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Safety and efficacy of two-step peginterferon α-2a treatment in patients of chronic hepatitis B with acute exacerbation | The focus of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of sequential peginterferon α-2a (Pegasys) therapy for chronic hepatitis B with acute exacerbation [ALT > 10 × upper limit of normal (ULN), bilirubin <2.0 mg/dL]. Four groups of patients categorized by HBeAg status and treatment regimens were studied since May 2007. Nineteen HBeAg-positive patients (Group 1) had received entecavir pretreatment (when ALT > 10 × ULN) plus Pegasys (180 μg/kg/week, when ALT was 5-10 × ULN) for 24 weeks. Thirteen HBeAg-negative patients (Group 2) had the same protocol for 48 weeks. In both groups, entecavir was then discontinued 14 days after the initiation of Pegasys. The results were compared, respectively, to 35 HBeAg-positive patients (Group 3) and 24 HBeAg-negative patients (Group 4), all with ALT > 5 × ULN, under continual entecavir monotherapy. The ALT levels of patients in Group 1 and 2 who had received entecavir pretreatment for a duration of 19.63 ± 3.34 days were below four times of ULN following 4 weeks of Pegasys treatment. At week 96, the rates of sustained virological response were 69.2% (9/13) and 80% (8/10), and the relapse rates were 23.1% (3/13) and 11.2% (1/9) for HBeAg-positive and HBeAg-negative patients with two-step Pegasys treatment, respectively. The HBeAg seroconversion rates were 46.2% in Group 1, and 42.1% in Group 3; HBsAg loss rates were 15.4% (2/13) in Group 1, and 30% (3/10) in Group 2, whereas none achieved HBsAg loss with entecavir monotherapy (Group 3 and 4). The two-step Pegasys treatment offers an alternative, other than the nucleos(t)ides, for treating chronic hepatitis B with acute exacerbation and provides a safe, efficacious, short-term and finite strategy. |
YouTube2Text: Recognizing and Describing Arbitrary Activities Using Semantic Hierarchies and Zero-Shot Recognition | Despite a recent push towards large-scale object recognition, activity recognition remains limited to narrow domains and small vocabularies of actions. In this paper, we tackle the challenge of recognizing and describing activities ``in-the-wild''. We present a solution that takes a short video clip and outputs a brief sentence that sums up the main activity in the video, such as the actor, the action and its object. Unlike previous work, our approach works on out-of-domain actions: it does not require training videos of the exact activity. If it cannot find an accurate prediction for a pre-trained model, it finds a less specific answer that is also plausible from a pragmatic standpoint. We use semantic hierarchies learned from the data to help to choose an appropriate level of generalization, and priors learned from Web-scale natural language corpora to penalize unlikely combinations of actors/actions/objects, we also use a Web-scale language model to ``fill in'' novel verbs, i.e. when the verb does not appear in the training set. We evaluate our method on a large YouTube corpus and demonstrate it is able to generate short sentence descriptions of video clips better than baseline approaches. |
Abacus: A Processor Family for Education | We present the Abacus processor family and its compiler framework for the MiniC language that we have developed for teaching processor architectures. Besides typical RISC instructions, Abacus also offers instructions for vector processing and thread synchronization, but it is still small enough to be discussed completely in a class. With reasonable effort, students can therefore modify given implementations of micro-architectures and code generators to deepen their understanding of the theoretical concepts. Moreover, using benchmark examples, they can explore the quantitative aspects of their optimizations. In contrast to commercial and other educational processors, we provide many micro-architectures that are based on a pure concept only rather than on a combination of concepts, and we provide code generators which contain the core ideas of some architectures. |
Elective versus Therapeutic Neck Dissection in Node-Negative Oral Cancer. | BACKGROUND
Whether patients with early-stage oral cancers should be treated with elective neck dissection at the time of the primary surgery or with therapeutic neck dissection after nodal relapse has been a matter of debate.
METHODS
In this prospective, randomized, controlled trial, we evaluated the effect on survival of elective node dissection (ipsilateral neck dissection at the time of the primary surgery) versus therapeutic node dissection (watchful waiting followed by neck dissection for nodal relapse) in patients with lateralized stage T1 or T2 oral squamous-cell carcinomas. Primary and secondary end points were overall survival and disease-free survival, respectively.
RESULTS
Between 2004 and 2014, a total of 596 patients were enrolled. As prespecified by the data and safety monitoring committee, this report summarizes results for the first 500 patients (245 in the elective-surgery group and 255 in the therapeutic-surgery group), with a median follow-up of 39 months. There were 81 recurrences and 50 deaths in the elective-surgery group and 146 recurrences and 79 deaths in the therapeutic-surgery group. At 3 years, elective node dissection resulted in an improved rate of overall survival (80.0%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 74.1 to 85.8), as compared with therapeutic dissection (67.5%; 95% CI, 61.0 to 73.9), for a hazard ratio for death of 0.64 in the elective-surgery group (95% CI, 0.45 to 0.92; P=0.01 by the log-rank test). At that time, patients in the elective-surgery group also had a higher rate of disease-free survival than those in the therapeutic-surgery group (69.5% vs. 45.9%, P<0.001). Elective node dissection was superior in most subgroups without significant interactions. Rates of adverse events were 6.6% and 3.6% in the elective-surgery group and the therapeutic-surgery group, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS
Among patients with early-stage oral squamous-cell cancer, elective neck dissection resulted in higher rates of overall and disease-free survival than did therapeutic neck dissection. (Funded by the Tata Memorial Centre; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00193765.). |
Multiple Cameras Using Real Time Object Tracking for Surveillance and Security System | In this paper we propose multiple cameras using real time tracking for surveillance and security system. It is extensively used in the research field of computer vision applications, like that video surveillance, authentication systems, robotics, pre-stage of MPEG4 image compression and user inter faces by gestures. The key components of tracking for surveillance system are extracting the feature, background subtraction and identification of extracted object. Video surveillance, object detection and tracking have drawn a successful increased interest in recent years. A object tracking can be understood as the problem of finding the path (i.e. trajectory) and it can be defined as a procedure to identify the different positions of the object in each frame of a video. Based on the previous work on single detection using single stationary camera, we extend the concept to enable the tracking of multiple object detection under multiple camera and also maintain a security based system by multiple camera to track person in indoor environment, to identify by my proposal system which consist of multiple camera to monitor a person. Present study mainly aims to provide security and detect the moving object in real time video sequences and live video streaming. Based on a robust algorithm for human body detection and tracking in videos created with support of multiple cameras. |
Binding interaction of indomethacin with human serum albumin. | The interaction between indomethacin and human serum albumin (HSA) was investigated by fluorescence quenching technique and UV-vis absorption spectroscopy. The results of fluorescence titration revealed that indomethacin, strongly quench the intrinsic fluorescence of HSA by static quenching and nonradiative energy transfer. The binding site number n and the apparent binding constant K(A), were calculated using linear and nonlinear fit to the experimental data. The distance r between donor (HSA) and acceptor (indomethacin) was obtained according to fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). The study suggests that the donor and the acceptor are bound at different locations but within the quenching distance. |
Attitudes Towards Self-change: A Comparison of Japanese and American University Students | This study examined attitudes related to the possibility of changing cognitions and behaviours among samples of college students in the United States and Japan. Students were asked to identify three things about themselves that they wanted to change, the method they would use to effect these changes, how difficult they thought making such changes would be, and how much they desired to make the changes. Japanese and US students differed significantly in the frequency with which they mentioned all seven aspects of the self that were targeted for change. Students in the United States expressed a desire to improve their sociability, academic achievement and cognitive abilities, physical appearance, and sense of individuality. Students in Japan were most concerned about enhancing their relationships with others, self-control and motivation, and ability to manage practical affairs. In addition, US respondents were more likely than their Japanese counterparts to use behaviour-oriented strategies, to believe it w... |
Measurement of heart rate using photoplethysmography | Heart rate, or pulse, is one of the vital signs used to measure basic functions of human body. Heart rate is the number of times one's heart beats per minute. The method that has been used to measure heart rate in this project is widely known as photoplethysmography (PPG). The constructed device can be used to find out the heart rate of a person and to analyze readings using existing software. Theoretically, any body part can be used to measure heart rate through the sensor of the device, although fingertips and earlobes are commonly targeted. |
IDRA: An ontology driven Cognitive Computing System | The problem I intend to address in my PhD research is t e leak of quality of the information extracted from Big Data u sing only a statistical approach. Google Flu is an explanatory example of how the knowledge extraction of Big Data based only on statistical methods could produce low quality results and lead to a misinterpretation of reality. Could it be feasible and effective to design a system that is able to leverage ontologies to balance the limits of statistical methods? Here I present an architecture of an ontology driven Cognitive Computing System that leverages ontologies to filter s atistical data. |
CNNLab: a Novel Parallel Framework for Neural Networks using GPU and FPGA-a Practical Study with Trade-off Analysis | Designing and implementing efficient, provably correct parallel neural network processing is challenging. Existing high-level parallel abstractions like MapReduce are insufficiently expressive while low-level tools like MPI and Pthreads leave ML experts repeatedly solving the same design challenges. However, the diversity and large-scale data size have posed a significant challenge to construct a flexible and high-performance implementation of deep learning neural networks. To improve the performance and maintain the scalability, we present CNNLab, a novel deep learning framework using GPU and FPGA-based accelerators. CNNLab provides a uniform programming model to users so that the hardware implementation and the scheduling are invisible to the programmers. At runtime, CNNLab leverages the trade-offs between GPU and FPGA before offloading the tasks to the accelerators. Experimental results on the state-of-the-art Nvidia K40 GPU and Altera DE5 FPGA board demonstrate that the CNNLab can provide a universal framework with efficient support for diverse applications without increasing the burden of the programmers. Moreover, we analyze the detailed quantitative performance, throughput, power, energy, and performance density for both approaches. Experimental results leverage the trade-offs between GPU and FPGA and provide useful practical experiences for the deep learning research community. |
Warmstarting of Model-Based Algorithm Configuration | The performance of many hard combinatorial problem solvers depends strongly on their parameter settings, and since manual parameter tuning is both tedious and suboptimal the AI community has recently developed several algorithm configuration (AC) methods to automatically address this problem. While all existing AC methods start the configuration process of an algorithm A from scratch for each new type of benchmark instances, here we propose to exploit information about A’s performance on previous benchmarks in order to warmstart its configuration on new types of benchmarks. We introduce two complementary ways in which we can exploit this information to warmstart AC methods based on a predictive model. Experiments for optimizing a flexible modern SAT solver on twelve different instance sets show that our methods often yield substantial speedups over existing AC methods (up to 165-fold) and can also find substantially better configurations given the same compute budget. |
Competitive intelligence process and tools for intelligence analysis | Purpose – The purpose of this survey research is twofold. First, to study and report the process that is commonly used to create and maintain a competitive intelligence (CI) program in organizations. And second, to provide an analysis of several emergent text mining, web mining and visualization-based CI tools, which are specific to collection and analysis of intelligence. Design/methodology/approach – A range of recently published research literature on CI processes, applications, tools and technologies to collect and analyze competitive information within organizations is reviewed to explore their current state, issues and challenges learned from their practice. Findings – The paper provides executive decision makers and strategic managers a better understanding of what methods are available and appropriate to the decisions they must make and the steps involved in CI undertaking. Originality/value – The findings of this research provide the managers of CI programs a context for understanding which tools and techniques are better suited to their specific types of problems; and help them develop and evaluate a usable set of tools and best practices to apply to their industry. |
Deep learning for stock prediction using numerical and textual information | This paper proposes a novel application of deep learning models, Paragraph Vector, and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), to financial time series forecasting. Investors make decisions according to various factors, including consumer price index, price-earnings ratio, and miscellaneous events reported in newspapers. In order to assist their decisions in a timely manner, many automatic ways to analyze those information have been proposed in the last decade. However, many of them used either numerical or textual information, but not both for a single company. In this paper, we propose an approach that converts newspaper articles into their distributed representations via Paragraph Vector and models the temporal effects of past events on opening prices about multiple companies with LSTM. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated on real-world data of fifty companies listed on Tokyo Stock Exchange. |
Using support vector machines with a novel hybrid feature selection method for diagnosis of erythemato-squamous diseases | 0957-4174/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2010.10.050 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 29 85307830; fax E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Xie) (C. Wang). In this paper, we developed a diagnosis model based on support vector machines (SVM) with a novel hybrid feature selection method to diagnose erythemato-squamous diseases. Our proposed hybrid feature selection method, named improved F-score and Sequential Forward Search (IFSFS), combines the advantages of filter and wrapper methods to select the optimal feature subset from the original feature set. In our IFSFS, we improved the original F-score from measuring the discrimination of two sets of real numbers to measuring the discrimination between more than two sets of real numbers. The improved Fscore and Sequential Forward Search (SFS) are combined to find the optimal feature subset in the process of feature selection, where, the improved F-score is an evaluation criterion of filter method, and SFS is an evaluation system of wrapper method. The best parameters of kernel function of SVM are found out by grid search technique. Experiments have been conducted on different training-test partitions of the erythemato-squamous diseases dataset taken from UCI (University of California Irvine) machine learning database. Our experimental results show that the proposed SVM-based model with IFSFS achieves 98.61% classification accuracy and contains 21 features. With these results, we conclude our method is very promising compared to the previously reported results. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Anxiety sensitivity and marijuana use: an analysis from ecological momentary assessment. | BACKGROUND
The cognitive factor of Anxiety Sensitivity (AS; the fear of anxiety and related bodily sensations) is theorized to play a role in cannabis use and its disorders. Lower-order facets of AS (physical concerns, mental incapacitation concerns, and social concerns) may be differentially related to cannabis use behavior. However, little is known about the impact of AS facets on the immediate antecedents of cannabis use.
