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Effect of concomitant pharmacotherapy on electroconvulsive therapy outcomes: short-term efficacy and adverse effects. | CONTEXT
Medication resistance is the leading indication for use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in major depression. The practice of stopping antidepressant medications prior to ECT derived from studies in the 1960s and 1970s in nonresistant samples. There is also continuing controversy regarding the relative efficacy and adverse effects of right unilateral and bilateral ECT.
OBJECTIVE
To test the hypotheses that, compared with placebo, concomitant treatment with nortriptline or venlafaxine during the ECT course enhances short-term efficacy without a meaningful effect on adverse effects and reduces the rate of post-ECT relapse, and to test the hypotheses that high-dose, right-sided, unilateral ECT is equivalent in efficacy to moderate-dosage bilateral ECT and retains advantages with respect to cognitive adverse effects.
DESIGN
Prospective, randomized, triple-masked, placebo-controlled study conducted from 2001 through 2005.
SETTING
Three university-based hospitals.
PATIENTS
Of approximately 750 consecutive patients referred for ECT, 319 with a major depressive episode consented, were randomized to pharmacological or ECT treatment conditions, and received at least 1 ECT treatment.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Scores on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, remission rate following completion of ECT, and selective measures of cognitive adverse effects.
RESULTS
Treatment with nortriptyline enhanced the efficacy and reduced the cognitive adverse effects of ECT relative to placebo. Venlafaxine resulted in a weaker degree of improvement and tended to worsen cognitive adverse effects. High-dosage right unilateral ECT did not differ or was superior to bilateral ECT in efficacy and resulted in less severe amnesia.
CONCLUSIONS
The efficacy of ECT is substantially increased by the addition of an antidepressant medication, but such medications may differ in whether they reduce or increase cognitive adverse effects. High-dose, right-sided, unilateral ECT is at least equivalent to moderate-dosage bilateral ECT in efficacy, but retains advantages with respect to cognitive adverse effects. |
Interhospital variation in the RATPAC trial (Randomised Assessment of Treatment using Panel Assay of Cardiac markers). | BACKGROUND
The RATPAC trial showed that using a point-of-care panel of CK-MB(mass), myoglobin and troponin at baseline and 90 min increased the proportion of patients successfully discharged home, leading to reduced median length of initial hospital stay. However, it did not change mean hospital stay and may have increased mean costs per patient. The aim of this study was to explore variation in outcome and costs between participating hospitals.
METHODS
RATPAC was a pragmatic multicentre randomised controlled trial (N=2243) and economic analysis comparing diagnostic assessment using the panel to standard care for patients with acute chest pain due to suspected myocardial infarction at six hospitals. The difference in the proportion of patients successfully discharged (primary outcome) and mean costs per patient between the participating hospitals was compared.
RESULTS
Point-of-care assessment led to a higher proportion of successful discharges in four hospitals, a lower proportion in one and was equivocal in another. The OR (95% CI) for the primary outcome varied from 0.12 (0.01 to 1.03) to 11.07 (6.23 to 19.66) with significant heterogeneity between the centres (p<0.001). The mean cost per patient for the intervention group ranged from being £214.49 less than the control group (-132.56 to 657.10) to £646.57 more expensive (73.12 to 1612.71), with weak evidence of heterogeneity between the centres (p=0.0803).
CONCLUSION
The effect of point-of-care panel assessment on successful discharge and costs per patient varied markedly between hospitals and may depend on local protocols, staff practices and available facilities. |
A Review of Steven Shavell's Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law | Steven Shavell's Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law (Harvard University Press, 2004) is a major theoretical contribution to "law and economics," the applied field of economics that studies the economic properties and consequences of legal doctrines and institutions. It is a field of immense practical importance, but unfamiliar to many economists--a situation that Shavell's book bids fair to rectify. This review essay situates Shavell's book in the history of economic scholarship about law and uses the book as a springboard for speculation about new directions in that scholarship. |
Guessing Attacks on User-Generated Gesture Passwords | Touchscreens, the dominant input type for mobile phones, require unique authentication solutions. Gesture passwords have been proposed as an alternative ubiquitous authentication technique. Prior security analysis has relied on inconsistent measurements such as mutual information or shoulder surfing attacks.We present the first approach for measuring the security of gestures with guessing attacks that model real-world attacker behavior. Our major contributions are: 1) a comprehensive analysis of the weak subspace for gesture passwords, 2) a method for enumerating the size of the full theoretical gesture password space, 3) a design of a novel guessing attack against user-chosen gestures using a dictionary, and 4) a brute-force attack used for benchmarking the performance of the guessing attack. Our dictionary attack, tested on newly collected user data, achieves a cracking rate of 47.71% after two weeks of computation using 109 guesses. This is a difference of 35.78 percentage points compared to the 11.93% cracking rate of the brute-force attack. In conclusion, users are not taking full advantage of the large theoretical password space and instead choose their gesture passwords from weak subspaces. We urge for further work on addressing this challenge. |
In Google We Trust: Users' Decisions on Rank, Position and Relevancy in Google We Trust: Users' Decisions on Rank, Position and Relevancy in Google We Trust: Users' Decisions on Rank, Position and Relevancy | This research intends to find out whether a user’s choice of a particular abstract in Google results pages was based on the rank of that abstract, the user’s evaluation of the relevancy of that abstract, or a combination of the two. An eye tracking experiment revealed that users have substantial trust in Google’s ability to rank results by their true relevance to the query. When users selected a link to follow from Google’s result pages, their decisions were strongly biased towards links higher in rank even if the abstracts themselves were less relevant. While users reacted to artificially reduced retrieval quality by greater scrutiny, they failed to achieve the same success rate. This demonstrated trust in Google has implications for the search engines’ tremendous potential influence on culture, society, and user traffic on the Web. |
Deep Convolutional Neural Networks with Layer-Wise Context Expansion and Attention | In this paper, we propose a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) with layer-wise context expansion and location-based attention, for large vocabulary speech recognition. In our model each higher layer uses information from broader contexts, along both the time and frequency dimensions, than its immediate lower layer. We show that both the layer-wise context expansion and the location-based attention can be implemented using the element-wise matrix product and the convolution operation. For this reason, contrary to other CNNs, no pooling operation is used in our model. Experiments on the 309hr Switchboard task and the 375hr short message dictation task indicates that our model outperforms both the DNN and LSTM significantly. |
Exploring the mechanisms behind the assessment of usefulness of restaurant reviews | Local online reviews such as Yelp have become large repositories of information, thus making it difficult for readers to find the most useful content. Our work investigates the factors that influence the readers' judgment of usefulness of restaurant reviews. We focus on assessing the mechanism behind the users' assessment of usefulness of reviews, particularly with respect to reviews provided by reviewers with local knowledge. We collected 160 manual annotations of 36 unique restaurant reviews and we interviewed ten participants. Our results show that users are able to detect reviews written by knowledgeable locals, and they perceive reviews provided by locals more useful not because they provide more valuable content but because local knowledge results in higher trust. We discuss design implications of these findings for helping readers to overcome information overload in local systems. |
A Dictionary of Nonsubsective Adjectives | Computational approaches to inference and information extraction often assume that adjective-noun compounds maintain all the relevant properties of the unmodified noun. A significant portion of nonsubsective adjectives violate this assumption. We present preliminary work towards a classifier for these adjectives. We also compile a comprehensive list of 60 nonsubsective adjectives including those used for training and those found by the classifiers. |
An overview of global gold market and gold price forecasting | The global gold market has recently attracted a lot of attention and the price of gold is relatively higher than its historical trend. For mining companies to mitigate risk and uncertainty in gold price fluctuations, make hedging, future investment and evaluation decisions, depend on forecasting future price trends. The first section of this paper reviews the world gold market and the historical trend of gold prices from January 1968 to December 2008. This is followed by an investigation into the relationship between gold price and other key influencing variables, such as oil price and global inflation over the last 40 years. The second section applies a modified econometric version of the longterm trend reverting jump and dip diffusion model for forecasting natural-resource commodity prices. This method addresses the deficiencies of previous models, such as jumps and dips as parameters and unit root test for long-term trends. The model proposes that historical data of mineral commodities have three terms to demonstrate fluctuation of prices: a long-term trend reversion component, a diffusion component and a jump or dip component. The model calculates each term individually to estimate future prices of mineral commodities. The study validates the model and estimates the gold price for the next 10 years, based on monthly historical data of nominal gold price. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Automatic system for determination of blood types using image processing techniques | Determine blood type is essential before administering a blood transfusion, including in emergency situation. Currently, these tests are performed manually by technicians, which can lead to human errors. Various systems have been developed to automate these tests, but none is able to perform the analysis in time for emergency situations. This work aims to develop an automatic system to perform these tests in a short period of time, adapting to emergency situations. To do so, it uses the slide test and image processing techniques using the IMAQ Vision from National Instruments. The image captured after the slide test is processed and detects the occurrence of agglutination. Next the classification algorithm determines the blood type in analysis. Finally, all the information is stored in a database. Thus, the system allows determining the blood type in an emergency, eliminating transfusions based on the principle of universal donor and reducing transfusion reactions risks. |
Influence of neck pain on cervical movement in the sagittal plane during
smartphone use | [Purpose] Smartphone use reportedly changes posture. However, how neck posture is altered in smartphone users with neck pain is unknown. This study examined changes in the posture of young adults with and without mild neck pain (MNP) when using a smartphone. [Subjects] Thirteen control subjects and 14 subjects with MNP who used smartphones were recruited. [Methods] The upper cervical (UC) and lower cervical (LC) angles in the sagittal plane were measured using an ultrasound-based motion analysis system while the seated subjects used a smartphone for 5 min. [Results] During smartphone use, the MNP group exhibited greater UC and LC flexion angles than the control group. [Conclusion] These findings suggest that young adults with MNP are more careful and more frequently utilize a neutral neck posture than young adults without MNP when using a smartphone while sitting. |
Withdrawal of inhaled corticosteroids can be safe in COPD patients at low risk of exacerbation: a real-life study on the appropriateness of treatment in moderate COPD patients (OPTIMO) | BACKGROUND
It has been suggested that withdrawal of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) in COPD patients on maintenance treatment results in deterioration of symptoms, lung function and exacerbations. The aim of this real-life, prospective, multicentric study was to investigate whether withdrawal of ICS in COPD patients at low risk of exacerbation is linked to a deterioration in lung function and symptoms and to a higher frequency of exacerbations.
METHODS
914 COPD patients, on maintenance therapy with bronchodilators and ICS, FEV1>50% predicted, and <2 exacerbations/year were recruited. Upon decision of the primary physicians, 59% of patients continued their ICS treatment whereas in 41% of patients ICS were withdrawn and regular therapy was continued with long-acting bronchodilators mostly (91% of patients). FEV1, CAT (COPD Assessment Test), and occurrence of exacerbations were measured at the beginning (T0) and at the end (T6) of the 6 months observational period.
RESULTS
816 patients (89.3%) concluded the study. FEV1, CAT and exacerbations history were similar in the two groups (ICS and no ICS) at T0 and at T6. We did not observe any deterioration of lung function symptoms, and exacerbation rate between the two groups at T0 and T6.
