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The effects of therapeutic taping on gross motor function in children with cerebral palsy. | PURPOSE
Therapeutic taping to address dysfunctional sitting control in children with cerebral palsy (CP) was investigated in this study.
METHODS
Eighteen children with quadriplegic CP, Gross Motor Function Classification System for Cerebral Palsy levels IV (n = 9) and V (n = 9) participated in the 12-week program. Subjects were assigned randomly to one of two groups: therapeutic taping + physical therapy or physical therapy only. Therapeutic taping was applied for periods of up to 72 hours over the paraspinal region. The effects were assessed with the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM-88) at baseline, six weeks, and 12 weeks. A factorial analysis of variance was used to examine group differences over time.
RESULTS
No significant differences were found for the GMFM-88 scores between groups over time.
CONCLUSION
Therapeutic taping does not evoke a positive functional change in the seated postural control of children with quadriplegic cerebral palsy. Subjective observation, however, suggested that one child with athetosis benefited from therapeutic taping over the paraspinal region. |
Bmp4 gene is expressed at the putative site of fusion in the midfacial region. | The molecular mechanisms by which the primordia of the midface grow and fuse to form the primary palate portion of the craniofacial region are not well characterized. This is in spite of the fact that failure of growth and/or fusion of these primordia leads to the most common craniofacial birth defect in humans (i.e. clefts of the lip and/or palate). Bmp4 plays a critical role during early embryonic development and has previously been shown to play a role in epithelial-mesenchymal interactions in the craniofacial region of chicks. We analyze the expression of bmp4 in mouse as the midfacial processes undergo fusion to form the primary palate. We show that bmp4 is expressed in a very distinct manner in the three midfacial processes (lateral nasal, LNP, medial nasal, MNP, and maxillary processes, MxP) that ultimately fuse to form the midface. Prior to fusion of the midfacial processes, bmp4 is expressed in the ectoderm of the LNP, MNP, and MxP in a distinct spatial and temporal manner near and at the site of fusion of the midface. Bmp4 appears to demarcate the cells in the LNP and MNP that will eventually contact and fuse with each other. As fusion of the three prominences proceeds, some bmp4 expressing cells are trapped in the fusion line. Later, the expression of bmp4 switches to the mesenchyme of the midface underlying its initial expression in the ectoderm. The switch occurs soon after fusion of the three processes. The pattern of expression in the midfacial region implicates the important role of bmp4 in mediating the fusion process, possibly through apoptosis of cells in the putative site of fusion, during midfacial morphogenesis. |
eyeLook: using attention to facilitate mobile media consumption | One of the problems with mobile media devices is that they may distract users during critical everyday tasks, such as navigating the streets of a busy city. We addressed this issue in the design of eyeLook: a platform for attention sensitive mobile computing. eyeLook appliances use embedded low cost eyeCONTACT sensors (ECS) to detect when the user looks at the display. We discuss two eyeLook applications, seeTV and seeTXT, that facilitate courteous media consumption in mobile contexts by using the ECS to respond to user attention. seeTV is an attentive mobile video player that automatically pauses content when the user is not looking. seeTXT is an attentive speed reading application that flashes words on the display, advancing text only when the user is looking. By making mobile media devices sensitive to actual user attention, eyeLook allows applications to gracefully transition users between consuming media, and managing life. |
Optimal Joint Power and Subcarrier Allocation for Full-Duplex Multicarrier Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems | In this paper, we investigate resource allocation algorithm design for multicarrier non-orthogonal multiple access (MC-NOMA) systems employing a full-duplex (FD) base station for serving multiple half-duplex (HD) downlink and uplink users simultaneously. The proposed algorithm is obtained from the solution of a non-convex optimization problem for the maximization of the weighted sum system throughput. We apply monotonic optimization to develop an optimal joint power and subcarrier allocation policy. The optimal resource allocation policy serves as a system performance benchmark due to its high computational complexity. Furthermore, a suboptimal iterative scheme based on successive convex approximation is proposed to strike a balance between computational complexity and optimality. Our simulation results reveal that the proposed suboptimal algorithm achieves a close-to-optimal performance. In addition, FD MC-NOMA systems employing the proposed resource allocation algorithms provide a substantial system throughput improvement compared with conventional HD multicarrier orthogonal multiple access (MC-OMA) systems and other baseline schemes. In addition, our results unveil that FD MC-NOMA systems enable a fairer resource allocation compared with traditional HD MC-OMA systems. |
The so-called stunning of thyroid tissue. | UNLABELLED
When thyroid tissues exhibited concentrations of therapeutic (131)I that appeared to be less than that predicted by data from the preceding diagnostic (131)I, the phenomenon was called stunning. We hypothesized that stunning arose from the early effects of the therapeutic dose of (131)I and that the initial uptake of (131)I, observed within the first day, was not impaired by the diagnostic dose.
METHODS
The hypothesis was tested by 2 types of studies. In each type, the fractional concentrations of (131)I in residual neck thyroid tissues of patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma were quantified. In the first study, fractional concentrations of diagnostic and therapeutic (131)I were measured at 2 d, a time when stunning has been observed, and expressed as ratios of radioactivity: therapeutic/diagnostic (Rx/Dx). Three different doses of diagnostic (131)I were prescribed to assess a dose response. In the second study, patients were prospectively recruited and tested to record disappearances of radioactivity from thyroid tissues. Diagnostic doses were 1.0 mCi (37 MBq) in all; therapeutic doses were 150 and 30 mCi (5,550 and 1,110 MBq), each to half of the patients. The disappearance curves were extrapolated to the period between 0 and 1 d, an interval when maximum uptake of ingested (131)I would be expected. The fractional concentrations of (131)I at 2 d and at 0-1 d were compared in terms of Rx/Dx ratios to assess changes at each time point.
RESULTS
In the first study, after diagnostic doses of 2, 1, and 0.5 mCi (74, 37, and 18.5 MBq), mean 2-d Rx/Dx values in 24, 29, and 17 patients were 0.35, 0.50, and 0.46 (P = 0.087). Of all patients, 74% exhibited Rx/Dx <0.6. In the second study, 6 of 10 patients exhibited disappearance curves of (131)I in which Rx/Dx was <0.6 at 2 d; 5 of the 6 had Rx/Dx values >0.97 at the 0- to 1-d point. In 1 patient the Rx/Dx was 0.54 at 2 d and 0.66 at the earlier time point. The other 4 patients had disappearance curves in which Rx/Dx values were >1.0 throughout or were above 0.6 and did not greatly change.
CONCLUSION
Two days after the administration of (131)I, the mean fractional concentration of radioactivity in thyroid tissues after a therapeutic dose is <60% of the diagnostic dose in most patients, but no correlation of Rx/Dx with the mCi in the diagnostic dose was seen. In 5 of 6 patients in whom the Rx/Dx at 2 d was <0.6, the maximum fractional concentrations of therapeutic and diagnostic (131)I (i.e., the tissue uptakes during the first day) were similar; this pattern was most apparent after therapies with 150 mCi. These results support the hypothesis that "stunning" of thyroid tissues, often observable by 2 d, is primarily the consequence of early destructive effects from therapeutic (131)I. |
Equivalent circuit model of the IC-Stripline coupling to IC package | As the operating frequency of integrated circuit (IC) is rapidly increased, the importance of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) performance test in the design stage of IC development process is becoming more significant. The new EMC test method, IC-Stripline enables fast and accurate EMC test with smaller form factor and lower cost compared with transverse electromagnetic (TEM) cell which is the most widely used for radiated electromagnetic interference test at the moment. This paper presents the equivalent lumped-element circuit model to capture capacitive and inductive coupling between open version of IC-Stripline and an IC package. Also, the equations to calculate the circuit components with geometrical structure of IC-Stripline are proposed. The S-parameter results from presented circuit models are compared against those obtained by 3D EM solver. The presented models are very accurate up to 3 GHz which is the upper limit of effective frequency range of IC-Stripline described in IEC standards [1], [2]. Therefore, the proposed IC-Stripline models can be effectively used to predict radiated emission and immunity of ICs using circuit level simulation tools. |
Persuasive system design: state of the art and future directions | This paper provides an overview of the current state of the art in persuasive systems design. All peer-reviewed full papers published at the first three International Conferences on Persuasive Technology were analyzed employing a literature review framework. Results from this analysis are discussed and directions for future research are suggested. Most research papers so far have been experimental. Five out of six of these papers (84.4%) have addressed behavioral change rather than an attitude change. Tailoring, tunneling, reduction and social comparison have been the most studied methods for persuasion. Quite, surprisingly ethical considerations have remained largely unaddressed in these papers. In general, many of the research papers seem to describe the investigated persuasive systems in a relatively vague manner leaving room for some improvement. |
Identifying ECUs Using Inimitable Characteristics of Signals in Controller Area Networks | As the functions of vehicles are more computerized for the safety and convenience of drivers, attack surfaces of vehicle are accordingly increasing. Many attack results have shown that an attacker could intentionally control vehicles. Most of them exploit the vulnerability that controller area network (CAN) protocol, a de-facto standard for the in-vehicle networks, does not support message origin authentication. Although a number of methods to resolve this security vulnerability have been suggested, they have their each limitation to be applied into the current system. They have required either the modification of the CAN standard or dramatical communication load increase, which is infeasible in practice. In this paper, we propose a novel identification method, which works in the physical layer of the in-vehicle CAN network. Our method identifies electronic control units (ECUs) using inimitable characteristics of electrical CAN signals enabling detection of a malicious ECU. Unlike previous attempts to address the security problem in the in-vehicle CAN network, our method works by simply adding a monitoring unit to the existing network, making it deployable in current systems and compliant with required CAN standards. Our experimental results show that our method is able to correctly identify ECUs. In case of misclassfication rate for ECU idnetification, our method yields 0.36% in average which is approximate four times lower than the method proposed by P.-S. Murvay et al. This paper is also the first to identify potential attack models that systems should be able to detect. |
Primary repair of bilateral cleft lip and nasal deformity. | LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this article, the participant should be able to: 1. List five principles that guide synchronous repair of bilateral complete cleft lip and nasal deformity. 2. Explain how different growth rates for the principal nasolabial features are applied during primary repair. 3. Describe two approaches for positioning the alar cartilages to form the columella. 4. Discuss the influences on referral patterns for a newborn with bilateral cleft lip. --Traditional repair of bilateral cleft lip focused on labial closure but accentuated the nasal deformities, which were addressed later. By the end of the past century, single-staged labial closure had replaced the old multistaged procedures and the technical emphasis had begun to shift from secondary to primary nasal correction. Now, presurgical maxillary orthopedics sets the bony foundation for synchronous nasolabial repair and for closure of the alveolar clefts. The study of normal nasolabial growth and the typical stigmata of the conventional methods provides the necessary foreknowledge to guide surgical sculpture in three dimensions and to anticipate the fourth dimension. The convergence of several forces are changing referral lines for children born with bilateral cleft lip. These include affirmation of centers of excellence, surgeons' self-regulation, prenatal diagnosis, economics of health-care delivery, and increasing parental sophistication. These pressures are not necessarily in conflict. Care by a subspecialized plastic surgeon and experienced team is in the best interests of the child and the third-party payer. |
High-Order Attention Models for Visual Question Answering | The quest for algorithms that enable cognitive abilities is an important part of machine learning. A common trait in many recently investigated cognitive-like tasks is that they take into account different data modalities, such as visual and textual input. In this paper we propose a novel and generally applicable form of attention mechanism that learns high-order correlations between various data modalities. We show that high-order correlations effectively direct the appropriate attention to the relevant elements in the different data modalities that are required to solve the joint task. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our high-order attention mechanism on the task of visual question answering (VQA), where we achieve state-of-the-art performance on the standard VQA dataset. |
A theoretical model of intentional social action in online social networks | a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: We-intention Social influence Social identity Subjective norm Group norm Online social networks IS adoption IS continuance Online social networks (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and the like) have become truly significant new phenomena in human communication and interaction patterns and may have a profound impact in the way people communicate and connect with each other. In this study, the decision to use an online social network is conceptualized as intentional social action and the relative impact of the three modes of social influence processes (compliance, internalization, and identification) on intentional social action to use (collective intention) is examined. An empirical study of Facebook users (n = 389) found that collective intention to use a social networking site is determined by both subjective norm and social identity. Further, social identity is found to be a second-order latent construct comprised of cognitive, evaluative, and affective (first-order) components. Implications for research and practice are discussed. The growth and public popularity of Web 2.0 applications have created a new world of collaboration and communication. More than a billion individuals around the world are connected. They support themselves through wikis, podcasts, discussion posts, comments, and instant messaging. New generation online social networks (a Web 2.0 application), as enabled by the widespread diffusion of high-speed Internet, have even emerged as a mainstream communication and interaction modality with ever-increasing significance in the information society in which we live today. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other similar online social networking sites provide online spaces where individuals can create a profile and connect that profile to others to create a personal network. In online social networking sites, social interaction and connection is the objective. These online social networking sites give everyone a place to share their personal stories, in words, pictures, and videos with their friends. They also connect people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them. They help people learn more about events, parties, and other social functions. Participation and continuance in online social networks represents a new social phenomenon that depends largely on the interactions with other users in a personal network. While recent information systems (IS) studies have started to address the issue of online social networks [15,20,21], these studies basically adopted the classical individual-based models to investigate the use of this new or complex communication and interaction phenomena. The classical individual-based models … |
School Start Times, Sleep, Behavioral, Health, and Academic Outcomes: A Review of the Literature. | BACKGROUND
Insufficient sleep in adolescents has been shown to be associated with a wide variety of adverse outcomes, from poor mental and physical health to behavioral problems and lower academic grades. However, most high school students do not get sufficient sleep. Delaying school start times for adolescents has been proposed as a policy change to address insufficient sleep in this population and potentially to improve students' academic performance, reduce engagement in risk behaviors, and improve health.