METHODS
This study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to prospectively examine the relations between specific facets of AS, cannabis craving, state anxiety, and cannabis use in the natural environment using real-world data about ad lib cannabis use episodes. Participants were 49 current cannabis users (38.8% female).
RESULTS
AS-mental incapacitation fears were related to significantly greater severity of cannabis-related problems at baseline. During the EMA period, AS-mental incapacitation and AS-social concerns significantly interacted with cannabis craving to prospectively predict subsequent cannabis use. Specifically, individuals with higher craving and either higher AS-mental incapacitation or AS-social concerns were the most likely to subsequently use cannabis. In contrast to prediction, no AS facet significantly moderated the relationship between state anxiety and cannabis use.
CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest facets of AS (mental incapacitation and social fears) interact with cannabis craving to predict cannabis use. Findings also suggest differential relations between facets of AS and cannabis-related behaviors. |
Effects of aromatherapy acupressure on hemiplegic shoulder pain and motor power in stroke patients: a pilot study. | OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to determine if aromatherapy acupressure, compared to acupressure alone, was effective in reducing hemiplegic shoulder pain and improving motor power in stroke patients.
DESIGN
This work was a randomized, controlled trial.
SUBJECTS
Thirty (30) stroke patients with hemiplegic shoulder pain participated in this study.
INTERVENTION
Subjects were randomly assigned to either an aromatherapy acupressure group (N = 15) or an acupressure group ( N = 15), with aromatherapy acupressure using lavender, rosemary, and peppermint given only to the former group. Each acupressure session lasted 20 minutes and was performed twice-daily for 2 weeks.
OUTCOMES MEASURES
Shoulder pain and motor power were the outcome measures used in this study.
RESULTS
The pain scores were markedly reduced in both groups at post-treatment, compared to pretreatment (both aroma acupressure and acupressure group, p < 0.001). A nonparametric statistical analysis revealed that the pain score differed significantly between the 2 groups at post-treatment ( p < 0.01). The motor power significantly improved at post-treatment, compared to pretreatment, in both groups ( p < 0.005). However, there was no intergroup difference between two groups.
CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that aromatherapy acupressure exerts positive effects on hemiplegic shoulder pain, compared to acupressure alone, in stroke patients. |
Indian Herbs and Herbal Drugs Used for the Treatment of Diabetes | Traditional Medicines derived from medicinal plants are used by about 60% of the world's population. This review focuses on Indian Herbal drugs and plants used in the treatment of diabetes, especially in India. Diabetes is an important human ailment afflicting many from various walks of life in different countries. In India it is proving to be a major health problem, especially in the urban areas. Though there are various approaches to reduce the ill effects of diabetes and its secondary complications, herbal formulations are preferred due to lesser side effects and low cost. A list of medicinal plants with proven antidiabetic and related beneficial effects and of herbal drugs used in treatment of diabetes is compiled. These include, Allium sativum, Eugenia jambolana, Momordica charantia Ocimum sanctum, Phyllanthus amarus, Pterocarpus marsupium, Tinospora cordifolia, Trigonella foenum graecum and Withania somnifera. One of the etiologic factors implicated in the development of diabetes and its complications is the damage induced by free radicals and hence an antidiabetic compound with antioxidant properties would be more beneficial. Therefore information on antioxidant effects of these medicinal plants is also included. |
Women and Repayment in Microfinance ∗ | This paper analyzes gender-differences with respect to microfinance repayment-rates using a large global dataset covering 350 Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) in 70 countries. The results indicate that more women clients is associated with lower portfolio-at-risk, lower write-offs, and lower credit-loss provisions, ceteris paribus. These findings confirm common believes that women in general are a better credit-risk for MFIs. Interaction effects reveal that the effect is stronger for NGOs, individual-based lenders, ‘finance plus’-providers and regulated MFIs. This indicates that two types of MFIs benefit more than others from focussing on women: First, those MFIs that develop hands-on, women-friendly procedures tailored to individual women’s need, and Second, those MFIs that apply coercive enforcement methods to which women are more responsive. Key-words: Microfinance, Gender, Repayment, Portfolio-at risk, Write-offs, Provisions JEL-classification codes: O10,O12 ∗ All remaining errors remain our own responsibility. 1 Roy Mersland is the corresponding author. All correspondence can be addressed to [email protected] |
Predicting Domain Generation Algorithms with Long Short-Term Memory Networks | Various families of malware use domain generation algorithms (DGAs) to generate a large number of pseudo-random domain names to connect to a command and control (C2) server. In order to block DGA C2 traffic, security organizations must first discover the algorithm by reverse engineering malware samples, then generate a list of domains for a given seed. The domains are then either preregistered, sink-holed or published in a DNS blacklist. This process is not only tedious, but can be readily circumvented by malware authors. An alternative approach to stop malware from using DGAs is to intercept DNS queries on a network and predict whether domains are DGA generated. Much of the previous work in DGA detection is based on finding groupings of like domains and using their statistical properties to determine if they are DGA generated. However, these techniques are run over large time windows and cannot be used for real-time detection and prevention. In addition, many of these techniques also use contextual information such as passive DNS and aggregations of all NXDomains throughout a network. Such requirements are not only costly to integrate, they may not be possible due to real-world constraints of many systems (such as endpoint detection). An alternative to these systems is a much harder problem: detect DGA generation on a per domain basis with no information except for the domain name. Previous work to solve this harder problem exhibits poor performance and many of these systems rely heavily on manual creation of features; a time consuming process that can easily be circumvented by malware authors. This paper presents a DGA classifier that leverages long short-term memory (LSTM) networks for real-time prediction of DGAs without the need for contextual information or manually created features. In addition, the presented technique can accurately perform multiclass classification giving the ability to attribute a DGA generated domain to a specific malware family. The technique is extremely easy to implement using open source tools allowing the technique to be deployed in almost any setting. Results are significantly better than all state-of-the-art techniques, providing 0.9993 area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for binary classification and a micro-averaged F1 score of 0.9906. In other terms, the LSTM technique can provide a 90% detection rate with a 1:10000 false positive (FP) rate—a twenty times FP improvement over the next best method. Experiments in this paper are run on open datasets and code snippets are provided to reproduce the results. |
Direct torque control via feedback linearization for permanent magnet synchronous motor drives | The paper describes a direct torque controlled (DTC) permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drive that employs feedback linearization and uses sliding-mode and linear controllers. We introduce a new feedback linearization approach that yields a decoupled linear PMSM model with two state variables, the torque and the square of stator flux magnitude. This linear model is intuitive and allows the implementation of DTC-type controllers that preserve all DTC advantages and eliminate its main drawback, the flux and torque ripple. Next, we investigate two controllers for toque and flux. A variable structure controller (VSC) which is robust, fast, and produces low-ripple control is compared with a linear-DTC scheme which is ripple free. The torque time response is similar to a conventional DTC drive and the proposed solutions are flexible and highly tunable. We present the controller design and analyze the robust stability. Experimental results for a sensorless PMSM drive validate the proposed solution. |
The femoral calcar: a computed tomography anatomical study. | The femoral calcar is a dense internal septum reaching from the femoral neck to the distal part of the lesser trochanter. Our study aimed at providing an exhaustive radio-anatomical description of this structure. One hundred pelvic computed tomography examinations were retrospectively selected to bilaterally evaluate the shape, dimensions, and density of the femoral calcar. Then, its relation to the femoral cavity was assessed by recording the dimensions of the medullary canal at the level of the greatest length of the spur. The femoral calcar exhibited a variable shape classified as ridge-type 17% (34/200), spur-type 66.5% (133/200), and septum-type 16.5% (33/200). Its mean dimensions were: height = 33.03 mm (20-46), length = 9.94 mm (5-16), and thickness = 2.71 mm (1-4). These dimensions were positively correlated to the height and weight of the individuals (P < 0.001) and were higher in males (P < 0.001). Its mean density was 788.5 Hounsfield units (530-1,200). The longest oblique and anteroposterior diameters of the femoral cavity were respectively 38.74 mm (28-51) and 22.04 mm (17-27). The femoral cavity dimensions were positively correlated to the height and weight of the individuals (P < 0.001), to the femoral calcar dimensions (P < 0.001) and were higher in males (P < 0.001). The femoral calcar was constantly identified as a vertical plate of compact bone exhibiting a consistent anatomical pattern, which suggests a significant mechanical function within the upper femur. Our results may lead to a greater understanding of the hip fracture patterns and to alternative designs for hip arthroplasties. |
Making recombinant proteins in filamentous fungi- are we expecting too much? | Hosts used for the production of recombinant proteins are typically high-protein secreting mutant strains that have been selected for a specific purpose, such as efficient production of cellulose-degrading enzymes. Somewhat surprisingly, sequencing of the genomes of a series of mutant strains of the cellulolytic Trichoderma reesei, widely used as an expression host for recombinant gene products, has shed very little light on the nature of changes that boost high-level protein secretion. While it is generally agreed and shown that protein secretion in filamentous fungi occurs mainly through the hyphal tip, there is growing evidence that secretion of proteins also takes place in sub-apical regions. Attempts to increase correct folding and thereby the yields of heterologous proteins in fungal hosts by co-expression of cellular chaperones and foldases have resulted in variable success; underlying reasons have been explored mainly at the transcriptional level. The observed physiological changes in fungal strains experiencing increasing stress through protein overexpression under strong gene promoters also reflect the challenge the host organisms are experiencing. It is evident, that as with other eukaryotes, fungal endoplasmic reticulum is a highly dynamic structure. Considering the above, there is an emerging body of work exploring the use of weaker expression promoters to avoid undue stress. Filamentous fungi have been hailed as candidates for the production of pharmaceutically relevant proteins for therapeutic use. One of the biggest challenges in terms of fungally produced heterologous gene products is their mode of glycosylation; fungi lack the functionally important terminal sialylation of the glycans that occurs in mammalian cells. Finally, exploration of the metabolic pathways and fluxes together with the development of sophisticated fermentation protocols may result in new strategies to produce recombinant proteins in filamentous fungi. |
Domo: a force sensing humanoid robot for manipulation research | Humanoid robots found in research and commercial use today typically lack the ability to operate in unstructured and unknown environments. Force sensing and compliance at each robot joint can allow the robot to safely act in these environments. However, these features can be difficult to incorporate into robot designs. We present a new force sensing and compliant humanoid under development in the humanoid robotics group at MIT CSAIL. The robot, named Domo, is to be a research platform for exploring issues in general dexterous manipulation, visual perception, and learning. In this paper we describe aspects of the design, detail proposed research directions for the robot, and illustrate how the design of humanoid robots can be informed by the desired research goals. |
Chemical potential on the lattice. | Imposing a physically desirable constraint, we obtain a class of lattice actions for nonzero chemical potential. Unfortunately, none of them lead to a real fermion determinant in general. |
An ultra-high precision, high bandwidth torque sensor for microrobotics applications | Motivated by the need for torque sensing in the µNm range for experiments with insect-sized flapping-wing robots, we present the design, fabrication and testing of a custom single-axis torque sensor. The micorobots in question are too large for MEMS force/torque sensors used for smaller live insects such as fruit flies, but too small to produce torques within the dynamic range of commercially available force/torque sensors. Our sensor consists of laser-machined Invar sheets that are assembled into a three dimensional beam. A capacitive displacement sensor is used to measure displacement of a target plate when the beam rotates, and the output voltage is correlated to applied torque. Sensor bandwidth, range, and resolution are designed to match the criteria of the robotic fly experiments while remaining insensitive to off-axis loads. We present a final sensor design with a range of ±130µNm, a resolution of 4.5nNm, and bandwidth of 1kHz. |
Biomechanical analysis of the pectoralis major tendon and comparison of techniques for tendo-osseous repair. | BACKGROUND
Various described surgical techniques exist for the repair of pectoralis major ruptures at the tendo-osseous junction. It is unclear how these techniques restore the native properties of the pectoralis major tendon because its biomechanical properties have not been described.