CONCLUSIONS
We conclude that the withdrawal of ICS, in COPD patients at low risk of exacerbation, can be safe provided that patients are left on maintenance treatment with long-acting bronchodilators. |
Fire and smoke detection without sensors: Image processing based approach | In this paper, novel models for fire and smoke detection using image processing is provided. The models use different colour models for both fire and smoke. The colour models are extracted using a statistical analysis of samples extracted from different type of video sequences and images. The extracted models can be used in complete fire/smoke detection system which combines colour information with motion analysis. |
Curiosity-driven optimization | The principle of artificial curiosity directs active exploration towards the most informative or most interesting data. We show its usefulness for global black box optimization when data point evaluations are expensive. Gaussian process regression is used to model the fitness function based on all available observations so far. For each candidate point this model estimates expected fitness reduction, and yields a novel closed-form expression of expected information gain. A new type of Pareto-front algorithm continually pushes the boundary of candidates not dominated by any other known data according to both criteria, using multi-objective evolutionary search. This makes the exploration-exploitation trade-off explicit, and permits maximally informed data selection. We illustrate the robustness of our approach in a number of experimental scenarios. |
Microchannel size effects on local flow boiling heat transfer to a dielectric fluid | Heat transfer with liquid–vapor phase change in microchannels can support very high heat fluxes for use in applications such as the thermal management of high-performance electronics. However, the effects of channel cross-sectional dimensions on the two-phase heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop have not been investigated extensively. In the present work, experiments are conducted to investigate the local flow boiling heat transfer of a dielectric fluid, Fluorinert FC-77, in microchannel heat sinks. Experiments are performed for mass fluxes ranging from 250 to 1600 kg/m s. Seven different test pieces made from silicon and consisting of parallel microchannels with nominal widths ranging from 100 to 5850 lm, all with a nominal depth of 400 lm, are considered. An array of temperature sensors on the substrate allows for resolution of local temperatures and heat transfer coefficients. The results of this study show that for microchannels of width 400 lm and greater, the heat transfer coefficients corresponding to a fixed wall heat flux as well as the boiling curves are independent of channel size. Also, heat transfer coefficients and boiling curves are independent of mass flux in the nucleate boiling region for a fixed channel size, but are affected by mass flux as convective boiling dominates. A strong dependence of pressure drop on both channel size and mass flux is observed. The experimental results are compared to predictions from a number of existing correlations for both pool boiling and flow boiling heat transfer. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Abnormalities of the TMJ and the Musculature in the Oculo-auriculo-vertebral Spectrum (OAV) | The abnormalities covered by the generic term “oculo-auriculovertebral spectrum” (OAV) form an exceptional heterogeneous dysmorphic complex characterized by unilateral malformations of miscellaneous craniofacial structures. The aim of the present study was to analyze morphometrically the developmental deficits concerning the temporomandibular joints, the mandibular rami and the mastication muscles by comparing the affected with the non-affected side. The volume, maximum horizontal diameter, and trabecular bone density of the head of the mandible, as well as the ramus height were acquired from CT data of 16 patients suffering from this syndrome. The volume and maximal cross-sectional area of the masseter muscles and the pterygoid muscles were defined by quantifying CT data of nine patients. The skeletal parameters were evaluated with VoXim® software. The comparison of the mandibular structures on the affected and on the non-affected side was based on the Wilcoxon signed rank test. The results recorded on the affected side showed that the TMJ volume was reduced by a mean factor of 7.98, and the spongiodensity of the head of the mandible by a mean factor of 1.33, while the mean reduction in ramus height was 14.89 mm. The muscle volumes on the affected side had also undergone a mean reduction of 9.10 cm3. The CT-based data analysis proved to be an excellent tool for quantitative three-dimensional evaluation of both the skeletal and the muscular parameters. Der Formenkreis des „okuloaurikulovertebralen Spektrums“ (OAV) stellt einen außerordentlich heterogenen Fehlbildungskomplex mit unilateraler Beteiligung verschiedener Strukturen im kraniofazialen Bereich dar. Ziel der vorliegenden Untersuchung war es, die Entwicklungsdefizite der betroffenen Kiefergelenke, der Rami mandibulae und der Kaumuskulatur im Seitenvergleich morphometrisch zu analysieren. Die Vermessung der Kiefergelenksvolumina, der Dichte der Gelenkspongiosa, des Kondylendurchmessers und der Ramuslänge erfolgte anhand computertomographischer Datensätze von 16 Patienten. Zur Bestimmung der Muskelvolumina und der maximalen Querschnittsfläche des Musculus masseter sowie der Muskelgruppe der Musculi pterygoidei dienten CT-Datensätze von neun Patienten. Die Auswertung der skelettalen Untersuchungsparameter wurde mittels der VoXim®-Software durchgeführt. Die Unterschiede zwischen den mandibulären Strukturen auf der Seite der Entwicklungsstörung und der nicht betroffenen Seite wurden mit dem Wilcoxon-Test für verbundene Stichproben überprüft. Es zeigte sich, dass das Volumen der betroffenen Kiefergelenke im Durchschnitt um den Faktor 7,98 vermindert war. Die Spongiosadichte der Kiefergelenke war auf der Seite der Entwicklungsstörung im Mittel um den Faktor 1,33 reduziert. Die Ramushöhe zeigte auf der betroffenen Seite eine durchschnittliche Längenreduktion von 14,89 mm. Die Muskelvolumina waren auf der Seite der Entwicklungsstörung ebenfalls vermindert; im Durchschnitt wurde für das Gesamtvolumen eine durchschnittliche Reduktion von 9,10 cm3 berechnet. Die CT-basierte Datenanalyse erwies sich sowohl für die quantitative dreidimensionale Evaluation der skelettalen als auch der muskulären Parameter als effizientes Untersuchungsmittel. |
Association of Sleep and Academic Performance | Poor school performance by adolescent students has been attributed in part to insufficient sleep. It is recognized that a number of factors lead to diminished total sleep time and chief among these are early school start times and sleep phase delay in adolescence. Political initiatives are gaining momentum across the United States to require later school start times with the intent of increasing total sleep time and consequently improving school performance. Later school start times come with significant costs and impact other activities of families and communities. The decision to implement later school start times cannot be made lightly and deserves support of well-performed research on the impact of these changes. A study evaluating the association of academic performance and total sleep time was performed in middle school and high school students in a suburban Maryland school system. Preliminary results of this study show no correlation of total sleep time with academic performance. Before mandating costly changes in school schedules, it would be useful to perform further research to determine the effects of increasing sleep time on the behaviors of adolescent students. |
A 100V gate driver with sub-nanosecond-delay capacitive-coupled level shifting and dynamic timing control for ZVS-based synchronous power converters | A high-voltage high-speed gate driver to enable synchronous rectifiers with zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) operation is presented in this paper. A capacitive-coupled level-shifter (CCLS) is developed to achieve negligible propagation delay and static current consumption. With only 1 off-chip capacitor, the proposed gate driver possesses strong driving capability and requires no external floating supply for the high-side driving. A dynamic timing control is also proposed not only to enable ZVS operation in the converter for minimizing the capacitive switching loss, but also to eliminate the converter short-circuit power loss. Implemented in a 0.5μm HV CMOS process, the proposed CCLS of the gate driver can shift up a 5V signal to the 100V DC rail with sub-nanosecond delay, improving the FoM by at least 29 times compared with that of state-of-the-art counterparts. The dynamic dead-time control properly enables ZVS operation in a synchronous buck converter under different input voltages (30V to 100V). The power losses of the high-voltage buck converter are thus greatly reduced under different load currents, achieving a maximum power efficiency improvement of 11.5%. |
Overview of the torque-controlled humanoid robot TORO | This paper gives an overview on the torque-controlled humanoid robot TORO, which has evolved from the former DLR Biped. In particular, we describe its mechanical design and dimensioning, its sensors, electronics and computer hardware. Additionally, we give a short introduction to the walking and multi-contact balancing strategies used for TORO. |
An Affective Model of Interplay between Emotions and Learning: Reengineering Educational Pedagogy - Building a Learning Companion | There is an interplay between emotions and learning, but this interaction is far more complex than previous theories have articulated. This article proffers a novel model by which to: 1). regard the interplay of emotions upon learning for, 2). the larger practical aim of crafting computer-based models that will recognize a learner’s affective state and respond appropriately to it so that learning will proceed at an optimal pace. 1. Looking around then moving forward The extent to which emotional upsets can interfere with mental life is no news to teachers. Students who are anxious, angry, or depressed don’t learn; people who are caught in these states do not take in information efficiently or deal with it well. Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence Educators have emphasized conveying information and facts; rarely have they modeled the learning process. When teachers present material to the class, it is usually in a polished form that omits the natural steps of making mistakes (e.g., feeling confused), recovering from them (e.g., overcoming frustration), deconstructing what went wrong (e.g., not becoming dispirited), and starting over again (with hope and enthusiasm). Those who work in science, math, engineering, and technology (SMET) as professions know that learning naturally involves failure and a host of associated affective responses. Yet, educators of SMET learners have rarely illuminated these natural concomitants of the learning experience. The result is that when students see that they are not getting the facts right (on quizzes, exams, etc.), then they tend to believe that they are either ‘not good at this,’ ‘can’t do it,’ or that they are simply ‘stupid’ when it comes to these subjects. What we fail to teach them is that all these feelings associated with various levels of failure are normal parts of learning, and that they can actually be helpful signals for how to learn better. Expert teachers are very adept at recognizing and addressing the emotional state of learners and, based upon their observation they take some action that positively impacts learning. But what do these expert teachers ‘see’ and how do they decide upon a course of action? How do students who have strayed from learning return to a productive path, such as the one that Csikszentmihalyi [1990] refers to as his “zone of flow”? Skilled humans can assess emotional signals with varying degrees of accuracy, and researchers are beginning to make progress giving computers similar abilities at recognizing affective expressions. We believe that accurately identifying a learner’s cognitive-emotional state is a critical mentoring skill. Although computers perform as well as or better than people in selected domains, they do not yet rise to human levels of mentoring. We envision that computers will soon become capable of recognizing human behaviors indicative of the user’s affective state. We have begun research that will lead to our building of a computerized Learning Companion that will track the affective state of a learner through their learning journey. It will recognize cognitive-emotive state (affective state), and respond appropriately. We believe that the first task is to evolve new pedagogical models, which assess whether or not learning is proceeding at a healthy rate and intervene appropriately; then these pedagogical models will be integrated into a computerized environment. Two issues face us, one is to research new educational pedagogy, and the other is a matter of building computerized mechanisms that will accurately and immediately recognize a learner’s state by some ubiquitous method and activate an appropriate response. Axis -1. 0 -0. 5 0 +0. 5 +1. 0 Anxiety-Confidence Anxiety Worry Discomfort Comfort Hopeful Confident Boredom-Fascination Ennui Boredom Indifference Interest Curiosity Intrigue Frustration-Euphoria Frustration Puzzlement Confusion Insight Enlightenment Epiphany Dispirited-Encouraged Dispirited Disappointed Dissatisfied Satisfied Thrilled Enthusiastic Terror-Enchantment Terror Dread Apprehension Calm Anticipatory Excited Figure 1 – Emotion sets possibly relevant to learning 2. Two sets of research results This research project will have two sets of results. This paper offers the first set of results, which consists of our model and a research method to investigate the issue. A future paper will contain the results of the empirical research—the second set of results. This paper will address two aspects of our current research. Section 3 will outline our theoretical frameworks and define our model (Figures 1 and 2). Section 4 will describe our empirical research methods. 3. Guiding theoretical frameworks: An ideal model of learning process Before describing the model’s dynamics, we should say something about the space of emotions it names. Previous emotion theories have proposed that there are from two to twenty basic or prototype emotions (see for example, Plutchik, 1980; Leidelmeijer, 1991). The four most common emotions appearing on the many theorists’ lists are fear, anger, sadness, and joy. Plutchik [1980] distinguished among eight basic emotions: fear, anger, sorrow, joy, disgust, acceptance, anticipation, and surprise. Ekman [1992] has focused on a set of from six to eight basic emotions that have associated facial expressions. However, none of the existing frameworks address emotions commonly seen in SMET learning experiences, some of which we have noted in Figure 1. Whether all of these are important, and whether the axes shown in Figure 1 are the “right” ones remains to be evaluated, and it will no doubt take many investigations before a “basic emo tion set for learning” can be established. Such a set may be culturally different and will likely vary with developmental age as well. For example, it has been argued that infants come into this world only expressing interest, distress, and pleasure [Lewis, 1993] and that these three states provide sufficiently rich initial cues to the caregiver that she or he can scaffold the learning experience appropriately in response. We believe that skilled observant human tutors and mentors (teachers) react to assist students based on a few ‘least common denominators’ of affect as opposed to a large number of complex factors; thus, we expect that the space of emotions presented here might be simplified and refined further as we tease out which states are most important for shaping the companion’s responses. Constructive Learning Disappointment Awe Puzzlement Satisfaction Confusion Curiosity II I Negative Positive Affect Affect III IV Frustration Hopefulness Discard Fresh research Misconceptions |
Gamification of Information Systems and Security Training : Issues and Case Studies | This paper discusses gamification, the application of gaming elements in non-game contexts, with regard to information systems and information security training. The authors have developed gamification tools for use in the classroom as well as several educational games in order to explore the viability of gamified curricula in both high school and college environments. Early results indicate positive student attitudes toward gamified approaches, as well as improved attendance and success rate. Issues encountered in curriculum gamification and game development are described along with best practices for both. |
Cyber security in the Smart Grid: Survey and challenges | The Smart Grid, generally referred to as the next-generation power system, is considered as a revolutionary and evolutionary regime of existing power grids. More importantly, with the integration of advanced computing and communication technologies, the Smart Grid is expected to greatly enhance efficiency and reliability of future power systems with renewable energy resources, as well as distributed intelligence and demand response. Along with the silent features of the Smart Grid, cyber security emerges to be a critical issue because millions of electronic devices are inter-connected via communication networks throughout critical power facilities, which has an immediate impact on reliability of such a widespread infrastructure. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of cyber security issues for the Smart Grid. Specifically, we focus on reviewing and discussing security requirements, network vulnerabilities, attack countermeasures, secure communication protocols and architectures in the Smart Grid. We aim to provide a deep understanding of security vulnerabilities and solutions in the Smart Grid and shed light on future research directions for Smart Grid security. 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
From Motion Blur to Motion Flow: A Deep Learning Solution for Removing Heterogeneous Motion Blur | Removing pixel-wise heterogeneous motion blur is challenging due to the ill-posed nature of the problem. The predominant solution is to estimate the blur kernel by adding a prior, but extensive literature on the subject indicates the difficulty in identifying a prior which is suitably informative, and general. Rather than imposing a prior based on theory, we propose instead to learn one from the data. Learning a prior over the latent image would require modeling all possible image content. The critical observation underpinning our approach, however, is that learning the motion flow instead allows the model to focus on the cause of the blur, irrespective of the image content. This is a much easier learning task, but it also avoids the iterative process through which latent image priors are typically applied. Our approach directly estimates the motion flow from the blurred image through a fully-convolutional deep neural network (FCN) and recovers the unblurred image from the estimated motion flow. Our FCN is the first universal end-to-end mapping from the blurred image to the dense motion flow. To train the FCN, we simulate motion flows to generate synthetic blurred-image-motion-flow pairs thus avoiding the need for human labeling. Extensive experiments on challenging realistic blurred images demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art. |
The virtual showcase | We present the Virtual Showcase, a new multiviewer augmented reality display device that has the same form factor as a real showcase traditionally used for museum exhibits. |
Fluid retention and vascular effects of rosiglitazone in obese, insulin-resistant, nondiabetic subjects. | OBJECTIVE
The use of thiazolidinedione (TZD) derivatives is associated with fluid retention, especially when combined with insulin. Because TZDs improve the metabolic effect of insulin, they may also reverse the blunted vascular response to insulin. We hypothesize that improvement of the action of insulin on vascular tone or permeability is the key mechanism of TZD-related fluid retention.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study in 18 obese, nondiabetic subjects with features of the metabolic syndrome, we investigated the effects of a 12-week treatment with 4 mg rosiglitazone twice a day on glucose disposal, hemodynamics (including forearm vasoconstrictor response to nitric oxide [NO]), synthase inhibition by N-monomethyl-L-arginine-acetate (L-NMMA), vascular permeability (transcapillary escape rate of albumin), and plasma volume during a hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp (120 min, 120 mU/m(2) per min).