METHODS
This article reviews 38 reports examining the association between school start times, sleep, and other outcomes among adolescent students.
RESULTS
Most studies reviewed provide evidence that delaying school start time increases weeknight sleep duration among adolescents, primarily by delaying rise times. Most of the studies saw a significant increase in sleep duration even with relatively small delays in start times of half an hour or so. Later start times also generally correspond to improved attendance, less tardiness, less falling asleep in class, better grades, and fewer motor vehicle crashes.
CONCLUSIONS
Although additional research is necessary, research results that are already available should be disseminated to stakeholders to enable the development of evidence-based school policies. |
Moderate Load Eccentric Exercise; A Distinct Novel Training Modality | Over the last 20 years a number of studies have been published using progressive eccentric exercise protocols on motorized ergometers or similar devices that allow for controlled application of eccentric loads. Exercise protocols ramp eccentric loads over an initial 3 weeks period in order to prevent muscle damage and delayed onset muscle soreness. Final training loads reach 400-500 W in rehabilitative settings and over 1200 W in elite athletes. Training is typically carried out three times per week for durations of 20-30 min. This type of training has been characterizes as moderate load eccentric exercise. It has also been denoted RENEW (Resistance Exercise via Negative Eccentric Work by LaStayo et al., 2014). It is distinct from plyometric exercises (i.e., drop jumps) that impose muscle loads of several thousand Watts on muscles and tendons. It is also distinct from eccentric overload training whereby loads in a conventional strength training setting are increased in the eccentric phase of the movement to match concentric loads. Moderate load eccentric exercise (or RENEW) has been shown to be similarly effective as conventional strength training in increasing muscle strength and muscle volume. However, as carried out at higher angular velocities of joint movement, it reduces joint loads. A hallmark of moderate load eccentric exercise is the fact that the energy requirements are typically 4-fold smaller than in concentric exercise of the same load. This makes moderate load eccentric exercise training the tool of choice in medical conditions with limitations in muscle energy supply. The use and effectiveness of moderate load eccentric exercise has been demonstrated mostly in small scale studies for cardiorespiratory conditions, sarcopenia of old age, cancer, diabetes type 2, and neurological conditions. It has also been used effectively in the prevention and rehabilitation of injuries of the locomotor system in particular the rehabilitation after anterior cruciate ligament surgery. |
Phase-oriented treatment of structural dissociation in complex traumatization: overcoming trauma-related phobias. | The theory of structural dissociation of the personality proposes that patients with complex trauma-related disorders are characterized by a division of their personality into different prototypical parts, each with its own psychobiological underpinnings. As one or more apparently normal parts (ANPs), patients have a propensity toward engaging in evolutionary prepared action systems for adaptation to daily living to guide their actions. Two or more emotional parts (EPs) are fixated in traumatic experience. As EPs, patients predominantly engage action systems related to physical defense and attachment cry. ANP and EP are insufficiently integrated, but interact and share a number of dispositions of the personality (e.g., speaking). All parts are stuck in maladaptive action tendencies that maintain dissociation, including a range of phobias, which is a major focus of this article. Phase-oriented treatment helps patients gradually develop adaptive mental and behavioral actions, thus overcoming their phobias and structural dissociation. Phase 1, symptom reduction and stabilization, is geared toward overcoming phobias of mental contents, dissociative parts, and attachment and attachment loss with the therapist. Phase 2, treatment of traumatic memories, is directed toward overcoming the phobia of traumatic memories, and phobias related to insecure attachment to the perpetrator(s), particularly in EPs. In Phase 3, integration and rehabilitation, treatment is focused on overcoming phobias of normal life, healthy risk-taking and change, and intimacy. To the degree that the theory of structural dissociation serves as an integrative heuristic for treatment, it should be compatible with other theories that guide effective treatment of patients with complex dissociative disorders. |
Assessing Test-Driven Development at IBM | In a software development group of IBM Retail Store Solutions, we built a non-trivial software system based on a stable standard specification using a disciplined, rigorous unit testing and build approach based on the test- driven development (TDD) practice. Using this practice, we reduced our defect rate by about 50 percent compared to a similar system that was built using an ad-hoc unit testing approach. The project completed on time with minimal development productivity impact. Additionally, the suite of automated unit test cases created via TDD is a reusable and extendable asset that will continue to improve quality over the lifetime of the software system. The test suite will be the basis for quality checks and will serve as a quality contract between all members of the team. |
A conversation with Emeritus Professor Frank Stilwell, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney | This discussion, with a true pioneer of pluralist economics teaching, examines a particular strategy for achieving reform that has been adopted at Sydney University. It is a strategy that may have wide applicability for the reform of economics. The strategy is shown to have two features. Firstly, there has been the pursuit of institutional independence: a separate department of pluralist economics has been established that is independent of the existing neoclassical economics department. The second feature of the strategy has been one of explicit disciplinary differentiation: a pluralist economics is taught using the disciplinary title of 'political economy' rather than 'economics'. The discussion also offers a range of interesting insights on the mainstream research frontier, the relationship between a pluralist economics and other social sciences, and the issues facing mainstream economists. |
Genetic association of miRNA-146a with systemic lupus erythematosus in Europeans through decreased expression of the gene | A recent genome-wide association study revealed a variant (rs2431697) in an intergenic region, between the pituitary tumor-transforming 1 (PTTG1) and microRNA (miR-146a) genes, associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) susceptibility. Here, we analyzed with a case–control design this variant and other candidate polymorphisms in this region together with expression analysis in order to clarify to which gene this association is related. The single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rs2431697, rs2910164 and rs2277920 were genotyped by TaqMan assays in 1324 SLE patients and 1453 healthy controls of European ancestry. Genetic association was statistically analyzed using Unphased. Gene expression of PTTG1, the miRNAs miR-3142 and primary and mature forms of miR-146a in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were assessed by quantitative real-time PCR. Of the three variants analyzed, only rs2431697 was genetically associated with SLE in Europeans. Gene expression analysis revealed that this SNP was not associated with PTTG1 expression levels, but with the microRNA-146a, where the risk allele correlates with lower expression of the miRNA. We replicated the genetic association of rs2341697 with SLE in a case–control study in Europeans and demonstrated that the risk allele of this SNP correlates with a downregulation of the miRNA 146a, potentially important in SLE etiology. |
Statistical Syntax-Directed Translation with Extended Domain of Locality | In syntax-directed translation, the sourcelanguage input is first parsed into a parsetree, which is then recursively converted into a string in the target-language. We model this conversion by an extended treeto-string transducer that has multi-level trees on the source-side, which gives our system more expressive power and flexibility. We also define a direct probability model and use a linear-time dynamic programming algorithm to search for the best derivation. The model is then extended to the general log-linear framework in order to incorporate other features like n-gram language models. We devise a simple-yet-effective algorithm to generate non-duplicate k-best translations for ngram rescoring. Preliminary experiments on English-to-Chinese translation show a significant improvement in terms of translation quality compared to a state-of-theart phrase-based system. |
Thin AMC Structure for Radar Cross-Section Reduction | A thin artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) structure is designed and breadboarded for radar cross-section (RCS) Reduction applications. The design presented in this paper shows the advantage of geometrical simplicity while simultaneously reducing the overall thickness (for the current design ). The design is very pragmatic and is based on a combination of AMC and perfect electric conductor (PEC) cells in a chessboard like configuration. An array of Sievenpiper's mushrooms constitutes the AMC part, while the PEC part is formed by full metallic patches. Around the operational frequency of the AMC-elements, the reflection of the AMC and PEC have opposite phase, so for any normal incident plane wave the reflections cancel out, thus reducing the RCS. The same applies to specular reflections for off-normal incidence angles. A simple basic model has been implemented in order to verify the behavior of this structure, while Ansoft-HFSS software has been used to provide a more thorough analysis. Both bistatic and monostatic measurements have been performed to validate the approach. |
Economic integration in China : Politics and culture | Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten, Libman, Alexander, and Yu, Xiaofan—Economic integration in China: Politics and culture The aim of the paper is to explicitly disentangle the role of political and cultural boundaries as factors of fragmentation of economies within large countries. On the one hand, local protectionism plays a substantial role in many federations and decentralized states. On the other hand, if the country exhibits high level of cultural heterogeneity, it may also contribute to the economic fragmentation; however, this topic has received significantly less attention in the literature. This paper looks at the case of China and proxies the cultural heterogeneity by the heterogeneity of local dialects. It shows that the effect of politics clearly dominates that of culture: while provincial borders seem to have a strong influence disrupting economic ties, economic linkages across provinces, even if the regions fall into the same linguistic zone, are rather weak and, on the contrary, linguistic differences within provinces do not prevent economic integration. For some language zones we do, however, find a stronger effect on economic integration. Journal of Comparative Economics 42 (2) (2014) 470–492. Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Germany; Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia. 2013 Association for Comparative Economic Studies Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
Benzhexol and side effects with long-acting fluphenazine therapy. | Sixteen patients who had for some months been on fluphenazine enanthate injections (1-3 ml) every two or three weeks, with daily oral benzhexol (6-40 mg), were divided into two groups comparable in age, diagnostic category, and drug dose.Placebo was substituted under blind controlled conditions for benzhexol in one group, and both groups were regularly assessed by Simpson rating scale for extra-pyramidal signs, and by a 30-question symptom check list. Both assessments were found reliable.Four out of eight patients had severe reactions when off benzhexol, but symptoms such as tremor and daytime sleepiness were unaltered in all patients. The other four did not suffer adversely from withdrawal of benzhexol.Acute withdrawal is therefore unjustified, but occasional revision of dosage of anti-Parkinsonian drugs is advisable. There is no evidence that tolerance develops to any effect of a phenothiazine, but long-continued benzhexol might induce a denervation supersensitivity. It is also possible that Parkinsonian signs are dependent on affective state. |
Text mining for market prediction: A systematic review | The quality of the interpretation of the sentiment in the online buzz in the social media and the online news can determine the predictability of financial markets and cause huge gains or losses. That is why a number of researchers have turned their full attention to the different aspects of this problem lately. However, there is no well-rounded theoretical and technical framework for approaching the problem to the best of our knowledge. We believe the existing lack of such clarity on the topic is due to its interdisciplinary nature that involves at its core both behavioral-economic topics as well as artificial intelligence. We dive deeper into the interdisciplinary nature and contribute to the formation of a clear frame of discussion. We review the related works that are about market prediction based on onlinetext-mining and produce a picture of the generic components that they all have. We, furthermore, compare each system with the rest and identify their main differentiating factors. Our comparative analysis of the systems expands onto the theoretical and technical foundations behind each. This work should help the research community to structure this emerging field and identify the exact aspects which require further research and are of special significance. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Digital image processing algorithms and applications. I[Book Review] | book goes beyond theory and techniques to address the underlying algorithms of digital image processing. It provides a complete compilation of algorithms for digital image processing , coding and analysis and includes digital image transform algorithms, edge detection algorithms, and image segmentation algorithms extracted from the literature. GPS design information, long scattered in hard-to-find places, is collected in this comprehensive reference work designed to assist engineers who use and design GPS systems. " With an emphasis on software-based signal processing—a cutting-edge approach expected to dominate future integration of GPS receivers into cellular phones…. " (The Publisher). The book covers aspects of receiver technology and relevant navigation schemes, and concentrates on civilian C/A code. The authors describe various discrete transforms and their application in different disciplines. They cover techniques such as adaptive quantization and entropy coding, which result in significant reduc-ation in bit rates when applied to the transform coefficients. Other features of the book include: L Theory of mathematical transforms in combination with techniques used in data compression L Issues fundamental to communications , image processing, and image and data storage L Classical and modern transforms, and how they relate to data compression L Compuression applications for speech analysis, pattern recognition, and medical imaging L Detailed definitions and properties of the each of the transforms presented L Lists of web sites, ftp addresses, etc. (cloth). This book is a practical guide to the state of the art of modern digital system design, combining accessible explanations and problem-solving strategies; it clarifies topics involving the effects of high frequencies on digital buses and presents techniques and application samples. The book, written by three Intel engineers, covers: L Introduction to the digital aspects of basic transmission line theory L Crosstalk and nonideal transmission line effects on signal quality and timings L The impact of packages, vias, and connectors on signal integrity L The effects of nonideal return current paths, high frequency power delivery , and simultaneous switching noise L Explanations of how driving circuit characteristis affect the quality of the digital signal L Digital timing analysis at the system level that incorporates high-speed signaling effects into timing budgets L Methodologies for designing high-speed buses and handling the very large number of variables that affect interconnect performance L Radiated emission problems and how to minimize system noise L The practical aspects of making measurements in high-speed digital systems. (The Publisher) Interconnect Analysis and Synthesis. … |