HYPOTHESIS
All repairs will have lower initial biomechanical profiles than the native attachment, and transosseous sutures will demonstrate improved initial biomechanical performance compared with anchors or buttons.
STUDY DESIGN
Controlled laboratory study.
METHODS
Twenty-four fresh-frozen cadaveric shoulders were randomized to 4 equal groups, including 3 experimental repair groups and 1 control group of intact pectoralis major tendons. The characteristics of the native anatomic footprint were recorded, and the experimental groups underwent pectoralis detachment, followed by subsequent repair. The restoration of the anatomic footprint was recorded. All specimens were tested with cyclic loading and load-to-failure protocols with load, displacement, and optical marker data simultaneously collected.
RESULTS
Under cyclic loading, the intact specimens demonstrated a significantly higher secant stiffness (74.8 ± 1.6 N/mm) than the repair groups (endosteal Pec Button [PB], 46.2 ± 6.4 N/mm; suture anchor [SA], 45.9 ± 8.7 N/mm; transosseous [TO], 44.2 ± 5.5 N/mm). Measured as a percentage change, the PB and SA groups showed a significantly higher initial excursion than the intact group (PB, 24.0% ± 11.7%; SA, 17.5% ± 6.9%; intact, 2.2% ± 1.0%), and the PB group demonstrated a significantly higher cyclic elongation than the intact group (PB, 7.5% ± 2.9%; intact, 1.5% ± 1.5%). Under load-to-failure testing, the intact group showed a significantly greater maximum load (1454.8 ± 795.7 N) and linear stiffness (221.0 ± 111.7 N/mm) than the 3 repair groups (PB, 353.5 ± 88.3 N and 63.5 ± 6.9 N/mm; SA, 292.0 ± 73.3 N and 77.0 ± 7.8 N/mm; TO, 359.2 ± 110.4 N and 64.5 ± 14.1 N/mm, respectively). All repair constructs failed via suture pulling through the tendon.
CONCLUSION
The biomechanical characteristics of the transosseous repair, suture anchors, or Pec Button repair were inferior to those of the native pectoralis tendon. There was no significant difference in any of the biomechanical outcomes among the repair groups. Further refinement and evaluation of suture technique and configuration in pectoralis major repair should be considered.
CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Transosseous repair, suture anchors, and endosteal Pec Buttons appear to confer similar biomechanical integrity for pectoralis major repair. Restricting early activities to thresholds below the identified failure loads seems prudent until soft tissue healing to bone is reliably achieved. |
Practice Makes Perfect ? When Does Massed Learning Improve Product Usage Proficiency ? | Previous research has shown that spacing of information (over time) leads to better learning of product information. We develop a theoretical framework to describe how massed or spaced learning schedules interact with different learning styles to influence product usage proficiency. The core finding is that with experiential learning, proficiency in a product usage task is better under massed conditions, whereas with verbal learning, spacing works better. This effect is demonstrated for usage proficiency assessed via speed as well as quality of use. Further, massed learning also results in better usage proficiency on transfer tasks, for both experiential and verbal learning. We also find that massed learning in experiential learning conditions leads not only to better usage proficiency but also to positive perceptions of the product. Overall, the pattern of results is consistent with a conceptual mapping account, with massed experiences leading to a superior mental model of usage and thus to better usage proficiency. |
Service-Oriented Computing: State of the Art and Research Challenges | Service-oriented computing promotes the idea of assembling application components into a network of services that can be loosely coupled to create flexible, dynamic business processes and agile applications that span organizations and computing platforms. An SOC research road map provides a context for exploring ongoing research activities. |
The impact of credit scoring on consumer lending | We study the adoption of automated credit scoring at a large auto finance company and the changes it enabled in lending practices. Credit scoring appears to have increased profits by roughly a thousand dollars per loan. We identify two distinct benefits of risk classification: the ability to screen high-risk borrowers and the ability to target more generous loans to lower-risk borrowers. We show that these had effects of similar magnitude. We also document that credit scoring compressed profitability across dealerships, and provide evidence consistent with the view that credit scoring may have substituted for varying qualities of local information. |
Evaluating a tool for improving accessibility to charts and graphs | We discuss factors in the design and evaluation of natural language-driven assistive technologies that generate descriptions of, and allow interaction with, graphical representations of numerical data. In particular, we provide data in favor of 1) screen-reading technologies as a usable, useful, and cost-effective means of interacting with graphs. The data also show that by carrying out evaluation of Assistive Technologies on populations other than the target communities, certain subtleties of navigation and interaction may be lost or distorted. |
Formal specification, verification and evaluation of the MQTT protocol in the Internet of Things | This paper presents the formal modeling and performance analysis of one of Internet of Things (IoT) protocols. The Internet of Things is among the subjects best financed in the industry and studied in the academic world. The rapid evolution of mobile Internet, the manufacture of mini hardware, microcomputer, and machine-to-machine (M2M) enabled IoT technologies to be at the top of media subjects. These technologies allow things or devices that are not computers to act intelligently and to make collaborative decisions that are beneficial for certain applications. Hence, the intelligent decision making, the self configuration and the ad hoc networking are from the main characteristics of IoT. Therefore, the implementation of protocols for IoT must comply the standards and satisfy the good properties. Using formal methods in the study of developed protocols ensure these conditions. In this paper, we use probabilistic timed automata for the formal modeling of Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and we use further statistical model checking of UPPAAL SMC tool-set for the performance evaluation of the protocol. |
1 . 2 Sparsity : A Reasonable Assumption ? | Compressed sensing is a novel research area, which was introduced in 2006, and since then has already become a key concept in various areas of applied mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. It surprisingly predicts that high-dimensional signals, which allow a sparse representation by a suitable basis or, more generally, a frame, can be recovered from what was previously considered highly incomplete linear measurements by using efficient algorithms. This article shall serve as an introduction to and a survey about compressed sensing. |
Enhancing learning and retarding forgetting: choices and consequences. | Our research on learning enhancement has been focusing on the consequences for learning and forgetting of some of the more obvious and concrete choices that arise in instruction, including questions such as these: How does spacing of practice affect retention of information over significant retention intervals (up to 1 year)? Do spacing effects generalize beyond recall of verbal materials? Is feedback needed to promote learning, and must it be immediate? Although retrieval practice has been found to enhance learning in comparison with additional study, does it actually reduce the rate of forgetting? Can retrieval practice effects be extended to nonverbal materials? We suggest that as we begin to find answers to these questions, it should become possible for cognitive psychology to offer nonobvious advice that can be applied in a variety of instructional contexts to facilitate learning and reduce forgetting. |
Real-World Anomaly Detection in Surveillance Videos | Surveillance videos are able to capture a variety of realistic anomalies. In this paper, we propose to learn anomalies by exploiting both normal and anomalous videos. To avoid annotating the anomalous segments or clips in training videos, which is very time consuming, we propose to learn anomaly through the deep multiple instance ranking framework by leveraging weakly labeled training videos, i.e. the training labels (anomalous or normal) are at video-level instead of clip-level. In our approach, we consider normal and anomalous videos as bags and video segments as instances in multiple instance learning (MIL), and automatically learn a deep anomaly ranking model that predicts high anomaly scores for anomalous video segments. Furthermore, we introduce sparsity and temporal smoothness constraints in the ranking loss function to better localize anomaly during training. We also introduce a new large-scale first of its kind dataset of 128 hours of videos. It consists of 1900 long and untrimmed real-world surveillance videos, with 13 realistic anomalies such as fighting, road accident, burglary, robbery, etc. as well as normal activities. This dataset can be used for two tasks. First, general anomaly detection considering all anomalies in one group and all normal activities in another group. Second, for recognizing each of 13 anomalous activities. Our experimental results show that our MIL method for anomaly detection achieves significant improvement on anomaly detection performance as compared to the state-of-the-art approaches. We provide the results of several recent deep learning baselines on anomalous activity recognition. The low recognition performance of these baselines reveals that our dataset is very challenging and opens more opportunities for future work. The dataset is available at: http://crcv.ucf.edu/projects/real-world/ |
Understanding Android Obfuscation Techniques: A Large-Scale Investigation in the Wild | Program code is a precious asset to its owner. Due to the easyto-reverse nature of Java, code protection for Android apps is of particular importance. To this end, code obfuscation is widely utilized by both legitimate app developers andmalware authors, which complicates the representation of source code or machine code in order to hinder the manual investigation and code analysis. Despite many previous studies focusing on the obfuscation techniques, however, our knowledge on how obfuscation is applied by realworld developers is still limited. In this paper, we seek to better understand Android obfuscation and depict a holistic view of the usage of obfuscation through a large-scale investigation in the wild. In particular, we focus on four popular obfuscation approaches: identifier renaming, string encryption, Java reflection, and packing. To obtain the meaningful statistical results, we designed efficient and lightweight detection models for each obfuscation technique and applied them to our massive APK datasets (collected from Google Play, multiple thirdparty markets, and malware databases). We have learned several interesting facts from the result. For example, malware authors use string encryption more frequently, and more apps on third-party markets than Google Play are packed. We are also interested in the explanation of each finding. Therefore we carry out in-depth code analysis on some Android apps after sampling. We believe our study will help developers select the most suitable obfuscation approach, and in the meantime help researchers improve code analysis systems in the right direction. |
String Stable Heterogeneous Vehicle Platoon Using Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control | In this paper, a heterogeneous vehicle platoon equipped with Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) systems is studied. First, various causes of heterogeneity are reviewed. A selection of parameters is made, for which string stability is analyzed. The influence of controller parameters and headway time on string stability is studied. Numerical simulation results provide guidelines on how to choose controller parameters and headway time for different vehicles using CACC. |
Safety of Intra-arterial Catheter Directed Thrombolysis: Does Level of Care Matter? | OBJECTIVES
The aim was to assess whether the level of care influenced the safety related outcomes of catheter directed thrombolysis (CDT) for patients presenting with limb ischaemia and dialysis access thrombosis.