RESULTS
As expected, rosiglitazone increased the glucose infusion rate during clamping. However, neither vascular permeability nor forearm blood flow response to hyperinsulinemia or L-NMMA was affected by rosiglitazone. Compared with placebo, rosiglitazone decreased diastolic blood pressure by 5 mmHg (95% CI 2.35-6.87, P = 0.0005) and increased plasma volume by 255 ml/1.73 m(2) (80-430, P = 0.007). Interestingly, the positive effect of rosiglitazone on glucose disposal correlated with change in foot volume (R(2) = 0.53, P = 0.001).
CONCLUSIONS
Rosiglitazone improved insulin sensitivity but had no effect on NO-dependent vasodilatation in the forearm or vascular permeability in obese, insulin-resistant, nondiabetic subjects. As such, TZD-related fluid retention was not caused by improvement of the vascular actions of insulin. Nonetheless, rosiglitazone-induced improvement in insulin sensitivity appears to be correlated to edema formation. |
Evaluation of Decision Tree Pruning Algorithms for Complexity and Classification Accuracy | Classification is an important problem in data mining. Given a database of records, each with a class label, a classifier generates a concise and meaningful description for each class that can be used to classify subsequent records. A number of popular classifiers construct decision trees to generate class models. These classifiers first build a decision tree and then prune subtrees from the decision tree in a subsequent pruning phase to improve accuracy and prevent “overfitting”. In this paper, the different pruning methodologies available & their various features are discussed. Also the effectiveness of pruning is evaluated in terms of complexity and classification accuracy by applying C4.5 decision tree classification algorithm on Credit Card Database with pruning and without pruning. Instead of classifying the transactions either fraud or non-fraud the transactions are classified in four risk levels which is an innovative concept. |
Anomaly Detection for Skin Disease Images Using Variational Autoencoder | In this paper, we demonstrate the potential of applying Variational Autoencoder (VAE) [9] for anomaly detection in skin disease images. VAE is a class of deep generative models which is trained by maximizing the evidence lower bound of data distribution [9]. When trained on only normal data, the resulting model is able to perform efficient inference and to determine if a test image is normal or not. We perform experiments on ISIC2018 Challenge Disease Classification dataset (Task 3)[4, 13] and compare different methods to use VAE to detect anomaly. The model is able to detect all diseases with 0.779 AUCROC. If we focus on specific diseases, the model is able to detect melanoma with 0.864 AUCROC and detect actinic keratosis with 0.872 AUCROC, even if it only sees the images of nevus. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first applied work of deep generative models for anomaly detection in dermatology. |
Different patterns of HIV-1 DNA after therapy discontinuation | BACKGROUND
By persisting in infected cells for a long period of time, proviral HIV-1 DNA can represent an alternative viral marker to RNA viral load during the follow-up of HIV-1 infected individuals. In the present study sequential blood samples of 10 patients under antiretroviral treatment from 1997 with two NRTIs, who refused to continue any antiviral regimen, were analyzed for 16-24 weeks to study the possible relationship between DNA and RNA viral load.
METHODS
The amount of proviral DNA was quantified by SYBR green real-time PCR in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from a selected group of ten patients with different levels of plasmatic viremia (RNA viral load).
RESULTS
Variable levels of proviral DNA were found without any significant correlation between proviral load and plasma HIV-1 RNA levels. Results obtained showed an increase or a rebound in viral DNA in most patients, suggesting that the absence of therapy reflects an increase and/or a persistence of cells containing viral DNA.
CONCLUSION
Even though plasma HIV RNA levels remain the basic parameter to monitor the intensity of viral replication, the results obtained seem to indicate that DNA levels could represent an adjunct prognostic marker in monitoring HIV-1 infected subjects. |
RNN based MIMO channel prediction | A new hybrid PSO-EA-DEPSO algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (PSO), evolutionary algorithm (EA), and differential evolution (DE) is presented for training a recurrent neural network (RNN) for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel prediction. This algorithm is shown to outperform RNN predictors trained off-line by PSO, EA, and DEPSO as well as a linear predictor trained by the Levinson–Durbin algorithm. To explore the effects of channel prediction error at the receiver, new expressions for the received SNR, array gain, and average probability of error are derived and analyzed. These expressions differ from previous results which assume the prediction error is Gaussian and/or independent of the true CSI. The array gain decays with increasing signal-to-noise ratio and is slightly larger for spatially correlated systems. As the prediction error increases in the non-saturation region, the coding gain decreases and the diversity gain remains unaffected. & 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: a meta-analysis. | More than 20 years ago, researchers proposed that individual differences in performance in such domains as music, sports, and games largely reflect individual differences in amount of deliberate practice, which was defined as engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance in a domain. This view is a frequent topic of popular-science writing-but is it supported by empirical evidence? To answer this question, we conducted a meta-analysis covering all major domains in which deliberate practice has been investigated. We found that deliberate practice explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. We conclude that deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued. |
An Optical Character Recognition | Arabic optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of converting images that contain Arabic text to a format that can be edited. In this work, a simple approach for Arabic OCR is presented, the proposed method deployed correlation and dynamic-size windowing to segment and to recognize Arabic characters. The proposed coherent template recognition process is characterized by the ability of recognizing Arabic characters with different sizes. Recognition results reveal the robustness of the proposed method. |
All-Optical Interrogation of Neural Circuits. | UNLABELLED
There have been two recent revolutionary advances in neuroscience: First, genetically encoded activity sensors have brought the goal of optical detection of single action potentials in vivo within reach. Second, optogenetic actuators now allow the activity of neurons to be controlled with millisecond precision. These revolutions have now been combined, together with advanced microscopies, to allow "all-optical" readout and manipulation of activity in neural circuits with single-spike and single-neuron precision. This is a transformational advance that will open new frontiers in neuroscience research. Harnessing the power of light in the all-optical approach requires coexpression of genetically encoded activity sensors and optogenetic probes in the same neurons, as well as the ability to simultaneously target and record the light from the selected neurons. It has recently become possible to combine sensors and optical strategies that are sufficiently sensitive and cross talk free to enable single-action-potential sensitivity and precision for both readout and manipulation in the intact brain. The combination of simultaneous readout and manipulation from the same genetically defined cells will enable a wide range of new experiments as well as inspire new technologies for interacting with the brain. The advances described in this review herald a future where the traditional tools used for generations by physiologists to study and interact with the brain-stimulation and recording electrodes-can largely be replaced by light. We outline potential future developments in this field and discuss how the all-optical strategy can be applied to solve fundamental problems in neuroscience.
SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT
This review describes the nexus of dramatic recent developments in optogenetic probes, genetically encoded activity sensors, and novel microscopies, which together allow the activity of neural circuits to be recorded and manipulated entirely using light. The optical and protein engineering strategies that form the basis of this "all-optical" approach are now sufficiently advanced to enable single-neuron and single-action potential precision for simultaneous readout and manipulation from the same functionally defined neurons in the intact brain. These advances promise to illuminate many fundamental challenges in neuroscience, including transforming our search for the neural code and the links between neural circuit activity and behavior. |
Artificial Noise Aided Secure Cognitive Beamforming for Cooperative MISO-NOMA Using SWIPT | Cognitive radio (CR) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) have been deemed two promising technologies due to their potential to achieve high spectral efficiency and massive connectivity. This paper studies a multiple-input single-output NOMA CR network relying on simultaneous wireless information and power transfer conceived for supporting a massive population of power limited battery-driven devices. In contrast to most of the existing works, which use an ideally linear energy harvesting model, this study applies a more practical non-linear energy harvesting model. In order to improve the security of the primary network, an artificial-noise-aided cooperative jamming scheme is proposed. The artificial-noise-aided beamforming design problems are investigated subject to the practical secrecy rate and energy harvesting constraints. Specifically, the transmission power minimization problems are formulated under both perfect channel state information (CSI) and the bounded CSI error model. The problems formulated are non-convex, hence they are challenging to solve. A pair of algorithms either using semidefinite relaxation (SDR) or a cost function are proposed for solving these problems. Our simulation results show that the proposed cooperative jamming scheme succeeds in establishing secure communications and NOMA is capable of outperforming the conventional orthogonal multiple access in terms of its power efficiency. Finally, we demonstrate that the cost function algorithm outperforms the SDR-based algorithm. |
Mentoring as professional development: ‘growth for both’ mentor and mentee | Teachers need professional development to keep current with teaching practices; although costs for extensive professional development can be prohibitive across an education system. Mentoring provides one way for embedding cost-effective professional development. This mixed method study includes surveying mentor teachers (n=101) on a five part Likert scale and interviews with experienced mentors (n=10) to investigate professional development for mentors as a result of the mentoring process. Quantitative data were analysed through a pedagogical knowledge framework and qualitative data were collated into themes. Survey data showed that although mentoring of pedagogical knowledge was variable, mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices occurs with the majority of mentors, which requires mentors to evaluate and articulate teaching practices. Qualitative data showed that mentoring acted as professional development and lead towards enhancing communication skills, developing leadership roles (problem solving and building capacity), and advancing pedagogical knowledge. Providing professional development to teachers on mentoring can help to build capacity in two ways: (1) quality mentoring of preservice teachers through explicit mentoring practices, and (2) reflecting and deconstructing teaching practices for mentors’ own pedagogical advancements. |
Multiple Physical Layer Pipes performance for DVB-T2 | The DVB-T2 terrestrial television standard is becoming increasingly important, and have been extensively studied and developed to provide many types of services with higher spectral efficiency and better performance. The Physical Layer Pipes in DVB-S2 are logical channels carrying one or more services with modulation scheme and robustness. The main changes are found in the physical layer where DVB-T2 incorporates a new physical layer pipe (PLP). Each physical layer pipe contains an individual configuration of modulation, coding and interleaving. This new concept allows a transmission with multiple physical layer pipes where each service can be transmitted with different physical layer configuration. The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC3.0) standard will add value to broadcasting services, allowing a extending reach by adding new business models, providing higher quality, improved accessibility, personalization and interactivity and more flexible and efficient use of the spectrum. |
Neurocristic cutaneous hamartoma of the scalp. | Neurocristic cutaneous hamartomas (NCHs) result from aberrant development of the neuromesenchyme. In addition to a dermal melanocytic component, these tumors can contain neuro sustentacular and fibrogenic components. The clinical importance of these lesions includes the potential for misdiagnosis as well as the development of malignant melanomas over a poorly described period of time. We present a rare case of NCH of the scalp in a 1-year-old female. |
History and principles of Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensing. | developed out of a need to solve a problem. The problem was posed, in the late 1960s, to the Optical Sciences Center (OSC) at the University of Arizona by the US Air Force. They wanted to improve the images of satellites taken from earth. The earth's atmosphere limits the image quality and exposure time of stars and satellites taken with telescopes over 5 inches in diameter at low altitudes and 10 to 12 inches in diameter at high altitudes. Dr. Aden Mienel was director of the OSC at that time. He came up with the idea of enhancing images of satellites by measuring the Optical Transfer Function (OTF) of the atmosphere and dividing the OTF of the image by the OTF of the atmosphere. The trick was to measure the OTF of the atmosphere at the same time the image was taken and to control the exposure time so as to capture a snapshot of the atmospheric aberrations rather than to average over time. The measured wavefront error in the atmosphere should not change more than /10 over the exposure time. The exposure time for a low earth orbit satellite imaged from a mountaintop was determined to be about 1/60 second. Mienel was an astronomer and had used the standard Hartmann test (Fig 1), where large wooden or cardboard panels were placed over the aperture of a large telescope. The panels had an array of holes that would allow pencils of rays from stars to be traced through the telescope system. A photographic plate was placed inside and outside of focus, with a sufficient separation, so the pencil of rays would be separated from each other. Each hole in the panel would produce its own blurry image of the star. By taking two images a known distance apart and measuring the centroid of the images, one can trace the rays through the focal plane. Hartmann used these ray traces to calculate figures of merit for large telescopes. The data can also be used to make ray intercept curves (H'-tan U'). When Mienel could not cover the aperture while taking an image of the satellite, he came up with the idea of inserting a beam splitter in collimated space behind the eyepiece and placing a plate with holes in it at the image of the pupil. Each hole would pass a pencil of rays to a vidicon tube (this was before … |