PLATO: Policy learning using adaptive trajectory optimization | Policy search can in principle acquire complex strategies for control of robots and other autonomous systems. When the policy is trained to process raw sensory inputs, such as images and depth maps, it can also acquire a strategy that combines perception and control. However, effectively processing such complex inputs requires an expressive policy class, such as a large neural network. These high-dimensional policies are difficult to train, especially when learning to control safety-critical systems. We propose PLATO, a continuous, reset-free reinforcement learning algorithm that trains complex control policies with supervised learning, using model-predictive control (MPC) to generate the supervision, hence never in need of running a partially trained and potentially unsafe policy. PLATO uses an adaptive training method to modify the behavior of MPC to gradually match the learned policy in order to generate training samples at states that are likely to be visited by the learned policy. PLATO also maintains the MPC cost as an objective to avoid highly undesirable actions that would result from strictly following the learned policy before it has been fully trained. We prove that this type of adaptive MPC expert produces supervision that leads to good long-horizon performance of the resulting policy. We also empirically demonstrate that MPC can still avoid dangerous on-policy actions in unexpected situations during training. Our empirical results on a set of challenging simulated aerial vehicle tasks demonstrate that, compared to prior methods, PLATO learns faster, experiences substantially fewer catastrophic failures (crashes) during training, and often converges to a better policy. |
Low-Cost Ku-Band Waveguide Devices Using 3-D Printing and Liquid Metal Filling | This paper presents a simple, low-cost, hours-long fabrication method for microwave waveguide components of high RF performance. The technique combines 3-D-printed configurations with liquid metal waveguide structures. As a demonstration, a fused deposition modeling multimaterial 3-D consumer-grade printer and liquid gallium were used. A conductive polylactic acid (PLA) waveguide flange was 3-D printed along, in-one-go, with standard PLA for the rectangular waveguide liquid metal enclosures. Microwave WR62 waveguides, resonators, and filters operating in Ku-band were designed, fabricated, and tested. The RF performance of the fabricated waveguide devices is in agreement with the simulations demonstrating better than 1.29 dB/m attenuation in the waveguide and better than 1000 $Q$ -factor for the resonator and the filter at 13 GHz. The fabricated devices demonstrate a new option of an economical fabrication technology for high RF performance microwave waveguide-based devices that can be delivered in hours-time, anywhere, anytime with minimal equipment deployment and investment. |
Melanoma exosomes educate bone marrow progenitor cells toward a pro-metastatic phenotype through MET | Tumor-derived exosomes are emerging mediators of tumorigenesis. We explored the function of melanoma-derived exosomes in the formation of primary tumors and metastases in mice and human subjects. Exosomes from highly metastatic melanomas increased the metastatic behavior of primary tumors by permanently 'educating' bone marrow progenitors through the receptor tyrosine kinase MET. Melanoma-derived exosomes also induced vascular leakiness at pre-metastatic sites and reprogrammed bone marrow progenitors toward a pro-vasculogenic phenotype that was positive for c-Kit, the receptor tyrosine kinase Tie2 and Met. Reducing Met expression in exosomes diminished the pro-metastatic behavior of bone marrow cells. Notably, MET expression was elevated in circulating CD45−C-KITlow/+TIE2+ bone marrow progenitors from individuals with metastatic melanoma. RAB1A, RAB5B, RAB7 and RAB27A, regulators of membrane trafficking and exosome formation, were highly expressed in melanoma cells. Rab27A RNA interference decreased exosome production, preventing bone marrow education and reducing, tumor growth and metastasis. In addition, we identified an exosome-specific melanoma signature with prognostic and therapeutic potential comprised of TYRP2, VLA-4, HSP70, an HSP90 isoform and the MET oncoprotein. Our data show that exosome production, transfer and education of bone marrow cells supports tumor growth and metastasis, has prognostic value and offers promise for new therapeutic directions in the metastatic process. |
Carpooling Service for Large-Scale Taxicab Networks | Carpooling has long held the promise of reducing gas consumption by decreasing mileage to deliver coriders. Although ad hoc carpools already exist in the real world through private arrangements, little research on the topic has been done. In this article, we present the first systematic work to design, implement, and evaluate a carpool service, called coRide, in a large-scale taxicab network intended to reduce total mileage for less gas consumption. Our coRide system consists of three components, a dispatching cloud server, passenger clients, and an onboard customized device, called TaxiBox. In the coRide design, in response to the delivery requests of passengers, dispatching cloud servers calculate cost-efficient carpool routes for taxicab drivers and thus lower fares for the individual passengers.
To improve coRide’s efficiency in mileage reduction, we formulate an NP-hard route calculation problem under different practical constraints. We then provide (1) an optimal algorithm using Linear Programming, (2) a 2-approximation algorithm with a polynomial complexity, and (3) its corresponding online version with a linear complexity. To encourage coRide’s adoption, we present a win-win fare model as the incentive mechanism for passengers and drivers to participate. We test the performance of coRide by a comprehensive evaluation with a real-world trial implementation and a data-driven simulation with 14,000 taxi data from the Chinese city Shenzhen. The results show that compared with the ground truth, our service can reduce 33% of total mileage; with our win-win fare model, we can lower passenger fares by 49% and simultaneously increase driver profit by 76%. |
Cepstral mean and variance normalization in the model domain | In prior work we have demonstrated the noise robustness of a novel microphone solution, the PARAT earplug communication terminal. Here we extend that work with results for the ETSI Advanced Front-End and segmental cepstral mean and variance normalization (CMVN). We also propose a method for doing CMVN in the model domain. This removes the need to train models on normalized features, which may significantly extend the applicability of CMVN. The recognition results are comparable to those of the traditional approach. |
Electricity Consumption and Economic Growth Nexus: A Multivariate Analysis for Turkey | This study examines the short-run and long-run causality issues between electricity consumption and economic growth in Turkey for 1968–2006 period by using Granger causality models augmented with a lagged error-correction term. The bounds F–test for cointegration test yields evidence of a long-run relationship between employment ratio, electricity consumption per capita and real GDP per capita. The overall results from the three error-correction based Granger causality models show that there is an evidence of unidirectional short-run, long-run and strong causalities running from the electricity consumption per capita to real GDP per capita. But, there is no causal evidence from the real GDP per capita to electricity consumption per capita. In other words, “Growth hypothesis” is confirmed in Turkey. This suggests that electricity consumption plays an important role in economic growth. |
Improvement Schemes for Indoor Mobile Location Estimation : A Survey | Location estimation is significant in mobile and ubiquitous computing systems. The complexity and smaller scale of the indoor environment impose a great impact on location estimation. The key of location estimation lies in the representation and fusion of uncertain information from multiple sources. The improvement of location estimation is a complicated and comprehensive issue. A lot of research has been done to address this issue. However, existing research typically focuses on certain aspects of the problem and specific methods. This paper reviews mainstream schemes on improving indoor location estimation from multiple levels and perspectives by combining existing works and our own working experiences. Initially, we analyze the error sources of common indoor localization techniques and provide a multilayered conceptual framework of improvement schemes for location estimation. This is followed by a discussion of probabilistic methods for location estimation, including Bayes filters, Kalman filters, extended Kalman filters, sigma-point Kalman filters, particle filters, and hiddenMarkov models.Then, we investigate the hybrid localization methods, including multimodal fingerprinting, triangulation fusing multiple measurements, combination of wireless positioning with pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR), and cooperative localization. Next, we focus on the location determination approaches that fuse spatial contexts, namely, map matching, landmark fusion, and spatial model-aided methods. Finally, we present the directions for future research. |
Computational Entropy and Information Leakage | We investigate how information leakage reduces computational entropy of a random variable X. Recall that HILL and metric computational entropy are parameterized by quality (how distinguishable is X from a variable Z that has true entropy) and quantity (how much true entropy is there in Z). We prove an intuitively natural result: conditioning on an event of probability p reduces the quality of metric entropy by a factor of p and the quantity of metric entropy by log2 1/p (note that this means that the reduction in quantity and quality is the same, because the quantity of entropy is measured on logarithmic scale). Our result improves previous bounds of Dziembowski and Pietrzak (FOCS 2008), where the loss in the quantity of entropy was related to its original quality. The use of metric entropy simplifies the analogous the result of Reingold et. al. (FOCS 2008) for HILL entropy. Further, we simplify dealing with information leakage by investigating conditional metric entropy. We show that, conditioned on leakage of λ bits, metric entropy gets reduced by a factor 2 in quality and λ in quantity. Our formulation allow us to formulate a “chain rule” for leakage on computational entropy. We show that conditioning on λ bits of leakage reduces conditional metric entropy by λ bits. This is the same loss as leaking from unconditional metric entropy. This result makes it easy to measure entropy even after several rounds of information leakage. |
My expressed breast milk turned pink! | A 28-year-old breastfeeding mother of term-born 3-month old twins contacted the Hospital Lactation consultant for advice. She had expressed milk at 2am and had stored the milk in the fridge. She fed some of that milk to one of the twins at 11am and further milk to both twins at 4pm. All three bottles were left on the bench until the next morning when the mother intended to clean the bottles. She found that the milk residue in all three feeding bottles had turned bright pink and had a strong earthy odour (see Fig. 1). The mother brought one of the bottles containing the bright pink milk with her to the hospital. The mother was in good health, with no symptoms of mastitis and no fever. Both twins were also healthy and continued to feed well and gain weight. What is the cause of the pink milk? (answer on page 82) |
Interrupted time series regression for the evaluation of public health interventions: a tutorial | Interrupted time series (ITS) analysis is a valuable study design for evaluating the effectiveness of population-level health interventions that have been implemented at a clearly defined point in time. It is increasingly being used to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions ranging from clinical therapy to national public health legislation. Whereas the design shares many properties of regression-based approaches in other epidemiological studies, there are a range of unique features of time series data that require additional methodological considerations. In this tutorial we use a worked example to demonstrate a robust approach to ITS analysis using segmented regression. We begin by describing the design and considering when ITS is an appropriate design choice. We then discuss the essential, yet often omitted, step of proposing the impact model a priori. Subsequently, we demonstrate the approach to statistical analysis including the main segmented regression model. Finally we describe the main methodological issues associated with ITS analysis: over-dispersion of time series data, autocorrelation, adjusting for seasonal trends and controlling for time-varying confounders, and we also outline some of the more complex design adaptations that can be used to strengthen the basic ITS design. |
Understanding MOSFET mismatch for analog design | Despite the significance of matched devices in analog circuit design, mismatch modeling for design application has been lacking. This paper addresses misconceptions about MOSFET mismatch for analog design. t mismatch does not follow a simplistic 1 ( area) law, especially for wide/short and narrow/long devices, which are common geometries in analog circuits. Further, t and gain factor are not appropriate parameters for modeling mismatch. A physically based mismatch model can be used to obtain dramatic improvements in prediction of mismatch. This model is applied to MOSFET current mirrors to show some nonobvious effects over bias, geometry, and multiple-unit devices. |
Fake News Headline Classification using Neural Networks with Attention | The Fake News Challenge is a competition to classify articles as agreeing, disagreeing, discussing, or having no relation to their headlines. The competition provides an annotated dataset (FNC-1) for training supervised models as well as a baseline model to compare against. We cast our fake news problem as a textual entailment task by using multiple Bidirectional LSTMs and an attention mechanism to predict the entailment of the articles to their paired headlines. To tune our model, we adjust a multilayer perceptron predictor layer’s width as well as the amount of dropout and regularization to control overfitting. We evaluate the effectiveness of our model against the baseline and compare to implementations of solutions to the same FNC-1 stance classification task. |
Use of antithrombotic medications among elderly ischemic stroke patients. | BACKGROUND
The use of antithrombotic medications after ischemic stroke is recommended for deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis and secondary stroke prevention. We assessed the rate of receipt of these therapies among eligible ischemic stroke patients age ≥65 years and determined the effects of age and other patient characteristics on treatment.
