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Stepped care vs. matched care for mood and anxiety disorders: a randomized trial in routine practice. | OBJECTIVE
The effectiveness of two versions of stepped care [with either brief therapy (BT) or cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as a first step] is studied in comparison with the traditional matched care approach (CAU) for patients with mood and anxiety disorders.
METHOD
A randomized trial was performed in routine mental health care in 12 settings, including 702 patients. Patients were interviewed once in 3 months for 18-24 months (response rate 69%).
RESULTS
Overall, patients' health improved significantly over time: 51% had achieved recovery from the DSM-IV disorder(s) after 1 year and 66% at the end of the study. Respectively, 50% and 60% had 'normal' SCL90 and SF36 scores. Cognitive behavioural therapy and BT patients achieved recovery more often than CAU patients (ORs between 1.26 and 1.48), although these results were not statistically significant.
CONCLUSION
Stepped care, with BT or CBT as a first step, is at least as effective as matched care. |
Communicating neuronal ensembles between neuromorphic chips | I describe an interchip communication system that reads out pulse trains from a 64 64 array of neurons on one chip, and transmits them to corresponding locations in a 64 64 array of neurons on a second chip. It uses a random-access, time-multiplexed, asynchronous digital bus to transmit log2N -bit addresses that uniquely identify each of theN neurons in the sending population. A peak transmission rate of 2.5MSpikes/s is achieved by pipelining the operation of the channel. I discuss how the communication channel design is optimized for sporadic stimulus-triggered activity which causes some small subpopulation to re in synchrony, by adopting an arbitered, event-driven architecture. I derive the bandwidth required to transmit this neuronal ensemble, without temporal dispersion, in terms of the number of neurons, the probability that a neuron is part of the ensemble, and the degree of synchrony. |
Evolving large-scale neural networks for vision-based TORCS | The TORCS racing simulator has become a standard testbed used in many recent reinforcement learning competitions, where an agent must learn to drive a car around a track using a small set of task-specific features. In this paper, large, recurrent neural networks (with over 1 million weights) are evolved to solve a much more challenging version of the task that instead uses only a stream of images from the driver’s perspective as input. Evolving such large nets is made possible by representing them in the frequency domain as a set of coefficients that are transformed into weight matrices via an inverse Fourier-type transform. To our knowledge this is the first attempt to tackle TORCS using vision, and successfully evolve a neural network controllers of this size. |
Box 1 . Common neural network models Neuron | Deep learning is the trendiest tool in a computational biologist’s toolbox. This exciting class of methods, based on artificial neural networks, quickly became popular due to its competitive performance in prediction problems. In pioneering early work, applying simple network architectures to abundant data already provided gains over traditional counterparts in functional genomics, image analysis, and medical diagnostics. Now, ideas for constructing and training networks and even off-the-shelf models have been adapted from the rapidly developing machine learning subfield to improve performance in a range of computational biology tasks. Here, we review some of these advances in the last 2 years. |
IndoTrack: Device-Free Indoor Human Tracking with Commodity Wi-Fi | Indoor human tracking is fundamental to many real-world applications such as security surveillance, behavioral analysis, and elderly care. Previous solutions usually require dedicated device being carried by the human target, which is inconvenient or even infeasible in scenarios such as elderly care and break-ins. However, compared with device-based tracking, device-free tracking is particularly challenging because the much weaker reflection signals are employed for tracking. The problem becomes even more difficult with commodity Wi-Fi devices, which have limited number of antennas, small bandwidth size, and severe hardware noise.
In this work, we propose IndoTrack, a device-free indoor human tracking system that utilizes only commodity Wi-Fi devices. IndoTrack is composed of two innovative methods: (1) Doppler-MUSIC is able to extract accurate Doppler velocity information from noisy Wi-Fi Channel State Information (CSI) samples; and (2) Doppler-AoA is able to determine the absolute trajectory of the target by jointly estimating target velocity and location via probabilistic co-modeling of spatial-temporal Doppler and AoA information. Extensive experiments demonstrate that IndoTrack can achieve a 35cm median error in human trajectory estimation, outperforming the state-of-the-art systems and provide accurate location and velocity information for indoor human mobility and behavioral analysis. |
Dynamics of the transition process towards partnership thinking in centralized public procurement | Abstract This research paper seeks to increase the knowledge of the transition process from transactional arm's length tendering towards partnership thinking in centralized public procurement. In centralized public procurement, the professional public purchaser forms a triadic partnership relationship with the public unit managing the procurement implementation and the private organization. A triadic partnership relationship in a home nursing procurement setting is investigated to further the understanding of the relationship dynamics related to the transitioning of public and private actors towards partnership thinking. The research shows how transactional procurement logic hinders the transition to partnering by establishing challenges for initiating and nurturing public–private partnerships (PPPs) and how partnership thinking changes this procurement logic. It illustrates the transactional procurement logic of single actor and the logic underlying the relationship of two actors to engender and intensify the problems of triad in the centralized public procurement process and vice versa; that is, a shared understanding from jointly agreed procurement goals between two actors is identified as promoting triadic partnering. Managerial implications are given for those public and private organizations engaging in PPPs and seeking to understand the ways of managing them in the context of centralized public procurement, particularly during the transition towards partnership thinking. |
Direct visibility of point sets | This paper proposes a simple and fast operator, the "Hidden" Point Removal operator, which determines the visible points in a point cloud, as viewed from a given viewpoint. Visibility is determined without reconstructing a surface or estimating normals. It is shown that extracting the points that reside on the convex hull of a transformed point cloud, amounts to determining the visible points. This operator is general - it can be applied to point clouds at various dimensions, on both sparse and dense point clouds, and on viewpoints internal as well as external to the cloud. It is demonstrated that the operator is useful in visualizing point clouds, in view-dependent reconstruction and in shadow casting. |
Telomere attrition and candidate gene mutations preceding monosomy 7 in aplastic anemia. | The pathophysiology of severe aplastic anemia (SAA) is immune-mediated destruction of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). Most patients respond to immunosuppressive therapies, but a minority transform to myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML), frequently associated with monosomy 7 (-7). Thirteen SAA patients were analyzed for acquired mutations in myeloid cells at the time of evolution to -7, and all had a dominant HSPC clone bearing specific acquired mutations. However, mutations in genes associated with MDS/AML were present in only 4 cases. Patients who evolved to MDS and AML showed marked progressive telomere attrition before the emergence of -7. Single telomere length analysis confirmed accumulation of short telomere fragments of individual chromosomes. Our results indicate that accelerated telomere attrition in the setting of a decreased HSPC pool is characteristic of early myeloid oncogenesis, specifically chromosome 7 loss, in MDS/AML after SAA, and provides a possible mechanism for development of aneuploidy. |
Gene therapy targeting haematopoietic stem cells for inherited diseases: progress and challenges | Pioneering gene therapy trials have shown that the genetic engineering of haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells can be an alternative to allogeneic transplantation in the treatment of primary immunodeficiencies. Early trials also highlighted the risk of insertional mutagenesis and oncogene transactivation associated with the first generation of gammaretroviral vectors. These events prompted the development of safer, self-inactivating lentiviral or gammaretroviral vectors. These lentiviral vectors have been successfully used to treat over 200 patients with 10 different haematological disorders (including primary immunodeficiencies, haemoglobinopathies and metabolic disorders) and for the generation of chimeric antigen receptor-T cells for cancer therapy. However, several challenges, such as effective reconstitution during inflammation, remain if gene therapy is to be extended to more complex diseases in which haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells can be altered by the disease environment. We discuss the progress made and future challenges for gene therapy and contrast gene therapy with gene-editing strategies. Advances in the design of vectors based on retroviruses, such as lentiviruses and gammaretroviruses, have led to improvements in the safety and stability of gene therapies directed at haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. In this Review, Cavazzana and colleagues discuss the results from recent clinical trials of retroviral vectors for the treatment of genetic disorders, including severe combined immunodeficiencies and β-haemoglobinopathies (β-thalassaemia and sickle cell disease). They highlight the progress made and the remaining challenges in applying gene therapies more broadly. |
Phase II study of mFOLFOX3 (5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, oxaliplatin) as second-line treatment after gemcitabine failure in patients with unresectable/metastatic biliary tract cancer | We conducted a phase II trial of 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin combination chemotherapy as a second-line treatment in unresectable/metastatic biliary tract cancer patients who had failed gemcitabine-based chemotherapy. Patients treated with gemcitabine-based palliative treatment were enrolled in this study. Patients were received modified FOLFOX3 (mFOLFOX3) consists of oxaliplatin 85 mg/m2 (day 1) and leucovorin 30 mg (days 1, 2) followed by 5-fluorouracil 1,500 mg/m2 (days 1, 2) every 2 weeks. Between March 2010 and June 2012, a total of 30 patients were enrolled in this study. Twenty-eight patients were measurable for treatment response. One achieved complete response, and one a partial response was observed. Overall response rate was 7.1 % (95 % confidence interval 0.9–23.5 %). The median progression-free survival was 1.6 months, and the median overall survival was 4.4 months. Grade 3–4 hematologic toxicities included neutropenia (6.7 %) and thrombocytopenia (3.4 %). The most common non-hematologic toxicity was neuropathy (22.2 %). However, the most common grade 3–4 non-hematologic toxicity was hyperbilirubinemia (5.0 %). There was one treatment-related death due to neutropenic infection. mFOLFOX3 as a second-line regimen has modest effect and tolerable toxicity in unresectable/metastatic biliary tract cancer patients who have been treated previously via gemcitabine-based chemotherapy. |
Towards dropout training for convolutional neural networks | Recently, dropout has seen increasing use in deep learning. For deep convolutional neural networks, dropout is known to work well in fully-connected layers. However, its effect in convolutional and pooling layers is still not clear. This paper demonstrates that max-pooling dropout is equivalent to randomly picking activation based on a multinomial distribution at training time. In light of this insight, we advocate employing our proposed probabilistic weighted pooling, instead of commonly used max-pooling, to act as model averaging at test time. Empirical evidence validates the superiority of probabilistic weighted pooling. We also empirically show that the effect of convolutional dropout is not trivial, despite the dramatically reduced possibility of over-fitting due to the convolutional architecture. Elaborately designing dropout training simultaneously in max-pooling and fully-connected layers, we achieve state-of-the-art performance on MNIST, and very competitive results on CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100, relative to other approaches without data augmentation. Finally, we compare max-pooling dropout and stochastic pooling, both of which introduce stochasticity based on multinomial distributions at pooling stage. |
Non-Orthogonal Access with Random Beamforming and Intra-Beam SIC for Cellular MIMO Downlink | We investigate non-orthogonal access with a successive interference canceller (SIC) in the cellular multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink for systems beyond LTE-Advanced. Taking into account the overhead for the downlink reference signaling for channel estimation at the user terminal in the case of non-orthogonal multiuser multiplexing and the applicability of the SIC receiver in the MIMO downlink, we propose intra-beam superposition coding of a multiuser signal at the transmitter and the spatial filtering of inter-beam interference followed by the intra-beam SIC at the user terminal receiver. The intra-beam SIC cancels out the inter-user interference within a beam. Furthermore, the transmitter beamforming (precoding) matrix is controlled based on open loop-type random beamforming, which is very efficient in terms of the amount of feedback information from the user terminal. Simulation results show that the proposed non-orthogonal access scheme with random beamforming and the intra-beam SIC simultaneously achieves better sum and cell-edge user throughput compared to orthogonal access, which is assumed in LTE-Advanced. |
A novel Generalized Arnold Transform-based Zero-Watermarking Scheme | In this paper, based on generalized Arnold Transform (GAT), a novel image zero-watermarking scheme with spread spectrum and despreading (SSD) techniques is presented by u sing spatial domain of watermark image. GAT is obtained by ad ding number of variables, and SSD is introduced from communicati on field to deal with pixels of watermark image. First of all, G AT is used to scramble an original watermark, in which the number of sec ret keys is increased to improve the security of watermark. T hen a binary matrix can be obtained from the original carrier image in qua ntit tive embedding rules. And by using spread spectrum tec hnique, the characteristic matrix can be got from XOR operation betw e n watermark and binary matrix, which is helpful to promote blind extraction of watermark. The embedding process does not cha nge the pixels of carrier, but creates a zero-watermark carr ier, which realizes the imperceptibility of watermark and improves th e embedding capacity of carrier. In order to achieve the blin d extraction of watermark, a binary matrix is calculated from the watermark ed carrier by using quantitative rules, and based on desprea ding technique, a new matrix is obtained from XOR operation between the above inary matrix and the characteristic matrix, which is gaine d from the embedding watermark. Thus, the original watermark can be ex tracted by generalized Arnold inverse transformation of th e matrix. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperf orms many existing algorithms against various attacks, and it can serve as not only robust watermark to protect the digital copyright o f w rks but also fragile watermark to protect the integrity o f w rks. |
Type theories, toposes and constructive set theory: predicative aspects of AST | Abstract We introduce a predicative version of topos (stratified pseudotopos) based on the notion of small maps in algebraic set theory, developed by Joyal and one of the authors. Examples of stratified pseudotoposes can be constructed in Martin-Lof type theory, which is a predicative theory. A stratified pseudotopos admits construction of the internal category of sheaves, which is again a stratified pseudotopos. We also show how to build models of Aczel-Myhill constructive set theory using this categorical structure. |
Effect of thumb joint mobilization on pressure pain threshold in elderly patients with thumb carpometacarpal osteoarthritis. | OBJECTIVE
This study evaluated the effects of Maitland's passive accessory mobilization on local hypoalgesia and strength in thumb carpometacarpal osteoarthritis (TCOA).