Putative role of aquaporins in variable hydraulic conductance of leaves in response to light. | Molecular and physiological studies in walnut (Juglans regia) are combined to establish the putative role of leaf plasma membrane aquaporins in the response of leaf hydraulic conductance (K(leaf)) to irradiance. The effects of light and temperature on K(leaf) are described. Under dark conditions, K(leaf) was low, but increased by 400% upon exposure to light. In contrast to dark conditions, K(leaf) values of light-exposed leaves responded to temperature and 0.1 mm cycloheximide treatments. Furthermore, K(leaf) was not related to stomatal aperture. Data of real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction showed that K(leaf) dynamics were tightly correlated with the transcript abundance of two walnut aquaporins (JrPIP2,1 and JrPIP2,2). Low K(leaf) in the dark was associated with down-regulation, whereas high K(leaf) in the light was associated with up-regulation of JrPIP2. Light responses of K(leaf) and aquaporin transcripts were reversible and inhibited by cycloheximide, indicating the importance of de novo protein biosynthesis in this process. Our results indicate that walnut leaves can rapidly change their hydraulic conductance and suggest that these changes can be explained by regulation of plasma membrane aquaporins. Model simulation suggests that variable leaf hydraulic conductance in walnut might enhance leaf gas exchanges while buffering leaf water status in response to ambient light fluctuations. |
Value Orientations and the Second Demographic Transition ( SDT ) in Northern , Western and Southern Europe : An Update | The core issue in this article is the empirical tracing of the connection between a variety of value orientations and the life course choices concerning living arrangements and family formation. The existence of such a connection is a crucial element in the socalled theory of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT). The underlying model is of a recursive nature and based on two effects: firstly, values-based self-selection of individuals into alternative living arrangement or household types, and secondly, event-based adaptation of values to the newly chosen household situation. Any testing of such a recursive model requires the use of panel data. Failing these, only “footprints” of the two effects can be derived and traced in cross-sectional data. Here, use is made of the latest round of the European Values Surveys of 1999-2000, mainly because no other source has such a large selection of value items. The comparison involves two Iberian countries, three western European ones, and two Scandinavian samples. The profiles of the value orientations are based on 80 items which cover a variety of dimensions (e.g. religiosity, ethics, civil morality, family values, social cohesion, expressive values, gender role orientations, trust in institutions, protest proneness and post-materialism, tolerance for minorities etc.). These are analysed according to eight different household positions based on the transitions to independent living, cohabitation and marriage, parenthood and union dissolution. Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) is used to control for confounding effects of other relevant covariates (age, gender, education, economic activity and stratification, urbanity). Subsequently, 1 Interface Demography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. E-mail: [email protected] 2 Interface Demography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. E-mail: [email protected] Demographic Research – Special Collection 3: Article 3 -Contemporary Research on European Fertility: Perspectives and Developments -46 http://www.demographic-research.org Correspondence Analysis is used to picture the proximities between the 80 value items and the eight household positions. Very similar value profiles according to household position are found for the three sets of countries, despite the fact that the onset of the SDT in Scandinavia precedes that in the Iberian countries by roughly twenty years. Moreover, the profile similarity remains intact when the comparison is extended to an extra group of seven formerly communist countries in central and Eastern Europe. Such pattern robustness is supportive of the contention that the ideational or “cultural” factor is indeed a nonredundant and necessary (but not a sufficient) element in the explanation of the demographic changes of the SDT. Moreover, the profile similarity also points in the direction of the operation of comparable mechanisms of selection and adaptation in the contrasting European settings. Demographic Research – Special Collection 3: Article 3 -Contemporary Research on European Fertility: Perspectives and Developments -http://www.demographic-research.org 47 |
A Theory of Destructive Entrepreneurship October 2007 | Policy interest since the early 1980s has focused in different ways on the creation of a large, productive, taxable economy – in which entrepreneurship plays a role for employment, income growth and innovation. The current understanding of various forms of entrepreneurship remains incomplete, focusing largely on productive and unproductive entrepreneurship. However, destructive entrepreneurship plays an important role in many, if not most, economies. This paper addresses the conceptual gap in the allocation of entrepreneurship by proposing a theory of destructive entrepreneurship. JEL-classification: O17, O20, P00 |
dipIQ: Blind Image Quality Assessment by Learning-to-Rank Discriminable Image Pairs | Objective assessment of image quality is fundamentally important in many image processing tasks. In this paper, we focus on learning blind image quality assessment (BIQA) models, which predict the quality of a digital image with no access to its original pristine-quality counterpart as reference. One of the biggest challenges in learning BIQA models is the conflict between the gigantic image space (which is in the dimension of the number of image pixels) and the extremely limited reliable ground truth data for training. Such data are typically collected via subjective testing, which is cumbersome, slow, and expensive. Here, we first show that a vast amount of reliable training data in the form of quality-discriminable image pairs (DIPs) can be obtained automatically at low cost by exploiting large-scale databases with diverse image content. We then learn an opinion-unaware BIQA (OU-BIQA, meaning that no subjective opinions are used for training) model using RankNet, a pairwise learning-to-rank (L2R) algorithm, from millions of DIPs, each associated with a perceptual uncertainty level, leading to a DIP inferred quality (dipIQ) index. Extensive experiments on four benchmark IQA databases demonstrate that dipIQ outperforms the state-of-the-art OU-BIQA models. The robustness of dipIQ is also significantly improved as confirmed by the group MAximum Differentiation competition method. Furthermore, we extend the proposed framework by learning models with ListNet (a listwise L2R algorithm) on quality-discriminable image lists (DIL). The resulting DIL inferred quality index achieves an additional performance gain. |
Enhancing Penetration Testing with Attack Signatures and Interface Monitoring for the Detection of Injection Vulnerabilities in Web Services | Web services are often deployed with critical software bugs that may be maliciously exploited. Developers often trust on penetration testing tools to detect those vulnerabilities but the effectiveness of such technique is limited by the lack of information on the internal state of the tested services. This paper proposes a new approach for the detection of injection vulnerabilities in web services. The approach uses attack signatures and interface monitoring to increase the visibility of the penetration testing process, yet without needing to access web service's internals (as these are frequently not available). To demonstrate the feasibility of the approach we implemented a prototype tool to detect SQL Injection vulnerabilities in SOAP. An experimental evaluation comparing this prototype with three commercial penetration testers was conducted. Results show that our prototype is able to achieve much higher detection coverage than those testers while avoiding false positives, indicating that the proposed approach can be used in real development scenarios. |
Intermediate and advanced topics in multilevel logistic regression analysis | Multilevel data occur frequently in health services, population and public health, and epidemiologic research. In such research, binary outcomes are common. Multilevel logistic regression models allow one to account for the clustering of subjects within clusters of higher-level units when estimating the effect of subject and cluster characteristics on subject outcomes. A search of the PubMed database demonstrated that the use of multilevel or hierarchical regression models is increasing rapidly. However, our impression is that many analysts simply use multilevel regression models to account for the nuisance of within-cluster homogeneity that is induced by clustering. In this article, we describe a suite of analyses that can complement the fitting of multilevel logistic regression models. These ancillary analyses permit analysts to estimate the marginal or population-average effect of covariates measured at the subject and cluster level, in contrast to the within-cluster or cluster-specific effects arising from the original multilevel logistic regression model. We describe the interval odds ratio and the proportion of opposed odds ratios, which are summary measures of effect for cluster-level covariates. We describe the variance partition coefficient and the median odds ratio which are measures of components of variance and heterogeneity in outcomes. These measures allow one to quantify the magnitude of the general contextual effect. We describe an R2 measure that allows analysts to quantify the proportion of variation explained by different multilevel logistic regression models. We illustrate the application and interpretation of these measures by analyzing mortality in patients hospitalized with a diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction. © 2017 The Authors. Statistics in Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. |
Bursty Feature Representation for Clustering Text Streams | Text representation plays a crucial role in classical text mining, where the primary focus was on static text. Nevertheless, well-studied static text representations including TFIDF are not optimized for non-stationary streams of information such as news, discussion board messages, and blogs. We therefore introduce a new temporal representation for text streams based on bursty features. Our bursty text representation differs significantly from traditional schemes in that it 1) dynamically represents documents over time, 2) amplifies a feature in proportional to its burstiness at any point in time, and 3) is topic independent. Our bursty text representation model was evaluated against a classical bagof-words text representation on the task of clustering TDT3 topical text streams. It was shown to consistently yield more cohesive clusters in terms of cluster purity and cluster/class entropies. This new temporal bursty text representation can be extended to most text mining tasks involving a temporal dimension, such as modeling of online blog pages. |
Using Pre-Training Can Improve Model Robustness and Uncertainty | Tuning a pre-trained network is commonly thought to improve data efficiency. However, Kaiming He et al. (2018) have called into question the utility of pre-training by showing that training from scratch can often yield similar performance, should the model train long enough. We show that although pre-training may not improve performance on traditional classification metrics, it does provide large benefits to model robustness and uncertainty. Through extensive experiments on label corruption, class imbalance, adversarial examples, out-of-distribution detection, and confidence calibration, we demonstrate large gains from pre-training and complementary effects with task-specific methods. We show approximately a 30% relative improvement in label noise robustness and a 10% absolute improvement in adversarial robustness on CIFAR10 and CIFAR-100. In some cases, using pretraining without task-specific methods surpasses the state-of-the-art, highlighting the importance of using pre-training when evaluating future methods on robustness and uncertainty tasks. |
The Reactive Tabu Search | We propose an algorithm for combinatorial optimization where an explicit check for the repetition of configurations is added to the basic scheme of Tabu search. In our Tabu scheme the appropriate size of the list is learned in an automated way by reacting to the occurrence of cycles. In addition, if the search appears to be repeating an excessive number of solutions excessively often, then the search is diversified by making a number of random moves proportional to a moving average of the cycle length. The reactive scheme is compared to a ”strict” Tabu scheme, that forbids the repetition of configurations and to schemes with a fixed or randomly varying list size. From the implementation point of view we show that the Hashing or Digital Tree techniques can be used in order to search for repetitions in a time that is approximately constant. We present the results obtained for a series of computational tests on a benchmark function, on the 0-1 Knapsack Problem, and on the Quadratic Assignment Problem. |
Proving Infinitary Formulas | The infinitary propositional logic of here-and-there is important for the theory of answer set programming in view of its relation to strongly equivalent transformations of logic programs. We know a formal system axiomatizing this logic exists, but a proof in that system may include infinitely many formulas. In this note we describe a relationship between the validity of infinitary formulas in the logic of here-and-there and the provability of formulas in some finite deductive systems. This relationship allows us to use finite proofs to justify the validity of infinitary formulas. |