METHODS
This was a retrospective cohort study. All consecutive patients at two tertiary referral centres for vascular surgery undergoing CDT for limb ischaemia and dialysis access thrombosis (N = 252) between 2012 and 2014 were included. Patients at Centre 1 were cared for on a general vascular ward and patients at Centre 2 were kept on a post-operative recovery unit with an increased level of care including invasive haemodynamic monitoring. Patient medical records were retrospectively scrutinised and data collected on comorbidities, anti-thrombotic medication, indications for CDT, technical success of CDT, bleeding and non-bleeding related complications, and transfer to a higher level of care.
RESULTS
There were no differences in the frequency of non-bleeding related complications between Centre 1 and Centre 2. Patients on the vascular ward had a higher frequency of minor bleeding (p = .002) but there was no difference in major bleeding (p = .12). Eleven patients on the ward required an increased level of care for medical reasons and six were moved for a lack of resources. The presence of cardiac disease was an independent risk factor for patient transfer (OR 3.2; 95% CI 1.04-9.8, p = .04).
CONCLUSIONS
CDT may be undertaken outside of a high dependency setting without a significantly increased risk of complications. Pre-existing cardiac disease was an independent risk factor for transfer to a higher level of care. These findings could have an implication for the clinical cost-effectiveness of CDT. |
Prevalence of Molar-Incisor-Hypomineralisation among school children in four German cities. | BACKGROUND
A wide range for the prevalence of Molar-Incisor-Hypomineralisation (MIH) has been found in regional studies.
AIM
The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of MIH in Germany and to compare the findings with other studies.
DESIGN
In the compulsory dental school examination, the first permanent molars, permanent incisors, and second primary molars were examined according to EAPD criteria in 2395 children (8.1 ± 0.8 years) in four regions in Germany for the presence of MIH. Examinations were performed by five calibrated examiners (κ = 0.9) on clean teeth after toothbrushing.
RESULTS
The prevalence of MIH at the four regions differed considerably (4.3-14.6%) with a mean prevalence of 10.1%. The DMFT/dmft was generally low, but children with MIH exhibited statistically significant higher caries values. A total of 12.0% of the children with MIH also had at least one affected primary molar, which resulted in a statistically significant correlation between primary and permanent teeth. Most of the affected teeth had demarcated opacities, but more than half of the affected children showed at least one tooth with severe MIH.
CONCLUSIONS
Molar-Incisor-Hypomineralisation is a prevalent finding in German school children. The prevalence varies highly in different regions, and the high rate of severe forms has clinically relevant implications. |
An Approach to Glove-Based Gesture Recognition | Nowadays, computer interaction is mostly done using dedicated devices. But gestures are an easy mean of expression between humans that could be used to communicate with computers in a more natural manner. Most of the current research on hand gesture recognition for HumanComputer Interaction rely on either the Neural Networks or Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). In this paper, we compare different approaches for gesture recognition and highlight the major advantages of each. We show that gestures recognition based on the Bio-mechanical characteristic of the hand provides an intuitive approach which provides more accuracy and less complexity. |
Complex Word Identification: Convolutional Neural Network vs. Feature Engineering | We describe the systems of NLP-CIC team that participated in the Complex Word Identification (CWI) 2018 shared task. The shared task aimed to benchmark approaches for identifying complex words in English and other languages from the perspective of non-native speakers. Our goal is to compare two approaches: feature engineering and a deep neural network. Both approaches achieved comparable performance on the English test set. We demonstrated the flexibility of the deeplearning approach by using the same deep neural network setup in the Spanish track. Our systems achieved competitive results: all our systems were within 0.01 of the system with the best macro-F1 score on the test sets except on Wikipedia test set, on which our best system is 0.04 below the best macro-F1 score. |
Interactive Language Acquisition with One-shot Visual Concept Learning through a Conversational Game | Building intelligent agents that can communicate with and learn from humans in natural language is of great value. Supervised language learning is limited by the ability of capturing mainly the statistics of training data, and is hardly adaptive to new scenarios or flexible for acquiring new knowledge without inefficient retraining or catastrophic forgetting. We highlight the perspective that conversational interaction serves as a natural interface both for language learning and for novel knowledge acquisition and propose a joint imitation and reinforcement approach for grounded language learning through an interactive conversational game. The agent trained with this approach is able to actively acquire information by asking questions about novel objects and use the justlearned knowledge in subsequent conversations in a one-shot fashion. Results compared with other methods verified the effectiveness of the proposed approach. |
On Leaf Disease Detection Using Image Processing Techniques | ---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract This paper holds a survey on leaf disease detection using various image processing technique. Digital image processing is fast, reliable and accurate technique for detection of diseases also various algorithms can be used for identification and classification of leaf diseases in plant. This paper presents techniques used by different author to identify disease such as clustering method, color base image analysis method, classifier and artificial neural network for classification of diseases. The main focus of our work is on the analysis of different leaf disease detection techniques and also provides an overview of different image processing techniques. |
Oral bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaw: the first report in Asia | Bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (BRONJ) is a serious side effect of bisphosphonate therapy. The incidence of BRONJ is known to be low among patients treated with oral bisphosphonates. We investigated the prevalence, demographics, clinical manifestations, and treatment outcome of 24 patients with oral BRONJ in Asian populations. The long-term safety of oral bisphosphonates is clinically important considering the rare but potentially serious complications such as bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (BRONJ) versus the effect of reducing and preventing osteoporotic fracture. The incidence of BRONJ is known to be low among patients treated with oral bisphosphonates around the world. However, the prevalence in those taking oral bisphosphonates for osteoporosis in Asian populations is unknown. Moreover, a recent article, showing that the majority of reported patients who received alendronate were Asian American, raised concern about the prevalence of oral BRONJ in Asian populations. The objective of this study was to investigate the estimated prevalence, clinical characteristics, and treatment outcome of oral BRONJ in Asian populations. From October 2005 to December 2008, a retrospective review of medical charts identified 24 patients receiving oral bisphosphonates diagnosed as BRONJ at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Yonsei University Dental Hospital, Seoul, South Korea. The estimated prevalence of oral BRONJ was 0.05–0.07%. The average oral bisphosphonate treatment duration was 43.1 months (range, 5–120 months). Treatment with oral antibiotics and/or surgery including sequestrectomy or alveolectomy showed relatively favorable results. The prevalence of oral BRONJ in Korea is similar to that reported previously in Western populations. We suggest that recognition of BRONJ and appropriate management pre- and post-dental surgery might reduce the frequency of BRONJ among patients receiving oral bisphosphonates. |
Effective face frontalization in unconstrained images | “Frontalization” is the process of synthesizing frontal facing views of faces appearing in single unconstrained photos. Recent reports have suggested that this process may substantially boost the performance of face recognition systems. This, by transforming the challenging problem of recognizing faces viewed from unconstrained viewpoints to the easier problem of recognizing faces in constrained, forward facing poses. Previous frontalization methods did this by attempting to approximate 3D facial shapes for each query image. We observe that 3D face shape estimation from unconstrained photos may be a harder problem than frontalization and can potentially introduce facial misalignments. Instead, we explore the simpler approach of using a single, unmodified, 3D surface as an approximation to the shape of all input faces. We show that this leads to a straightforward, efficient and easy to implement method for frontalization. More importantly, it produces aesthetic new frontal views and is surprisingly effective when used for face recognition and gender estimation. |
The vascularised fibular graft for limb salvage after bone tumour surgery: a multicentre study. | Vascularised fibular grafts (VFGs ) are a valuable surgical technique in limb salvage after resection of a tumour. The primary objective of this multicentre study was to assess the risk factors for failure and complications for using a VFG after resection of a tumour. The study involved 74 consecutive patients (45 men and 29 women with mean age of 23 years (1 to 64) from four tertiary centres for orthopaedic oncology who underwent reconstruction using a VFG after resection of a tumour between 1996 and 2011. There were 52 primary and 22 secondary reconstructions. The mean follow-up was 77 months (10 to 195). In all, 69 patients (93%) had successful limb salvage; all of these united and 65 (88%) showed hypertrophy of the graft. The mean time to union differed between those involving the upper (28 weeks; 12 to 96) and lower limbs (44 weeks; 12 to 250). Fracture occurred in 11 (15%), and nonunion in 14 (19%) patients. In 35 patients (47%) at least one complication arose, with a greater proportion in lower limb reconstructions, non-bridging osteosynthesis, and in children. These complications resulted in revision surgery in 26 patients (35%). VFG is a successful and durable technique for reconstruction of a defect in bone after resection of a tumour, but is accompanied by a significant risk of complications, that often require revision surgery. Union was not markedly influenced by the need for chemo- or radiotherapy, but should not be expected during chemotherapy. Therefore, restricted weight-bearing within this period is advocated. |
Advances in geometric modeling and feature extraction on pots | This paper outlines progress on the 3DK Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence project undertaken by the Partnership for Research In Stereo Modeling (PRISM) at Arizona State University. Three of the six 3DK pilot projects of this National Science Foundation funded project involve archaeological and biological material, namely ceramic vessels, lithic artifacts, and bones. These projects are: (1) “3D Morphology of Ceramic Vessels” which aims to learn about vessel uniformity and proportionality as indicators of developing craft specialization and complex social organization among prehistoric cultures; (2) “Lithic Refitting” which intends to develop the algorithms required to (partially) automate the refitting process through 3D scanning and surface modeling; and finally (3) “3D Topography of Joint Surfaces” which investigates the ability of human ancestors to make tools and walk upright by developing software that will automate segmentation of osteological features and quantify the surface area and curvature of joint surfaces and the congruency between reciprocal joint surfaces, allowing for the development of biomechanical models. This paper discusses the links between these three unique projects and explores the underlying research aspects common to all: geometric modeling, feature recognition, and the development of a database structure aimed at making 3D models of these artifacts available online for query. |
Role of nitric oxide in muscle regeneration following eccentric muscle contractions in rat skeletal muscle | We examined the role of nitric oxide (NO) in muscle repair and regeneration following repetitive eccentric contractions (ECC). A standardized exercise protocol was used to create eccentric contraction-induced injury to the left tibialis anterior muscle of 48 male Wistar rats (body wt 250–350 g), using a customized isokinetic test device and a bout of 40 ECCs under electrical stimulation. A nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, N(G)-nitro-l-arginine-methyl ester (l-NAME; 35 mg kg−1 day−1), was included in the diet for half the animals (n = 24) beginning 3 days prior to the ECC and continuing throughout the experiment, whereas the other half (n = 24) received a control diet. ECC/+l-NAME and ECC/−l-NAME were killed after the ECC protocol at 0, 1, 3 and 7 days (n = 6 on each day). An unexercised contralateral limb with and without l-NAME infusion served as a respective control muscle at each time point. Muscle NO content, skeletal muscle damage, leukocyte infiltration, calpain activity, and MyoD and myogenin expression were assessed. NO has both pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory properties, and several possible roles for NO in skeletal muscle damage have been postulated. NO content was greater in the ECC/−l-NAME group at all time points (p < 0.05) compared to ECC/+l-NAME. Additionally, significant differences in NO content were observed on day 0 (p < 0.05), and day 3 (p < 0.05), ECC/+l-NAME versus ECC/−l-NAME. One day following the bout of ECC, and NO levels were increased in the ECC/−l-NAME group. Three days following ECC, there was greater myofiber damage (measured by β-glucuronidase activity) and leukocyte invasion in the ECC/−l-NAME group as compared to the ECC/+l-NAME group. One day after ECC, calpain activity was significantly increased in ECC/−l-NAME compared with control muscles (p < 0.05). On days 3 and 7, Myo-D and myogenin gene expression was increased in both groups; however, the degree of regeneration was less in the ECC/+l-NAME-treated animals. These data suggest that NO dynamics have important implications in the regulation of various factors during skeletal muscle regeneration following damaging eccentric muscle contractions. |