METHODS
Twenty-eight patients between 70 and 90 years old with secondary TCOA were randomized into glide mobilization and sham groups. This study was designed as a double-blind, randomized controlled trial. Therapy consisted of Maitland's passive accessory mobilization of the dominant hand during 4 sessions over 2 weeks. We measured pressure pain threshold (PPT) at the trapeziometacarpal joint (TMJ), the tubercle of the scaphoid bone, and the unciform apophysis of the hamate bone by algometry. The tip and tripod pinch strength was also measured. Grip strength was measured by a grip dynamometer. Measurements were taken before treatment and after 1 week (first follow-up [FU]) and 2 weeks (second FU).
RESULTS
All values in sham group remained unchanged along the treatment period. In the treated group, the PPT in the TMJ was 3.85 ± 0.35 kg/cm(2), which increased after treatment to 3.99 ± 0.37 and was maintained at the same level during the first FU 3.94 ± 0.39 and second FU 4.74 ± 0.40. In contrast, we found no differences in PPT in the other studied structures after treatment. Similarly, tip, tripod pinch, and grip strength remained without change after treatment.
CONCLUSIONS
Passive accessory mobilization increased PPT in the TMJ; however, it did not increase motor function in patients with TCOA. |
3D point cloud processing using spin images for object detection | The goal of this paper is to propose a step-by-step methodology of 3D point cloud processing for object detection depth1. Since the use of point clouds are relatively new for object detection, we need to build a capable framework in order to handle an enormous amount data. The framework follows a system of methods to process 3D point cloud and allows autonomous systems to detect objects. We first propose a pipeline based on spin images for the descriptor stage that proves ineffective for static object detection. We then change to a method called Signature of Histogram of OrienTation (SHOT) and successfully achieve object detection. We also perform further experiments to retrieve real time data from Quanergy's M8 long range LiDAR sensors and acquire visualizations of processed 3D point cloud. |
Proceedings of the Second U.S. Geological Survey workshop on the early Mesozoic basins of the Eastern United States | The Newark Supergroup includes the largely continental elastic rocks ("red bedsn) and interbedded basaltic flow rocks of Late Triassic and Early Jurassic age that crop out in discrete elongate basins parallel to the Appalachian orogen in eastern North America (fig. 1.1). The term "Newark Supergroup" was introduced by Van Houten (1977), referring to an unpublished manuscript by Olsen, to replace "Newark Group" (Redfield, 1856). a term that had been widely used but frequently misapplied in a time-stratigraphic sense (Klein, 1962). The use of the term "Newark Supergroup" preserves a well-established name (North American Stratigraphic Code, art. 7: c), which has increasingly been applied outside the U.S. Geological Survey to the rocks in all of the exposed basins (Geological Society of America, 1983). The Newark Supergroup is a formal assemblage of related group and formations (North American Stratigraphic Code, art. 29) with close lithologic and structural relationship that are implied through use of the supergroup designation. The term was clearly redefined by Olsen (1978) and was expanded to include subsurface red beds of early Mesozoic age beneath the Atlantic Coastal Plain and Continental Shelf. As these subsurface rocks are poorly understood and apparently of diverse age, lithol- |
Distributed and Decentralized Voltage Control of Smart Distribution Networks: Models, Methods, and Future Research | The future grid is evolving into a smart distribution network that integrates multiple distributed energy resources ensuring at the same time reliable operation and increased power quality. In recent years, many research papers have addressed the voltage violation problems that arise from the high penetration of distributed generation. In view of the transition to active network management and the increase in the quantity of collected data, distributed control schemes have been proposed that use pervasive communications to deal with the complexity of smart grid. This paper reviews the recent publications on distributed and decentralized voltage control of smart distribution networks, summarizes their control models, and classifies the solution methodologies. Moreover, it comments on issues that should be addressed in the future and the perspectives of industry applications. |
Owner-Centric Protection of Unstructured Data on Smartphones | Modern smartphone apps tend to contain and use vast amounts of data that can be broadly classified as structured and unstructured. Structured data, such as an user’s geolocation, has predefined semantics that can be retrieved by well-defined platform APIs. Unstructured data, on the other hand, relies on the context of the apps to reflect its meaning and value, and is typically provided by the user directly into an app’s interface. Recent research has shown that third-party apps are leaking highly-sensitive unstructured data, including user’s banking credentials. Unfortunately, none of the current solutions focus on the protection of |
Validation of the FOUR Score (Spanish Version) in acute stroke: an interobserver variability study. | BACKGROUND
Methods to assess impaired consciousness in acute stroke typically include the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), but the verbal component has limitations in aphasic or intubated patients. The FOUR (Full Outline of UnResponsiveness) score, a new coma scale, evaluates 4 components: eye and motor responses, brainstem reflexes and respiration. We aimed to study the interobserver variability of the FOUR score in acute stroke patients.
METHODS
We prospectively enrolled consecutive patients with acute stroke admitted from February to July 2008 to the stroke unit of our Neurology Department. Patients were evaluated by neurology residents and nurses using the FOUR score and the GCS. For both scales, we obtained paired and total weighted kappa values (Kw) and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). NIH stroke scale was also recorded on admission.
RESULTS
We obtained a total of 75 paired evaluations in 60 patients (41 cerebral infarctions, 15 cerebral hemorrhages and 4 transient ischemic attacks). Thirty-three (55%) patients were alert, 17 (28.3%) drowsy and 10 (16.7%) stuporous or comatose. The overall rater agreement was excellent in the FOUR score (Kw 0.93; 95% CI 0.89-0.97) with an ICC of 0.94 (95% CI 0.91-0.96) and in the GCS (Kw 0.96; 95% CI 0.94-0.98) with an ICC of 0.96 (95% CI 0.93-0.97). A good correlation was found between the FOUR score and the GCS (rho 0.83; p < 0.01) and between the FOUR score and the NIH stroke scale (rho -0.78; p < 0.001).
CONCLUSIONS
The FOUR score is a reliable scale for evaluating the level of consciousness in acute stroke patients, showing a good correlation with the GCS and the NIH stroke scale. |
The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: translation and validation in university students. | The aim of this study was to translate into Spanish and to validate the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), completed by 420 university students. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the model that best fit the data, both in the total sample and in the male and female subsamples, was the one-factor structure with method effects associated with positively worded items. The results indicated high, positive correlations between self-esteem and the five dimensions of self-concept. The scale showed satisfactory levels of internal consistency and temporal stability over a four-week period. Lastly, gender differences were obtained. These findings support the use of the RSES for the assessment of self-esteem in higher education. |
Developing a retrieval based diagnostic aid for automated melanoma recognition of dermoscopic images | Skin cancer is one of the most frequent cancers among human beings. Whereas, malignant melanoma is the most aggressive and deadly type of skin cancer, and its incidence has been quickly increasing over the last years. The detection of the malignant melanoma in its early stages with dermoscopic images reduces the mortality considerably, hence this a crucial issue for the dermatologists. However, their interpretation is time consuming and subjective, even for trained dermatologists. The current computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems are mainly noninteractive in nature and their prediction represents just a cue for the dermatologist, as the final decision regarding the likelihood of the presence of a melanoma is left exclusively to him/her. Recently, developing CAD schemes that use image retrieval approach to search for the clinically relevant and visually similar lesions has been attracting research interest. Although preliminary studies have suggested that using retrieval might improve dermatologists' performance and/or increase their confidence in the decision making, this technology is still in the early development stage with lack of benchmark evaluation in ground-truth datasets to compare retrieval effectiveness. A CAD system based on both classification and retrieval would be more effective and robust. This work is focusing on by addressing the various issues related to the development of such an integrated and interactive CAD system by performing automatic lesion segmentation with an adaptive thresholding and region growing approach, extracting invariant features from lesions and classifying and retrieving those using Extreme Learning Machines (ELM) and a similarity fusion approach. Finally, various methods are evaluated with promising results in a benchmark dataset of International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC). |
Unsupervised Footwear Impression Analysis and Retrieval from Crime Scene Data | Footwear impressions are one of the most frequently secured types of evidence at crime scenes. For the investigation of crime series they are among the major investigative notes. In this paper, we introduce an unsupervised footwear retrieval algorithm that is able to cope with unconstrained noise conditions and is invariant to rigid transformations. A main challenge for the automated impression analysis is the separation of the actual shoe sole information from the structured background noise. We approach this issue by the analysis of periodic patterns. Given unconstrained noise conditions, the redundancy within periodic patterns makes them the most reliable information source in the image. In this work, we present four main contributions: First, we robustly measure local periodicity by fitting a periodic pattern model to the image. Second, based on the model, we normalize the orientation of the image and compute the window size for a local Fourier transformation. In this way, we avoid distortions of the frequency spectrum through other structures or boundary artefacts. Third, we segment the pattern through robust point-wise classification, making use of the property that the amplitudes of the frequency spectrum are constant for each position in a periodic pattern. Finally, the similarity between footwear impressions is measured by comparing the Fourier representations of the periodic patterns. We demonstrate robustness against severe noise distortions as well as rigid transformations on a database with real crime scene impressions. Moreover, we make our database available to the public, thus enabling standardized benchmarking for the first time. |
The linguistic realisation of information packaging | There is increasing awareness of the large degree of crosslinguistic diversity involved in the structural realisation of information packaging (or information structure). Whereas English and many Germanic languages primarily exploit intonation for informational purposes , in other languages, like Catalan, syntax plays the primary role in the realisation of information packaging and intonation is reduced to a secondary role. In yet another group of languages the primary structural correlate is morphology. This paper provides a contrastive analysis of the structural properties of information packaging in a number of languages. It also contains a discussion of some basic issues concerning information packaging and identiies a set of information-packaging primitives that are applied to the crosslinguistic facts. |
A survey of information-centric networking | The information-centric networking (ICN) concept is a significant common approach of several future Internet research activities. The approach leverages in-network caching, multiparty communication through replication, and interaction models decoupling senders and receivers. The goal is to provide a network infrastructure service that is better suited to today¿s use (in particular. content distribution and mobility) and more resilient to disruptions and failures. The ICN approach is being explored by a number of research projects. We compare and discuss design choices and features of proposed ICN architectures, focusing on the following main components: named data objects, naming and security, API, routing and transport, and caching. We also discuss the advantages of the ICN approach in general. |
Design and Finite-Element Analysis of Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor With Flux Barriers | The paper presents a finite-element method-based design and analysis of interior permanent magnet synchronous motor with flux barriers (IPMSMFB). Various parameters of IPMSMFB rotor structure were taken into account at determination of a suitable rotor construction. On the basis of FEM analysis the rotor of IPMSMFB with three-flux barriers was built. Output torque capability and flux weakening performance of IPMSMFB were compared with performances of conventional interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM), having the same rotor geometrical dimensions and the same stator construction. The predicted performance of conventional IPMSM and IPMSMFB was confirmed with the measurements over a wide-speed range of constant output power operation. |