Towards the improvement of Cuckoo search algorithm | Cuckoo search algorithm via L'evy flights by Xin-She Yang and Saush Deb [1] for optimizing a nonlinear function uses generation of random numbers with symmetric L'evy distribution obtained by Mantegna's algorithm. However, instead of using the original algorithm, they have used a simplified version to generate L'evy flights during the Cuckoo search algorithm [2]. Also, apaper by MatteoLeccardi [3] describes three algorithms to generate such random numbers and claims that McCulloch's algorithm is outperforming the other two, namely, Mantegna's algorithm and rejection algorithm. The idea in this paper is to compare and see if the Cuckoo Search algorithm shows any improvement in the performance in three cases when the simplified version algorithm, Mantegna's algorithm and McCulloch's algorithm each of them is included in Cuckoo Search algorithm to generate L'evy flights. |
Chinese Clinical Entity Recognition via Attention-Based CNN-LSTM-CRF | Chinese clinical entity recognition is a fundamental task of Chinese clinical natural language processing, which has attracted plenty of attention. In this paper, we propose a novel neural network, called attention-based CNN-LSTM-CRF, for this task. The neural network employs a CNN (convolutional neural network) layer to capture local context information of words of interest, a LSTM (long-short term memory) layer to obtain global information of each sentence, an attention layer to select relevant words, and a CRF layer to predict a label sequence for an input sentence. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we compare it with other two state-of-the-art methods, CRF (conditional random field) and LSTM-CRF, on two benchmark datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed neural network outperforms CRF and LSTM-CRF. |
The Fallacy of Tongue Thrust and Non-Surgical Treatment of a Severe Anterior Open Bite | Introduction: The causal relation between tongue thrust swallowing or habit and development of anterior open bite continues to be made in clinical orthodontics yet studies suggest a lack of evidence to support a cause and effect. Treatment continues to be directed towards closing the anterior open bite frequently with surgical intervention to reposition the maxilla and mandible. This case report illustrates a highly successful non-surgical orthodontic treatment without extractions. |
Optimal Trajectory Control of LLC Resonant Converters for LED PWM Dimming | In this paper, a novel PWM dimming solution with the optimal trajectory control for a multichannel constant current (MC3) LLC resonant LED driver is proposed. When PWM dimming is on, the LLC resonant converter operates under the full-load condition. The LED intensity is controlled by the ratio between the on-time and off-time of the PWM dimming signal. To eliminate the dynamic oscillations when the MC3 LLC starts to work from the idle status, the switching pattern is optimized based on the graphic state-trajectory analysis. Thus, the full-load steady state is tracked within the minimum time. Moreover, under low dimming conditions, the LED intensity can be controlled more precisely. Finally, the optimal PWM dimming approach is verified on a 200 W, 4-channel MC3 LLC LED driver prototype. |
Data driven investigation of faults in HVAC systems with model, cluster and compare (MCC) | The complexity of modern HVAC systems leads to device mis-configuration in about 40% of buildings, wasting upto 40% of the energy consumed. Fault detection methods generate excessive alarms leading to operator alert fatigue, faults left unfixed and energy wastage. Sophisticated fault detection techniques developed in the literature are seldom used in practice. We investigate this gap by applying various fault detection techniques on real data from a 145,000 sqft, five floor building. We first find that none of these algorithms are designed to capture control loop configuration faults. We develop a novel algorithm, Model, Cluster and Compare (MCC) that is able to detect anomalies by automatically modeling and clustering similar entities in an HVAC system, in an unsupervised manner, and comparing them. We implemented MCC to detect faults in Variable Air Volume boxes in our building, and demonstrate that it successfully detects non-obvious configuration faults. We propose a two stage approach, where we design intelligent rules (iRules) based on anomaly exemplars from a mix of data driven algorithms. iRules are successful in capturing a large fraction of faults in our building, with only one false alarm and 78 anomalies detected out of 237 zones. Thus, comparative data mining is useful in filtering the large amount of data generated in modern buildings, but that human in the loop systems are better still. |
Oral eicosapentaenoic acid for complications of bone marrow transplantation | The ‘systemic inflammatory response syndrome’ (SIRS) may represent the underlying cause of complications after bone marrow transplantation (BMT). This study was conducted to determine whether blocking the etiologic factors of SIRS could improve the complications of BMT. Sixteen consecutive patients with unrelated donors were allocated alternately to two groups. Seven patients received 1.8 g/day of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) orally from 3 weeks before to about 180 days after transplantation, while nine patients did not. These two groups were compared with respect to complications, survival, and various cytokines and factors causing vascular endothelial damage. All seven patients receiving EPA survived and only two had grade III graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Among the nine patients not receiving EPA, three had grade III or IV GVHD. In addition, thrombotic microangiopathy developed in four patients and cytomegalovirus disease occurred in four. Five patients died in this group. The levels of leukotriene B4, thromboxane A2, and prostaglandin I2 were significantly lower in patients receiving EPA than in those not receiving it (all P < 0.01). Cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor-α, interferon-γ, and interleukin-10 were also significantly decreased by EPA (P < 0.05), as were factors causing vascular endothelial damage such as thrombomodulin and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (P < 0.05). The survival rate was significantly higher in the group given EPA (P < 0.01). EPA significantly reduced the complications of BMT, indicating that these complications may be manifestations of the systemic inflammatory response syndrome. Bone Marrow Transplantation (2001) 28, 769–774. |
SEED: Hands-On Lab Exercises for Computer Security Education | This paper presents the development of a set of hands-on exercises(labs) that covered a spectrum of security topics and could be shared with other instructors. The author developed SEED labs covering many security topics: vulnerabilities, attacks, software security, system security, network security, Web security, access control, authentication, cryptography, and so on. Most SEED labs have gone through multiple development trial cycles in university courses. Many universities have requested the instructor's manual and adopted SEED labs for their courses. Most SEED labs use Ubuntu Linux. A few labs require significant effort for kernel-level coding; for them, the author chose Minix, an instructional OS. SEED labs don't require a dedi cated physical laboratory. The author created a prebuilt VM image of Ubuntu and installed the necessary software. Various lab environment setups were tried, including using students' PCs, a general computing lab, and a cloud-computing infrastructure. And found that for convenience, students prefer to use their own computers. |
Efficacy of sodium hyaluronate and carboxymethylcellulose in treating mild to moderate dry eye disease. | PURPOSE
We compared the efficacy and safety of sodium hyaluronate (SH) and carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) in treating mild to moderate dry eye.
METHODS
Sixty-seven patients with mild to moderate dry eye were enrolled in this prospective, randomized, blinded study. They were treated 6 times a day with preservative-free unit dose formula eyedrops containing 0.1% SH or 0.5% CMC for 8 weeks. Corneal and conjunctival staining with fluorescein, tear film breakup time, subjective symptoms, and adverse reactions were assessed at baseline, 4 weeks, and 8 weeks after treatment initiation.
RESULTS
Thirty-two patients were randomly assigned to the SH group and 33 were randomly assigned to the CMC group. Both the SH and CMC groups showed statistically significant improvements in corneal and conjunctival staining sum scores, tear film breakup time, and dry eye symptom score at 4 and 8 weeks after treatment initiation. However, there were no statistically significant differences in any of the indices between the 2 treatment groups. There were no significant adverse reactions observed during follow-up.
CONCLUSIONS
The efficacies of SH and CMC were equivalent in treating mild to moderate dry eye. SH and CMC preservative-free artificial tear formulations appropriately manage dry eye sign and symptoms and show safety and efficacy when frequently administered in a unit dose formula. |
Mixed Convection in a Vertical Porous Channel | Abstract. A numerical study of mixed convection in a vertical channel filled with a porous medium including the effect of inertial forces is studied by taking into account the effect of viscous and Darcy dissipations. The flow is modeled using the Brinkman– Forchheimer-extended Darcy equations. The two boundaries are considered as isothermal– isothermal, isoflux–isothermal and isothermal–isoflux for the left and right walls of the channel and kept either at equal or at different temperatures. The governing equations are solved numerically by finite difference method with Southwell–Over–Relaxation technique for extended Darcy model and analytically using perturbation series method for Darcian model. The velocity and temperature fields are obtained for various porous parameter, inertia effect, product of Brinkman number and Grashof number and the ratio of Grashof number and Reynolds number for equal and different wall temperatures. Nusselt number at the walls is also determined for three types of thermal boundary conditions. The viscous dissipation enhances the flow reversal in the case of downward flow while it counters the flow in the case of upward flow. The Darcy and inertial drag terms suppress the flow. It is found that analytical and numerical solutions agree very well for the Darcian model. |
Regulatory Arbitrage and International Bank Flows | We study whether cross-country differences in regulations have affected international bank flows. We find strong evidence that banks have transferred funds to markets with fewer regulations. This form of regulatory arbitrage suggests there may be a destructive “race to the bottom” in global regulations which restricts domestic regulators’ ability to limit bank risk-taking. However, we also find that the links between regulation differences and bank flows are significantly stronger if the recipient country is a developed country with strong property rights and creditor rights. This suggests that while differences in regulations have important influences, that without a strong institutional environment, lax regulations are not enough to encourage massive capital flows. ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ * Houston is with University of Florida, Lin is with Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Ma is with Lingnan University. We thank Campbell Harvey (the editor), an associate editor, and the referee for their very constructive and helpful comments. We thank Thorsten Beck, Daniel Berkowitz, David Brown, Charles Calomiris, Murillo Campello, Olivier De Jonghe, Avinash Dixit, Andrew Filardo, Mark Flannery, Borja Larrain, Micah Officer, Frank Packer, Eswar Prasad, Jun Qian, Mike Ryngaert, Frank Song, Yihui Wang, Yuhai Xuan, Bernard Yeung, Haibin Zhu, participants of the 2009 ICCFFI conference in Hong Kong, 2010 Asian Development Bank Institute-China Banking Regulatory Commission-IMF conference on Banking Regulation and Financial Stability in Beijing, and seminar participants at Chinese University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Tulane University for helpful comments. We also thank Philip Wooldridge from the BIS for clarifying some important conceptual issues of the BIS data and offering useful comments on our research. |
Intramucosal nevus in the oral cavity. | AIM
The aim of this study is to report a clinical case of oral nevus.
BACKGROUND
Nevus is a congenital or acquired benign neoplasia that can be observed in the skin or mucous membranes. It is an uncommon condition in the oral mucosa. When it does occur, the preferred location is on the palate, followed by the cheek mucosa, lip and tongue.
CASE REPORT
In this case study, we relate the diagnosis and treatment of a 23-year-old female patient with an irregular, pigmented lesion of the oral mucosa that underwent excisional biopsy resulting in a diagnosis of intramucosal nevus.
CONCLUSION
Nevus can appear in the oral mucosa and should be removed.
CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE
It is important for dental professionals to adequately categorize and treat pigmented lesions in the mouth. |
A review of outcome following valve surgery for rheumatic heart disease in Australia | BACKGROUND
Globally, rheumatic heart disease (RHD) remains an important cause of heart disease. In Australia it particularly affects younger Indigenous and older non-Indigenous Australians. Despite its impact there is limited understanding of the factors influencing outcome following surgery for RHD.
METHODS
The Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons Cardiac Surgery Database was analysed to assess outcomes following surgical procedures for RHD and non-RHD valvular disease. The association with demographics, co-morbidities, pre-operative status, valve(s) affected and operative procedure was evaluated.
RESULTS
Outcome of 1384 RHD and 15843 non-RHD valve procedures was analysed. RHD patients had longer ventilation, experienced fewer strokes and had more readmissions to hospital and anticoagulant complications. Mortality following RHD surgery at 30 days was 3.1% (95% CI 2.2 - 4.3), 5 years 15.3% (11.7 - 19.5) and 10 years 25.0% (10.7 - 44.9). Mortality following non-RHD surgery at 30 days was 4.3% (95% CI 3.9 - 4.6), 5 years 17.6% (16.4 - 18.9) and 10 years 39.4% (33.0 - 46.1). Factors independently associated with poorer longer term survival following RHD surgery included older age (OR1.03/additional year, 95% CI 1.01 - 1.05), concomitant diabetes (OR 1.7, 95% CI 1.1 - 2.5) and chronic kidney disease (1.9, 1.2 - 2.9), longer invasive ventilation time (OR 1.7 if greater than median value, 1.1- 2.9) and prolonged stay in hospital (1.02/additional day, 1.01 - 1.03). Survival in Indigenous Australians was comparable to that seen in non-Indigenous Australians.