METHODS AND RESULTS
The analysis included Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries discharged with ischemic stroke (ICD 433.x1, 434.x1, 436) randomly selected for inclusion in the Medicare Health Care Quality Improvement Program's National Stroke Project 1998 to 1999, 2000 to 2001. Patients discharged from nonacute facilities, transferred, or terminally ill were excluded. Receipt of in-hospital pharmacological deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, antiplatelet medication, anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation, and antithrombotic medications at discharge were assessed in eligible patients, stratified by age (65 to 74, 75 to 84, and 85+ years). Descriptive models identified characteristics associated with treatment. Among 31 554 patients, 14.9% of those eligible received pharmacological deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis, 83.9% antiplatelet drugs, 82.8% anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation, and 74.2% were discharged on an antithrombotic medication. Rates of treatment decreased with age and were lowest for patients ages 85 years or older. Admission from a skilled nursing facility and functional dependence were associated with lower treatment rates.
CONCLUSIONS
There was substantial underutilization of antithrombotic therapies among elderly ischemic stroke patients, particularly among the very elderly, those admitted from skilled nursing facilities, and patients with functional dependence. The reasons for low use of antithrombotic therapies, including the apparent underutilization of deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis in otherwise eligible patients, require further investigation. |
On the Systemogenesis of Activity | All sciences, and indeed not just the sciences but any intellectual effort, purpose to understand the interrelations of phenomena existing at the different stages of our hierarchical ladder in order to discover the connection between beauty and history, between history and human psychology, between psychology and the workings of the brain … and so on, both upward and downward. |
Organisation of the care of patients with heart failure | Heart failure is a major cardiovascular problem with a steadily increasing incidence and prevalence. 1-5 These increases are due to a higher proportion of elderly individuals in the population and also because effective treatment of acute myocardial infarction and hypertension exposes more patients to the risk of heart failure than in the past. Recent epidemiological studies that included patients without symptoms of heart failure suggest that the prevalence may greatly exceed that of earlier estimates. 6 Based on data from the Framingham Study 2 the median survival is only 1.7 years in men and 3.2 years in women. Despite advances in the treatment of heart failure the prognosis remains poor. 7'~ Heart failure is associated witl~ frequent admissions to hospital which are a substantial:" burden on health-care providers? Furthermore, there are shortcomings in the diagnosis of heart failure and, even when correctly diagnosed, optimum treatment is not always given in accordance with current guidelines. 1°'1~ There is a need to improve the care of patients with heart failure. The entire spectrum of heart-failure management should be taken into account, and this includes the provision of adequate resources for diagnosis, the creation of an infrastructure that can meet the needs associated with treatment based on evidence from clinical trials, and the development of innovative strategies for optimum care of heart-failure patients in different settings (ie, urban vs rural or primary care vs specialist care). |
Fluidic Thrust Vectoring of Low Observable Aircraft ( 13 / 39 ) 1 FLUIDIC THRUST VECTORING OF LOW OBSERVABLE AIRCRAFT | The work presented in this paper deals with the development of a coflow fluidic thrust vectoring system for use on a low observable unmanned air vehicle operating in the subsonic flight regime. Two approximately 1/10 scale fluidic thrust vectoring demonstrator rigs were designed and built in order to investigate the effect of various geometric variables on thrust vectoring effectiveness. These included secondary gap height, dh, and Coanda surface diameter, ∅. Load measurements were obtained using a six component overhead balance. The thrust vector force, Fz,tv, was made non-dimensional using the thrust force of the nonvectored primary jet, Fx, to give a thrust vector coefficient, Cz. Tests were carried out over the mass flow ratio range 0 m s/mp < 0.13 which corresponded to a momentum flow ratio range of 0 M s/Mp < 0.4. A computational investigation for 2D flow was also undertaken primarily to aid in the design of the experimental demonstrator rigs and smoke flow visualisation techniques were used to further investigate the flow characteristics of a non-vectored and a vectored primary jet. The investigation shows that both the experimental and computational results obtained follow a similar trend line. A ‘dead zone’ appears at low mass flow ratios in which no control can be achieved. There then follows a control region in which continuous thrust vector control can be achieved followed by a hypothetical saturation region. The secondary jet blowing rate, the Coanda surface diameter and the primary nozzle to secondary nozzle height ratio are seen to determine whether effective and efficient fluidic thrust vectoring can be achieved. |
An eye tracking study of how font size and type influence online reading | In order to maximize online reading performance and comprehension, how should a designer choose typographical variables such as font size and font type? This paper presents an eye tracking study of how font size and font type affect online reading. In a between-subjects design, we collected data from 82 subjects reading stories formatted in a variety of point sizes, san serif, and serif fonts. Reading statistics such as reading speed were computed, and post-tests of comprehension were recorded. For smaller font sizes, fixation durations are significantly longer, resulting in slower reading – but not significantly slower. While there were no significant differences in serif vs. san serif fonts, serif reading was slightly faster. Significant eye tracking differences were found for demographic variables such as age group and whether English is the subject’s first language. |
Factors Affecting the Adoption of Internet Banking in Jordan : An Extended TAM Model | This study aims to investigate how customers perceive and adopt internet banking (IB) in Jordan. An extended Model, based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), was developed. Three more constructs were added to the Model, namely; Perceived Risk (PR), Perceived Trust (PT) and Bank Credibility (BC). To empirically test the Model’s ability to predict customers’ intention to adopt and use internet banking, a questionnaire was developed and used. A randomly 500 graduate students at four Jordanian Universities were surveyed. An exploratory factor analysis, correlation matrix, and a regression analysis were used to test the robustness of the model as well as to test the hypothesized relationships among variables. The results provide support to the extended TAM model and confirm its robustness in predicting customers’ intention to adopt and use internet banking. This study contributes to the body of literature about internet banking, and its results provide useful information for bank managers on how to deal with internet challenges in Jordan. Since this empirical study was performed with a time constraint, it is not without limitation. |
Age , gender and income : do they really moderate online shopping behaviour ? | Purpose – The objective of this paper is to analyse whether individuals’ socioeconomic characteristics – age, gender and income – influence their online shopping behaviour. The individuals analysed are experienced e-shoppers i.e. individuals who often make purchases on the internet. Design/methodology/approach – The technology acceptance model was broadened to include previous use of the internet and perceived self-efficacy. The perceptions and behaviour of e-shoppers are based on their own experiences. The information obtained has been tested using causal and multi-sample analyses. Findings – The results show that socioeconomic variables moderate neither the influence of previous use of the internet nor the perceptions of e-commerce; in short, they do not condition the behaviour of the experienced e-shopper. Practical implications – The results obtained help to determine that once individuals attain the status of experienced e-shoppers their behaviour is similar, independently of their socioeconomic characteristics. The internet has become a marketplace suitable for all ages and incomes and both genders, and thus the prejudices linked to the advisability of selling certain products should be revised. Originality/value – Previous research related to the socioeconomic variables affecting e-commerce has been aimed at forecasting who is likely to make an initial online purchase. In contrast to the majority of existing studies, it is considered that the current development of the online environment should lead to analysis of a new kind of e-shopper (experienced purchaser), whose behaviour differs from that studied at the outset of this research field. The experience acquired with online shopping nullifies the importance of socioeconomic characteristics. |
Fog Computing: A Platform for Internet of Things and Analytics | Internet of Things (IoT) brings more than an explosive proliferation of endpoints. It is disruptive in several ways. In this chapter we examine those disruptions, and propose a hierarchical distributed architecture that extends from the edge of the network to the core nicknamed Fog Computing. In particular, we pay attention to a new dimension that IoT adds to Big Data and Analytics: a massively distributed number of sources at the edge. |
OCCUPATION AND LOCAL TIMES FOR SKEW BROWNIAN MOTION WITH APPLICATIONS TO DISPERSION ACROSS AN INTERFACE∗ | Advective skew dispersion is a natural Markov process defined by a diffusion with drift across an interface of jump discontinuity in a piecewise constant diffusion coefficient. In the absence of drift this process may be represented as a function of α-skew Brownian motion for a uniquely determined value of α = α∗; see Ramirez, Thomann, Waymire, Haggerty and Wood (2006). In the present paper the analysis is extended to the case of non-zero drift. A determination of the (joint) distributions of key functionals of standard skew Brownian motion together with some associated probabilistic semigroup and local time theory is given for these purposes. An application to the dispersion of a solute concentration across an interface is provided that explains certain symmetries and asymmetries in recently reported laboratory experiments conducted at Lawrence-Livermore Berkeley Labs by Berkowitz, Cortis, Dror and Scher (2009). |
Comparative effectiveness of white blood cell growth factors on neutropenia, infection, and survival in older people with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma treated with chemotherapy. | OBJECTIVES
To determine the effect of colony-stimulating factor (CSF) on incidence of febrile neutropenia, infection, and survival in older people with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) treated with chemotherapy.
DESIGN
Retrospective cohort study.
SETTING
The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results-Medicare database.
PARTICIPANTS
Thirteen thousand two hundred twenty-three people diagnosed with NHL at age 65 and older (mean age 74.9, range 65-102) in 1992 to 2002 who received chemotherapy within 12 months of diagnosis.
MEASUREMENTS
Primary prophylaxis was defined as CSF administered at the start of chemotherapy before febrile neutropenia or infection; secondary prophylaxis was defined as CSF use after febrile neutropenia or infection.
RESULTS
Participants with five to nine administrations of primary prophylactic CSF had a 42% lower risk of febrile neutropenia (odds ratio (OR)=0.58, 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.41-0.83), and participants with 10 or more administrations had a 48% lower risk (OR=0.52, 95% CI=0.36-0.76) after adjusting for age, stage, histology, and comorbidity. Results did not differ significantly after adjusting for propensity score of receiving CSF. There was no significant association between primary prophylactic CSF and overall survival, but secondary prophylactic CSF was significantly associated with better survival. Four to 10 administrations of secondary prophylactic CSF was associated with 9% lower mortality risk (hazard ratio (HR)=0.91, 95% CI=0.84-0.99), 11 to 23 administrations was associated with 23% lower mortality risk (HR=0.77, 95% CI=0.71-0.84) and 24 or more administrations was associated with 13% lower mortality risk (HR=0.87, 95% CI+0.79-0.95) than in participants not receiving CSF after neutropenia or infection.