Investigating How Student's Cognitive Behavior in MOOC Discussion Forum Affect Learning Gains | While MOOCs undoubtedly provide valuable learning resources for students, little research in the MOOC context has sought to evaluate students’ learning gains in the environment. It has been long acknowledged that conversation is a significant way for students to construct knowledge and learn. However, rather than studying learning in MOOC discussion forums, the thrust of current research in that context has been to identify factors that predict dropout. Thus, cognitively relevant student behavior in the forums has not been evaluated for its impact on cognitive processes and learning. In this paper, we adopt a content analysis approach to analyze students’ cognitively relevant behaviors in a MOOC discussion forum and further explore the relationship between the quantity and quality of that participation with their learning gains. As an integral part of our approach, we built a computational model to automate the analysis so that it is possible to extend the content analysis to all communication that occurred in the MOOC. We identified significant associations between discourse behavior and learning. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. |
INDUSTRIAL USE OF ENZYMES | 1. Historical Background 2. Enzyme Classification 3. Enzyme Production 3.1. Microbial Production Strains 3.2. Enzyme Production by Microbial Fermentation 4. Protein Engineering 5. Enzyme Technology 6. Large-Scale Enzyme Applications 6.1. Detergents 6.2. Starch Hydrolysis and Fructose Production 6.3. Drinks 6.4. Textiles 6.5. Animal Feed 6.6. Baking 6.7. Pulp and Paper 6.8. Leather 7. Specialty Enzymes 7.1. Enzymes in Analytics 7.2. Enzymes in Personal Care Products 7.3. Enzymes in DNA Technology 8. Enzymes in Fine Chemical Production 8.1. Enantiomerically Pure Amino Acids and Aspartame 8.2. Rare Sugars 8.3. Semisynthetic Penicillins 8.4. Lipase-Based Reactions 8.5. Asymmetric Synthesis 8.6. Enzymatic Oligosaccharide Synthesis 9. Future Trends in Industrial Enzymology Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketches |
Alternative Risk Premia : What Do We Know ? 2 The rationale of alternative risk premia | The concept of alternative risk premia is an extension of the factor investing approach. Factor investing consists in building long-only equity portfolios, which are directly exposed to common risk factors like size, value or momentum. Alternative risk premia designate non-traditional risk premia other than a long exposure to equities and bonds. They may involve equities, rates, credit, currencies or commodities and correspond to long/short portfolios. However, contrary to traditional risk premia, it is more difficult to define alternative risk premia and which risk premia really matter. In fact, the term “alternative risk premia” encompasses two different types of systematic risk factor: skewness risk premia and market anomalies. For example, the most frequent alternative risk premia are carry and momentum, which are respectively a skewness risk premium and a market anomaly. Because the returns of alternative risk premia exhibit heterogeneous patterns in terms of statistical properties, option profile and drawdown, asset allocation is more complex than with traditional risk premia. In this context, risk diversification cannot be reduced to volatility diversification and skewness risk becomes a key component of portfolio optimization. Understanding these different concepts and how they interconnect is essential for improving multi-asset allocation. |
A review of contraceptive practices among married and unmarried women in China from 1982 to 2010. | OBJECTIVE
To analyse the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) among - and contraceptive methods used by - married and unmarried women in China, from 1982 to 2010.
METHOD
Data concerning married women were collected from national surveys conducted by the Chinese government. Those pertaining to unmarried women were obtained by searching the China Academic Journal Network Publishing database and PubMed.
RESULTS
CPR among married women in China was 89% in 2010, the highest in the world. Most married women use long-acting reversible contraceptives, particularly intrauterine devices, and sterilisation. CPR among sexually active unmarried women has fluctuated between 17 and 70% since 1988, although the frequency of condom use has increased (Cochran-Armitage trend test, χ(2) = 126.1, p < 0.001). More than 25% of unmarried women rely since at least 1982 on less effective contraceptive methods, including rhythm and withdrawal. This has led to an annual induced abortion rate of approximately 20% among those women.
CONCLUSION
In sharp contrast to the high CPR among married women, the rate among sexually active unmarried women in China has remained extremely low since 1988. More efforts should be directed at raising contraception awareness among this population to improve their reproductive health and reduce the rate of unwanted pregnancy. |
An approach to the diagnosis of neutrophilic dermatoses: A histopathological perspective. | Neutrophilic dermatoses comprises of non-infective dermatoses which are histopathologically characterized by neutrophil predominant infiltrate and clinically, respond promptly to corticsteroids. Conditions primarily with vasculitis though neutrophilic are excluded from this group. In this article we intend to briefly outline the approach to diagnose these conditions with histological perspective. The ambiguity regarding few recent dermatosis viz, rheumatoid neutrophilic dermatosis, bowel associated-dermatosis-arthritis syndrome etc. with regard to their inclusion in this group has also been highlighted. |
Adaptively Secure Threshold Cryptography: Introducing Concurrency, Removing Erasures | We put forward two new measures of security for threshold schemes secure in the adaptive adversary model: security under concurrent composition; and security without the assumption of reliable erasure. Using novel constructions and analytical tools, in both these settings, we exhibit efficient secure threshold protocols for a variety of cryptographic applications. In particular, based on the recent scheme by Cramer-Shoup, we construct adaptively secure threshold cryptosystems secure against adaptive chosen ciphertext attack under the DDH intractability assumption. Our techniques are also applicable to other cryptosystems and signature schemes, like RSA, DSS, and ElGamal. Our techniques include the first efficient implementation, for a wide but special class of protocols, of secure channels in erasure-free adaptive model. Of independent interest, we present the notion of a committed proof. |
Probabilistic Model-Based Clustering of Multivariate and Sequential Data | Probabilistic model-based clustering, based on nite mixtures of multivariate models, is a useful framework for clustering data in a statistical context. This general framework can be directly extended to clustering of sequential data, based on nite mixtures of sequential models. In this paper we consider the problem of tting mixture models where both multivariate and sequential observations are present. A general EM algorithm is discussed and experimental results demonstrated on simulated data. The problem is motivated by the practical problem of clustering individuals into groups based on both their static characteristics and their dynamic behavior. |
From the Temple to the Castle: An Architectural History of British Literature, 1660-1760 | Visiting Britain in the mid-18th century, Andre Rouquet wrote that "in England more than in any other country, every man would fain be his own architect." Not surprisingly, then, several of the most important 18th-century British authors were also practicing architects: John Vanbrugh, a playwrite, designed Blenheim Palace; the poet Alexander Pope offered architectural drawings for redesigning the houses of friends; and Horace Walpole claimed that the home he renovated, Strawberry Hill, inspired his Novel "The Castle of Otranto". The work of John Milton and Thomas Gray also exhibits an abiding interest in architecture. By examining the connections between literature and architecture in the work of these writers and by viewing architecture in literary terms, Lee Morissey traces a narrative of cultural change in the Augustan age and beyond. A literary scholar with a strong background in architectural theory and practice, Morissey examines architectural references made by these authors and architectural publications familiar to them. Each chapter establishes a connection with architecture in the careers of an author and then describes how a principal text - "Paradise Lost", "The Provok'd Wife", "An Essay on Man", "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", and "The Castle of Otranto" - focuses the literary and historical issues of the period in architectural terms. While some 20th-century architectural theorists have worried that treating architecture in literary terms robs it of its social function, Morrissey argues that architecture can be a language and still participate in political and social contexts, because language itself is political and social. The fruit of his argument is a unique intellectual history of late 17th- and early 18th-century Britain of use to scholars of architectural history and landscape architecture as well as of literature. |
Large Scale Sentiment Learning with Limited Labels | Sentiment analysis is an important task in order to gain insights over the huge amounts of opinions that are generated in the social media on a daily basis. Although there is a lot of work on sentiment analysis, there are no many datasets available which one can use for developing new methods and for evaluation. To the best of our knowledge, the largest dataset for sentiment analysis is TSentiment [8], a 1.6 millions machine-annotated tweets dataset covering a period of about 3 months in 2009. This dataset however is too short and therefore insufficient to study heterogeneous, fast evolving streams. Therefore, we annotated the Twitter dataset of 2015 (228 million tweets without retweets and 275 million with retweets) and we make it publicly available for research. For the annotation we leverage the power of unlabeled data, together with labeled data using semi-supervised learning and in particular, Self-Learning and Co-Training. Our main contribution is the provision of the TSentiment15 dataset together with insights from the analysis, which includes a batch and a stream-processing of the data. In the former, all labeled and unlabeled data are available to the algorithms from the beginning, whereas in the later, they are revealed gradually based on their arrival time in the stream. |
Returning from the Horizon: Introducing Urban Island Studies | Island studies tends to focus on peripheral, isolated, and marginal aspects of island communities, while urban studies has showed scant awareness of islandness: Although many people research cities on islands, there is little tradition of researching island cities or urban archipelagos per se. Island cities (densely populated small islands and population centres of larger islands and archipelagos) nevertheless play import cultural, economic, political, and environmental roles on local, regional, and global scales. Many major cities and ports have developed on small islands, and even villages can fulfil important urban functions on lightly populated islands. Island concepts are also deployed to metaphorically describe developments in urban space. The journal Urban Island Studies explores island and urban processes around the world, taking an island approach to urban research and an urban approach to island research. |
Multi-Modal Locomotion Robotic Platform Using Leg-Track-Wheel Articulations | Other than from its sensing and processing capabilities, a mobile robotic platform can be limited in its use by its ability to move in the environment. Legs, tracks and wheels are all efficient means of ground locomotion that are most suitable in different situations. Legs allow to climb over obstacles and change the height of the robot, modifying its viewpoint of the world. Tracks are efficient on uneven terrains or on soft surfaces (snow, mud, etc.), while wheels are optimal on flat surfaces. Our objective is to work on a new concept capable of combining different locomotion mechanisms to increase the locomotion capabilities of the robotic platform. The design we came up with, called AZIMUT, is symmetrical and is made of four independent leg-track-wheel articulations. It can move with its articulations up, down or straight, allowing the robot to deal with three-dimensional environments. AZIMUT is also capable of moving sideways without changing its orientation, making it omnidirectional. By putting sensors on these articulations, the robot can also actively perceive its environment by changing the orientation of its articulations. Designing a robot with such capabilities requires addressing difficult design compromises, with measurable impacts seen only after integrating all of the components together. Modularity at the structural, hardware and embedded software levels, all considered concurrently in an iterative design process, reveals to be key in the design of sophisticated mobile robotic platforms. |
Dynapenic obesity and the effect on long-term physical function and quality of life: data from the osteoarthritis initiative | BACKGROUND
Obesity is associated with functional impairment, institutionalization, and increased mortality risk in elders. Dynapenia is defined as reduced muscle strength and is a known independent predictor of adverse events and disability. The synergy between dynapenia and obesity leads to worse outcomes than either independently. We identified the impact of dynapenic obesity in a cohort at risk for and with knee osteoarthritis on function.
METHODS
We identified adults aged ≥ 60 years from the Osteoarthritis Initiative. Obesity was defined as a body mass index ≥ 30 kg/m(2). Dynapenia was classified using the lowest sex-specific tertile of knee extensor strength. Participants were grouped according to obesity and knee strength: dynapenic obesity; dynapenia without obesity; obesity without dynapenia; and no dynapenia nor obesity. Four-year data was available. Self-reported activities of daily living (ADL) were assessed at follow-up. Outcomes of gait speed, 400 m walk distance, Late-life Disability and Function Index (LLFDI), and Short-Form (SF)-12 were analyzed using mixed effects and logistic regression models.