Young adults' emotional reactions after hooking up encounters. | Hooking up, or a sexual encounter ranging from kissing to intercourse that occurs on one occasion and where the partners do not necessarily expect future physical encounters or a committed relationship, has become commonplace among college students. This study (N = 500) examined gender differences in emotional reactions after hooking up and explored the relationship between specific processes in the hooking up encounter and reactions to hooking up. Compared to women, men reported more positive and fewer negative emotional reactions; however, both men and women reported that the experience was largely more positive than negative. Coital hook ups were associated with fewer negative emotional responses for men as compared to women who engaged in coital and non-coital hook ups and to men who engaged in non-coital hook ups. For those who engaged in coital hook ups, women reported that condom use was associated with fewer positive and more negative emotional reactions whereas condom use was related to fewer negative emotion reactions for men. Negative emotional reactions were also related to reports of depressive symptoms and feelings of loneliness; however, feelings of loneliness were not related to negative emotional reactions after accounting for young adults' positive emotional reactions. Positive emotional reactions were related to hope for and discussion of a committed relationship. Implications for relationship education and future research are outlined. |
Influence of different types of environmental enrichment on the behaviour of finishing pigs in two different housing systems: 3. Hanging toy versus rootable toy of the same material | This study aimed to assess the effects of (1) environmental enrichment with either straw bedding or a plastic toy and (2) the way in which the plastic toy was presented on the behaviour of finishing pigs in two different housing systems. One thousand and twenty four (Large White Landrace) Large White pigs were housed contemporarily in either a straw-based (ST) or fully slatted (FS) building from 35 kg to slaughter at 104 kg. In each building, half of the pens received additional environmental enrichment in the form of a hanging plastic toy. The remaining pens in the ST house were enriched only by the straw bedding. In the FS house, the remaining pens were provided with a rootable toy of the same plastic material presented on the floor of the pen. There was no significant effect of housing system on the level of manipulation of the hanging toy. Within the FS system, the level of manipulation of the hanging toy tended to be higher than that of the plastic toy presented on the floor (P = 0.052). Neither form of additional environmental enrichment provided a comparable level of occupation to that of straw bedding. In the absence of straw, more investigatory behaviours were directed towards both pen-mates (P < 0.001) and pen components (P < 0.001). Further study is required to identify functional forms of environmental enrichment in slatted systems to occupy pigs and prevent them from performing adverse behaviours. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
X-ray structures of the maltose-maltodextrin-binding protein of the thermoacidophilic bacterium Alicyclobacillus acidocaldarius provide insight into acid stability of proteins. | Maltose-binding proteins act as primary receptors in bacterial transport and chemotaxis systems. We report here crystal structures of the thermoacidostable maltose-binding protein from Alicyclobacillus acidocaldarius, and explore its modes of binding to maltose and maltotriose. Further, comparison with the structures of related proteins from Escherichia coli (a mesophile), and two hyperthermophiles (Pyrococcus furiosus and Thermococcus litoralis) allows an investigation of the basis of thermo- and acidostability in this family of proteins.The thermoacidophilic protein has fewer charged residues than the other three structures, which is compensated by an increase in the number of polar residues. Although the content of acidic and basic residues is approximately equal, more basic residues are exposed on its surface whereas most acidic residues are buried in the interior. As a consequence, this protein has a highly positive surface charge. Fewer salt bridges are buried than in the other MBP structures, but the number exposed on its surface does not appear to be unusual. These features appear to be correlated with the acidostability of the A. acidocaldarius protein rather than its thermostability. An analysis of cavities within the proteins shows that the extremophile proteins are more closely packed than the mesophilic one. Proline content is slightly higher in the hyperthermophiles and thermoacidophiles than in mesophiles, and this amino acid is more common at the second position of beta-turns, properties that are also probably related to thermostability. Secondary structural content does not vary greatly in the different structures, and so is not a contributing factor. |
e-Examiner : Towards a Fully-Automatic Knowledge Assessment Tool applicable in Adaptive E-Learning Systems | Information about the learners’ level or state of knowledge is a key aspect for effective provision of personalized learning activities. E-learning systems gain such information by users’ self-assessment, predefined questionnaires and indirectly by inferences on observed user behaviors. However, most present solution approaches either cause a huge effort of manpower or a lack of required reliability. To overcome this, we have developed e-Examiner, a tool for automated knowledge assessment. It is designed to generate questions automatically and to assess student’s natural language answers based on the learning content. In this paper, firstly, we introduce the overall concept and architecture. Secondly, we focus on our solution for automated assessment of answers, which is based on the ROUGE toolset for automatic summary evaluation. |
Towards Technologically and Competitively Neutral Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Infrastructure | This paper provides a framework for understanding competition and industry structure in the context of Fiber to the Home (FTTH). We present engineering cost models, which indicate that FTTH is a decreasing cost industry, thereby making facilities based competition an unlikely outcome. Non-facilities based competition (or service level competition) in FTTH can happen in data-link layer (or transport) services via unbundled dark fiber (i.e. unbundled network elements) and in higher layer (voice, video and data) services via logical layer unbundling (or open access). FTTH architectures differ in the extent to which they support unbundling and therefore the extent of non-facilities based competition in FTTH depends on the architecture of the shared network over which multiple service providers offer service. Among the four different FTTH architectures considered, the curbside single-wavelength Passive Optical Network architecture (PON) (that has isolated pole-mounted splitters) has the most economical fiber plant but permits unbundling only at the logical layer. Physical plant unbundling is made possible in PONs by establishing Optimal Fiber Aggregation Points (OFAPs) that aggregate multiple splitters (and hence multiple distribution fibers or homes). Unbundling is achieved at the cost of longer distribution loop lengths (vis-à-vis a curbside PON). OFAP architectures further lead to higher utilization of splitter and Optical Line Termination (OLT) ports in markets that have less than 100% penetration, lowers NPV Capital Costs and provides the service provider with a real option to (i) defer investment in OLT ports (ii) deploy multiple data-link layer technologies and (iii) effectively phase in new technologies under both monopoly and competition. |
Nasal base reduction by alar release: a laboratory evaluation. | BACKGROUND
When reducing the broad nasal base, there is a limit to the amount of soft tissue that can be resected, beyond which the anatomy distorts and the nostrils become stenotic (if resection enters the nostril). Alar mobilization by freeing soft-tissue attachments helps. This study purported to examine the nature of those attachments and the extent of medialization.
METHODS
The supporting tissues of the ala were sequentially divided in 16 fresh hemifacial cadavers. Key structures included the following: (1) the soft tissues and pyriform ligament of the anterior maxilla, (2) the periosteum posterior to the pyriform rim (in the bony nasal vault), and (3) the soft tissues along the horizontal pyriform rim. After release of each tethering region, the ala-pyriform distance was measured.
RESULTS
After releasing the anterior maxillary periosteum and pyriform ligament along the vertical pyriform rim, the ala-pyriform distance was reduced by a mean of 1.9 mm. After releasing the periosteum posterior to the pyriform rim (in the nasal vault), it was reduced by a mean of 1.7 mm. Releasing the soft tissues (which were thick medially) of the horizontal pyriform rim reduced the mean distance 1.0 mm for a total of 4.6 mm. Medialization resulting from anterior and posterior releases was significantly greater than that from the horizontal pyriform rim (p < 0.0006 and p < 0.015, respectively), but they were not significantly different from one another.
CONCLUSIONS
This cadaver study confirmed the role of the stabilizing effect of the pyriform ligament and the periosteum lateral and posterior to the pyriform rim. The total release was substantial, suggesting a clinical means of achieving tension-free alar medialization. |
ConvNets and ImageNet Beyond Accuracy: Understanding Mistakes and Uncovering Biases | ConvNets and ImageNet have driven the recent success of deep learning for image classification. However, the marked slowdown in performance improvement combined with the lack of robustness of neural networks to adversarial examples and their tendency to exhibit undesirable biases question the reliability of these methods. This work investigates these questions from the perspective of the end-user by using human subject studies and explanations. The contribution of this study is threefold. We first experimentally demonstrate that the accuracy and robustness of ConvNets measured on ImageNet are vastly underestimated. Next, we show that explanations can mitigate the impact of misclassified adversarial examples from the perspective of the end-user. We finally introduce a novel tool for uncovering the undesirable biases learned by a model. These contributions also show that explanations are a valuable tool both for improving our understanding of ConvNets’ predictions and for designing more reliable models. |
An Ontology-based Approach to Support Text Mining and Information Retrieval in the Biological Domain | This paper describes an ontology-based approach aiming at helping biologists to annotate their documents and at facilitating their information retrieval task. Our approach, based on semantic web technologies, relies on formalised ontologies, semantic annotations of scientific articles and knowledge extraction from texts. We propose a method/system for the generation of ontology-based semantic annotations (MeatAnnot) and a system allowing biologists to draw advanced inferences on these annotations (MeatSearch). This approach was proposed to support biologists working on DNA microarray experiments in the validation and the interpretation of their results, but it can probably be extended to other massive analyses of biological events (as provided by proteomics, metabolomics...). |
Incremental Parsing Models for Dialog Task Structure | In this paper, we present an integrated model of the two central tasks of dialog management: interpreting user actions and generating system actions. We model the interpretation task as a classication problem and the generation task as a prediction problem. These two tasks are interleaved in an incremental parsing-based dialog model. We compare three alternative parsing methods for this dialog model using a corpus of human-human spoken dialog from a catalog ordering domain that has been annotated for dialog acts and task/subtask information. We contrast the amount of context provided by each method and its impact on performance. |
Study of Trend-Stuffing on Twitter through Text Classification | Twitter has become an important mechanism for users to keep up with friends as well as the latest popular topics, reaching over 20 million unique visitors monthly and generating over 1.2 billion tweets a month. To make popular topics easily accessible, Twitter lists the current most tweeted topics on its homepage as well as on most user pages. This provides a one-click shortcut to tweets related to the most popular or trending topics. Due to the increased visibility of tweets associated with a trending topic, miscreants and spammers have started exploiting them by posting unrelated tweets to such topics – a practice we call trend-stuffing. We study the use of text-classification over 600 trends consisting of 1.3 million tweets and their associated web pages to identify tweets that are closely-related to a trend as well as unrelated tweets. Using Information Gain, we reduce the original set of over 12,000 features for tweets and over 500,000 features for the associated web pages by over 91% and 99%, respectively, showing that any additional features would have a low Information Gain of less than 10 and 0.016 bits, respectively. We compare the use of näıve Bayes, C4.5 decision trees, and Decision Stumps over the individual sets of features. Then, we combine classifier predictions for the tweet text and associated web page text. Although we find that the C4.5 decision tree classifier achieves the highest average F1-measure of 0.79 on the tweet text and 0.9 on the associated web page content, we recommend the use of the näıve Bayes classifier. The näıve Bayes classifier performs slightly worse with an average F1-measure of 0.77 on the tweet text and 0.74 on the associated web page content, but its required training time is significantly smaller. |
Pelvic Discontinuity Associated With Total Hip Arthroplasty: Evaluation and Management. | Pelvic discontinuity is a challenging complication encountered during revision total hip arthroplasty. Pelvic discontinuity is defined as a separation of the ilium superiorly from the ischiopubic segment inferiorly and is typically a chronic condition in failed total hip arthroplasties in the setting of bone loss. After a history and a physical examination have been completed and infection has been ruled out, appropriate imaging must be obtained, including plain hip radiographs, oblique Judet radiographs, and often a CT scan. The main management options are a hemispheric acetabular component with posterior column plating, a cup-cage construct, pelvic distraction, and a custom triflange construct. The techniques have unique pros and cons, but the goals are to obtain stable and durable acetabular component fixation and a healed or unitized pelvis while minimizing complications. |
Geographic and Genetic Population Differentiation of the Amazonian Chocolate Tree (Theobroma cacao L) | Numerous collecting expeditions of Theobroma cacao L. germplasm have been undertaken in Latin-America. However, most of this germplasm has not contributed to cacao improvement because its relationship to cultivated selections was poorly understood. Germplasm labeling errors have impeded breeding and confounded the interpretation of diversity analyses. To improve the understanding of the origin, classification, and population differentiation within the species, 1241 accessions covering a large geographic sampling were genotyped with 106 microsatellite markers. After discarding mislabeled samples, 10 genetic clusters, as opposed to the two genetic groups traditionally recognized within T. cacao, were found by applying Bayesian statistics. This leads us to propose a new classification of the cacao germplasm that will enhance its management. The results also provide new insights into the diversification of Amazon species in general, with the pattern of differentiation of the populations studied supporting the palaeoarches hypothesis of species diversification. The origin of the traditional cacao cultivars is also enlightened in this study. |