CONCLUSION
In a large prospective cohort study we have demonstrated survival following RHD valve surgery in Australia is comparable to earlier studies. Patients with diabetes and chronic kidney disease, were at particular risk of poorer long-term survival. Unlike earlier studies we did not find pre-existing atrial fibrillation, being an Indigenous Australian or the nature of the underlying valve lesion were independent predictors of survival. |
Native and domestic browsers and grazers reduce fuels, fire temperatures, and acacia ant mortality in an African savanna. | Despite the importance of fire and herbivory in structuring savanna systems, few replicated experiments have examined the interactive effects of herbivory and fire on plant dynamics. In addition, the effects of fire on associated ant-tree mutualisms have been largely unexplored. We carried out small controlled burns in each of 18 herbivore treatment plots of the Kenya Long-term Exclosure Experiment (KLEE), where experimentally excluding elephants has resulted in 42% greater tree densities. The KLEE design includes six different herbivore treatments that allowed us to examine how different combinations of megaherbivore wildlife, mesoherbivore wildlife, and cattle affect fire temperatures and subsequent loss of ant symbionts from Acacia trees. Before burning, we quantified herbaceous fuel loads and plant community composition. We tagged all trees, measured their height and basal diameter, and identified the resident ant species on each. We recorded weather conditions during the burns and used ceramic tiles painted with fire-sensitive paints to estimate fire temperatures at different heights and in different microsites (under vs. between trees). Across all treatments, fire temperatures were highest at 0-50 cm off the ground and hotter in the grass under trees than in the grassy areas between trees. Plots with more trees burned hotter than plots with fewer trees, perhaps because of greater fine woody debris. Plots grazed by wildlife and by cattle prior to burning had lower herbaceous fuel loads and experienced lower burn temperatures than ungrazed plots. Many trees lost their ant colonies during the burns. Ant survivorship differed by ant species and at the plot level was positively associated with previous herbivory (and lower fire temperatures). Across all treatments, ant colonies on taller trees were more likely to survive, but even some of the tallest trees lost their ant colonies. Our study marks a significant step in understanding the mechanisms that underlie the interactions between fire and herbivory in savanna ecosystems. |
CryptoDL: Deep Neural Networks over Encrypted Data | Machine learning algorithms based on deep neural networks have achieved remarkable results and are being extensively used in different domains. However, the machine learning algorithms requires access to raw data which is often privacy sensitive. To address this issue, we develop new techniques to provide solutions for running deep neural networks over encrypted data. In this paper, we develop new techniques to adopt deep neural networks within the practical limitation of current homomorphic encryption schemes. More specifically, we focus on classification of the well-known convolutional neural networks (CNN). First, we design methods for approximation of the activation functions commonly used in CNNs (i.e. ReLU, Sigmoid, and Tanh) with low degree polynomials which is essential for efficient homomorphic encryption schemes. Then, we train convolutional neural networks with the approximation polynomials instead of original activation functions and analyze the performance of the models. Finally, we implement convolutional neural networks over encrypted data and measure performance of the models. Our experimental results validate the soundness of our approach with several convolutional neural networks with varying number of layers and structures. When applied to the MNIST optical character recognition tasks, our approach achieves 99.52% accuracy which significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art solutions and is very close to the accuracy of the best non-private version, 99.77%. Also, it can make close to 164000 predictions per hour. We also applied our approach to CIFAR-10, which is much more complex compared to MNIST, and were able to achieve 91.5% accuracy with approximation polynomials used as activation functions. These results show that CryptoDL provides efficient, accurate and scalable privacy-preserving predictions. |
Cybersecurity Information Sharing: a Framework for Sustainable Information Security Management in UK SME Supply Chains | UK small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are suffering increasing levels of cybersecurity breaches and are a major point of vulnerability in the supply chain networks in which they participate. A key factor for achieving optimal security levels within supply chains is the management and sharing of cybersecurity information associated with specific metrics. Such information sharing schemes amongst SMEs in a supply chain network, however, would give rise to a certain level of risk exposure. In response, the purpose of this paper is to assess the implications of adopting select cybersecurity metrics for information sharing in SME supply chain consortia. Thus, a set of commonly used metrics in a prototypical cybersecurity scenario were chosen and tested from a survey of 17 UK SMEs. The results were analysed in respect of two variables; namely, usefulness of implementation and willingness to share across supply chains. Consequently, we propose a Cybersecurity Information Sharing Taxonomy for identifying risk exposure categories for SMEs sharing cybersecurity information, which can be applied to developing Information Sharing Agreements (ISAs) within SME supply chain consortia. |
Performance evaluation of interthread communicationmechanisms on multicore/multithreaded architectures | The three major solutions for increasing the nominal performance of a CPU are: multiplying the number of cores per socket, expanding the embedded cache memories and use multi-threading to reduce the impact of the deep memory hierarchy. Systems with tens or hundreds of hardware threads, all sharing a cache coherent UMA or NUMA memory space, are today the de-facto standard. While these solutions can easily provide benefits in a multi-program environment, they require recoding of applications to leverage the available parallelism. Threads must synchronize and exchange data, and the overall performance is heavily in influenced by the overhead added by these mechanisms, especially as developers try to exploit finer grain parallelism to be able to use all available resources. |
Rigorous Analysis of Electromagnetic Scattering by Cylindrical EBG Structures | Cylindrical EBG structures excited by a Hertzian dipole source and TM polarized plane wave at oblique incidence are analyzed using a rigorous semi-analytical method based on the cylindrical Floquet mode expansion. Concentric and eccentric cylindrical EBG structures are investigated. Resonance and stopband characteristics in the transmission spectra of the cylindrical EBG structures, enhancement and shading effects in the excited fields, radiation patterns of Hertzian dipole located inside the cylindrical EBG structures in both H-plane and E-plane are numerically studied. Co-polarization and cross-polarizations scattering effects between the electric and magnetic fields are investigated at the oblique incidence of plane waves. |
Treatment of depression after myocardial infarction and the effects on cardiac prognosis and quality of life: rationale and outline of the Myocardial INfarction and Depression-Intervention Trial (MIND-IT). | BACKGROUND
Patients with a depressive disorder after myocardial infarction (MI) have a significantly increased risk of major cardiac events. The Myocardial INfarction and Depression-Intervention Trial (MIND-IT) investigates whether antidepressive treatment can improve the cardiac prognosis for these patients. The rationale and outline of the study are described.
METHODS
In this multicenter randomized clinical trial, 2140 patients admitted for MI are screened for depressive symptoms with a questionnaire 0, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months after MI. Patients with symptoms undergo a standardized psychiatric interview. Those with a post-MI depressive episode are randomized to intervention (ie, antidepressive treatment; n = 190) or care-as-usual (CAU; n = 130). In the intervention arm, the research diagnosis is to be confirmed by a psychiatrist. First-choice treatment consists of placebo-controlled treatment with mirtazapine. In case of refusal or nonresponse, alternative open treatment with citalopram is offered. In the CAU arm, the patient is not informed about the research diagnosis. Psychiatric treatment outside the study is recorded, but no treatment is offered. Both arms are followed for end points (cardiac death or hospital admission for MI, unstable angina, heart failure, or ventricular tachyarrhythmia) during an average period of 27 months. Analysis is on an intention-to-treat basis.
CONCLUSION
The MIND-IT study will show whether treatment of post-MI depression can improve cardiac prognosis. |
Choosing to Migrate or Migrating to Choose: Migration and Labor Choice in Albania | While sustainable economic growth, poverty reduction, and the management of migration flows are among the most pressing items on the policy agenda in Albania, very little systematic analysis exists of the income generating strategies of Albanian households within the emerging market economy, and how this relates to income dynamics, people’s mobility and poverty. Results show that agricultural, migration and human capital assets have a differential impact across livelihood choices, and that this impact varies by gender and age. Two areas of policy concern derive from this analysis. First, migration is clearly crucial for the economic future of Albania, both in terms of financing economic development, serving as an informal safety net, and in reducing excess labour supply and poverty. The suggestion of a potential disincentive effect on labour effort and participation is however worrying, as it would have implications in terms of missed opportunities for development. Second, agriculture appears to be more of a survival strategy than part of a poverty exit strategy. |
Cloud Computing for Mobile Users: Can Offloading Computation Save Energy? | The cloud heralds a new era of computing where application services are provided through the Internet. Cloud computing can enhance the computing capability of mobile systems, but is it the ultimate solution for extending such systems' battery lifetimes? |
Short Answer Grading Using String Similarity And Corpus-Based Similarity | Most automatic scoring systems use pattern based that requires a lot of hard and tedious work. These systems work in a supervised manner where predefined patterns and scoring rules are generated. This paper presents a different unsupervised approach which deals with students’ answers holistically using text to text similarity. Different String-based and Corpus-based similarity measures were tested separately and then combined to achieve a maximum correlation value of 0.504. The achieved correlation is the best value achieved for unsupervised approach Bag of Words (BOW) when compared to previous work. Keywords-Automatic Scoring; Short Answer Grading; Semantic Similarity; String Similarity; Corpus-Based Similarity. |
Stability of Elastomeric Isolation Bearings: Experimental Study | Elastomeric isolation bearings are required to be stable at high shear strains, which occur during strong earthquake rigorous determination of the critical axial load during design is important. Currently, the critical load is determined using th displacement Haringx theory and modified to account for large shear strains by an approximate correction factor. The objectiv study is to experimentally determine the effect of horizontal displacement or shear strain on critical load and to study the validi approximate correction factor. Experiments were conducted on a series of elastomeric bearings with low shape factors. Test proc test results are presented in detail. It is shown that the critical load decreases with increasing horizontal displacement or shear also shown that substantial critical load capacity exists at a horizontal displacement equal to the width of the bearing and is no predicted by the correction factor. It is further shown that the approximate formula is not conservative at smaller displacements a conservative at larger displacements. The critical loads obtained from experiments are compared with results from finite elemen and nonlinear analytical solutions; the comparisons indicate that the effect of large horizontal displacements on the critical loa reliably predicted. DOI: 10.1061/ ~ASCE!0733-9445~2002!128:1~3! CE Database keywords: Seismic isolation; Stability; Experimentation; Shear strain; Axial loads; Critical loads. |
Indoor Positioning using Sensor-fusion in Android Devices September 2011 | This project examines the level of accuracy that can be achieved in precision positioning by using built-in sensors in an Android smartphone. The project is focused in estimating the position of the phone inside a building where the GPS signal is bad or unavailable. The approach is sensor-fusion: by using data from the device’s different sensors, such as accelerometer, gyroscope and wireless adapter, the position is determined. The results show that the technique is promising for future handheld indoor navigation systems that can be used in malls, museums, large office buildings, hospitals, etc. |
Begging Rome: Norms at the margins, norms of the in-between | In this article, I argue that begging and beggary represents and must be analyzed through a twofold prism: as an economic exchange taking place at the margins but amply within the structures of the market economy and as a social relationship and cultural exchange that, due exactly to its in-between liminal nature, touches upon and generate central values; an exchange in which crucial norms are negotiated and established. Begging activities are just one example of how the market oriented economy intertwines with underground networks and “informal economies”, and how these interconnections produce implicit and explicit norms. |
Emotional intelligence and emotional creativity. | Three studies examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and emotional creativity (EC) and whether each construct was predictive of creative behavior. It was hypothesized that the relationship between EI and EC corresponds to the relationship between cognitive intelligence and creative ability. Therefore, EI and EC were expected to be two distinct sets of abilities. Intercorrelations and confirmatory factor analyses supported the hypothesis. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that EC, but not EI, would correlate with behavioral creativity. Self-report measures of EC significantly correlated with laboratory and self-reported creativity measures in both studies, while ability measures of EC only correlated with self-reported artistic activity. EI was uncorrelated with creative behavior. |
Can't we all just get along: Cultural variables in codes of ethics | Abstract Ethical issues in the practice of public relations become increasingly complex when international borders are crossed. Differences in what “counts” as public relations as well as what “counts” as ethical practice abound. Rather than taking the position that a specific, “objective” code of ethics can be developed or arguing that cultural diversity makes ethical standards impossible, this paper argues that an international set of principles for practice is feasible. Such a set of principles can only be agreed upon if representatives of diverse organizations and cultural values will work together to understand each others' perspectives. This approach is consistent with the goal of “mutual understanding” that increasingly characterizes public relations practice. It is also consistent with recent theoretical work in ethics and postcolonialism. Nancy L. Roth is Assistant Professor of Communication, Todd Hunt is Professor of Communication, Maria Stavropoulus is a Ph.D. student, and Karen Babik is completing her Masters Degree in the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies at Rutgers University. |
Embedded 6 GHz 3D-printed half-wave dipole antenna array | In this paper, a 2×2 broadside array of 3D printed half-wave dipole antennas is presented. The array design leverages direct digital manufacturing (DDM) technology to realize a shaped substrate structure that is used to control the array beamwidth. The non-planar substrate allows the element spacing to be changed without affecting the length of the feed network or the distance to the underlying ground plane. The 4-element array has a broadside gain that varies between 7.0–8.5 dBi depending on the out-of-plane angle of the substrate. Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) is deposited using fused deposition modeling to form the array structure (relative permittivity of 2.7 and loss tangent of 0.008) and Dupont CB028 silver paste is used to form the conductive traces. |
Horse trichinellosis, an unresolved puzzle. | In spite of routine controls to detect Trichinella larvae in horse-meat, human infections due to horse-meat consumption continue to occur in France and Italy. The epidemiology of horse trichinellosis since its discovery in 1975 is outlined, addressing the possible modes of natural transmission to horses, the need to develop more sensitive methods for detecting Trichinella larvae in horses, and the economic impact of horse trichinellosis. Investigations of human outbreaks due to horse-meat consumption have implicated single cases of inadequate veterinary controls on horses imported from non-European Union countries. In particular, most cases of human infection have been attributed to horses imported from Eastern Europe, where pig trichinellosis is re-emerging and the main source of infection in horses. |
Implementation salvage experiences from the Melbourne diabetes prevention study | BACKGROUND
Many public health interventions based on apparently sound evidence from randomised controlled trials encounter difficulties when being scaled up within health systems. Even under the best of circumstances, implementation is exceedingly difficult. In this paper we will describe the implementation salvage experiences from the Melbourne Diabetes Prevention Study, which is a randomised controlled trial of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness nested in the state-wide Life! Taking Action on Diabetes program in Victoria, Australia.