RESULTS
Of 2025 subjects (56.3 % female), mean age was 68.2 years and 182 (24.1 %) had dynapenic obesity. Dynapenic obesity was associated with reduced gait speed, LLFDI-limitations, and SF-12 physical score in both sexes and in the 400 m walk in men only (all p < 0.001). A time*group interaction was significant for dynapenic obese men in the 400 m walk distance only. Odds of ADL limitations in dynapenic obesity was OR 2.23 [1.42:3.50], in dynapenia 0.98 [0.66:1.46], and in obesity 1.98 [1.39:2.80] in males. In females, odds were 2.45 [1.63:3.68], 1.60 [1.15:2.22], and 1.47 [1.06:2.04] respectively.
CONCLUSION
Dynapenic obesity may be a risk factor for functional decline suggesting the need to target subjects with low knee strength and obesity. |
Antibacterial Potential of Northeastern Portugal Wild Plant Extracts and Respective Phenolic Compounds | The present work aims to assess the antibacterial potential of phenolic extracts, recovered from plants obtained on the North East of Portugal, and of their phenolic compounds (ellagic, caffeic, and gallic acids, quercetin, kaempferol, and rutin), against bacteria commonly found on skin infections. The disk diffusion and the susceptibility assays were used to identify the most active extracts and phenolic compounds. The effect of selected phenolic compounds on animal cells was assessed by determination of cellular metabolic activity. Gallic acid had a higher activity, against gram-positive (S. epidermidis and S. aureus) and gram-negative bacteria (K. pneumoniae) at lower concentrations, than the other compounds. The caffeic acid, also, showed good antibacterial activity against the 3 bacteria used. The gallic acid was effective against the 3 bacteria without causing harm to the animal cells. Gallic and caffeic acid showed a promising applicability as antibacterial agents for the treatment of infected wounds. |
STHREE: Stemmer for Malayalam using three pass algorithm | This paper reports the design of a three pass stemmer STHREE for Malayalam. The language is rich in morphological variations but poor in linguistic computational resources. The system returns the meaningful root word of the input word in 97% of the cases when tested with 1040 words. This is a significant improvement over the reported accuracy of SILPA system, the only known stemmer for Malayalam, with the same test data sets. |
A Survey on Dialogue Systems: Recent Advances and New Frontiers | Dialogue systems have attracted more and more attention. Recent advances on dialogue systems are overwhelmingly contributed by deep learning techniques, which have been employed to enhance a wide range of big data applications such as computer vision, natural language processing, and recommender systems. For dialogue systems, deep learning can leverage a massive amount of data to learn meaningful feature representations and response generation strategies, while requiring a minimum amount of hand-crafting. In this article, we give an overview to these recent advances on dialogue systems from various perspectives and discuss some possible research directions. In particular, we generally divide existing dialogue systems into task-oriented and nontask- oriented models, then detail how deep learning techniques help them with representative algorithms and finally discuss some appealing research directions that can bring the dialogue system research into a new frontier |
JOB SATISFACTION AND EMPLOYEE TURNOVER : A FIRM-LEVEL PERSPECTIVE | In this paper, I study how companies can use their personnel data and information from job satisfaction surveys to predict employee quits. An important issue discussed at length in the paper is how employers can ensure the anonymity of employees in surveys used for management and HR analytics. I argue that a simple mechanism where the company delegates the implementation of job satisfaction surveys to an external consulting company can be optimal. In the subsequent empirical analysis, I use a unique combination of firm-level data (personnel records) and information from job satisfaction surveys to assess the benefits for companies using data in their decision-making. Moreover, I show how companies can move from a descriptive to a predictive approach. |
Gesture recognition with a Wii controller | In many applications today user interaction is moving away from mouse and pens and is becoming pervasive and much more physical and tangible. New emerging interaction technologies allow developing and experimenting with new interaction methods on the long way to providing intuitive human computer interaction. In this paper, we aim at recognizing gestures to interact with an application and present the design and evaluation of our sensor-based gesture recognition. As input device we employ the Wii-controller (Wiimote) which recently gained much attention world wide. We use the Wiimote's acceleration sensor independent of the gaming console for gesture recognition. The system allows the training of arbitrary gestures by users which can then be recalled for interacting with systems like photo browsing on a home TV. The developed library exploits Wii-sensor data and employs a hidden Markov model for training and recognizing user-chosen gestures. Our evaluation shows that we can already recognize gestures with a small number of training samples. In addition to the gesture recognition we also present our experiences with the Wii-controller and the implementation of the gesture recognition. The system forms the basis for our ongoing work on multimodal intuitive media browsing and are available to other researchers in the field. |
Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of superconducting LiFeAs single crystals: evidence for two nodeless energy gaps and coupling to a bosonic mode. | The superconducting compound LiFeAs is studied by scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. A gap map of the unreconstructed surface indicates a high degree of homogeneity in this system. Spectra at 2 K show two nodeless superconducting gaps with Δ(1)=5.3±0.1 meV and Δ(2)=2.5±0.2 meV. The gaps close as the temperature is increased to the bulk T(c), indicating that the surface accurately represents the bulk. A dip-hump structure is observed below T(c) with an energy scale consistent with a magnetic resonance recently reported by inelastic neutron scattering. |
Mixed Precision Training of Convolutional Neural Networks using Integer Operations | The state-of-the-art (SOTA) for mixed precision training is dominated by variants of low precision floating point operations, and in particular FP16 accumulating into FP32 Micikevicius et al. (2017). On the other hand, while a lot of research has also happened in the domain of low and mixed-precision Integer training, these works either present results for non-SOTA networks (for instance only AlexNet for ImageNet-1K), or relatively small datasets (like CIFAR-10). In this work, we train state-of-the-art visual understanding neural networks on ImageNet-1K dataset, with Integer operations on General Purpose (GP) hardware. In particular, we focus on Integer Fused-Multiply-and-Accumulate (FMA) operations which take two pairs of INT16 operands and accumulate results into an INT32 output.We propose a shared exponent representation of tensors, and develop a Dynamic Fixed Point (DFP) scheme suitable for common neural network operations. The nuances of developing an efficient integer convolution kernel is examined, including methods to handle overflow of the INT32 accumulator. We implement CNN training for ResNet-50, GoogLeNet-v1, VGG-16 and AlexNet; and these networks achieve or exceed SOTA accuracy within the same number of iterations as their FP32 counterparts without any change in hyper-parameters and with a 1.8X improvement in end-to-end training throughput. To the best of our knowledge these results represent the first INT16 training results on GP hardware for ImageNet-1K dataset using SOTA CNNs and achieve highest reported accuracy using half precision representation. |
A work-efficient parallel breadth-first search algorithm (or how to cope with the nondeterminism of reducers) | We have developed a multithreaded implementation of breadth-first search (BFS) of a sparse graph using the Cilk++ extensions to C++. Our PBFS program on a single processor runs as quickly as a standar. C++ breadth-first search implementation. PBFS achieves high work-efficiency by using a novel implementation of a multiset data structure, called a "bag," in place of the FIFO queue usually employed in serial breadth-first search algorithms. For a variety of benchmark input graphs whose diameters are significantly smaller than the number of vertices -- a condition met by many real-world graphs -- PBFS demonstrates good speedup with the number of processing cores.
Since PBFS employs a nonconstant-time "reducer" -- "hyperobject" feature of Cilk++ -- the work inherent in a PBFS execution depends nondeterministically on how the underlying work-stealing scheduler load-balances the computation. We provide a general method for analyzing nondeterministic programs that use reducers. PBFS also is nondeterministic in that it contains benign races which affect its performance but not its correctness. Fixing these races with mutual-exclusion locks slows down PBFS empirically, but it makes the algorithm amenable to analysis. In particular, we show that for a graph G=(V,E) with diameter D and bounded out-degree, this data-race-free version of PBFS algorithm runs it time O((V+E)/P + Dlg3(V/D)) on P processors, which means that it attains near-perfect linear speedup if P << (V+E)/Dlg3(V/D). |
Quality improvement guidelines for the performance of inferior vena cava filter placement for the prevention of pulmonary embolism. | i PREAMBLE The membership of the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) Standards of Practice Committee represents experts in a broad spectrum of interventional procedures from both the private and academic sectors of medicine. Generally Standards of Practice Committee members dedicate the vast majority of their professional time to performing interventional procedures; as such they represent a valid broad expert constituency of the subject matter under consideration for standards production. Technical documents specifying the exact consensus and literature review methodologies as well as the institutional affiliations and professional credentials of the authors of this document are available upon request from SIR, 3975 Fair Ridge Dr., Suite 400 N., Fairfax, VA 22033. |
The Wordometer -- Estimating the Number of Words Read Using Document Image Retrieval and Mobile Eye Tracking | We introduce the Wordometer, a novel method to estimate the number of words a user reads using a mobile eye tracker and document image retrieval. We present a reading detection algorithm which works with over 91 % accuracy over 10 test subjects using 10-fold cross validation. We implement two algorithms to estimate the read words using a line break detector. A simple version gives an average error rate of 13,5 % for 9 users over 10 documents. A more sophisticated word count algorithm based on support vector regression with an RBF kernel reaches an average error rate from only 8.2 % (6.5 % if one test subject with abnormal behavior is excluded). The achieved error rates are comparable to pedometers that count our steps in our daily life. Thus, we believe the Wordometer can be used as a step counter for the information we read to make our knowledge life healthier. |
Analysis of topological characteristics of huge online social networking services | Social networking services are a fast-growing business in the Internet. However, it is unknown if online relationships and their growth patterns are the same as in real-life social networks. In this paper, we compare the structures of three online social networking services: Cyworld, MySpace, and orkut, each with more than 10 million users, respectively. We have access to complete data of Cyworld's ilchon (friend) relationships and analyze its degree distribution, clustering property, degree correlation, and evolution over time. We also use Cyworld data to evaluate the validity of snowball sampling method, which we use to crawl and obtain partial network topologies of MySpace and orkut. Cyworld, the oldest of the three, demonstrates a changing scaling behavior over time in degree distribution. The latest Cyworld data's degree distribution exhibits a multi-scaling behavior, while those of MySpace and orkut have simple scaling behaviors with different exponents. Very interestingly, each of the two e ponents corresponds to the different segments in Cyworld's degree distribution. Certain online social networking services encourage online activities that cannot be easily copied in real life; we show that they deviate from close-knit online social networks which show a similar degree correlation pattern to real-life social networks. |
Complementary Switching in Oxide-Based Bipolar Resistive-Switching Random Memory | Resistive-switching random access memory (RRAM) devices utilizing a crossbar architecture represent a promising alternative for Flash replacement in high-density data storage applications. However, RRAM crossbar arrays require the adoption of diodelike select devices with high on-off -current ratio and with sufficient endurance. To avoid the use of select devices, one should develop passive arrays where the nonlinear characteristic of the RRAM device itself provides self-selection during read and write. This paper discusses the complementary switching (CS) in hafnium oxide RRAM, where the logic bit can be encoded in two high-resistance levels, thus being immune from leakage currents and related sneak-through effects in the crossbar array. The CS physical mechanism is described through simulation results by an ion-migration model for bipolar switching. Results from pulsed-regime characterization are shown, demonstrating that CS can be operated at least in the 10-ns time scale. The minimization of the reset current is finally discussed. |
Psychological sex differences. Origins through sexual selection. | Men and women clearly differ in some psychological domains. A. H. Eagly (1995) shows that these differences are not artifactual or unstable. Ideally, the next scientific step is to develop a cogent explanatory framework for understanding why the sexes differ in some psychological domains and not in others and for generating accurate predictions about sex differences as yet undiscovered. This article offers a brief outline of an explanatory framework for psychological sex differences--one that is anchored in the new theoretical paradigm of evolutionary psychology. Men and women differ, in this view, in domains in which they have faced different adaptive problems over human evolutionary history. In all other domains, the sexes are predicted to be psychologically similar. Evolutionary psychology jettisons the false dichotomy between biology and environment and provides a powerful metatheory of why sex differences exist, where they exist, and in what contexts they are expressed (D. M. Buss, 1995). |