CONCLUSION
Primary prophylactic CSF was observed to be effective in reducing the incidence of neutropenia and infection. These findings substantiate the clinical guidelines for recommending prophylactic CSF in older people with NHL receiving chemotherapy. |
Predictive Saliency Maps for Surveillance Videos | When viewing video sequences, the human visual system (HVS) tends to focus on the active objects. These are perceived as the most salient regions in the scene. Additionally, human observers tend to predict the future positions of moving objects in a dynamic scene and to direct their gaze to these positions. In this paper we propose a saliency detection model that accounts for the motion in the sequence and predicts the positions of the salient objects in future frames. This is a novel technique for attention models that we call Predictive Saliency Map (PSM). PSM improves the consistency of the estimated saliency maps for video sequences. PSM uses both static information provided by static saliency maps (SSM) and motion vectors to predict future salient regions in the next frame. In this paper we focus only on surveillance videos therefore, in addition to low-level features such as intensity, color and orientation we consider high-level features such as faces as salient regions that attract naturally viewers attention. Saliency maps computed based on these static features are combined with motion saliency maps to account for saliency created by the activity in the scene. The predicted saliency map is computed using previous saliency maps and motion information. The PSMs are compared with the experimentally obtained gaze maps and saliency maps obtained using approaches from the literature. The experimental results show that our enhanced model yields higher ability to predict eye fixations in surveillance videos. |
Adaptive Kalman Filtering for GPS-based Mobile Robot Localization | Kalman filters have been widely used for navigation in mobile robotics. One of the key problems associated with Kalman filter is how to assign suitable statistical properties to both the dynamic and the observational models. For GPS-based localization of a rough-terrain mobile robot, the maneuver of the vehicle and the level of measurement noise are environmental dependent, and hard to be predicted. This is particularly true when the vehicle experiences a sudden change of its state, which is typical on rugged terrain due, for example, to an obstacle or slippery slopes. Therefore to assign constant noise levels for such applications is not realistic. In this work we propose a real-time adaptive algorithm for GPS data processing based on the observation of residuals. Large value of residuals suggests poor performance of the filter that can be improved giving more weight to the measurements provided by the GPS using a fading memory factor. For a finer gradation of this parameter, we used a fuzzy logic inference system implementing our physical understanding of the phenomenon. The proposed approach was validated in experimental trials comparing the performance of the adaptive algorithm with a conventional Kalman filter for vehicle localization. The results demonstrate that the novel adaptive algorithm is much robust to the sudden changes of vehicle motion and measurement errors. |
Perfect Fingerprint Orientation Fields by Locally Adaptive Global Models | Fingerprint recognition is widely used for verification and identification in many commercial, governmental and forensic applications. The orientation field (OF) plays an important role at various processing stages in fingerprint recognition systems. OFs are used for image enhancement, fingerprint alignment, for fingerprint liveness detection, fingerprint alteration detection and fingerprint matching. In this paper, a novel approach is presented to globally model an OF combined with locally adaptive methods. We show that this model adapts perfectly to the ’true OF’ in the limit. This perfect OF is described by a small number of parameters with straightforward geometric interpretation. Applications are manifold: Quick expert marking of very poor quality (for instance latent) OFs, high fidelity low parameter OF compression and a direct road to ground truth OFs markings for large databases, say. In this contribution we describe an algorithm to perfectly estimate OF parameters automatically or semi-automatically, depending on image quality, and we establish the main underlying claim of high fidelity low parameter OF compression. |
Shortened acquisition time or reduced-activity dose for gated myocardial perfusion SPECT with new reconstruction algorithm | To confirm that shortened acquisition time or reduced-activity dose in single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) myocardial perfusion imaging reconstructed with Astonish software (AS) does not compromise image quality or diagnostic accuracy. One hundred patients referred for SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging were prospectively studied. The patients were randomly selected to receive the full-dose protocol (group A, n = 54) or the half-dose protocol (group B, n = 46). The patients of group A underwent a 2-day stress/rest protocol. After half-time acquisition, they underwent a full-time acquisition for stress and rest SPECT. Group B underwent a 1-day stress/rest protocol. During peak stress, all patients received an intravenous injection of 99mTc-methoxyisobutylisonitrile (MIBI; 5.2 ± 0.6 mCi). After the full-time stress acquisition, the patients underwent a double-time stress acquisition. If the stress image showed a defect, a patient received 99mTc-MIBI (19.5 ± 1.7 mCi) at rest on the same day. The rest SPECT acquisition protocol was the same in both groups. The low count (LC) and high count (HC) were acquired for each patient. AS and filtered back projection (FBP) reconstructed each set of raw data. Image quality of perfusion was assessed on a four-point scale. Perfusion parameters and function parameters were calculated by quantitative perfusion SPECT and quantitative gated SPECT. Mean image quality for LC-AS and HC-AS (3.5 ± 0.5 and 3.7 ± 0.5, respectively) was superior to HC-FBP (3.1 ± 0.4) in group A (for all, p < 0.001). LC-AS and HC-AS (3.5 ± 0.5 and 3.6 ± 0.5, respectively) in group B were superior to HC-FBP (3.1 ± 0.3) (for all, p < 0.001). LC-AS, HC-AS and LC-FBP showed high diagnostic concordance with HC-FBP (kappa value was 0.92, 0.92, and 0.94, respectively; all p < 0.001). Cardiac SPECT studies can be acquired with half of the scan time or reduced radioactivity dose and reconstructed by using the AS algorithm without compromising image quality. |
Queensland Economic Review, January 2011 | Trend employment in Queensland rose 5,700 persons (0.2%) in December 2010, to be 78,000 persons (3.4%) higher over the year. |
Toroidally-Wound Self-Bearing BLDC Motor With Lorentz Force | Self-bearing motors (SBM) use a single magnetic structure for rotational motoring as well as for noncontact levitation. They are sometimes referred to as bearingless motors or combined motor-bearings. In this paper, we propose a new type of self-bearing motors based on toroidally-wound brushless DC machines. This type of SBM can be made to be passively stable in the axial direction and for out-of-plane rotations. To achieve self-bearing operation, we derive a force-current model and show that the levitation force is decoupled from the rotational torque. To overcome the singularity problem in the force-current model, we propose a phase selection algorithm in which the phase that may cause singularity is counted out when inverting the force-current model. Through finite element analyses and experiments, we validate the force-current model and the phase selection algorithm. |
TRANSLATION AND VALIDATION OF THE BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE VERSION OF THE GASTROINTESTINAL SYMPTOM RATING SCALE (GSRS) QUESTIONNAIRE. | BACKGROUND
- Bowel function is a widely evaluated parameter in interventional and longitudinal studies since it is associated with good maintenance of health. The evaluation of intestinal function has been performed by many questionnaires, however, there are few options validated in Brazilian Portuguese.
OBJECTIVE
- The aim of this work was to translate and validate into Brazilian Portuguese the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale (GSRS) questionnaire.
METHODS
- Translation and cultural adaptation were performed according to a previously established methodology followed by reliability calculations.
RESULTS
- The final translated GSRS questionnaire showed an adequate value of overall reliability of Cronbach's alpha of 0.83, and its domains were classified from acceptable to adequate. The overall test-retest reliability by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.84, considered excellent.
CONCLUSION
- The GSRS was translated and validated into Brazilian Portuguese, with appropriate internal consistency and reliability and is available to be used in assessments of bowel function. |
Vitamin E supplementation may transiently increase tuberculosis risk in males who smoke heavily and have high dietary vitamin C intake. | Vitamin E and beta-carotene affect the immune function and might influence the predisposition of man to infections. To examine whether vitamin E or beta-carotene supplementation affects tuberculosis risk, we analysed data of the Alpha-Tocopherol Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention (ATBC)Study, a randomised controlled trial which examined the effects of vitamin E (50 mg/d) and beta-carotene (20 mg/d) on lung cancer. The trial was conducted in the general community in Finland in 1985-93; the intervention lasted for 6.1 years (median). The ATBC Study cohort consists of 29,023 males aged 50-69 years, smoking at baseline, with no tuberculosis diagnosis prior to randomisation. Vitamin E supplementation had no overall effect on the incidence of tuberculosis (risk ratio (RR) = 1.18; 95% CI 0.87, 1.59) nor had beta-carotene (RR = 1.07; 95% CI 0.80, 1.45). Nevertheless, dietary vitamin C intake significantly modified the vitamin E effect. Among participants who obtained 90 mg/d or more of vitamin Cin foods (n 13,502), vitamin E supplementation increased tuberculosis risk by 72 (95% CI 4, 185)%. This effect was restricted to participants who smoked heavily. Finally, in participants not supplemented with vitamin E, dietary vitamin C had a negative association with tuberculosis risk so that the adjusted risk was 60 (95% CI 16, 81)% lower in the highest intake quartile compared with the lowest. Our finding that vitamin E seemed to transiently increase the risk of tuberculosis in those who smoked heavily and had high dietary vitamin C intake should increase caution towards vitamin E supplementation for improving the immune system. |
Smart power management system for home appliances and wellness based on wireless sensors network and mobile technology | This work is focused on the development of a new management system for building and home automation that provides a fully real time monitor of household appliances and home environmental parameters. The developed system consists of a smart sensing unit, wireless sensors and actuators and a Web-based interface for remote and mobile applications. The main advantages of the proposed solution rely on the reliability of the developed algorithmics, on modularity and open-system characteristics, on low power consumption and system cost efficiency. |
A survey of deep facial landmark detection | Facial landmark detection plays a very important role in many facial analysis applications such as identity recognition, facial expression analysis, facial animation, 3D face reconstruction as well as facial beautification. With the recent advance of deep learning, the performance of facial landmark detection, including on unconstrained inthe-wild dataset, has seen considerable improvement. This paper presents a survey of deep facial landmark detection for 2D images and video. A comparative analysis of different face alignment approaches is provided as well as some future research directions. |
Process-oriented Semantic Web Search | |
The biomechanics of running. | This review article summarizes the current literature regarding the analysis of running gait. It is compared to walking and sprinting. The current state of knowledge is presented as it fits in the context of the history of analysis of movement. The characteristics of the gait cycle and its relationship to potential and kinetic energy interactions are reviewed. The timing of electromyographic activity is provided. Kinematic and kinetic data (including center of pressure measurements, raw force plate data, joint moments, and joint powers) and the impact of changes in velocity on these findings is presented. The status of shoewear literature, alterations in movement strategies, the role of biarticular muscles, and the springlike function of tendons are addressed. This type of information can provide insight into injury mechanisms and training strategies. Copyright 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. |
The influence of an adaptation period in reducing the third party observer effect during a neuropsychological evaluation. | Individuals have been shown to perform suboptimally on memory measures when a third party observer (TPO) is present. The current study attempted to use adaptation to reduce the inhibitory effect of a TPO on memory performance. Undergraduate participants (N=80) were randomly assigned to one of four groups in a 2 x 2 (+/-adaptation period, +/-observation) design in order to investigate the interaction between adaptation period and observation status. Results indicated that the adaptation period had a negligible inhibitory effect over the recall of observed participants (d= -0.11), but unexpectedly, when unobserved participants were not given an adaptation period, recall was inhibited by a sizeable degree (d= -1.11). These findings suggest that the presence of the TPO may have prevented participants from benefiting from adaptation to the general testing situation. To date, there are no known methods for eliminating the TPO effect. |
An Unusual Cause of Chest Pain in a Young Healthy Female. | BACKGROUND
Infection of the sternoclavicular joint is an uncommon disease that is usually seen in patients with underlying risk factors such as prior trauma, intravenous drug use, or diabetes mellitus. The true pathophysiology remains unknown, but underlying bacteremia has been found in a number of cases. Without proper diagnosis and treatment, severe complications such as mediastinitis, sepsis, or death can occur.
CASE REPORT
This is a case of spontaneous stenoclavicular septic arthritis in an otherwise healthy female. The patient's lack of risk factors and minimal examination findings highlight the unusual nature of the case, as well as the challenges it presents in making an early diagnosis. WHY SHOULD AN EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN BE AWARE OF THIS CONDITION?: Emergency physicians should consider sternoclavicular joint infections in patients who present to the emergency department with chest pain, even in patients without risk factors. They should especially consider the diagnosis in patients with suspected musculoskeletal etiologies or in those with return visits for chest pain. Although most patients do well with treatment, the infection can be life threatening without appropriate interventions. |
Gender-related differences of diabetic patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention with drug-eluting stents: a real-life multicenter experience. | BACKGROUND
Gender-based differences in diabetic patients are understudied in the field of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug-eluting stents.
METHODS
Data were obtained from a multicenter registry of 2420 consecutive patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) who underwent PCI with paclitaxel- or sirolimus-eluting stents between 2003 and 2009. Among them, 679 (28.1%) women were compared to 1741 (71.9%) men in terms of clinical aspects and major adverse cardiac events (MACE), including all-cause death, myocardial infarction (MI) and target lesion revascularization (TLR). Target vessel revascularization (TVR) and any revascularization were also reported.
RESULTS
Women were less numerous, older, used more insulin and showed more tortuous coronary arteries, while men were more frequently smokers and received larger stents. At the median follow-up of 24.3 months (interquartile range 12.3-39.7), MACE, TVR and any revascularization did not significantly differ between females and males (19.9% vs 18.7%, 12.2% vs 13.4%, 14.1% vs 15.1%, respectively). At multivariable analysis of the overall cohort, female gender was not a predictor of MACE (hazard ratio [HR] 1.02, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.92-2.36, p=0.11), death (HR 1.04, 95% CI 0.84-1.24, p=0.86), MI (HR 1.48, 95% CI 0.92-2.36, p=0.11), and TLR (HR 1.14, 95% CI 0.85-1.52, p=0.38).