DISCUSSION
The Melbourne Diabetes Prevention Study sits within an evolving larger scale implementation project, the Life! program. Changes that occurred during the roll-out of that program had a direct impact on the process of conducting this trial. The issues and methods of recovery the study team encountered were conceptualised using an implementation salvage strategies framework. The specific issues the study team came across included continuity of the state funding for Life! program and structural changes to the Life! program which consisted of adjustments to eligibility criteria, referral processes, structure and content, as well as alternative program delivery for different population groups. Staff turnover, recruitment problems, setting and venue concerns, availability of potential participants and participant characteristics were also identified as evaluation roadblocks. Each issue and corresponding salvage strategy is presented.
SUMMARY
The experiences of conducting such a novel trial as the preliminary Melbourne Diabetes Prevention Study have been invaluable. The lessons learnt and knowledge gained will inform the future execution of this trial in the coming years. We anticipate that these results will also be beneficial to other researchers conducting similar trials in the public health field. We recommend that researchers openly share their experiences, barriers and challenges when conducting randomised controlled trials and implementation research. We encourage them to describe the factors that may have inhibited or enhanced the desired outcomes so that the academic community can learn and expand the research foundation of implementation salvage. |
The beginning of geography didactics in Norway | At the end of the 19th century geography became a mandatory subject in primary and secondary schools in Norway. Geography was seen as a useful subject that contributed to the modernization of society, but also as a subject that strengthened the national ideology. A need for better education in geography arose and consequently some authors of geography textbooks wrote about teaching geography. In order to strengthen teachers’ education, geography was taught at university level, and to develop the subject it became necessary to relate it to other subjects, especially geology. The author shows that there are several similarities between the content of geography taught in Norwegian schools in the late 19th century and geography taught in schools today. |
Blockade of striatal dopamine transporters by intravenous methylphenidate is not sufficient to induce self-reports of "high". | The reinforcing effects of cocaine and methylphenidate have been linked to their ability to block dopamine transporters (DAT). Using positron emission tomography (PET), we previously showed that intravenous cocaine induced a significant level of DAT blockade, which was associated with the intensity for self-reports of "high" in cocaine abusers. In this study, we measured DAT occupancies after intravenous methylphenidate and assessed whether they also were associated with the "high". Occupation of DAT by intravenous MP was measured with PET using [11C]cocaine, as a DAT ligand, in eight normal control subjects tested with different methylphenidate doses. The ratio of the distribution volume of [11C]cocaine in striatum to that in cerebellum, which corresponds to Bmax/Kd + 1, was used as measure of DAT availability. In parallel, self-reports of "high" were measured. Methylphenidate produced a dose-dependent blockade of DAT with an estimated ED50 of 0.075 mg/kg. DAT occupancies were significantly correlated with the "high" (p <.03). However, four of the eight subjects, despite having significant levels of DAT blockade, did not perceive the "high". Methylphenidate is as effective as cocaine in blocking DAT in the human brain (cocaine ED50 = 0.13 mg/kg), and DAT blockade, as for cocaine, was also associated with the "high". However, the fact that there were subjects who despite significant DAT blockade did not experience the "high" suggests that DAT blockade, although necessary, is not sufficient to produce the "high". |
Compiler-Directed Lightweight Checkpointing for Fine-Grained Guaranteed Soft Error Recovery | This paper presents Bolt, a compiler-directed soft error recovery scheme, that provides fine-grained and guaranteed recovery without excessive performance and hardware overhead. To get rid of expensive hardware support, the compiler protects the architectural inputs during their entire liveness period by safely checkpointing the last updated value in idempotent regions. To minimize the performance overhead, Bolt leverages a novel compiler analysis that eliminates those checkpoints whose value can be reconstructed by other checkpointed values without compromising the recovery guarantee. As a result, Bolt incurs only 4.7% performance overhead on average which is 57% reduction compared to the state-of-the-art scheme that requires expensive hardware support for the same recovery guarantee as Bolt. |
Unconstrained Salient Object Detection via Proposal Subset Optimization | We aim at detecting salient objects in unconstrained images. In unconstrained images, the number of salient objects (if any) varies from image to image, and is not given. We present a salient object detection system that directly outputs a compact set of detection windows, if any, for an input image. Our system leverages a Convolutional-Neural-Network model to generate location proposals of salient objects. Location proposals tend to be highly overlapping and noisy. Based on the Maximum a Posteriori principle, we propose a novel subset optimization framework to generate a compact set of detection windows out of noisy proposals. In experiments, we show that our subset optimization formulation greatly enhances the performance of our system, and our system attains 16-34% relative improvement in Average Precision compared with the state-of-the-art on three challenging salient object datasets. |
IT project managers' construction of successful project management practice: a repertory grid investigation | Although effective project management is critical to the success of information technology (IT) projects, little empirical research has investigated skill requirements for IT project managers (PMs). This study addressed this gap by asking 19 practicing IT PMs to describe the skills that successful IT PMs exhibit. A semi-structured interview method known as the repertory grid (RepGrid) technique was used to elicit these skills. Nine skill categories emerged: client management, communication, general management, leadership, personal integrity, planning and control, problem solving, systems development and team development. Our study complements existing research by providing a richer understanding of several skills that were narrowly defined (client management, planning and control, and problem solving) and by introducing two new skill categories that had not been previously discussed (personal integrity and team development). Analysis of the individual RepGrids revealed four distinct ways in which study participants combined skill categories to form archetypes of effective IT PMs. We describe these four IT PM archetypes – General Manager, Problem Solver, Client Representative and Balanced Manager – and discuss how this knowledge can be useful for practitioners, researchers and educators. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research. |
"Easy" Cooking Recipe Recommendation Considering User's Conditions | It is natural to think that couples who work at a company or a person who lives by her/himself want to cook food for themselves as quickly and easily as possible when they are busy. However, to keep having the same food they can easily cook fed them up, therefore, it should be preferable for them to be recommended a variety of food that they can cook "easily". Currently, there are so many Web sites for cooking recipes, and there are also recipes regarded as "easy" to cook. However, those recipes are not estimated as "easy" by taking user's conditions into account. Therefore, in this study, we aim to propose a method to recommend "easy" cooking recipes by analyzing the content of recipes and considering user's conditions and then develop a recommendation system with the proposed method. |
A Wideband Dual-Cavity-Backed Circularly Polarized Crossed Dipole Antenna | A novel wideband dual-cavity-backed circularly polarized (CP) crossed dipole antenna is presented in this letter. The exciter of the antenna comprises two classical orthogonal straight dipoles for a simple design. Dual-cavity structure is employed to achieve unidirectional radiation and improve the broadside gain. In particular, the rim edges of the cavity act as secondary radiators, which contribute to significantly enhance the overall CP performance of the antenna. The final design with an overall size of 0.57λ<sub>o</sub> × 0.57λ<sub>o</sub> × 0.24λ<sub>o</sub> where λ<sub>o</sub> is the free-space wavelength at the lowest CP operating frequency of 2.0 GHzb yields a measured –10 dB impedance bandwidth (BW) of 79.4% and 3 dB axial-ratio BW of 66.7%. The proposed antenna exhibits right-handed circular polarization with a maximum broadside gain of about 9.7 dBic. |
Multi-label Zero-Shot Learning with Structured Knowledge Graphs | In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning architecture for multi-label zero-shot learning (ML-ZSL), which is able to predict multiple unseen class labels for each input instance. Inspired by the way humans utilize semantic knowledge between objects of interests, we propose a framework that incorporates knowledge graphs for describing the relationships between multiple labels. Our model learns an information propagation mechanism from the semantic label space, which can be applied to model the interdependencies between seen and unseen class labels. With such investigation of structured knowledge graphs for visual reasoning, we show that our model can be applied for solving multi-label classification and ML-ZSL tasks. Compared to state-of-the-art approaches, comparable or improved performances can be achieved by our method. |
Profiling quality of care for patients with chronic headache in three different German hospitals – a case study | BACKGROUND
Legal requirements for quality assurance in German rehabilitation hospitals include comparisons of providers. Objective is to describe and to compare outcome quality of care offered by three hospitals providing in-patient rehabilitative treatment exemplified for patients with chronic headache.
METHODS
We performed a prospective three center observational study on patients suffering from chronic headache. Patients underwent interventions commonly used according to internal guidelines of the hospitals. Measurements were taken at three points in time (at admission, at discharge and 6 months after discharge). Indicators of outcome quality included pain intensity and frequency of pain, functional ability, depression, quality of life and health related behavior. Analyses of differences amongst the hospitals were adjusted by covariates due to case-mix situation.
RESULTS
306 patients from 3 hospitals were included in statistical analysis. Amongst the hospitals, patients differed significantly in age, education, diagnostic subgroups, beliefs, and with respect to some pain-related baseline values (covariates). Patients in all three hospitals benefited from intervention to a clinically relevant degree. At discharge from hospital, outcome quality differed significantly after adjustment according to case-mix only in terms of patients' global assessment of treatment results. Six months after discharge, the only detectable significant differences were for secondary outcomes like improved coping with stress or increased use of self-help. The profiles for satisfaction with the hospital stay showed clear differences amongst patients.
CONCLUSION
The results of this case study do not suggest a definite overall ranking of the three hospitals that were compared, but outcome profiles offer a multilayer platform of reliable information which might facilitate decision making. |
Impact of lattice distortions on elastic and thermal behavior of La doped YVO3 | Abstract The thermodynamic study of vanadates is particularly interesting, as these compounds undergo multiple orbital and magnetic ordering transitions resulting in structural phase transitions as a function of temperature. The elastic and thermal properties have been computed by considering the intriguing temperature dependent structural phase transitions. A detailed investigation of lattice distortions, bulk modulus, cohesive energy and Debye temperature of the doped vanadium compounds Y 1− x La x VO 3 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) has been accomplished. The temperature dependence of specific heat (1 K ≤ T ≤ 300 K) and low temperature thermal expansion is probed over the whole doping range. The results obtained are compared with the earlier experimental data to validate the application of modified rigid ion model to describe elastic and thermal behavior of the La doped YVO 3 . |
Lidar Remote Sensing for Ecosystem Studies | Articles R emote sensing has facilitated extraordinary advances in the modeling, mapping, and understanding of ecosystems. Typical applications of remote sensing involve either images from passive optical systems, such as aerial photography and Landsat Thematic Mapper (Goward and Williams 1997), or to a lesser degree, active radar sensors such as RADARSAT (Waring et al. 1995). These types of sensors have proven to be satisfactory for many ecological applications , such as mapping land cover into broad classes and, in some biomes, estimating aboveground biomass and leaf area index (LAI). Moreover, they enable researchers to analyze the spatial pattern of these images. However, conventional sensors have significant limitations for ecological applications. The sensitivity and accuracy of these devices have repeatedly been shown to fall with increasing aboveground biomass and leaf area index (Waring et al. 1995, Carlson and Ripley 1997, Turner et al. 1999). They are also limited in their ability to represent spatial patterns: They produce only two-dimensional (x and y) images, which cannot fully represent the three-dimensional structure of, for instance, an old-growth forest canopy.Yet ecologists have long understood that the presence of specific organisms, and the overall richness of wildlife communities, can be highly dependent on the three-dimensional spatial pattern of vegetation (MacArthur and MacArthur 1961), especially in systems where biomass accumulation is significant (Hansen and Rotella 2000). Individual bird species, in particular, are often associated with specific three-dimensional features in forests (Carey et al. 1991). In addition, other functional aspects of forests, such as productivity, may be related to forest canopy structure. Laser altimetry, or lidar (light detection and ranging), is an alternative remote sensing technology that promises to both increase the accuracy of biophysical measurements and extend spatial analysis into the third (z) dimension. Lidar sensors directly measure the three-dimensional distribution of plant canopies as well as subcanopy topography, thus providing high-resolution topographic maps and highly accurate estimates of vegetation height, cover, and canopy structure. In addition , lidar has been shown to accurately estimate LAI and aboveground biomass even in those high-biomass ecosystems where passive optical and active radar sensors typically fail to do so. The basic measurement made by a lidar device is the distance between the sensor and a target surface, obtained by determining the elapsed time between the emission of a short-duration laser pulse and the arrival of the reflection of that pulse (the return signal) at the sensor's receiver. Multiplying this … |
The Role of Feature Emergence in Metaphor Appreciation | This study examined how emergent features, which are made salient in the interpretation of metaphor, are related to metaphor appreciation. According to an incongruity resolution model of poetic appreciation, the role of emergent features in metaphor appreciation is predicted to facilitate poetic appreciation by constituting a richer interpretation when topic–vehicle similarity is lower. Two experiments demonstrated that this prediction was supported for comprehensible metaphors. In Experiment 1, more emergent features were generated when comprehensible metaphors with lower topic–vehicle similarity were interpreted, and richer interpretations included more emergent features. In Experiment 2, poeticality rating of comprehensible metaphors was positively correlated with richness of interpretation. Furthermore, Experiment 2 found that conceptual aptness of metaphor also affected poeticality of comprehensible metaphors but, in contrast, that only emotive value of metaphor affected poeticality of less comprehensible metaphors. This finding suggests that the process of poetic appreciation may differ between comprehensible and less comprehensible metaphors. |
Motivation Deficit in ADHD is Associated with Dysfunction of the Dopamine Reward Pathway | Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is typically characterized as a disorder of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity but there is increasing evidence of deficits in motivation. Using positron emission tomography (PET), we showed decreased function in the brain dopamine reward pathway in adults with ADHD, which, we hypothesized, could underlie the motivation deficits in this disorder. To evaluate this hypothesis, we performed secondary analyses to assess the correlation between the PET measures of dopamine D2/D3 receptor and dopamine transporter availability (obtained with [11C]raclopride and [11C]cocaine, respectively) in the dopamine reward pathway (midbrain and nucleus accumbens) and a surrogate measure of trait motivation (assessed using the Achievement scale on the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire or MPQ) in 45 ADHD participants and 41 controls. The Achievement scale was lower in ADHD participants than in controls (11±5 vs 14±3, P<0.001) and was significantly correlated with D2/D3 receptors (accumbens: r=0.39, P<0.008; midbrain: r=0.41, P<0.005) and transporters (accumbens: r=0.35, P<0.02) in ADHD participants, but not in controls. ADHD participants also had lower values in the Constraint factor and higher values in the Negative Emotionality factor of the MPQ but did not differ in the Positive Emotionality factor—and none of these were correlated with the dopamine measures. In ADHD participants, scores in the Achievement scale were also negatively correlated with symptoms of inattention (CAARS A, E and SWAN I). These findings provide evidence that disruption of the dopamine reward pathway is associated with motivation deficits in ADHD adults, which may contribute to attention deficits and supports the use of therapeutic interventions to enhance motivation in ADHD. |
Japanese cancer patient participation in and satisfaction with treatment-related decision-making: A qualitative study | BACKGROUND
Over the last decade, patient involvement in treatment-related decision-making has been widely advocated in Japan, where patient-physician encounters are still under the influence of the long-standing tradition of paternalism. Despite this profound change in clinical practice, studies investigating the actual preferences of Japanese people regarding involvement in treatment-related decision-making are limited. The main objectives of this study were to (1) reveal the actual level of involvement of Japanese cancer patients in the treatment-related decision-making and their overall satisfaction with the decision-making process, and (2) consider the practical implications of increased satisfaction in cancer patients with regard to the decision-making process.