Adaptation of Bird Communities to Farmland Abandonment in a Mountain Landscape | Widespread farmland abandonment has led to significant landscape transformations of many European mountain areas. These semi-natural multi-habitat landscapes are important reservoirs of biodiversity and their abandonment has important conservation implications. In multi-habitat landscapes the adaptation of communities depends on the differential affinity of the species to the available habitats. We use nested species-area relationships (SAR) to model species richness patterns of bird communities across scales in a mountain landscape, in NW Portugal. We compare the performance of the classic-SAR and the countryside-SAR (i.e. multi-habitat) models at the landscape scale, and compare species similarity decay (SSD) at the regional scale. We find a considerable overlap of bird communities in the different land-uses (farmland, shrubland and oak forest) at the landscape scale. Analysis of the classic and countryside SAR show that specialist species are strongly related to their favourite habitat. Farmland and shrubland have higher regional SSD compared to oak forests. However, this is due to the opportunistic use of farmlands by generalist birds. Forest specialists display significant regional turnover in oak forest. Overall, the countryside-SAR model had a better fit to the data showing that habitat composition determines species richness across scales. Finally, we use the countryside-SAR model to forecast bird diversity under four scenarios of land-use change. Farmland abandonment scenarios show little impact on bird diversity as the model predicts that the complete loss of farmland is less dramatic, in terms of species diversity loss, than the disappearance of native Galicio-Portuguese oak forest. The affinities of species to non-preferred habitats suggest that bird communities can adapt to land-use changes derived from farmland abandonment. Based on model predictions we argue that rewilding may be a suitable management option for many European mountain areas. |
Beating 1-1/e for ordered prophets | Hill and Kertz studied the prophet inequality on iid distributions [The Annals of Probability 1982]. They proved a theoretical bound of 1 â 1/e on the approximation factor of their algorithm. They conjectured that the best approximation factor for arbitrarily large n is 1/1+1/eâ 0.731. This conjecture remained open prior to this paper for over 30 years. In this paper we present a threshold-based algorithm for the prophet inequality with n iid distributions. Using a nontrivial and novel approach we show that our algorithm is a 0.738-approximation algorithm. By beating the bound of 1/1+1/e, this refutes the conjecture of Hill and Kertz. Moreover, we generalize our results to non-uniform distributions and discuss its applications in mechanism design. |
Korean Wave as Tool for Korea ’ s New Cultural Diplomacy | In recent years, there has been an influx of Korean popular culture throughout the world, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Korean popular culture, also known as the “Korean Wave” (Hallyu in Korean) ranges from television dramas, movies, popular music (K-pop), dance (B-boys), video game, food, fashion, tourism, and language (Hangul). The main focus of this paper is to examine the essence of the Korean Wave and its impact on the world. In particular, this paper aims to explore the relationships between the spread of the Korean Wave and political and social changes in a global perspective. That is, does the Korean Wave affect the political position and diplomatic leverage of Korea in any meaningful way? Toward this objective, this paper first examines the relevant literature of international relations for policy and culture change, especially with regards to globalization, interdependence, soft power and world value change. Then, recent developments of the Korean Wave are reviewed and critically analyzed in order to ascertain political and policy implications for Korean diplomatic and practical directives. Finally, we will draw an interpretive conclusion and recommendations toward the plausibility of the Korean Wave as a policy tool for Korea’s cultural diplomacy. |
Taking the Human Out of the Loop: A Review of Bayesian Optimization | Big Data applications are typically associated with systems involving large numbers of users, massive complex software systems, and large-scale heterogeneous computing and storage architectures. The construction of such systems involves many distributed design choices. The end products (e.g., recommendation systems, medical analysis tools, real-time game engines, speech recognizers) thus involve many tunable configuration parameters. These parameters are often specified and hard-coded into the software by various developers or teams. If optimized jointly, these parameters can result in significant improvements. Bayesian optimization is a powerful tool for the joint optimization of design choices that is gaining great popularity in recent years. It promises greater automation so as to increase both product quality and human productivity. This review paper introduces Bayesian optimization, highlights some of its methodological aspects, and showcases a wide range of applications. |
The Good, the Bad, or the Useful? The Examination of the Relationship between the Feedback-related Negativity (FRN) and Long-term Learning Outcomes | According to the reinforcement learning account of the error-related negativity (ERN), the ERN is a manifestation of a signal generated in ACC as a consequence of a phasic decrease in the activity of the mesencephalic dopamine system occurring when the monitoring system evaluates events as worse than expected. This signal is also hypothesized to be used to modify behavior to ascertain that future events will have better outcomes. It is therefore expected that this signal be correlated with learning outcomes. We report a study designed to examine the extent to which the ERN is related to learning outcomes within a paired-associates learning task. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) elicited by stimuli that indicated to the participants whether their response was correct or not was examined both according the degree to which the associates were learned in the session and according to whether participants recalled the associations on the next day. The results of the spatio-temporal PCA indicate that, whereas the process giving rise to the negative feedback elicited a FRN whose amplitude was not correlated with long-term learning outcomes, positive feedback was associated with a FRN-like activity, which was correlated with the learning outcomes. Another ERP component that follows the FRN temporally and shares its spatial distribution was found associated with long-term learning outcomes. Our findings shed light on the functional significance of the feedback-related ERP components and are discussed within the framework of the reinforcement learning ERN hypothesis. |
CASSL: Curriculum Accelerated Self-Supervised Learning | Recent self-supervised learning approaches focus on using a few thousand data points to learn policies for high-level, low-dimensional action spaces. However, scaling this framework for higher-dimensional control requires either scaling up the data collection efforts or using a clever sampling strategy for training. We present a novel approach - Curriculum Accelerated Self-Supervised Learning (CASSL) - to train policies that map visual information to high-level, higher-dimensional action spaces. CASSL orders the sampling of training data based on control dimensions: the learning and sampling are focused on few control parameters before other parameters. The right curriculum for learning is suggested by variance-based global sensitivity analysis of the control space. We apply our CASSL framework to learning how to grasp using an adaptive, underactuated multi-fingered gripper, a challenging system to control. Our experimental results indicate that CASSL provides significant improvement and generalization compared to baseline methods such as staged curriculum learning (8% increase) and complete end-to-end learning with random exploration (14% improvement) tested on a set of novel objects. |
A compact dual-band half-mode SIW based semi-circular antenna | In this paper, a half mode SIW based semi-circular antenna with co-axial feed has been designed for dual band operation. The fundamental resonating frequency is found to operate at 4.66 GHz while the next higher mode is at 8.3 GHz. The antenna performance is optimized through parametric studies and the dual band antenna is designed using Arlon AD270 substrate. Simulation studies have been carried out to study the various antenna parameters. |
Neural regulation of endocrine and autonomic stress responses | The survival and well-being of all species requires appropriate physiological responses to environmental and homeostatic challenges. The re-establishment and maintenance of homeostasis entails the coordinated activation and control of neuroendocrine and autonomic stress systems. These collective stress responses are mediated by largely overlapping circuits in the limbic forebrain, the hypothalamus and the brainstem, so that the respective contributions of the neuroendocrine and autonomic systems are tuned in accordance with stressor modality and intensity. Limbic regions that are responsible for regulating stress responses intersect with circuits that are responsible for memory and reward, providing a means to tailor the stress response with respect to prior experience and anticipated outcomes. |
Tilapia Production Systems in the Americas: Technological Advances, Trends, and Challenges | Tilapia is the common name applied to three genera of fish in the family Cichlidae: Oreochromis, Sarotherodon, and Tilapia. The species that are most important for aquaculture are in the genus Oreochromis, including the Nile tilapia, O. niloticus, the Mozambique tilapia, O. mossambicus, the blue tilapia, O. aureus, and O. urolepis hornorum. Fish farmers are now growing many strains of these parent species along with many hybrid strains. Native to Africa and the Middle East, these species have become the second most common farm raised food fish in the world. In the 1960s and 1970s tilapia culture was aimed at the production of food for local consumption, utilizing primarily extensive or semiintensive culture methods with minimal inputs of fertilizer or feeds. However, tilapia culture has expanded rapidly during the last decade as a result of technological advances associated with the intensification of culture practices. These include the development of new strains and hybrids, monosex male culture, formulated diets, a variety of semiintensive and intensive culture systems (e.g., ponds, cages, tanks, and raceways) and the utilization of greenhouses, geothermal, or industrial waste heat and advanced water treatment methods. Marketing programs have also nurtured a growing demand for tilapia in domestic and international markets. Annual worldwide production of cultured tilapia was less than 200,000 metric tons (mt) in 1984 and increased to 1,100,000 mt |
Vehicles on RFID: Error-Cognitive Vehicle Localization in GPS-Less Environments | GPS has been commonly used for vehicle localization. However, since GPS signals are very sensitive to terrain and interference, they may become unavailable in places such as lower layers of multilayer bridges, streets besides high buildings, tunnels, etc. To address this issue, various techniques have been proposed. Nevertheless, none of them are applicable to safety-critical and highly mobile vehicular network applications, which require high localization accuracy anywhere and anytime. Meanwhile, with the advent of radio frequency identification (RFID) systems on roads (RSR), passive RFID tags with road-related information are expected to be deployed on road surfaces for driving safety and efficiency. In this paper, we introduce a novel RFID-based approach for vehicle localization in GPS-less road environments, where passive RFID tags are deployed on the roads and readers are installed on vehicles. To achieve accurate vehicle localization, we propose an error-cognitive localization system, which leverages both reader-to-tag and vehicle-to-vehicle communications to adaptively cognize and correct localization errors. Extensive simulation and experiment have verified the effectiveness of our proposed system. Particularly, our field tests show that, with sparsely deployed tags, which cost just a few dollars per kilometer, a vehicle can localize itself with submeter errors on average. |
Phase I study of NGR-hTNF, a selective vascular targeting agent, in combination with cisplatin in refractory solid tumors. | PURPOSE
NGR-hTNF exploits the tumor-homing peptide asparagine-glycine-arginine (NGR) for selectively targeting TNF-α to an aminopeptidase N overexpressed on cancer endothelial cells. Preclinical synergism with cisplatin was displayed even at low doses. This study primarily aimed to explore the safety of low-dose NGR-hTNF combined with cisplatin in resistant/refractory malignancies. Secondary aims included pharmacokinetics (PKs), pharmacodynamics, and activity.
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
NGR-hTNF was escalated using a doubling-dose scheme (0.2-0.4-0.8-1.6 μg/m(2)) in combination with fixed-dose of cisplatin (80 mg/m(2)), both given intravenously once every three weeks. PKs and circulating TNF-receptors (sTNF-Rs) were assessed over the first three cycles.
RESULTS
Globally, 22 patients (12 pretreated with platinum) received a range of one to ten cycles. Consistently with the low-dose range tested, maximum-tolerated dose was not reached. No dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs) were observed at 0.2 (n = 4) and 0.4 μg/m(2) (n = 3). One DLT (grade 3 infusion-related reaction) was observed at 0.8 μg/m(2). This dose cohort was expanded to six patients without further DLTs. No DLTs were noted also at 1.6 μg/m(2) (n = 3). NGR-hTNF exposure increased dose-proportionally without apparent PK interactions with cisplatin. No shedding of sTNF-Rs was detected up to 0.8 μg/m(2). At the dose level of 0.8 μg/m(2), expanded to 12 patients for activity assessment, a platinum-pretreated lung cancer patient achieved a partial response lasting more than six months and five patients maintained stable disease for a median time of 5.9 months.