CONCLUSION
In this registry of diabetic patients treated by drug-eluting stents, women were less represented, older and needed more insulin compared to men who, on the other hand, received larger stents. Gender-related outcomes were similar and female sex did not predict MACE. |
Activation of the MEF2 transcription factor in skeletal muscles from myotonic mice. | Becker syndrome, a recessive nondystrophic myotonia caused by mutations in the chloride channel 1 gene (CLCN1), is characterized by delayed muscle relaxation after contraction. The ADR (arrested development of righting response) mouse is an animal model for Becker syndrome. Skeletal muscles from ADR myotonic animals show an increased number of oxidative fibers with a lack of glycolytic fibers as well as signs of muscle hypertrophy. Through breeding ADR myotonic mice with mice harboring a MEF2-dependent reporter gene, we found that the transcriptional activity of MEF2 was dramatically enhanced in myotonic muscles. Post-translational induction of MEF2 transcriptional activity correlated with the activation of p38 MAPK and did not affect MEF2 DNA-binding affinity. Expression of class II histone deacetylases (HDACs), which repress MEF2-dependent gene expression, was significantly reduced in skeletal muscles from myotonic mice. These findings suggest that the combined effects of class II HDAC deficiency and p38 MAPK activation lead to potent upregulation of MEF2 transcriptional activity, which contributes to the long-term changes in gene expression and fiber-type transformation observed in myotonic skeletal muscles. These findings provide new molecular targets for potential treatment of congenital myotonia. |
Output Reachable Set Estimation and Verification for Multilayer Neural Networks | In this brief, the output reachable estimation and safety verification problems for multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural networks are addressed. First, a conception called maximum sensitivity is introduced, and for a class of MLPs whose activation functions are monotonic functions, the maximum sensitivity can be computed via solving convex optimization problems. Then, using a simulation-based method, the output reachable set estimation problem for neural networks is formulated into a chain of optimization problems. Finally, an automated safety verification is developed based on the output reachable set estimation result. An application to the safety verification for a robotic arm model with two joints is presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. |
Differentially Fed Planar Aperture Antenna With High Gain and Wide Bandwidth for Millimeter-Wave Application | This paper presents a novel planar aperture antenna with differential feeding. Compared with conventional high-gain aperture antennas, such as horn and reflector antennas, it maintains a high gain and wide bandwidth, but has a much lower profile with only one quarter-wavelength height. Since the height (λg/4) at millimeter-wave (mmWave) band is as low as the most of the commercially available laminates, planar aperture antennas with high gain and wide bandwidth can be realized at mmWave band using the proposed structure. A prototype working at 60 GHz band was designed and fabricated on a single layer laminate using standard printed circuit board (PCB) technology. A differential feeding network based on E-plane tee was also designed to feed the prototype for the measurement purposes. Experiment results show that the prototype achieves a -15-dB impedance bandwidth from 56.2 to 69.7 GHz (21.5%). The peak gain at broadside is 15.3 dBi at 60 GHz. The 3-dB gain bandwidth is from 54.0 to 67.5 GHz (22.2%). Within the operating bandwidth, the radiation pattern is stable with a low cross-polarization level below -24 dB, and is symmetrical about both the E- and H-planes. |
Contemporary Cinematic Work from Finland: the Non-place of Cinema and Identity | The article discusses the identity-crisis that has taken place in the institution of cinema during the last years. The changes (in aesthetics, economics and the sociological conditions) are related ... |
Long-term expansion of epithelial organoids from human colon, adenoma, adenocarcinoma, and Barrett's epithelium. | BACKGROUND & AIMS
We previously established long-term culture conditions under which single crypts or stem cells derived from mouse small intestine expand over long periods. The expanding crypts undergo multiple crypt fission events, simultaneously generating villus-like epithelial domains that contain all differentiated types of cells. We have adapted the culture conditions to grow similar epithelial organoids from mouse colon and human small intestine and colon.
METHODS
Based on the mouse small intestinal culture system, we optimized the mouse and human colon culture systems.
RESULTS
Addition of Wnt3A to the combination of growth factors applied to mouse colon crypts allowed them to expand indefinitely. Addition of nicotinamide, along with a small molecule inhibitor of Alk and an inhibitor of p38, were required for long-term culture of human small intestine and colon tissues. The culture system also allowed growth of mouse Apc-deficient adenomas, human colorectal cancer cells, and human metaplastic epithelia from regions of Barrett's esophagus.
CONCLUSIONS
We developed a technology that can be used to study infected, inflammatory, or neoplastic tissues from the human gastrointestinal tract. These tools might have applications in regenerative biology through ex vivo expansion of the intestinal epithelia. Studies of these cultures indicate that there is no inherent restriction in the replicative potential of adult stem cells (or a Hayflick limit) ex vivo. |
MultiRefactor: Automated Refactoring to Improve Software Quality | In this paper, a new approach is proposed for automated software maintenance. The tool is able to perform 26 different refactorings. It also contains a large selection of metrics to measure the impact of the refactorings on the software and six different search based optimization algorithms to improve the software. This tool contains both monoobjective and multi-objective search techniques for software improvement and is fully automated. The paper describes the various capabilities of the tool, the unique aspects of it, and also presents some research results from experimentation. The individual metrics are tested across five different codebases to deduce the most effective metrics for general quality improvement. It is found that the metrics that relate to more specific elements of the code are more useful for driving change in the search. The mono-objective genetic algorithm is also tested against the multi-objective algorithm to see how comparable the results gained are with three separate objectives. When comparing the best solutions of each individual objective the multi-objective approach generates suitable improvements in quality in less time, allowing for rapid maintenance cycles. |
Generative Image Modeling using Style and Structure Adversarial Networks | Current generative frameworks use end-to-end learning and generate images by sampling from uniform noise distribution. However, these approaches ignore the most basic principle of image formation: images are product of: (a) Structure: the underlying 3D model; (b) Style: the texture mapped onto structure. In this paper, we factorize the image generation process and propose Style and Structure Generative Adversarial Network (S-GAN). Our S-GAN has two components: the StructureGAN generates a surface normal map; the Style-GAN takes the surface normal map as input and generates the 2D image. Apart from a real vs. generated loss function, we use an additional loss with computed surface normals from generated images. The two GANs are first trained independently, and then merged together via joint learning. We show our S-GAN model is interpretable, generates more realistic images and can be used to learn unsupervised RGBD representations. |
Successful implementation of user-centered game based learning in higher education: An example from civil engineering | Goal: The use of an online game for learning in higher education aims to make complex theoretical knowledge more approachable. Permanent repetition will lead to a more in-depth learning. Objective: To gain insight into whether and to what extent, online games have the potential to contribute to student learning in higher education. Experimental Setting: The online game was used for the first time during a lecture on Structural Concrete at Master’s level, involving 121 seventh semester students. Methods: Pretest/posttest experimental control group design with questionnaires and an independent online evaluation. Results: The minimum learning result of playing the game was equal to that achieved with traditional methods. A factor called “joy” was introduced, according to Nielsen (2002), which was amazingly high. Conclusion: The experimental findings support the efficacy of game playing. Students enjoyed this kind of e-Learning. |
Security Aspects in Software Defined Radio and Cognitive Radio Networks: A Survey and A Way Ahead | Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Cognitive Radio (CR) are promising technologies, which can be used to alleviate the spectrum shortage problem or the barriers to communication interoperability in various application domains. The successful deployment of SDR and CR technologies will depend on the design and implementation of essential security mechanisms to ensure the robustness of networks and terminals against security attacks. SDR and CR may introduce entirely new classes of security threats and challenges including download of malicious software, licensed user emulation and selfish misbehaviors. An attacker could disrupt the basic functions of a CR network, cause harmful interference to licensed users or deny communication to other CR nodes. The research activity in this area has started only recently and many challenges are still to be resolved. This paper presents a survey of security aspects in SDR and CR. We identify the requirements for the deployment of SDR and CR, the main security threats and challenges and the related protection techniques. This paper provides an overview of the SDR and CR certification process and how it is related to the security aspects. Finally, this paper summarizes the most critical challenges in the context of the future evolution of SDR/CR technologies. |
The impact of Xpert(®) MTB/RIF in sparsely populated rural settings. | BACKGROUND
The impact of implementing Xpert(®) MTB/RIF and the choice of instrument placement on patient care in sparsely populated areas with poor access to laboratory and radiology services have not yet been elucidated.
METHODS
Prospective evaluation of three diagnostic approaches in the Central Karoo, South Africa: smear microscopy as the initial diagnostic, with sputum processing at centralised laboratories, and Xpert as the initial diagnostic with instrument placement at facility level or centralised laboratory.
RESULTS
Of 1449 individuals, 196 were diagnosed with TB. The proportion positive on initial testing was respectively 8%, 20% and 8% during the smear microscopy, decentralised Xpert and centralised Xpert periods. The proportion of bacteriologically confirmed cases was respectively 88%, 99% and 91% during the smear microscopy, decentralised Xpert and centralised Xpert periods. The median time to treatment was respectively 11.5 (interquartile range [IQR] 6-24), 1 (IQR 0-2) and 6 days (IQR 2-9) during the smear microscopy, decentralised Xpert and centralised Xpert periods.
CONCLUSION
Introducing Xpert as the initial diagnostic in areas with poor access to TB diagnostics increased the proportion of cases with bacteriological confirmation and reduced time to treatment initiation; however, point-of-care placement may have resulted in fewer people being evaluated for TB. |
V3D enables real-time 3D visualization and quantitative analysis of large-scale biological image data sets | The V3D system provides three-dimensional (3D) visualization of gigabyte-sized microscopy image stacks in real time on current laptops and desktops. V3D streamlines the online analysis, measurement and proofreading of complicated image patterns by combining ergonomic functions for selecting a location in an image directly in 3D space and for displaying biological measurements, such as from fluorescent probes, using the overlaid surface objects. V3D runs on all major computer platforms and can be enhanced by software plug-ins to address specific biological problems. To demonstrate this extensibility, we built a V3D-based application, V3D-Neuron, to reconstruct complex 3D neuronal structures from high-resolution brain images. V3D-Neuron can precisely digitize the morphology of a single neuron in a fruitfly brain in minutes, with about a 17-fold improvement in reliability and tenfold savings in time compared with other neuron reconstruction tools. Using V3D-Neuron, we demonstrate the feasibility of building a 3D digital atlas of neurite tracts in the fruitfly brain. |
Evaluating Visualizations: Do Expert Reviews Work? | Visualization research generates beautiful images and impressive interactive systems. Such developments make fascinating demos, but how do we know if they are actually useful for real people doing real tasks? If the interaction is awkward or we have not carefully considered users’ needs, even the most well intentioned and technically developed visual display will be ineffective. Emphasis on evaluating visualizations is growing. User studies of perceptual phenomena related to visualization and comparisons of visualization tools are becoming hot topics in the visualization literature [7][13]. But along the way, researchers are discovering that user study design is rarely straightforward. |
Ketotifen in atopic asthma and exercise-induced asthma. | The efficacy of ketotifen, a tricyclic benzocycloheptathiophene derivative, was assessed in an outpatient clinical trial and in a group of 12 asthmatic subjects with exercise-induced asthma. Subjects in the outpatient trial had mild asthma and consisted of two groups: a group of 24 atopic asthmatics with at least one positive skin test reaction and with an associated history of bronchial reactivity to at least one allergen; and a group of eight asthmatics with one or more positive skin prick tests but not bronchial reactivity to an allergen. Both groups took four weeks medication of ketotifen 1 mg bd and placebo in a randomised double-blind crossover study. There was no difference between ketotifen and placebo for any measurement made during the study and consequently no evidence of drug efficacy. The exercise study followed a standardised protocol and each subject took in random double-blind order, placebo, 1 mg, 2 mg, and 4 mg ketotifen two hours before exercise. There was no difference in the mean decreases in lung function from pre-exercise baseline values after three doses of ketotifen than with placebo. Drug levels suggested ketotifen was well absorbed. It would appear that if given for a period of only four weeks ketotifen had no beneficial effects in the management of mild asthma, and that a single dose before exercise does not modify exercise-induced asthma. |
Methylphenidate Ameliorates Depressive Comorbidity in ADHD Children without any Modification on Differences in Serum Melatonin Concentration between ADHD Subtypes | UNLABELLED
The vast majority of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) patients have other associated pathologies, with depressive symptoms as one of the most prevalent. Among the mediators that may participate in ADHD, melatonin is thought to regulate circadian rhythms, neurological function and stress response. To determine (1) the serum baseline daily variations and nocturnal excretion of melatonin in ADHD subtypes and (2) the effect of chronic administration of methylphenidate, as well as the effects on symptomatology, 136 children with ADHD (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision: DSM-IV-TR criteria) were divided into subgroups using the "Children's Depression Inventory" (CDI). Blood samples were drawn at 20:00 and 09:00 h, and urine was collected between 21:00 and 09:00 h, at inclusion and after 4.61 ± 2.29 months of treatment. Melatonin and its urine metabolite were measured by radioimmunoassay RIA. Factorial analysis was performed using STATA 12.0. Melatonin was higher predominantly in hyperactive-impulsive/conduct disordered children (PHI/CD) of the ADHD subtype, without the influence of comorbid depressive symptoms. Methylphenidate ameliorated this comorbidity without induction of any changes in the serum melatonin profile, but treatment with it was associated with a decrease in 6-s-melatonin excretion in both ADHD subtypes.