Live predators, robots, and computer-animated images elicit differential avoidance responses in zebrafish. | Emotional disturbances constitute a major health issue affecting a considerable portion of the population in western countries. In this context, animal models offer a relevant tool to address the underlying biological determinants and to screen novel therapeutic strategies. While rodents have traditionally constituted the species of choice, zebrafish are now becoming a viable alternative. As zebrafish gain momentum in biomedical sciences, considerable efforts are being devoted to developing high-throughput behavioral tests. Here, we present a comparative study of zebrafish behavioral response to fear-evoking stimuli offered via three alternative methodologies. Specifically, in a binary-choice test, we exposed zebrafish to an allopatric predator Astronotus ocellatus, presented in the form of a live subject, a robotic replica, and a computer-animated image. The robot's design and operation were inspired by the morphology and tail-beat motion of its live counterpart, thereby offering a consistent three-dimensional stimulus to focal fish. The computer-animated image was also designed after the live subject to replicate its appearance. We observed that differently from computer-animated images, both the live predator and its robotic replica elicited robust avoidance response in zebrafish. In addition, in response to the robot, zebrafish exhibited increased thrashing behavior, which is considered a valid indicator of fear. Finally, inter-individual response to a robotic stimulus is more consistent than that shown in response to live stimuli and animated images, thereby increasing experimental statistical power. Our study supports the view that robotic stimuli can constitute a promising experimental tool to elicit targeted behavioral responses in zebrafish. |
Redactable Blockchain – or – Rewriting History in Bitcoin and Friends | We put forward a new framework that makes it possible to re-write or compress the content of any number of blocks in decentralized services exploiting the blockchain technology. As we argue, there are several reasons to prefer an editable blockchain, spanning from the necessity to remove inappropriate content and the possibility to support applications requiring re-writable storage, to "the right to be forgotten." Our approach generically leverages so-called chameleon hash functions (Krawczyk and Rabin, NDSS '00), which allow determining hash collisions efficiently, given a secret trapdoor information. We detail how to integrate a chameleon hash function in virtually any blockchain-based technology, for both cases where the power of redacting the blockchain content is in the hands of a single trusted entity and where such a capability is distributed among several distrustful parties (as is the case with Bitcoin). We also report on a proof-of-concept implementation of a redactable blockchain, building on top of Nakamoto's Bitcoin core. The prototype only requires minimal changes to the way current client software interprets the information stored in the blockchain and to the current blockchain, block, or transaction structures. Moreover, our experiments show that the overhead imposed by a redactable blockchain is small compared to the case of an immutable one. |
A simplification of the protein assay method of Lowry et al. which is more generally applicable. | Some recent modifications of the protein assay by the method of Lowry, Rosebrough, Farr, and Randall (1951, .I. Biol. Chem. 193, 265-275) have been reexamined and altered to provide a consolidated method which is simple, rapid, objective, and more generally applicable. A DOC-TCA protein precipitation technique provides for rapid quantitative recovery of soluble and membrane proteins from interfering substances even in very dilute solutions (< 1 pg/ml of protein). SDS is added to alleviate possible nonionic and cationic detergent and lipid interferences, and to provide mild conditions for rapid denaturation of membrane and proteolipid proteins. A simple method based on a linear log-log protein standard curve is presented to permit rapid and totally objective protein analysis using small programmable calculators. The new modification compared favorably with the original method of Lowry ef al. |
Realisation of Single-Resistance-Controlled Sinusoidal Oscillator: A new application of the CDTA | Among various modern active building blocks, the recently introduced ’current differencing transconductance amplifier’ (CDTA) is emerging as a very flexible and versatile building block for analog circuit design and has been used earlier for realizing a variety of functions. In this paper, a new application of the CDTA in realising a Single Resistance Controlled Sinusoidal Oscillator has been introduced. The proposed circuit employs only a single CDTA alongwith a bare minimum of only four passive components and yet offers the advantages of (i) independent control of condition of oscillation and frequency of oscillation and (ii) low active and passive sensitivities. The workability of the proposed configuration has been demonstrated by experimental results. Key-Words: Current Differencing Transconductance Amplifier, Sinusoidal oscillator, Current-mode circuits. |
Rigid-Foldable Thick Origami | In this paper, a method is proposed for geometrically constructing thick panel structures that follow the kinetic behavior of rigid origami by using tapered or two-ply panels and hinges located at their edges. The proposed method can convert generalized pattern of rigid-foldable origami into thick panels structure with kinetic motion, which leads to novel designs of origami for various engineering purposes including architecture. |
A Family of Isolated Buck-Boost Converters Based on Semiactive Rectifiers for High-Output Voltage Applications | A systematic method for developing isolated buck-boost (IBB) converters is proposed in this paper, and single-stage power conversion, soft-switching operation, and high-efficiency performance can be achieved with the proposed family of converters. On the basis of a nonisolated two-switch buck-boost converter, the proposed IBB converters are generated by replacing the dc buck-cell and boost-cell in the non-IBB converter with the ac buck-cell and boost-cell, respectively. Furthermore, a family of semiactive rectifiers (SARs) is proposed to serve as the secondary rectification circuit for the IBB converters, which helps to extend the converter voltage gain and reduce the voltage stresses on the devices in the rectification circuit. Hence, the efficiency is improved by employing a transformer with a smaller turns ratio and reduced parasitic parameters, by using low-voltage rating MOSFETs and diodes with better switching and conduction performances. A full-bridge IBB converter is proposed and analyzed in detail as an example. The phase-shift modulation strategy is applied to the full-bridge IBB converter to achieve IBB conversion. Moreover, soft-switching performance of all active switches and diodes can be achieved over a wide load and voltage range by the proposed converter and control strategy. A 380-V-output prototype is fabricated to verify the effectiveness of the proposed family of IBB converters, the SARs, and the control strategies. |
Developing early warning systems to predict students' online learning performance | An early warning system can help to identify at-risk students, or predict student learning performance by analyzing learning portfolios recorded in a learning management system (LMS). Although previous studies have shown the applicability of determining learner behaviors from an LMS, most investigated datasets are not assembled from online learning courses or from whole learning activities undertaken on courses that can be analyzed to evaluate students’ academic achievement. Previous studies generally focus on the construction of predictors for learner performance evaluation after a course has ended, and neglect the practical value of an ‘‘early warning’’ system to predict at-risk students while a course is in progress. We collected the complete learning activities of an online undergraduate course and applied data-mining techniques to develop an early warning system. Our results showed that, timedependent variables extracted from LMS are critical factors for online learning. After students have used an LMS for a period of time, our early warning system effectively characterizes their current learning performance. Data-mining techniques are useful in the construction of early warning systems; based on our experimental results, classification and regression tree (CART), supplemented by AdaBoost is the best classifier for the evaluation of learning performance investigated by this study. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
A geometric study of v-style pop-ups: theories and algorithms | Pop-up books are a fascinating form of paper art with intriguing geometric properties. In this paper, we present a systematic study of a simple but common class of pop-ups consisting of patches falling into four parallel groups, which we call v-style pop-ups. We give sufficient conditions for a v-style paper structure to be pop-uppable. That is, it can be closed flat while maintaining the rigidity of the patches, the closing and opening do not need extra force besides holding two patches and are free of intersections, and the closed paper is contained within the page border. These conditions allow us to identify novel mechanisms for making pop-ups. Based on the theory and mechanisms, we developed an interactive tool for designing v-style pop-ups and an automated construction algorithm from a given geometry, both of which guaranteeing the pop-uppability of the results. |
The relationship between gamma frequency and running speed differs for slow and fast gamma rhythms in freely behaving rats. | In hippocampal area CA1 of rats, the frequency of gamma activity has been shown to increase with running speed (Ahmed and Mehta, 2012). This finding suggests that different gamma frequencies simply allow for different timings of transitions across cell assemblies at varying running speeds, rather than serving unique functions. However, accumulating evidence supports the conclusion that slow (∼25-55 Hz) and fast (∼60-100 Hz) gamma are distinct network states with different functions. If slow and fast gamma constitute distinct network states, then it is possible that slow and fast gamma frequencies are differentially affected by running speed. In this study, we tested this hypothesis and found that slow and fast gamma frequencies change differently as a function of running speed in hippocampal areas CA1 and CA3, and in the superficial layers of the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC). Fast gamma frequencies increased with increasing running speed in all three areas. Slow gamma frequencies changed significantly less across different speeds. Furthermore, at high running speeds, CA3 firing rates were low, and MEC firing rates were high, suggesting that CA1 transitions from CA3 inputs to MEC inputs as running speed increases. These results support the hypothesis that slow and fast gamma reflect functionally distinct states in the hippocampal network, with fast gamma driven by MEC at high running speeds and slow gamma driven by CA3 at low running speeds. |
Investigating accident causation through information network modelling. | Management of risk in complex domains such as aviation relies heavily on post-event investigations, requiring complex approaches to fully understand the integration of multi-causal, multi-agent and multi-linear accident sequences. The Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork methodology (EAST; Stanton et al. 2008) offers such an approach based on network models. In this paper, we apply EAST to a well-known aviation accident case study, highlighting communication between agents as a central theme and investigating the potential for finding agents who were key to the accident. Ultimately, this work aims to develop a new model based on distributed situation awareness (DSA) to demonstrate that the risk inherent in a complex system is dependent on the information flowing within it. By identifying key agents and information elements, we can propose proactive design strategies to optimize the flow of information and help work towards avoiding aviation accidents. Statement of Relevance: This paper introduces a novel application of an holistic methodology for understanding aviation accidents. Furthermore, it introduces an ongoing project developing a nonlinear and prospective method that centralises distributed situation awareness and communication as themes. The relevance of findings are discussed in the context of current ergonomic and aviation issues of design, training and human-system interaction. |
Does gaze perception facilitate overt orienting | Recent studies have demonstrated the facilitation of responses to peripheral targets cued by the direction of the gaze of a face. However, in the absence of data from an eye tracker, it has been unclear to what extent these effects are due to the participants making small saccades in response to the cue that bring them closer to the congruent location of the cued targets. We used an eye tracker to show that while such cue-driven saccades occur, they do not account for the main cueing effects observed. Additionally, by using the same general paradigm as has previously been used with infants, we suggest that different mechanisms underlie eye gaze cueing effects in infants and adults. When attention is directed toward a particular location, the visual processing of targets in that location is facilitated, resulting in faster reaction times to detect or discriminate targets at that location than in locations that are not cued (Posner & Cohen, 1980). Several recent studies with adults have demonstrated that the direction of gaze of a face can cue visuospatial orienting in a viewer (e. Driver and colleagues manipulated the direction of gaze of a computerized face and found that judgements about a peripheral letter discrimination task were faster when the targets were in a location congruent with the direction of gaze. This effect was observed even when participants knew that the target letters were more likely to be presented in a location opposite to that cued by the eye gaze direction. In these and other related experiments, participants' eye movements were not closely monitored, leading Driver and colleagues to state that they could not discriminate between covert and overt orienting explanations of their results, and that in future it would be useful to monitor saccadic movements We thank Bruce Hood for allowing us to use his eye gaze shift stimulus and Gergely Csibra for software. We acknowledge financial support from the MRC (Programme Grant G97 15587) and Birkbeck College. |
Cardiorespiratory Fitness Is Associated With Cognitive Performance in Older But Not Younger Adults. | OBJECTIVES
Aging is associated with declines in executive function and episodic memory. Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) has been associated with enhanced executive function in older adults (OA), but the relationship with episodic memory remains unclear. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationship between CRF and cognition in young and OA and whether CRF mitigates age-related cognitive decline.