CONCLUSIONS
The combination of NGR-hTNF 0.8 μg/m(2) with cisplatin 80 mg/m(2) showed favorable toxicity profile and promising antitumor activity. |
Named Entity Recognition using FOX | Unstructured data still makes up an important portion of the Web. One key task towards transforming this unstructured data into structured data is named entity recognition. We demo FOX, the Federated knOwledge eXtraction framework, a highly accurate open-source framework that implements RESTful web services for named entity recognition. Our framework achieves a higher Fmeasure than state-of-the-art named entity recognition frameworks by combining the results of several approaches through ensemble learning. Moreover, it disambiguates and links named entities against DBpedia by relying on the AGDISTIS framework. As a result, FOX provides users with accurately disambiguated and linked named entities in several RDF serialization formats. We demonstrate the different interfaces implemented by FOX within use cases pertaining to extracting entities from news texts. |
Design, simulation and implementation of a self-oscillating control circuit to drive series resonant inverter feeding a brazing induction furnace | This research deals with the design and simulation of induction furnace power source (inverter) using MATLAB package. This source designed to lock on the resonant frequency of the load by using self-oscillating technique, also it has the capability to control the power supplied to the load using phase shift pulse width modulation (PSPWM) technique. These characteristics used to overcome the load nonlinear behavior during the brazing process and to achieve soft switching of the inverter elements. Also, the inverter has the capability to operate with or without load (workpiece). The implemented prototype operates at a frequency range (50-100)kHz and 10kW was successfully used for brazing two copper workpieces. |
Dynamic feature generation and selection on heterogeneous graph for music recommendation | In the past decade, online music streaming services (MSS), e.g., Pandora and Spotify, revolutionized the way people access, consume and share music. MSS serve users with a huge digital music library, various kinds of music discovery channels, and a number of tools for music sharing and management (e.g. bookmark, playlist, comment, etc.). As a result, metadata and user-generated data hosted on MSS demonstrate great heterogeneity, which provides important potential to enhance music recommendation performance. In this study, we propose a novel music recommendation approach by leveraging heterogeneous graph schema mining and ranking feature selection. Unlike existing heterogeneous graph-based recommendation techniques, the new method can automatically generate and select the optimized meta-path-based features for the learning to rank model. To make feature selection more efficient, we propose the Dynamic Feature Generation Tree algorithm (DFGT), which can activate and eliminate the short sub-meta-paths for feature evolution at a low cost. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm can efficiently generate optimized ranking feature set for meta-path-based music recommendation, which significantly enhances the state-of-the-art collaborative filtering algorithms. |
Educational support for orphans and vulnerable children in primary schools : Challenges and interventions | Educational status is an important indicator of children’s wellbeing and future life opportunities. It can predict growth potential and economic viability of a state. While this is an ideal situation for all children, the case may be different for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) due to the challenges they go through on a daily basis. This article aims to advance a debate on the findings of our study on the educational support provided for OVC through a critical engagement on the challenges experienced and the intervention measures to be taken in South African public primary schools context. The study involved one hundred and seven participants comprising sixty five OVC and forty two teachers. Questionnaires with structured and unstructured questions were utilised to collect descriptive and qualitative data. Findings suggest that, although the South African Government has put mechanisms in place to support OVC attain basic education, numerous challenges were found to be hindering some OVC from attaining quality education. Based on the findings, several intervention measures have been suggested. |
Comparison of Doctors' and Breast Cancer Patients' Perceptions of Docetaxel, Epirubicin, and Cyclophosphamide (TEC) Toxicity. | In Spain, around 26,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year, representing nearly 30% of all cancers in women. The aim this study was to compare the perceptions of nonhematologic toxicities after administration of a docetaxel, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide (TEC) regimen between breast cancer patients and oncologists. Furthermore, the relationship between such adverse events and quality of life (QOL) was evaluated. Cross-sectional study carried out among 92 breast cancer patients who received TEC as neoadjuvant or adjuvant treatment. The main nonhematologic toxicities experienced by breast cancer patients treated with the TEC regimen were asthenia, nausea, dysgeusia, arthralgia, headache, and myalgia. Patients were less likely to be affected by vomiting and peripheral neuropathy. Oncologists seemed to show greater interest in toxicities, such as asthenia, nausea, and diarrhea. Vomiting was the toxicity with the most substantial degree of agreement between oncologist and patient. Toxicities with greater disagreement were dysgeusia, arthralgia, myalgia, asthenia, and headache. Asthenia, dysgeusia, loss of appetite, skin allergies, peripheral edema, abdominal pain, and myalgia were found to significantly affect the QOL. Tolerability and QOL were more favorable in patients treated with pegfilgrastim compared with filgrastim. Oncologists tend to underestimate toxicities experienced by breast cancer patients treated with the TEC regimen. The establishment of a protocol to record these toxicities may reduce that problem. |
Development and Learning Control of a Human Limb With a Rehabilitation Exoskeleton | This paper describes a novel development of a lower limber exoskeleton for physical assistance and rehabilitation. The developed exoskeleton is a motorized leg device having a total of 4 DOF with hip, knee, and ankle actuated in the sagittal plane. The exoskeleton applies forces and learns the impedance parameters of both robot and human. An adaptive control scheme by incorporating learning control approaches into the exoskeleton system is developed to help the leg movement on a desired periodic trajectory and handle periodic uncertainties with known periods. The proposed control approach does not require a muscle model and can be proven to yield asymptotic stability for a nonlinear muscle model and an exoskeleton model in the presence of bounded nonlinear disturbances (e.g., spasticity and fatigue). The performance of the controller is demonstrated through closed-loop experiments on human subjects. The experiments illustrate the ability of the exoskeleton to enable the leg shank to track single and multiple period trajectories with different periods and ranges of motion. |
Adaptive graph filtering: Multiresolution classification on graphs | We present an adaptive graph filtering approach to semi-supervised classification. Adaptive graph filters combine decisions from multiple graph filters using a weighting function that is optimized in a semi-supervised manner. We also demonstrate the multiresolution property of adaptive graph filters by connecting them to the diffusion wavelets. In our experiments, we apply the adaptive graph filters to the classification of online blogs and damage identification in indirect bridge structural health monitoring. |
Virtualization Technology: Cross-VM Cache Side Channel Attacks make it Vulnerable | Cloud computing provides an effective business model for the deployment of IT infrastructure, platform, and software services. Often, facilities are outsourced to cloud providers and this offers the service consumer virtualization technologies without the added cost burden of development. However, virtualization introduces serious threats to service delivery such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, Cross-VM Cache Side Channel attacks, Hypervisor Escape and Hyper-jacking. One of the most sophisticated forms of attack is the cross-VM cache side channel attack that exploits shared cache memory between VMs. A cache side channel attack results in side channel data leakage, such as cryptographic keys. Various techniques used by the attackers to launch cache side channel attack are presented, as is a critical analysis of countermeasures against cache side channel attacks. |
Agile human-centered software engineering | We seek to close the gap between software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI) by indicating interdisciplinary interfaces throughout the different phases of SE and HCI lifecycles. As agile representatives of SE, Extreme Programming (XP) and Agile Modeling (AM) contribute helpful principles and practices for a common engineering approach. We present a cross-discipline user interface design lifecycle that integrates SE and HCI under the umbrella of agile development. Melting IT budgets, pressure of time and the demand to build better software in less time must be supported by traveling as light as possible. We did, therefore, choose not just to mediate both disciplines. Following our surveys, a rather radical approach best fits the demands of engineering organizations. |
Accurate age classification of 6 and 12 month-old infants based on resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging data | Human large-scale functional brain networks are hypothesized to undergo significant changes over development. Little is known about these functional architectural changes, particularly during the second half of the first year of life. We used multivariate pattern classification of resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (fcMRI) data obtained in an on-going, multi-site, longitudinal study of brain and behavioral development to explore whether fcMRI data contained information sufficient to classify infant age. Analyses carefully account for the effects of fcMRI motion artifact. Support vector machines (SVMs) classified 6 versus 12 month-old infants (128 datasets) above chance based on fcMRI data alone. Results demonstrate significant changes in measures of brain functional organization that coincide with a special period of dramatic change in infant motor, cognitive, and social development. Explorations of the most different correlations used for SVM lead to two different interpretations about functional connections that support 6 versus 12-month age categorization. |
Applying graph-based anomaly detection approaches to the discovery of insider threats | The ability to mine data represented as a graph has become important in several domains for detecting various structural patterns. One important area of data mining is anomaly detection, but little work has been done in terms of detecting anomalies in graph-based data. In this paper we present graph-based approaches to uncovering anomalies in applications containing information representing possible insider threat activity: e-mail, cell-phone calls, and order processing. |
Kernel Belief Propagation | We propose a nonparametric generalization of belief propagation, Kernel Belief Propagation (KBP), for pairwise Markov random fields. Messages are represented as functions in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS), and message updates are simple linear operations in the RKHS. KBP makes none of the assumptions commonly required in classical BP algorithms: the variables need not arise from a finite domain or a Gaussian distribution, nor must their relations take any particular parametric form. Rather, the relations between variables are represented implicitly, and are learned nonparametrically from training data. KBP has the advantage that it may be used on any domain where kernels are defined (R, strings, groups), even where explicit parametric models are not known, or closed form expressions for the BP updates do not exist. The computational cost of message updates in KBP is polynomial in the training data size. We also propose a constant time approximate message update procedure by representing messages using a small number of basis functions. In experiments, we apply KBP to image denoising, depth prediction from still images, and protein configuration prediction: KBP is faster than competing classical and nonparametric approaches (by orders of magnitude, in some cases), while providing significantly more accurate results. |
Explicit Modelling of the Implicit Short Term User Preferences for Music Recommendation | Recommender systems are a key component of music sharing platforms, which suggest musical recordings a user might like. People often have implicit preferences while listening to music, though these preferences might not always be the same while they listen to music at different times. For example, a user might be interested in listening to songs of only a particular artist at some time, and the same user might be interested in the top-rated songs of a genre at another time. In this paper we try to explicitly model the short term preferences of the user with the help of Last.fm tags of the songs the user has listened to. With a session defined as a period of activity surrounded by periods of inactivity, we introduce the concept of a subsession, which is that part of the session wherein the preference of the user does not change much. We assume the user preference might change within a session and a session might have multiple subsessions. We use our modelling of the user preferences to generate recommendations for the next song the user might listen to. Experiments on the user listening histories taken from Last.fm indicate that this approach beats the present methodologies in predicting the next recording a user might listen to. |
Liquid Crystal Polymer (LCP): The ultimate solution for low-cost RF flexible electronics and antennas | In this paper, solutions for developing low cost electronics for antenna transceivers that take advantage of the stable electrical properties of the organic substrate liquid crystal polymer (LCP) has been presented. Three important ingredients in RF wireless transceivers namely embedded passives, a dual band filter and a RFid antenna have been designed and fabricated on LCP. Test results of all 3 of the structures show good agreement between the simulated and measured results over their respective bandwidths, demonstrating stable performance of the LCP substrate. |
Tag-Latent Dirichlet Allocation: Understanding Hashtags and Their Relationships | A hash tag is defined to be a word or phrase prefixed with the symbol "#". It is widely used in current social media sites including Twitter and Google+, and serves as a significant meta tag to categorize users' messages, to propagate ideas and topic trends. The use of hash tags has become an integral part of the social media culture. However, the free-form nature and the varied contexts of hash tags bring challenges: how to understand hash tags and discover their relationships? In this paper, we propose Tag-Latent Dirichlet Allocation (TLDA), a new topic modeling approach to bridge hash tags and topics. TLDA extends Latent Dirichlet Allocation by incorporating the observed hash tags in the generative process. In TLDA, a hash tag is mapped into the form of a mixture of shared topics. This representation further enables the analysis of the relationships between the hash tags. Applying our model to tweet data, we first illustrate the ability of our approach to explain hard-to-understand hash tags with topics. We also demonstrate that our approach enables users to further analyze the relationships between the hash tags. |