CONCLUSIONS
In untreated children, partial homeostatic restoration of disrupted neuroendocrine equilibrium most likely led to an increased serum melatonin in PHI/CD children. A differential cerebral melatonin metabolization after methylphenidate may underlie some of the clinical benefit. |
Structured Convolution Matrices for Energy-efficient Deep learning | We derive a relationship between network representation in energy-efficient neuromorphic architectures and block Toplitz convolutional matrices. Inspired by this connection, we develop deep convolutional networks using a family of structured convolutional matrices and achieve state-of-the-art trade-off between energy efficiency and classification accuracy for well-known image recognition tasks. We also put forward a novel method to train binary convolutional networks by utilising an existing connection between noisy-rectified linear units and binary activations. |
Design and Vlsi Implementation of Anti- Collision Enabled Robot Processor Using Rfid Technology | RFID is a low power wireless emerging technology which has given rise to highly promising applications in real life. It can be employed for robot navigation. In multi-robot environment, when many robots are moving in the same workspace, there is a possibility of their physical collision with themselves as well as with physical objects. In the present work, we have proposed and developed a processor incorporating smart algorithm for avoiding such collisions with the help of RFID technology and implemented it by using VHDL. The design procedure and the simulated results are very useful in designing and implementing a practical RFID system. The RTL schematic view of the processor is achieved by successfully synthesizing the proposed design. |
Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on Medical and Premedical Students | The inability to cope successfully with the enormous stress of medical education may lead to a cascade of consequences at both a personal and professional level. The present study examined the short-term effects of an 8-week meditation-based stress reduction intervention on premedical and medical students using a well-controlled statistical design. Findings indicate that participation in the intervention can effectively (1) reduce self-reported state and trait anxiety, (2) reduce reports of overall psychological distress including depression, (3) increase scores on overall empathy levels, and (4) increase scores on a measure of spiritual experiences assessed at termination of intervention. These results (5) replicated in the wait-list control group, (6) held across different experiments, and (7) were observed during the exam period. Future research should address potential long-term effects of mindfulness training for medical and premedical students. |
Grounded Theory Research : Procedures , Canons , and Evaluative Criteria | Using grounded theory as an example, this paper examines three methodological questions that are generally applicable to all qualitative methods. How should the usual scientific canons be reinterpreted for qualitative research? How should researchers report the procedures and canons used in their research? What evaluative criteria should be used in judging the research products? We propose that the criteria should be adapted to fit the procedures of the method. We demonstrate how this can be done for grounded theory and suggest criteria for evaluating studies following this approach. We argue that other qualitative researchers might be similarly specific about their procedures and evaluative criteria. |
Memory for choices in Alzheimer's disease. | Despite their cognitive impairment, patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) often make important life choices. When making choices, people frequently attempt to directly compare the features of different options, rather than evaluating each option separately. Not every feature has an analogous (or alignable) feature in the other option, however. In 2005, Mather's group found that both younger and older adults filled in such gaps when remembering, creating features in the other option to contrast with existing features. In the present study, such effects of alignability on recognition memory were not found in patients with mild AD. This finding suggests that patients with mild AD are less likely to engage in feature-by-feature comparison processes across choice options, a change that may lead them to make qualitatively different choices than healthy older adults. |
Association of gene-linked SSR markers to seed glucosinolate content in oilseed rape (Brassica napus ssp. napus) | Breeding of oilseed rape (Brassica napus ssp. napus) has evoked a strong bottleneck selection towards double-low (00) seed quality with zero erucic acid and low seed glucosinolate content. The resulting reduction of genetic variability in elite 00-quality oilseed rape is particularly relevant with regard to the development of genetically diverse heterotic pools for hybrid breeding. In contrast, B. napus genotypes containing high levels of erucic acid and seed glucosinolates (++ quality) represent a comparatively genetically divergent source of germplasm. Seed glucosinolate content is a complex quantitative trait, however, meaning that the introgression of novel germplasm from this gene pool requires recurrent backcrossing to avoid linkage drag for high glucosinolate content. Molecular markers for key low-glucosinolate alleles could potentially improve the selection process. The aim of this study was to identify potentially gene-linked markers for important seed glucosinolate loci via structure-based allele-trait association studies in genetically diverse B. napus genotypes. The analyses included a set of new simple-sequence repeat (SSR) markers whose orthologs in Arabidopsis thaliana are physically closely linked to promising candidate genes for glucosinolate biosynthesis. We found evidence that four genes involved in the biosynthesis of indole, aliphatic and aromatic glucosinolates might be associated with known quantitative trait loci for total seed glucosinolate content in B. napus. Markers linked to homoeologous loci of these genes in the paleopolyploid B. napus genome were found to be associated with a significant effect on the seed glucosinolate content. This example shows the potential of Arabidopsis-Brassica comparative genome analysis for synteny-based identification of gene-linked SSR markers that can potentially be used in marker-assisted selection for an important trait in oilseed rape. |
Scattering of core-shell nanowires with the interference of electric and magnetic resonances. | We study the scattering of normally incident waves by core-shell nanowires, which support both electric and magnetic resonances. Within such nanowires, for p-polarized incident waves, each electric resonance corresponds to two degenerate scattering channels while the magnetic resonance corresponds to only one channel. Consequently, when the electric dipole (ED) and magnetic dipole (MD) are tuned to overlap spectrally, the magnitude of the ED is twice that of the magnetic one, leading to a pair of angles of vanishing scattering. We further demonstrate that the scattering features of nanowires are polarization dependent, and vanishing scattering angles also can be induced by Fano resonances due to the interference of higher-order electric modes with the broad MD mode. |
Fully Convolutional Attention Networks for Fine-Grained Recognition | Fine-grained recognition is challenging due to its subtle local inter-class differences versus large intra-class variations such as poses. A key to address this problem is to localize discriminative parts to extract pose-invariant features. However, ground-truth part annotations can be expensive to acquire. Moreover, it is hard to define parts for many fine-grained classes. This work introduces Fully Convolutional Attention Networks (FCANs), a reinforcement learning framework to optimally glimpse local discriminative regions adaptive to different fine-grained domains. Compared to previous methods, our approach enjoys three advantages: 1) the weakly-supervised reinforcement learning procedure requires no expensive part annotations; 2) the fully-convolutional architecture speeds up both training and testing; 3) the greedy reward strategy accelerates the convergence of the learning. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with extensive experiments on four challenging fine-grained benchmark datasets, including CUB-200-2011, Stanford Dogs, Stanford Cars and Food-101. |
Compressive Sensing Based Multi-User Detection for Uplink Grant-Free Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access | Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has become one of the promising key technologies for future 5G wireless communications to improve spectral efficiency and support massive connectivity. However, in the uplink grant-free NOMA system, the current near-optimal multi-user detection (MUD) based on message passing algorithm (MPA) assumes that the user activity information is exactly known at the receiver, which is impractical yet challenging due to anyone of massive users can randomly enter or leave the system. In this paper, inspired by the observation of user sparsity, we jointly use compressive sensing (CS) and MPA to propose a CS-MPA detector to realize both user activity and data detection for uplink grant-free NOMA. Specifically, the MUD problem is firstly formulated under CS framework by exploiting user sparsity, and then user activity can be detected by sparse signal recovery algorithms in CS. Then, MPA can be performed to reliably detect active users' data. It is shown that the proposed CS-MPA detector with affordable complexity not only outperforms the conventional MPA detector without user activity information, but also achieves very close performance to the genie- knowledge MPA detector with exact knowledge of user activity, especially when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is high. |
A cross-sectional survey of the diagnosis and management of bone metastasis in breast cancer patients in Turkey | This study aimed to report the practice of managing breast cancer with bone metastasis in Turkey and to determine the adherence to the British Association of Surgical Oncology (BASO) guidelines. This multicenter, cross-sectional epidemiological survey was conducted in 38 centers across Turkey. Data from 1,026 breast cancer patients with bone metastases (mean age 54.0 ± 11.9 years) were analyzed. Over 30 % of patients had a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer (stage IV) at the time of primary diagnosis. The imaging modalities used for diagnosing bone metastases were bone scintigraphy (57.8 %), radiography (22.8 %), and bone survey (4.4 %). Tumor markers were detected in 94.9 %, and markers of bone metabolism were measured in 90.4 % of patients. A total of 3.5 % of patients underwent surgery for bone metastasis, 26.4 % underwent palliative chemotherapy (most commonly docetaxel + capecitabine), and 56.5 % endured radiotherapy. Most patients (96 %) also received bisphosphonate. Radiography, bone scintigraphy, and CT were the main imaging tools used for postoperative follow-up of bone metastasis. Our results were >95 % in line with the BASO guidelines for the management of bone metastasis, except that interventional procedures, such as biopsy, were applied less frequently in our survey. The diagnosis and management practices of breast cancer with bone metastasis in Turkey were generally compatible with international guidelines. However, the awareness and knowledge of physicians on the current guidelines should be increased, and equipment for the appropriate interventional procedures should be provided in every clinic to obtain optimal and standard management of bone metastases. |
EFFECT OF THE BOBATH TECHNIQUE, CONDUCTIVE EDUCATION AND EDUCATION TO PARENTS IN ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING IN CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY IN IRAN | 1Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, 2Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Health, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, 3Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Baqiyatollah University of Medical Sciences, and 4Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Reprint requests and correspondence to: Dr. Leila Dehghan, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Piche Shemiran, Tehran, Iran. E-mail: [email protected] EFFECT OF THE BOBATH TECHNIQUE, CONDUCTIVE EDUCATION AND EDUCATION TO PARENTS IN ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING IN CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY IN IRAN |
Planar Dual-Band Wide-Scan Phased Array in X-Band | The design of a planar dual-band wide-scan phased array is presented. The array uses novel dual-band comb-slot-loaded patch elements supporting two separate bands with a frequency ratio of 1.4:1. The antenna maintains consistent radiation patterns and incorporates a feeding configuration providing good bandwidths in both bands. The design has been experimentally validated with an X-band planar 9 × 9 array. The array supports wide-angle scanning up to a maximum of 60 ° and 50 ° at the low and high frequency bands respectively. |
Impact of high-dose salvage therapy (BEAM) on overall survival in younger patients with advanced large-cell lymphomas entered into BNLI trials. | The survival of two cohorts of patients with stage III/IV large-cell lymphomas treated by CHOP has been compared. In the first cohort of 88 patients (1974-1982), high-dose therapy with autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) was not available as salvage therapy and in the second cohort of 87 patients (1987-1992), this was the recommended salvage for patients with disease that was still chemosensitive to conventional-dose therapy. The actuarial overall survivals at five years were 40% and 44% in the first and second cohorts, respectively, indicating that the availability of ABMT had made little impact. Of the 62 patients in the second cohort who failed CHOP therapy, 8 died before second-line chemotherapy could be given, 1 refused more therapy, and 8 were considered unsuitable for further combination chemotherapy. Seven patients with localized disease remaining received local radiotherapy. Of the 38 patients given salvage therapy, 14 had chemoresistant disease. Only 9 patients received high-dose BEAM chemotherapy and ABMT, and 7 remain disease-free. ABMT was restricted to a highly select patient group, and as a result more widespread application of this strategy might result in only a modest further improvement. |
CPLR: Collaborative pairwise learning to rank for personalized recommendation | Compared with explicit feedback data, implicit feedback data is easier to be collected and more widespread. However, implicit feedback data is also more difficult to be analyzed due to the lack of negative examples. Bayesian personalized ranking (BPR) is a well-known algorithm for personalized recommendation on implicit feedback data due to its high performance. However, it (1) treats all the unobserved feedback the same as negative examples which may be just caused by unseen, (2) treats all the observed feedback the same as positive examples which may be just caused by noisy action, and (3) assumes the preferences of users are independent which is difficult to achieve in reality. To solve all these problems, we propose a novel personalized recommendation algorithm called collaborative pairwise learning to rank (CPLR), which considers the influence between users on the preferences for both items with observed feedback and items without. To take these information into consideration, we try to optimize a generalized AUC instead of the standard AUC used in BPR. CPLR can be seen as a generalized BPR. Besides BPR, several extension algorithms of BPR, like social BPR (SBPR) and group preference based BPR (GBPR), are special cases of CPLR. Extensive experiments demonstrate the promise of our approach in comparison with traditional collaborative filtering methods and state-of-the-art pairwise learning to rank algorithms. Compared with the performance of baseline algorithms on five real-world data sets, the improvements of CPLR are over 17%, 23% and 22% for Pre@5, MAP and NDCG, respectively. © 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V. |
Exploiting Process Variations and Programming Sensitivity of Phase Change Memory for Reconfigurable Physical Unclonable Functions | Physical unclonable function (PUF) leverages the immensely complex and irreproducible nature of physical structures to achieve device authentication and secret information storage. To enhance the security and robustness of conventional PUFs, reconfigurable physical unclonable functions (RPUFs) with dynamically refreshable challenge-response pairs (CRPs) have emerged recently. In this paper, we propose two novel physically reconfigurable PUF (P-RPUF) schemes that exploit the process parameter variability and programming sensitivity of phase change memory (PCM) for CRP reconfiguration and evaluation. The first proposed PCM-based P-RPUF scheme extracts its CRPs from the measurable differences of the PCM cell resistances programmed by randomly varying pulses. An imprecisely controlled regulator is used to protect the privacy of the CRP in case the configuration state of the RPUF is divulged. The second proposed PCM-based RPUF scheme produces the random response by counting the number of programming pulses required to make the cell resistance converge to a predetermined target value. The merging of CRP reconfiguration and evaluation overcomes the inherent vulnerability of P-RPUF devices to malicious prediction attacks by limiting the number of accessible CRPs between two consecutive reconfigurations to only one. Both schemes were experimentally evaluated on 180-nm PCM chips. The obtained results demonstrated their quality for refreshable key generation when appropriate fuzzy extractor algorithms are incorporated. |