METHODS
Participants completed exercise testing to evaluate CRF (peak VO2) and neuropsychological testing to assess cognition.
RESULTS
In OA, peak VO2 was positively related to executive function, as well as to accuracy on an experimental face-name memory task and visual episodic memory. In young adults (YA), a relationship between peak VO2 and cognition was not evident. High-fit OA performed as well as YA on executive function measures. On episodic memory measures, YA performed better than high-fit OA, who in turn performed better than low-fit OA.
CONCLUSIONS
CRF is positively associated with executive function and episodic memory in OA and attenuates age-related cognitive decline. We provide preliminary support for the age-dependence hypothesis, which posits that cognition and CRF relationships may be most readily observed during lifetime periods of significant neurocognitive development. |
An integrated fuzzy MCDM approach for supplier evaluation and selection | A fuzzy multi-criteria group decision making approach that makes use of quality function deployment (QFD), fusion of fuzzy information and 2-tuple linguistic representation model is developed for supplier selection. The proposed methodology seeks to establish the relevant supplier assessment criteria while also considering the impacts of inner dependence among them. Two interrelated house of quality matrices are constructed, and fusion of fuzzy information and 2-tuple linguistic representation model are employed to compute the weights of supplier selection criteria and subsequently the ratings of suppliers. The proposed method is apt to manage non-homogeneous information in a decision setting with multiple information sources. The decision framework presented in this paper employs ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator, and the aggregation process is based on combining information by means of fuzzy sets on a basic linguistic term set. The proposed framework is illustrated through a case study conducted in a private hospital in Istanbul. |
Sorption behavior of polyaramides in relation to isolation of nucleic acids and proteins. | The effect of chemical composition and morphology of the surface layers of new polyaramide-containing sorbents on the mechanism of selective sorption of nucleic acids and proteins was investigated as compared to the previously studied sorbents modified with fluoropolymers and polyaniline (high-throughput materials providing one-step isolation of DNA from biological mixtures). A series of silica-based sorbents modified with polyaramides having consistently varying structure and containing the set of "key" structural elements (aromatic units and nitrogen atoms in the backbone, fluorinated groups), and various donor and acceptor moieties was prepared. The chemical composition of the polymer coatings was evaluated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The surface morphology was studied by scanning probe microscopy. The sorption properties were investigated by passing the mixtures containing DNA, RNA and proteins of different nature through the cartridges containing the obtained sorbents. All the investigated materials weakly retain double-stranded DNA but effectively retain RNA and proteins. The sorption capacity of the sorbents depends on the protein nature. The observed sorption behavior was shown to be determined by the chemical structure and not by the morphology of the polymer coating. It was proposed that similarity of the sorption properties of the series of chemically different polymers could be determined by similar total input of different sorption mechanisms. |
Unified constant-frequency integration control of three-phase standard bridge boost rectifiers with power-factor correction | Abstract: In this paper, a three-phase six-switch standard boost rectifier with unity-power-factor-correction is investigated. A general equation is derived that relates input phase voltage and duty ratios of switches in continuous conduction mode. Based on one of solutions and using One-Cycle Control, a Unified Constant-frequency Integration (UCI) controller for powerfactor-correction (PFC) is proposed. For the standard bridge boost rectifier, unity-power-factor and low total-harmonicdistortion (THD) can be realized in all three phases with a simple circuit that is composed of one integrator with reset along with several flips-flops, comparators, and some logic and linear components. It does not require multipliers and threephase voltage sensors, which are used in many other control approaches. In addition, it employs constant switching frequency modulation that is desirable for industrial applications. The proposed control approach is simple and reliable. Theoretical analysis is verified by simulation and experimental results. |
Development of a 6-DOF manipulator actuated with a straight-fiber-type artificial muscle | Robots have become an integral part of human life, and the relationship between humans and robots has grown closer. Thus, it is desired that robots have characteristics similar to humans. In this context, we paid attention to an artificial muscle actuator. We used straight-fiber-type artificial muscles, derived from the McKibben type, which have excellent characteristics with respect to the contraction rate and force. We developed a 6-DOF manipulator actuated by a straight fiber artificial muscle. Furthermore, we tried to control the manipulator position by considering its characteristics. |
Benefits of environmental management system in Polish companies compliant with ISO 14001. | This article describes the benefits of implementing an environmental management system (EMS) conforming to the ISO 14001 standard in Polish companies. Experience shows that implementing an environmental management system in a company can bring a number of benefits, not only for the company itself but also to the whole surrounding environment. Prevention of pollution, which is the idea underlying the concept of an environmental management system, generates mechanisms aimed at minimizing material, resource and energy consumption. It is difficult to identify the benefits which directly arise from environmental management system implementation, as well as the benefits which indirectly spring from maintaining the system. The following article is an attempt to classify the benefits gained according to a number of factors. These factors are related to operational activities and management in an organization. Moreover, some notable benefits that improve the state of natural environment are described in this article. The following article can inform many organizations about the benefits of implementing environmental management system compliant with ISO 14001 standard and convince them to implement such a system. Moreover, thanks to this article some groups of benefits resulting from implementing, maintaining and continually improving an environmental management system will be pinpointed. The survey presented in this article was conducted out in 700 companies that have certified their environmental management systems at ISO 14001 standard. |
Virus-induced gene silencing unravels multiple transcription factors involved in floral growth and development in Phalaenopsis orchids | Orchidaceae, one of the largest angiosperm families, has significant commercial value. Isolation of genes involved in orchid floral development and morphogenesis, scent production, and colouration will advance knowledge of orchid flower formation and facilitate breeding new varieties to increase the commercial value. With high-throughput virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS), this study identified five transcription factors involved in various aspects of flower morphogenesis in the orchid Phalaenopsis equestris. These genes are PeMADS1, PeMADS7, PeHB, PebHLH, and PeZIP. Silencing PeMADS1 and PebHLH resulted in reduced flower size together with a pelaloid column containing petal-like epidermal cells and alterations of epidermal cell arrangement in lip lateral lobes, respectively. Silencing PeMADS7, PeHB, and PeZIP alone resulted in abortion of the first three fully developed flower buds of an inflorescence, which indicates the roles of the genes in late flower development. Furthermore, double silencing PeMADS1 and PeMADS6, C- and B-class MADS-box genes, respectively, produced a combinatorial phenotype with two genes cloned in separate vectors. Both PeMADS1 and PeMADS6 are required to ensure the normal development of the lip and column as well as the cuticle formation on the floral epidermal cell surface. Thus, VIGS allows for unravelling the interaction between two classes of MADS transcription factors for dictating orchid floral morphogenesis. |
Forces and moments generated by removable thermoplastic aligners: incisor torque, premolar derotation, and molar distalization. | INTRODUCTION
The exact force systems as well as their progressions generated by removable thermoplastic appliances have not been investigated. Thus, the purposes of this experimental study were to quantify the forces and moments delivered by a single aligner and a series of aligners (Invisalign; Align Technology, Santa Clara, Calif) and to investigate the influence of attachments and power ridges on the force transfer.
METHODS
We studied 970 aligners of the Invisalign system (60 series of aligners). The aligners came from 30 consecutive patients, of which 3 tooth movements (incisor torque, premolar derotation, molar distalization) with 20 movements each were analyzed. The 3 movement groups were subdivided so that 10 movements were supported with an attachment and 10 were not. The patients' ClinCheck (Align Technology, Santa Clara, Calif) was planned so that the movements to be investigated were performed in isolation in the respective quadrant. Resin replicas of the patients' intraoral situation before the start of the investigated movement were taken and mounted in a biomechanical measurement system. An aligner was put on the model, the force systems were measured, and the calculated movements were experimentally performed until no further forces or moments were generated. Subsequently, the next aligners were installed, and the measurements were repeated.
RESULTS
The initial mean moments were about 7.3 N·mm for maxillary incisor torque and about 1.0 N for distalization. Significant differences in the generated moments were measured in the premolar derotation group, whether they were supported with an attachment (8.8 N·mm) or not (1.2 N·mm). All measurements showed an exponential force change.