Integrating Object Affordances with Artificial Visual Attention | Affordances, as for example grasping possibilities, are known to play a role in the guidance of human attention but have not been considered in artificial attention systems so far. Extending our earlier work, we investigate the combination of affordance estimation and visual saliency in an artificial visual attention model. Different models based on saliency, affordance estimation, or their combination are suggested and evaluated via their predictions for a change detection task with human observers. Furthermore, we discuss the potential of Growing Neural Gases as a framework for consistently integrating bottom-up saliency, affordance-based and top-down attention mechanisms. |
Magnetoimpedance of Amorphous Ribbons with Polymer Covering | Magnetic properties and magnetoimpedance were studied for as-cast Fe5Co75Si4B16 rapidly quenched amorphous ribbons and Fe5Co75Si4B16/polymer amorphous ribbon based composites with the following polymer coverings: modified rubber solution in o-xylene, copolymer solution of butyl methacrylate and methacrylic acid in isopropanol and solution of polymethylphenyl resin in toluene. All selected composites showed very good adhesion of the coverings and allowed us to provide long term temperature measurements, including measurements under stress. Polymer coverings have an effect on the temperature sensitivity of the impedance value. The present study demonstrates the promising future for the development of magnetically active conductor/polymer composites for creating new sensors. Modification of the composition and thickness of the polymer coverings can be the basis for creation of the detectors with a unique set of functional properties. Polymer covering can perform the protective and reinforcing role that is particularly important in the case of nanocrystalline alloys and the polymer covering can also affect and improve the functional properties of the magnetic core. |
Automatic Keyword Extraction for Text Summarization: A Survey | In recent times, data is growing rapidly in every domain such as news, social media, banking, education, etc. Due to the excessiveness of data, there is a need of automatic summarizer which will be capable to summarize the data especially textual data in original document without losing any critical purposes. Text summarization is emerged as an important research area in recent past. In this regard, review of existing work on text summarization process is useful for carrying out further research. In this paper, recent literature on automatic keyword extraction and text summarization are presented since text summarization process is highly depend on keyword extraction. This literature includes the discussion about different methodology used for keyword extraction and text summarization. It also discusses about different databases used for text summarization in several domains along with evaluation matrices. Finally, it discusses briefly about issues and research challenges faced by researchers along with future direction. |
TWO FIXED-POINT THEOREMS FOR MAPPINGS SATISFYING A GENERAL CONTRACTIVE CONDITION OF INTEGRAL TYPE | We establish two fixed-point theorems for mappings satisfying a general contrac-tive inequality of integral type. These results substantially extend the theorem of Branciari (2002). In a recent paper [1], Branciari established the following theorem. Theorem 1. Let (X, d) be a complete metric space, c ∈ [0, 1), f : X → X a mapping such that, for each x, y ∈ X, d(f x,f y) 0 ϕ(t)dt ≤ c d(x,y) 0 ϕ(t)dt, (1) where ϕ : R + → R + is a Lebesgue-integrable mapping which is summable, non-negative, and such that, for each > 0, 0 ϕ(t)dt > 0. Then f has a unique fixed point z ∈ X such that, for each x ∈ X, lim n f n x = z. In [1], it was mentioned that (1) could be extended to more general contrac-tive conditions. It is the purpose of this paper to make such an extension to two of the most general contractive conditions. Define m(x, y) = max d(x,y),d(x,f x),d(y,f y), d(x, f y) + d(y, f x) 2. (2) Our first result is the following theorem. Theorem 2. Let (X, d) be a complete metric space, k ∈ [0, 1), f : X → X a mapping such that, for each x, y ∈ X, d(f x,f y) 0 ϕ(t)dt ≤ k m(x,y) 0 ϕ(t)dt, (3) |
A 32 nm High-k Metal Gate SRAM With Adaptive Dynamic Stability Enhancement for Low-Voltage Operation | SRAM bitcell design margin continues to shrink due to random and systematic process variation in scaled technologies and conventional SRAM faces a challenge in realizing the power and density benefits of technology scaling. Smart and adaptive assist circuits can improve design margins while satisfying SRAM power and performance requirements in scaled technologies. This paper introduces an adaptive, dynamic SRAM word-line under-drive (ADWLUD) scheme that uses a bitcell-based sensor to dynamically optimize the strength of WLUD for each die. The ADWLUD sensor enables 130 mV reduction in SRAM Vccmin while increasing frequency yield by 9% over conventional SRAM without WLUD. The sensor area overhead is limited to 0.02% and power overhead is 2% for a 3.4 Mb SRAM array. |
Dietary intakes and lifestyle factors of a vegan population in Germany: results from the German Vegan Study | Objective: Evaluation of dietary intakes and lifestyle factors of German vegans.Design: Cross-sectional study.Settings: Germany.Subjects: Subjects were recruited through journal advertisements. Of 868 volunteers, only 154 participated in all study segments (pre- and main questionnaire, two 9-day food frequency questionnaires, blood sampling) and fulfilled the following study criteria: vegan dietary intake at least 1 year prior to study start, minimum age of 18 y, no pregnancy or childbirth during the last 12 months.Interventions: No interventions.Results: All the 154 subjects had a comparatively low BMI (median 21.2 kg/m2), with an extremely low mean consumption of alcohol (0.77±3.14 g/day) and tobacco (96.8% were nonsmokers). Mean energy intake (total collective: 8.23±2.77 MJ) was higher in strict vegans than in moderate ones. Mean carbohydrate, fat, and protein intakes in proportion to energy (total collective: 57.1:29.7:11.6%) agreed with current recommendations. Recommended intakes for vitamins and minerals were attained through diet, except for calcium (median intake: 81.1% of recommendation), iodine (median: 40.6%), and cobalamin (median: 8.8%). For the male subgroup, the intake of a small amount of food of animal origin improved vitamin and mineral nutrient densities (except for zinc), whereas this was not the case for the female subgroup (except for calcium).Conclusion: In order to reach favourable vitamin and mineral intakes, vegans should consider taking supplements containing riboflavin, cobalamin, calcium, and iodine. Intake of total energy and protein should also be improved.Sponsorship: EDEN Foundation, Bad Soden, Germany; Stoll VITA Foundation, Waldshut-Tiengen, Germany |
Family environment of children and adolescents with bipolar parents. | OBJECTIVES
The effect of family environment on the development of bipolar disorder (BD) in children is not known. We sought to characterize families with children at high risk for developing BD in order to better understand the contributions of family environment to the development of childhood BD.
METHODS
We collected demographic data and parental ratings on the Family Environment Scale (FES) for 56 children (aged 6-18 years) from 36 families with at least one biological parent with BD. The cohort had previously been psychiatrically diagnosed according to semistructured interviews.
RESULTS
Statistical comparisons with normative data indicated that parents' ratings were significantly lower on the FES Cohesion and Organization scales and were significantly higher on the FES Conflict scale. Multivariate analyses of variance indicated that families with both parents having a mood disorder had no significantly different FES scores than families with only one parent with a mood disorder (BD). Diagnostic data indicated that while 54% of the children in the sample had an Axis I disorder and 14% had BD, FES scores did not differ significantly for subjects with or without an Axis I disorder, or with or without BD.
CONCLUSIONS
Families with a bipolar parent differ from the average family in having less cohesion and organization, and more conflict. Despite this difference, it does not appear that the environment alone of families with a bipolar parent determines the outcome of psychopathology in the children, or that the psychopathology of the children determines the family environment. |
Antimicrobial Activity of Propolis on Oral Microorganisms | Formation of dental caries is caused by the colonization and accumulation of oral microorganisms and extracellular polysaccharides that are synthesized from sucrose by glucosyltransferase of Streptococcus mutans. The production of glucosyltransferase from oral microorganisms was attempted, and it was found that Streptococcus mutans produced highest activity of the enzyme. Ethanolic extracts of propolis (EEP) were examined whether EEP inhibit the enzyme activity and growth of the bacteria or not. All EEP from various regions in Brazil inhibited both glucosyltransferase activity and growth of S. mutans, but one of the propolis from Rio Grande do Sul (RS2) demonstrated the highest inhibition of the enzyme activity and growth of the bacteria. It was also found that propolis (RS2) contained the highest concentrations of pinocembrin and galangin. |
Removal of heavy metals by an Aspergillus terreus strain immobilized in a polyurethane matrix. | AIMS
The aim was to investigate the biosorption of chromium, nickel and iron from metallurgical effluents, produced by a steel foundry, using a strain of Aspergillus terreus immobilized in polyurethane foam.
METHODS AND RESULTS
A. terreus UFMG-F01 was immobilized in polyurethane foam and subjected to biosorption tests with metallurgical effluents. Maximal metal uptake values of 164.5 mg g(-1) iron, 96.5 mg g(-1) chromium and 19.6 mg g(-1) nickel were attained in a culture medium containing 100% of effluent stream supplemented with 1% of glucose, after 6 d of incubation.
CONCLUSIONS
Microbial populations in metal-polluted environments include fungi that have adapted to otherwise toxic concentrations of heavy metals and have become metal resistant. In this work, a strain of A. terreus was successfully used as a metal biosorbent for the treatment of metallurgical effluents.
SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY
A. terreus UFMG-F01 was shown to have good biosorption properties with respect to heavy metals. The low cost and simplicity of this technique make its use ideal for the treatment of effluents from steel foundries. |
Classification of Attributes in a Natural Language Query into Different SQL Clauses | Attribute information in a natural language query is one of the key features for converting a natural language query into a Structured Query Language1 (SQL) in Natural Language Interface to Database systems. In this paper, we explore the task of classifying the attributes present in a natural language query into different SQL clauses in a SQL query. In particular, we investigate the effectiveness of various features and Conditional Random Fields for this task. Our system uses a statistical classifier trained on manually prepared data. We report our results on three different domains and also show how our system can be used for generating a complete SQL query. |
A brain-computer interface using electrocorticographic signals in humans. | Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) enable users to control devices with electroencephalographic (EEG) activity from the scalp or with single-neuron activity from within the brain. Both methods have disadvantages: EEG has limited resolution and requires extensive training, while single-neuron recording entails significant clinical risks and has limited stability. We demonstrate here for the first time that electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity recorded from the surface of the brain can enable users to control a one-dimensional computer cursor rapidly and accurately. We first identified ECoG signals that were associated with different types of motor and speech imagery. Over brief training periods of 3-24 min, four patients then used these signals to master closed-loop control and to achieve success rates of 74-100% in a one-dimensional binary task. In additional open-loop experiments, we found that ECoG signals at frequencies up to 180 Hz encoded substantial information about the direction of two-dimensional joystick movements. Our results suggest that an ECoG-based BCI could provide for people with severe motor disabilities a non-muscular communication and control option that is more powerful than EEG-based BCIs and is potentially more stable and less traumatic than BCIs that use electrodes penetrating the brain. |
Wideband internal antenna for Tablet/Laptop applications | According to the demands of modern communication products, Laptop/Tablet, at least four antennas are required to provide 3G WCDMA, 4G LTE, WiFi, BT, GPS, and Wimax. Recently, most antennas have employed planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) design. However, the conventional PIFA suffers from narrow bandwidth and the relative isolation is another issue when high efficiency of antennas is demanded. If we can use one antenna to cover above-mentioned frequency bands, the antenna can economize space in comparison to that of using the four antennas. The proposed antenna is composed of a broadband monopole and three parasitic antennas. It can cover 824-960 MHz, 1575 MHz, 1710-2690 MHz, 3300-3800 MHz, and 5150-6000MHz. Besides, the proposed antenna is suitable to be placed at the top or side of the Laptop/Tablet monitor due to its dimensions of 60 (length) × 3 (width) × 12 (height) mm3. |
Identifying differentially expressed genes using false discovery rate controlling procedures | MOTIVATION
DNA microarrays have recently been used for the purpose of monitoring expression levels of thousands of genes simultaneously and identifying those genes that are differentially expressed. The probability that a false identification (type I error) is committed can increase sharply when the number of tested genes gets large. Correlation between the test statistics attributed to gene co-regulation and dependency in the measurement errors of the gene expression levels further complicates the problem. In this paper we address this very large multiplicity problem by adopting the false discovery rate (FDR) controlling approach. In order to address the dependency problem, we present three resampling-based FDR controlling procedures, that account for the test statistics distribution, and compare their performance to that of the naïve application of the linear step-up procedure in Benjamini and Hochberg (1995). The procedures are studied using simulated microarray data, and their performance is examined relative to their ease of implementation.