Swelling and gelatinization of cereal starches. I. Effects of amylopectin, amylose, and lipids | A method was developed for measuring the volume of water absorbed by starch -granules heated in excess water, based on the observation that blue dextran dye (molecular weight 2 X 106) will dissolve in supernatant and interstitial water but not in the intragranular water. Swelling curves of wheat and normal and waxy barley and maize starches, determined by measuring the swelling factor (swollen volume/initial volume of airdried starch) at various temperatures up to 850C, were characterized by an initial phase of slight swelling, a second phase of rapid swelling, and a final stage of maximum swelling (not observed with high-gelatinizing starches or if granules disintegrated). With wheat starch, swelling began at 45-500C and continued to 850C; loss of birefringence and a large decrease in gelatinization enthalpy attributed to dissociation of crystalline Gelatinization in the narrowest sense is the thermal disordering of crystalline structures in native starch granules, but in the broader sense it includes related events such as swelling of the granules and leaching of soluble polysaccharides (Atwell et al 1988). Gelatinization temperature (GT) and enthalpy (AH) are conveniently measured by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and this aspect has received much attention in recent years because it is experimentally convenient and precise. However, in most food systems the actual temperature at which starch gelatinizes is less important than those properties that depend on swelling, such as pasting behavior and rheological properties of the partially or fully swollen starch granules. The properties of the starch-water system will, of course, be different if the swollen granules are dispersed mechanically to give a uniform gel. Historically, starch swelling has been studied by simple methods that do not distinguish between intragranular water and intergranular or interstitial water (Leach et al 1959), and the precision of measurements was not particularly good. This paper describes an improved method for measuring only intragranular water and hence the true swelling factor at a given temperature, based on the observation that blue dextran (Mr 2 X 106) does not penetrate swollen granules. The effects of amylopectin (AP), amylose (AM), and lipids on swelling behavior were then investigated using the blue dextran method. MATERIALS AND METHODS |
New Concept of Telemetry X-Band Circularly Polarized Antenna Payload for CubeSat | This letter presents a new concept of compact circularly polarized X-band [8–8.4 GHz] antenna for the 3U-CubeSat platforms. Despite the integration constraints on the top face of the CubeSat, the design aims at an isoflux radiation pattern. This antenna associates a driving patch antenna and 12 parasitic crossed dipoles, both to minimize the axial ratio in the opening angle θ = ±65° and to shape the radiation pattern. The patch excitation is carried out by a compact sequential-phase feed microstrip circuit. This antenna is manufactured and measured. |
Flash Device Support for Database Management | While disks have offered a stable behavior for decades thus guaranteeing the timelessness of many database design decisions, flash devices keep on mutating. Their behavior varies across models and across firmware updates for the same model. Many researchers have proposed to adapt database algorithms for existing flash devices; others have tried to capture the performance characteristics of flash devices. However, today, we neither have a reference DBMS design nor a performance model for flash devices: database researchers are running after flash memory technology. In this paper, we take the reverse approach and we define how flash devices should support database management. We advocate that flash devices should provide DBMS with more control over IO behavior without sacrificing correctness or robustness. We introduce the notion of bimodal flash devices that expose the full potential of the underlying flash chips as long as the submitted IOs respect a few well-defined constraints. We suggest two approaches for implementing bimodal flash devices: (a) based on the narrow block device interface, or (b) based on a rich interface that allows a DBMS to explicitly control IO behavior. We believe that these approaches are natural evolutions of the current generation of flash devices, whose complexity and opacity is illsuited for database management. We discuss how bimodal flash devices would benefit many existing techniques proposed by the database research community, and identify a set of new research issues. |
Discrete wavelet transform-based time series analysis and mining | Time series are recorded values of an interesting phenomenon such as stock prices, household incomes, or patient heart rates over a period of time. Time series data mining focuses on discovering interesting patterns in such data. This article introduces a wavelet-based time series data analysis to interested readers. It provides a systematic survey of various analysis techniques that use discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) in time series data mining, and outlines the benefits of this approach demonstrated by previous studies performed on diverse application domains, including image classification, multimedia retrieval, and computer network anomaly detection. |
Metabolic effects of honey in type 1 diabetes mellitus: a randomized crossover pilot study. | The aim of this study was to evaluate the metabolic effects of 12-week honey consumption on patients suffering from type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM). This was a randomized crossover clinical trial done in the National Institute for Diabetes and Endocrinology, Cairo, Egypt. Twenty patients of both sexes aged 4-18 years with type 1 DM and HbA1C<10% participated in the study. They were randomized into two equal groups (intervention to control and control to intervention). The dietary intervention was 12-week honey consumption in a dose of 0.5 mL/kg body weight per day. The main outcome measures were serum glucose, lipids, and C-peptide, and anthropometric measurements. None of participants were lost in follow-up. The intervention resulted in significant decreases in subscapular skin fold thickness (SSFT; P=.002), fasting serum glucose (FSG; P=.001), total cholesterol (P=.0001), serum triglycerides (TG; P=.0001), and low-density lipoprotein (P=.0009), and significant increases in fasting C-peptide (FCP; P=.0004) and 2-h postprandial C-peptide (PCP; P=.002). As possible long-term effects of honey after its withdrawal, statistically significant reductions in midarm circumference (P=.000), triceps skin fold thickness (P=.006), SSFT (P=.003), FSG (P=.005), 2-h postprandial serum glucose (P=.000), TG (P=.003), and HbA1C (P=.043), and significant increases in FCP (P=.002) and PCP (P=.003) were observed. This small clinical trial suggests that long-term consumption of honey might have positive effects on the metabolic derangements of type 1 DM. |
Neoadjuvant Radiochemotherapy Increases Matrix Metalloproteinase Activity in Healthy Tissue in Esophageal Cancer Patients | Neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy (RCT) is thought to result in a favorable oncological outcome in esophageal cancer patients. Unfortunately, it also implies that adjacent healthy tissue is preoperatively exposed to the potential damaging influence of RCT. Here, the impact of preoperative RCT on matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) expression in healthy esophageal tissue aligned with the tumor at the time of surgery is examined. 23 patients participating in a clinical trial were randomized to either the control (n = 12) or the neoadjuvant RCT group (n = 11). In the latter group, surgery was performed 5 weeks after the last course of RCT. Full-thickness biopsies were taken from healthy esophageal tissue at the proximal border of the resection specimen and more distally next to the tumor. MMP-2 and MMP-9 activity in the samples was assessed by quantitative gelatin zymography and immunohistochemistry. In the proximal segment, the activities of the MMP-9-dimer (135 kDa) and proMMP-9 (92 kDa) were significantly increased in the RCT group as compared with the control group: 28.5 versus 3.0 (p = 0.025) and 87.7 versus 13.0 (p = 0.015) arbitrary units for 135 kDa and 92 kDa, respectively. In the distal part, RCT resulted in a significant increase of proMMP-2 (72 kDa: 35.8 versus 17.8, p = 0.005) and proMMP-9 (81.2 versus 23.3, p = 0.03). In esophageal cancer patients, neoadjuvant RCT results in increased MMP expression in healthy esophageal tissue as measured at the time of surgery. Since increased levels of MMPs are associated with severe postoperative complications including anastomotic leakage this finding necessitates further clinical research. |
Blurred Shape Model for binary and grey-level symbol recognition | Many symbol recognition problems require the use of robust descriptors in order to obtain rich information of the data. However, the research of a good descriptor is still an open issue due to the high variability of symbols appearance. Rotation, partial occlusions, elastic deformations, intra-class and inter-class variations, or high variability among symbols due to different writing styles, are just a few problems. In this paper, we introduce a symbol shape description to deal with the changes in appearance that these types of symbols suffer. The shape of the symbol is aligned based on principal components to make the recognition invariant to rotation and reflection. Then, we present the Blurred Shape Model descriptor (BSM), where new features encode the probability of appearance of each pixel that outlines the symbols shape. Moreover, we include the new descriptor in a system to deal with multi-class symbol categorization problems. Adaboost is used to train the binary classifiers, learning the BSM features that better split symbol classes. Then, the binary problems are embedded in an Error-Correcting Output Codes framework (ECOC) to deal with the multi-class case. The methodology is evaluated on different synthetic and real data sets. State-of-the-art descriptors and classifiers are compared, showing the robustness and better performance of the present scheme to classify symbols with high variability of appearance. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
Molecular pharmacology, regulation and function of mammalian melatonin receptors. | Melatonin (5-methoxy-N-acetyltryptamine), dubbed the hormone of darkness, is released following a circadian rhythm with high levels at night. It provides circadian and seasonal timing cues through activation of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in target tissues (1). The discovery of selective melatonin receptor ligands and the creation of mice with targeted disruption of melatonin receptor genes are valuable tools to investigate the localization and functional roles of the receptors in native systems. Here we describe the pharmacological characteristics of melatonin receptor ligands and their various efficacies (agonist, antagonist, or inverse agonist), which can vary depending on tissue and cellular milieu. We also review melatonin-mediated responses through activation of melatonin receptors (MT1, MT2, and MT3) highlighting their involvement in modulation of CNS, hypothalamic-hypophyseal-gonadal axis, cardiovascular, and immune functions. For example, activation of the MT1 melatonin receptor inhibits neuronal firing rate in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) and prolactin secretion from the pars tuberalis and induces vasoconstriction. Activation of the MT2 melatonin receptor phase shifts circadian rhythms generated within the SCN, inhibits dopamine release in the retina, induces vasodilation, enhances splenocyte proliferation and inhibits leukocyte rolling in the microvasculature. Activation of the MT3 melatonin receptor reduces intraocular pressure and inhibits leukotriene B4-induced leukocyte adhesion. We conclude that an accurate characterization of melatonin receptors mediating specific functions in native tissues can only be made using receptor specific ligands, with the understanding that receptor ligands may change efficacy in both native tissues and heterologous expression systems. |
Event driven analog modeling for the verification of PLL frequency synthesizers | The focus of this work is to provide a efficient modeling approach for the functional verification of complex analog frequency synthesizers. The event driven analog modeling approach uses the double precision data type wreal (supported by VerilogAMS), that enables analog accuracy in the digital simulation domain. It is therefore possible to separate high frequency signal paths in the frequency synthesizers from the analog domain, in order to archive higher simulation efficiency for fast verification purposes. The modeling approach and an investigation of the necessary accuracy requirements for the verification including phase noise performances of the analog frequency synthesizers is presented. The proposed approach is demonstrated on baseof a sub micron CMOS Fractional-N frequency synthesizer and compared with different traditional modeling approaches, like phase model and pure digital model. The paper concludes with a proposal of a verification approach for RF mixed signal systems. |
Long-term effect of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on the production of cytokines and other inflammatory mediators by blood cells of patients with osteoarthritis | Most of the previous studies dealing with the effect of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) on the synthesis of inflammatory mediators involved in joint damage have been done in cells culturedin vitro or in blood cells from patients treated for short periods of time. In this work we have evaluated the long-term effect of aceclofenac, a new NSAID, and diclofenac on the production of a series of inflammatory mediators by blood cells from 30 patients with severe knee osteoarthritis. Both aceclofenac and diclofenac significantly inhibited prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) synthesis by blood mononuclear and polymorphonuclear cells after 180 days of treatment. However, no clear effect was noted on leukotriene B4 (LTB4) and platelet activating factor (PAF) production. The generation of O 2 − by polymorphonuclear cells, stimulated with FMLP, was decreased after 15 days of treatment with both drugs, but reached normal values after 180 days. Interleukin-1β (IL-1β) production decreased significantly at 180 days with both drugs in the group of high producer patients. In a few (n=3) patients with high basal mononuclear cell tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) production, this also decreased on treatment for 180 days with the NSAIDs. In the remaining low TNFα-producing patients, TNFα production tended to increase. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) synthesis was not affected by aceclofenac while it was diminished by diclofenac. The decrease in IL-6 in all treated patients was significantly correlated with a worsening of the clinical condition. On the whole, these data could afford a pathogenetic basic for the long-term employment of these drugs in patients with inflammatory conditions. |
Vehicle Embedded Data Stream Processing Platform for Android Devices | Automotive information services utilizing vehicle data are rapidly expanding. However, there is currently no data centric software architecture that takes into account the scale and complexity of data involving numerous sensors. To address this issue, the authors have developed an in-vehicle datastream management system for automotive embedded systems (eDSMS) as data centric software architecture. Providing the data stream functionalities to drivers and passengers are highly beneficial. This paper describes a vehicle embedded data stream processing platform for Android devices. The platform enables flexible query processing with a dataflow query language and extensible operator functions in the query language on the platform. The platform employs architecture independent of data stream schema in in-vehicle eDSMS to facilitate smoother Android application program development. This paper presents specifications and design of the query language and APIs of the platform, evaluate it, and discuss the results. Keywords—Android, automotive, data stream management system |
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