METHODS
We conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 Japanese cancer patients who were recruited from a cancer self-help group in Tokyo. The interviews were qualitatively analysed using the approach described by Lofland and Lofland.
RESULTS
The analyses of the patients' interviews focused on 2 aspects: (1) who made treatment-related decisions (the physician or the patient), and (2) the informants' overall satisfaction with the decision-making process. The analyses revealed the following 5 categories of decision-making: 'patient as the active decision maker', 'doctor selection', 'wilfully entrusting the physician', 'compelled decision-making', and 'surrendering decision-making'. While the informants under the first 3 categories were fairly satisfied with the decision-making process, those under the latter 2 were extremely dissatisfied. Informants' views regarding their preferred role in the decision-making process varied substantially from complete physician control to complete patient control; the key factor for their satisfaction was the relation between their preferred involvement in decision-making and their actual level of involvement, irrespective of who the decision maker was.
CONCLUSION
In order to increase patient satisfaction with regard to the treatment-related decision-making process, healthcare professionals in Japan must assess individual patient preferences and provide healthcare accordingly. Moreover, a better environment should be created in hospitals and in society to facilitate patients in expressing their preferences and appropriate resources need to be made available to facilitate their decision-making process. |
Music Personalization at Spotify | Spotify is the world's largest on-demand music streaming company, with over 75 million active listeners choosing what to listen to among tens of millions songs. Discovery and personalization is a key part of the experience and critical to the success of the creator and consumer ecosystem. In this talk, we'll discuss the state of our current discovery approaches, such as the Discover Weekly playlist that has already streamed billions of new discoveries and Fresh Finds, a scalable platform for brand new music that focuses suggestions on the long end of the popularity tail. We'll discuss the technologies at scale necessary to distill the information about music from our listeners and the world at large we collect outside of Spotify -- with the massive amounts of user-item activity data we collect every day to create highly personalized music experiences. Entire teams at Spotify focus on understanding both the creator and listener through collaborative filtering, machine learning, DSP and NLP approaches -- we crawl the web for artist information, scan each note in every one of our millions of songs for acoustic signals, and model users' taste through a cluster analysis and in a latent space based on their historical and real-time listening patterns. The data generated by these analyses have ensured our discovery products are precise and help our users enjoy music and media across our entire catalog. We'll dive deep into the workings of Discover Weekly, our marquee personalized playlist which updates weekly and reached 1 billion streams within the first 10 weeks from its release. The technology behind Discover Weekly is powered by a scalable factor analysis of Spotify's over two billion user-generated playlists matched to each user's current listening behavior. We'll discuss its innovative genesis and the challenges and opportunities the system faces a year after its launch. We'll also discuss Spotify's home page, seen by each of our users, currently undergoing vast efforts around personalization to ensure each listener gets a targeted list of playlists, shows and music to select throughout their day. We'll discuss the various similarity metrics, ranking approaches and user modeling we're working on to increase precision and optimize for our users' happiness. |
Estimation of Rényi Entropy and Mutual Information Based on Generalized Nearest-Neighbor Graphs | We present simple and computationally efficient nonparametric estimators of Rényi entropy and mutual information based on an i.i.d. sample drawn from an unknown, absolutely continuous distribution over R. The estimators are calculated as the sum of p-th powers of the Euclidean lengths of the edges of the ‘generalized nearest-neighbor’ graph of the sample and the empirical copula of the sample respectively. For the first time, we prove the almost sure consistency of these estimators and upper bounds on their rates of convergence, the latter of which under the assumption that the density underlying the sample is Lipschitz continuous. Experiments demonstrate their usefulness in independent subspace analysis. |
An Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) Reduced High-Efficiency Switching Power Amplifier | The design of a new high-efficiency switching power amplifier with an ultralow-power spread spectrum clock generator (SSCG) is first reported in this paper. An effective low-power frequency modulation method is first proposed to reduce the electromagnetic interference of the pulse width modulation class D power amplifier without degrading its power efficiency. Also, a simple RC voltage feedback circuit is used to reduce the total harmonic distortion (THD). This amplifier proves to be a cost-effective solution for designing high fidelity and high efficiency audio power amplifiers for portable applications. Measurement results show that the power efficiency and THD can reach 90% and 0.05%, respectively. The power dissipation of the SSCG is only 112 ¿W. The harmonic peaks of the switching frequency are greatly reduced when the SSCG technique is applied to the amplifier design. The impact of the SSCG on the THD of the class D power amplifier is also first reported in this paper. This switching power amplifier is implemented using a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacture Company (TSMC) 0.35- ¿m CMOS process. |
Structural and dielectric characterization of praseodymium-modified lead titanate ceramics synthesized by the OPM route | Abstract Quasi-spherical nanoparticles of praseodymium-modified lead titanate powder (Pb 0.80 Pr 0.20 TiO 3 ) with an average size of 54.8 nm were synthesized successfully by the oxidant-peroxo method (OPM) and were used to prepare highly dense ceramic bodies which were sintered at 1100 and 1150 °C for 2 h. A tetragonal phase was identified in the powder and ceramic samples by X-ray powder diffraction and FT-Raman spectroscopy at room temperature. The fractured surface of the ceramic sample showed a high degree of densification with fairly uniform grain sizes. Dielectric constants measured in the range of 30–300 °C at different frequencies (120 Hz and at 1, 10 and 100 kHz) indicated that samples with 20 mol% praseodymium showed normal ferroelectric behavior regardless of the sintering temperature. |
Using sonification | The idea behind sonification is that synthetic non-verbal sounds can represent numerical data and provide support for information processing activities of many different kinds. This article describes some of the ways that sonification has been used in assistive technologies, remote collaboration, engineering analyses, scientific visualisations, emergency services and aircraft cockpits. Approaches for designing sonifications are surveyed, and issues raised by the existing approaches and applications are outlined. Relations are drawn to other areas of knowledge where similar issues have also arisen, such as human-computer interaction, scientific visualisation, and computer music. At the end is a list of resources that will help you delve further into the topic. |
8 A More Constructive Encounter: a Bah’ View of Religion and Human Rights | The tension between human rights values and religious values has been reinforced by the emergence in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century of an increasingly aggressive form of religious extremism which is clearly contemptuous of human rights. This chapter explores the relationship between religion and human rights from a Baha’i perspective and examines the work of the Baha’i community in wholeheartedly supporting the theory and practice of universal human rights. It gives an example of a religion that has emerged in modern times, which clearly and directly addresses modern concerns and which is wholeheartedly committed to universal human rights. The chapter adduces evidence from the Baha’i sacred writings and other sources to demonstrate its commitment to human rights, and examines work done by the Baha’i International Community (BIC) in support of the human rights of the Baha’is in Iran and of human rights more generally. Keywords: Baha’i community; human rights; religion |
Augmenting fun and beauty: a pamphlet | In this article we describe how the augmented reality and product design communities, which share the common interest of combining the real and the virtual, might learn from each other. From our side, we would like to share with you some of our ideas about product design which we consider highly relevant for the augmented reality community. In a pamphlet we list 10 sloganesque points for action which challenge the status quo in product design. Finally, we present some projects which show how these points could be implemented. We hope this approach will inspire those involved in augmented reality design and help them to avoid the pitfalls that the product design community is now trying to crawl out of. |
Impact of wireless communications technologies on elder people healthcare: Smart home in Australia | Over the last three decades, there has been a dramatic rise in ageing populations in most countries. Older people are remaining in nursing home care due to the fact that general services and medical support are provided. However, these costly environments often negatively affect older people due to high cost, limited staff and the social impacts they have. A way to overcome these challenges is to place the elderly instead in a smart home environment. The aim of this study is to describe the impact of wireless communications technologies on elderly people in a smart home. This has been compared with conditions in nursing homes. Using smart wireless sensors, wireless communications and ambient intelligent system, it is possible to create systems capable of measuring vital signs of the person in their own home. The findings indicate that wireless technology is the most suitable basis for a communications framework in a smart home to assist older people. |
Double Refinement Network for Efficient Indoor Monocular Depth Estimation | Monocular Depth Estimation is an important problem of Computer Vision that may be solved with Neural Networks and Deep Learning nowadays. Though recent works in this area have shown significant improvement in accuracy, state-of-the-art methods require large memory and time resources. The main purpose of this paper is to improve performance of the latest solutions with no decrease in accuracy. To achieve this, we propose a Double Refinement Network architecture. We evaluate the results using the standard benchmark RGB-D dataset NYU Depth v2. The results are equal to the current state-of-the-art, while frames per second rate of our approach is significantly higher (up to 15 times speedup per image with batch size 1), RAM per image is significantly lower. |
Machine Learning for Encrypted Malware Traffic Classification: Accounting for Noisy Labels and Non-Stationarity | The application of machine learning for the detection of malicious network traffic has been well researched over the past several decades; it is particularly appealing when the traffic is encrypted because traditional pattern-matching approaches cannot be used. Unfortunately, the promise of machine learning has been slow to materialize in the network security domain. In this paper, we highlight two primary reasons why this is the case: inaccurate ground truth and a highly non-stationary data distribution. To demonstrate and understand the effect that these pitfalls have on popular machine learning algorithms, we design and carry out experiments that show how six common algorithms perform when confronted with real network data. With our experimental results, we identify the situations in which certain classes of algorithms underperform on the task of encrypted malware traffic classification. We offer concrete recommendations for practitioners given the real-world constraints outlined. From an algorithmic perspective, we find that the random forest ensemble method outperformed competing methods. More importantly, feature engineering was decisive; we found that iterating on the initial feature set, and including features suggested by domain experts, had a much greater impact on the performance of the classification system. For example, linear regression using the more expressive feature set easily outperformed the random forest method using a standard network traffic representation on all criteria considered. Our analysis is based on millions of TLS encrypted sessions collected over 12 months from a commercial malware sandbox and two geographically distinct, large enterprise networks. |
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