RESULTS
Comparative simulation analysis shows that all four FDR controlling procedures control the FDR at the desired level, and retain substantially more power then the family-wise error rate controlling procedures. In terms of power, using resampling of the marginal distribution of each test statistics substantially improves the performance over the naïve one. The highest power is achieved, at the expense of a more sophisticated algorithm, by the resampling-based procedures that resample the joint distribution of the test statistics and estimate the level of FDR control.
AVAILABILITY
An R program that adjusts p-values using FDR controlling procedures is freely available over the Internet at www.math.tau.ac.il/~ybenja. |
Beyond Web 2.0: mapping the technology landscapes of young learners | Boundaries between formal and informal learning settings are shaped by influences beyond learners’ control. This can lead to the proscription of some familiar technologies that learners may like to use from some learning settings. This contested demarcation is not well documented. In this paper, we introduce the term ‘digital dissonance’ to describe this tension with respect to learners’ appropriation of Web 2.0 technologies in formal contexts. We present the results of a study that explores learners’ inand out-of-school use of Web 2.0 and related technologies. The study comprises two data sources: a questionnaire and a mapping activity. The contexts within which learners felt their technologies were appropriate or able to be used are also explored. Results of the study show that a sense of ‘digital dissonance’ occurs around learners’ experience of Web 2.0 activity in and out of school. Many learners routinely cross institutionally demarcated boundaries, but the implications of this activity are not well understood by institutions or indeed by learners themselves. More needs to be understood about the transferability of Web 2.0 skill sets and ways in which these can be used to support formal learning. |
Test Scaling and Value-Added Measurement | Conventional value-added assessment requires that achievement be reported on an interval scale. While many metrics do not have this property, application of item response theory (IRT) is said to produce interval scales. However, it is difficult to confirm that the requisite conditions are met. Even when they are, the properties of the data that make a test IRT scalable may not be the properties we seek to represent in an achievement scale, as shown by the lack of surface plausibility of many scales resulting from the application of IRT. An alternative, ordinal data analysis, is presented. It is shown that value-added estimates are sensitive to the choice of ordinal methods over conventional techniques. Value-added practitioners should ask themselves whether they are so confident of the metric properties of these scales that they are willing to attribute differences to the superiority of the latter. |
Sexual and physical health after sex reassignment surgery. | A long-term follow-up study of 55 transsexual patients (32 male-to-female and 23 female-to-male) post-sex reassignment surgery (SRS) was carried out to evaluate sexual and general health outcome. Relatively few and minor morbidities were observed in our group of patients, and they were mostly reversible with appropriate treatment. A trend toward more general health problems in male-to-females was seen, possibly explained by older age and smoking habits. Although all male-to-females, treated with estrogens continuously, had total testosterone levels within the normal female range because of estrogen effects on sex hormone binding globulin, only 32.1% reached normal free testosterone levels. After SRS, the transsexual person's expectations were met at an emotional and social level, but less so at the physical and sexual level even though a large number of transsexuals (80%) reported improvement of their sexuality. The female-to-males masturbated significantly more frequently than the male-to-females, and a trend to more sexual satisfaction, more sexual excitement, and more easily reaching orgasm was seen in the female-to-male group. The majority of participants reported a change in orgasmic feeling, toward more powerful and shorter for female-to-males and more intense, smoother, and longer in male-to-females. Over two-thirds of male-to-females reported the secretion of a vaginal fluid during sexual excitation, originating from the Cowper's glands, left in place during surgery. In female-to-males with erection prosthesis, sexual expectations were more realized (compared to those without), but pain during intercourse was more often reported. |
Episodic Future Thinking Reduces Reward Delay Discounting through an Enhancement of Prefrontal-Mediotemporal Interactions | Humans discount the value of future rewards over time. Here we show using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neural coupling analyses that episodic future thinking reduces the rate of delay discounting through a modulation of neural decision-making and episodic future thinking networks. In addition to a standard control condition, real subject-specific episodic event cues were presented during a delay discounting task. Spontaneous episodic imagery during cue processing predicted how much subjects changed their preferences toward more future-minded choice behavior. Neural valuation signals in the anterior cingulate cortex and functional coupling of this region with hippocampus and amygdala predicted the degree to which future thinking modulated individual preference functions. A second experiment replicated the behavioral effects and ruled out alternative explanations such as date-based processing and temporal focus. The present data reveal a mechanism through which neural decision-making and prospection networks can interact to generate future-minded choice behavior. |
Design and Characterization of High-Voltage 4H-SiC p-IGBTs | High-voltage p-channel 4H-SiC insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) have been fabricated and characterized. The devices have a forward voltage drop of 7.2 V at 100 A/cm2 and a -16 V gate bias at 25degC, corresponding to a specific on-resistance of 72 mOmega ldr cm2 and a differential on-resistance of 26 mmOmega ldr cm2. Hole mobility of 12 cm2/V ldr s in the inversion channel with a threshold voltage of -6 V was achieved by optimizing the n+ well doping profile and gate oxidation process. A novel current enhancement layer was adopted to reduce the JFET resistance and enhance conductivity modulation by improving hole current spreading and suppressing the electron current conduction through the top n-p-n transistor. Inductive switching results have shown that the p-IGBT exhibited a turn-off time of ~1 mus and a turn-off energy loss of 12 m J at 4-kV dc-link voltage and 6-A load current at 25degC. The turn-off trajectory from the measured inductive load switching waveforms and numerical simulations shows that the p-IGBT had a near-square reverse bias safe operating area. Numerical simulations have been conducted to achieve an improved tradeoff between forward voltage drop and switching off energy by investigating the effects of drift layer lifetime and p-buffer layer parameters. The advantages of SiC p-IGBTs, such as the potential of very low ON-state resistance, slightly positive temperature coefficient, high switching speed, small switching losses, and large safe operating area, make them suitable and attractive for high-power high-frequency applications. |
Early skin-to-skin contact for mothers and their healthy newborn infants. | BACKGROUND
Mother-infant separation postbirth is common in Western culture. Early skin-to-skin contact (SSC) begins ideally at birth and involves placing the naked baby, covered across the back with a warm blanket, prone on the mother's bare chest. According to mammalian neuroscience, the intimate contact inherent in this place (habitat) evokes neurobehaviors ensuring fulfillment of basic biological needs. This time may represent a psychophysiologically 'sensitive period' for programming future behavior.
OBJECTIVES
To assess the effects of early SSC on breastfeeding, behavior, and physiological adaptation in healthy mother-newborn dyads.
SEARCH STRATEGY
Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group's and Neonatal Group's Trials Registers (August 2006), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library 2006, Issue 2), MEDLINE (1976 to 2006).
SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomized and quasi-randomized clinical trials comparing early SSC with usual hospital care.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
We independently assessed trial quality and extracted data. Study authors were contacted for additional information.
MAIN RESULTS
Thirty studies involving 1925 participants (mother-infant dyads), were included. Data from more than two trials were available for only 8-of-64 outcome measures. We found statistically significant and positive effects of early SSC on breastfeeding at one to four months postbirth (10 trials; 552 participants) (odds ratio (OR) 1.82, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08 to 3.07), and breastfeeding duration (seven trials; 324 participants) (weighted mean difference (WMD) 42.55, 95% CI -1.69 to 86.79). Trends were found for improved summary scores for maternal affectionate love/touch during observed breastfeeding (four trials; 314 participants) (standardized mean difference (SMD) 0.52, 95% CI 0.07 to 0.98) and maternal attachment behavior (six trials; 396 participants) (SMD 0.52, 95% CI 0.31 to 0.72) with early SSC. SSC infants cried for a shorter length of time (one trial; 44 participants) (WMD -8.01, 95% CI -8.98 to -7.04). Late preterm infants had better cardio-respiratory stability with early SSC (one trial; 35 participants) (WMD 2.88, 95% CI 0.53 to 5.23). No adverse effects were found.
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
Limitations included methodological quality, variations in intervention implementation, and outcome variability. The intervention may benefit breastfeeding outcomes, early mother-infant attachment, infant crying and cardio-respiratory stability, and has no apparent short or long-term negative effects. Further investigation is recommended. To facilitate meta-analysis, future research should be done using outcome measures consistent with those in the studies included here. Published reports should clearly indicate if the intervention was SSC and include means, standard deviations, exact probability values, and data to measure intervention dose. |
Bit error rate in NAND Flash memories | NAND flash memories have bit errors that are corrected by error-correction codes (ECC). We present raw error data from multi-level-cell devices from four manufacturers, identify the root-cause mechanisms, and estimate the resulting uncorrectable bit error rates (UBER). Write, retention, and read-disturb errors all contribute. Accurately estimating the UBER requires care in characterization to include all write errors, which are highly erratic, and guardbanding for variation in raw bit error rate. NAND UBER values can be much better than 10-15, but UBER is a strong function of program/erase cycling and subsequent retention time, so UBER specifications must be coupled with maximum specifications for these quantities. |
Pharmacogenomics knowledge for personalized medicine. | The Pharmacogenomics Knowledgebase (PharmGKB) is a resource that collects, curates, and disseminates information about the impact of human genetic variation on drug responses. It provides clinically relevant information, including dosing guidelines, annotated drug labels, and potentially actionable gene-drug associations and genotype-phenotype relationships. Curators assign levels of evidence to variant-drug associations using well-defined criteria based on careful literature review. Thus, PharmGKB is a useful source of high-quality information supporting personalized medicine-implementation projects. |
An Incentive-Compatible Routing Protocol for Two-Hop Delay-Tolerant Networks | Delay-tolerant networks (DTNs) rely on the mobility of nodes and their contacts to make up with the lack of continuous connectivity and, thus, enable message delivery from source to destination in a “store-carry-forward” fashion. Since message delivery consumes resource such as storage and power, some nodes may choose not to forward or carry others' messages while relying on others to deliver their locally generated messages. These kinds of selfish behaviors may hinder effective communications over DTNs. In this paper, we present an efficient incentive-compatible (IC) routing protocol (ICRP) with multiple copies for two-hop DTNs based on the algorithmic game theory. It takes both the encounter probability and transmission cost into consideration to deal with the misbehaviors of selfish nodes. Moreover, we employ the optimal sequential stopping rule and Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auction as a strategy to select optimal relay nodes to ensure that nodes that honestly report their encounter probability and transmission cost can maximize their rewards. We attempt to find the optimal stopping time threshold adaptively based on realistic probability model and propose an algorithm to calculate the threshold. Based on this threshold, we propose a new method to select relay nodes for multicopy transmissions. To ensure that the selected relay nodes can receive their rewards securely, we develop a signature scheme based on a bilinear map to prevent the malicious nodes from tampering. Through simulations, we demonstrate that ICRP can effectively stimulate nodes to forward/carry messages and achieve higher packet delivery ratio with lower transmission cost. |
Vaccination strategies against Zika virus. | The epidemic emergence of Zika virus (ZIKV) in 2015-2016 has been associated with congenital malformations and neurological sequela. Current efforts to develop a ZIKV vaccine build on technologies that successfully reduced infection or disease burden against closely related flaviviruses or other RNA viruses. Subunit-based (DNA plasmid and modified mRNA), viral vectored (adeno- and measles viruses) and inactivated viral vaccines are already advancing to clinical trials in humans after successful mouse and non-human primate studies. Among the greatest challenges for the rapid implementation of immunogenic and protective ZIKV vaccines will be addressing the potential for exacerbating Dengue virus infection or causing Guillain-Barré syndrome through production of cross-reactive immunity targeting related viral or host proteins. Here, we review vaccine strategies under development for ZIKV and the issues surrounding their usage. |
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