CONCLUSIONS
Apart from a few maximal initial force systems, the forces and moments generated by aligners of the Invisalign system are within the range of orthodontic forces. The force change is exponential while a patient is wearing removable thermoplastic appliances. |
Hierarchical Bayesian Matrix Factorization with Side Information | Bayesian treatment of matrix factorization has been successfully applied to the problem of collaborative prediction, where unknown ratings are determined by the predictive distribution, inferring posterior distributions over user and item factor matrices that are used to approximate the user-item matrix as their product. In practice, however, Bayesian matrix factorization suffers from cold-start problems, where inferences are required for users or items about which a sufficient number of ratings are not gathered. In this paper we present a method for Bayesian matrix factorization with side information, to handle cold-start problems. To this end, we place Gaussian-Wishart priors on mean vectors and precision matrices of Gaussian user and item factor matrices, such that mean of each prior distribution is regressed on corresponding side information. We develop variational inference algorithms to approximately compute posterior distributions over user and item factor matrices. In addition, we provide Bayesian Cramér-Rao Bound for our model, showing that the hierarchical Bayesian matrix factorization with side information improves the reconstruction over the standard Bayesian matrix factorization where the side information is not used. Experiments on MovieLens data demonstrate the useful behavior of our model in the case of cold-start problems. |
Epstein-Barr Virus Infectious Mononucleosis Associated with Acute Acalculous Cholecystitis | Hepatitis with mild transient elevations in serum aminotransferases is often reported in Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) infectious mononucleosis, while mild jaundice develops in approximately 5% of cases and may result from cholestasis or virus-induced hemolysis [1]. Isolated gallbladder wall thickening has been described in patients with EBV infectious mononucleosis [2]. However, acute acalculous cholecystitis (AAC) associated with EBV infectious mononucleosis has not been reported. A previously healthy, 4-year-old girl was admitted to our hospital with a 4-day history of fever, decreased appetite, malaise, vomiting and mild abdominal pain. The sclerae were icteric, while exudative tonsillopharyngitis and bilateral cervical adenopathy were noticed, with the largest nodes measuring 2 cm in diameter. Abdominal examination revealed a nondistended abdomen with normally active bowel sounds and mild tenderness localized over the right upper quadrant. The liver was palpable 3 cm under costal margin, while the spleen edge was palpable 2 cm below the left costal margin. The remaining physical findings were normal. Laboratory investigations on admission revealed a white blood cell count of 22.1 × 109/l (25% atypical lymphocytes), hemoglobin 13.1 g/dl, alanine aminotransferase 304 U/l (5–45 U/l), aspartate aminotransferase 188 U/l (5–45 U/l), alkaline phosphatase 236 U/ l (38–148 U/l), gamma-glutamyltransferase 241 U/l (7–32 U/l), total serum bilirubin 4.6 mg/dl (direct fraction 3.6 mg/dl), erythrocyte sedimentation rate 23 mm/ h and C-reactive protein 8 mg/l (0–5 mg/l). Abdominal ultrasonography showed hepatospenomegaly and, in addition, thickening of the gallbladder wall measuring 9 mm, with no presence of stones, sludge or dilatation of the biliary tract. IgM and IgG antibodies against Epstein–Barr viral capsid antigen (VCA) were positive, whereas IgG antibodies for Epstein–Barr nuclear antigen (EBNA) were negative. In addition, detection of EBV-DNA in serum, using real-time PCR, was positive. Serological studies excluded ongoing infection caused by other viral agents such as hepatitis A, B, C viruses, cytomegalovirus, human immunodeficiency virus, adenovirus and enteroviruses. During the first 7 days of hospitalization the child remained febrile, but in a good general condition. Because of her abdominal pain the patient was monitored with serial abdominal ultrasonography. On the seventh hospital day the abdominal ultrasound examination revealed a distended enlarged thick-walled gallbladder containing sludge (Figure 1). In addition there was tenderness over the gallbladder, the so-called positive sonographic Murphy’s sign. Laboratory investigations at that time were as follows: white blood cell count of 11.1 × 109/l (10% atypical lymphocytes); alanine aminotransferase, 219 U/l (5–45 U/l); aspartate aminotransferase, 141 U/l (5–45 U/l); alkaline phosphatase 204 U/l (38–148 U/l); gamma-glutamyltransferase, 184 U/l (7–32 U/l) and C-reactive protein, 1 mg/l (0–5 mg/l). Blood and stool cultures were negative. No parasitic or group A streptococci infection was identified, while serological tests for Brucella species, Salmonella typhi, Leptospira species and Mycoplasma species were negative. AAC was confirmed, oral feeding was stopped, aggressive hydration was initiated and follow-up ultrasonographic examination of the abdomen was obtained. On the tenth hospital day, abdominal pain and fever had resolved, while gallbladder sonography was normal. The patient was discharged on the 13th day of admission, and during a follow-up of 7 months the child has been in good condition without recurrence. Abdominal ultrasonography 5 months after the admission was normal. AAC is rare in childhood and most cases occur during the course of infectious diseases such as septicemia, salmonellosis, brucellosis or A virus hepatitis. Criteria such as gallbladder wall thickening over 3 mm, distention of gallbladder, localized tenderness, pericholecystic fluid and sludge have been used for the diagnosis of AAC. The combination of two or more of the above criteria, in the appropriate clinical setting, is considered to be diagnostic [3]. |
Practicing Safe Computing: A Multimedia Empirical Examination of Home Computer User Security Behavioral Intentions | By: Catherine L. Anderson Decision, Operations, and Information Technologies Department Robert H. Smith School of Business University of Maryland Van Munching Hall College Park, MD 20742-1815 U.S.A. [email protected] Ritu Agarwal Center for Health Information and Decision Systems University of Maryland 4327 Van Munching Hall College Park, MD 20742-1815 U.S.A. [email protected] |
Controllable Electrochemical Synthesis of Copper Sulfides as Sodium-Ion Battery Anodes with Superior Rate Capability and Ultralong Cycle Life. | Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are prospective alternative to lithium-ion batteries for large-scale energy-storage applications, owing to the abundant resources of sodium. Metal sulfides are deemed to be promising anode materials for SIBs due to their low-cost and eco-friendliness. Herein, for the first time, series of copper sulfides (Cu2S, Cu7S4, and Cu7KS4) are controllably synthesized via a facile electrochemical route in KCl-NaCl-Na2S molten salts. The as-prepared Cu2S with micron-sized flakes structure is first investigated as anode of SIBs, which delivers a capacity of 430 mAh g-1 with a high initial Coulombic efficiency of 84.9% at a current density of 100 mA g-1. Moreover, the Cu2S anode demonstrates superior capability (337 mAh g-1 at 20 A g-1, corresponding to 50 C) and ultralong cycle performance (88.2% of capacity retention after 5000 cycles at 5 A g-1, corresponding to 0.0024% of fade rate per cycle). Meanwhile, the pseudocapacitance contribution and robust porous structure in situ formed during cycling endow the Cu2S anodes with outstanding rate capability and enhanced cyclic performance, which are revealed by kinetics analysis and ex situ characterization. |
Analysis of a Resonant Transistor DC-DC Converter with Capacitive Output Filter | Resonant dc-dc converters offer several advantages over the more conventional PWM converters. Some of these advantages include: 1) low switching losses and low transistor stresses; 2) medium speed diodes are sufficient (transistor parasitic, inverse-parallel diodes can be used, even for frequencies in the hundreds of kilohertz); and 3) ability to step the input voltage up or down. This paper presents an analysis of a resonant converter which contains a capacitive-input output filter, rather than the more conventional inductor-input output filter. The switching waveforms are derived and design curves presented along with experimental data. The results are compared to the inductor-input filter case obtained from an earlier paper. |
Stable Stair Climbing in a Simple Hexapod Robot | RHex is a hexapod robot with compliant legs and only six actuated degrees of freedom. Its ability to traverse highly fractured and unstable terrain has already been documented. In this paper, we describe open loop controllers for our small robot to climb and descend regular stairs. The reliability is 90% (9/10) for climbing and 100% (10/10) for descending, based on ten successive trials. Specific resistance, a measure of energy efficiency, during stair climbing is 10.9, and 4.5 during descent. |
Anti-obesity effects of green tea: from bedside to bench. | During the last decade, the traditional notion that green tea consumption benefits health has received significant scientific attention and, particularly, the areas of cardiovascular disease and cancer were subject to numerous studies. Due to the ever-growing obesity pandemic, the anti-obesity effects of green tea are being increasingly investigated in cell, animal, and human studies. Green tea, green tea catechins, and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) have been demonstrated in cell culture and animal models of obesity to reduce adipocyte differentiation and proliferation, lipogenesis, fat mass, body weight, fat absorption, plasma levels of triglycerides, free fatty acids, cholesterol, glucose, insulin and leptin, as well as to increase beta-oxidation and thermogenesis. Adipose tissue, liver, intestine, and skeletal muscle are target organs of green tea, mediating its anti-obesity effects. Studies conducted with human subjects report reduced body weight and body fat, as well as increased fat oxidation and thermogenesis and thereby confirm findings in cell culture systems and animal models of obesity. There is still a need for well-designed and controlled clinical studies to validate the existing and encouraging human studies. Since EGCG is regarded as the most active component of green tea, its specific effects on obesity should also be investigated in human trials. |
Adaptive Deep Metric Learning for Identity-Aware Facial Expression Recognition | A key challenge of facial expression recognition (FER) is to develop effective representations to balance the complex distribution of intra- and inter- class variations. The latest deep convolutional networks proposed for FER are trained by penalizing the misclassification of images via the softmax loss. In this paper, we show that better FER performance can be achieved by combining the deep metric loss and softmax loss in a unified two fully connected layer branches framework via joint optimization. A generalized adaptive (N+M)-tuplet clusters loss function together with the identity-aware hard-negative mining and online positive mining scheme are proposed for identity-invariant FER. It reduces the computational burden of deep metric learning, and alleviates the difficulty of threshold validation and anchor selection. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that our method outperforms many state-of-art approaches on the posed as well as spontaneous facial expression databases. |
Connecting Language and Knowledge Bases with Embedding Models for Relation Extraction | This paper proposes a novel approach for relation extraction from free text which is trained to jointly use information from the text and from existing knowledge. Our model is based on two scoring functions that operate by learning low-dimensional embeddings of words and of entities and relationships from a knowledge base. We empirically show on New York Times articles aligned with Freebase relations that our approach is able to efficiently use the extra information provided by a large subset of Freebase data (4M entities, 23k relationships) to improve over existing methods that rely on text features alone. |
The role of ideology in disagreements among economists: A quantitative analisis | How justified is the charge that ideology strongly influences the allegedly objective opinions of economists? An analysis of a new survey of AEA members and of surveys by Fuchs et al of labor economists and public economists shows that value judgments and judgments about the government''s efficacy have some influence on the way economists think about what should be purely economic issues. But such influence is not strong enough to explain much of the disagreement among economists. |
Handwritten English Word Recognition Based on Convolutional Neural Networks | This paper presents a novel segmentation-based and lexicon-driven handwritten English recognition systems. For the segmentation, a modified online segmentation method based on rules are applied. Then, convolutional neural networks are introduced for offline character recognition. Experiments are evaluated on UNIPEN lowercase data sets, with the word recognition rate of 92.20%. |
New Interpretation of the Structure and Formation of Ozone Based on the Atomic and Golden Ratio Based Ionic Radii of Oxygen | A decade ago, the Bohr radius of hydrogen atom was interpreted as the sum of two Golden sections pertaining to the electron and proton, and those of the bond length of a hydrogen molecule as the cationic and anionic radii. Subsequently, this result was shown to be applicable to other elements as well. Further, the bond lengths in the structures of molecules were found to be sums of the appropriate atomic and or the Golden ratio based ionic radii. Here, the formation and structure of ozone have been explained in terms of the atomic and ionic radii of oxygen. |
On maintaining multiple versions in STM | An effective way to reduce the number of aborts in software transactional memory (STM) is to keep multiple versions of transactional objects. In this paper, we study inherent properties of STMs that use multiple versions to guarantee successful commits of all read-only transactions.
We first show that these STMs cannot be disjoint-access parallel. We then consider the problem of garbage collecting old object versions, and show that no STM can be optimal in the number of previous versions kept. Moreover, we show that garbage collecting useless versions is impossible in STMs that implement invisible reads. Finally, we present an STM algorithm using visible reads that efficiently garbage collects useless object versions. |
Hybrid E-learning platform based on cloud architecture model: A proposal | Education is to be affordable and able to reach the mass at an affordable cost. An E-learning platform based on open standards with minimum initial cost of investment, will be able to educate people to achieve knowledge based economy. The current E-learning platforms require high initial cost on the infrastructure and software applications. Adoption of cloud computing can help, educational institutions to reduce expenditure on infrastructure, software and human resources to a considerable extent. The authors focus on the current e-learning architecture model and issues in current e-learning applications. The paper also discusses cloud computing concepts, and analyse advantages for adopting cloud computing. A model for e-learning applications based on cloud computing is proposed. |
Calibrated Lazy Associative Classification | Article history: Received 10 February 2009 Received in revised form 7 March 2010 Accepted 10 March 2010 Available online 20 March 2010 |
A wireless surveillance and safety system for mine workers based on Zigbee | This paper addresses a cost-effective, flexible solution of underground mine workers' safety. A module of MEMS based sensors are used for underground environment monitoring and automating progression of measurement data through digital wireless communication technique is proposed with high accuracy, smooth control and reliability. A microcontroller is used for collecting data and making decision, based on which the mine worker is informed through alarm as well as voice system. The voice system with both microphone and speaker, transforms into digital signal and effectively communicate wirelessly with the ground control centre computer. ZigBee, based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard is used for this short distance transmission between the hardware fitted with the mine worker and the ground control centre. |
Reviewing the Design of DAML+OIL: An Ontology Language for the Semantic Web | In the current "Syntactic Web", uninterpreted syntactic constructs are given meaning only by private off-line agreements that are inaccessible to computers. In the Semantic Web vision, this is replaced by a web where both data and its semantic definition are accessible and manipulable by computer software. DAML+OIL is an ontology language specifically designed for this use in the Web; it exploits existing Web standards (XML and RDF), adding the familiar ontological primitives of object oriented and frame based systems, and the formal rigor of a very expressive description logic. The definition of DAML+OIL is now over a year old, and the language has been in fairly widespread use. In this paper, we review DAML+OIL's relation with its key ingredients (XML, RDF, OIL, DAML-ONT, Description Logics), we discuss the design decisions and trade-offs that were the basis for the language definition, and identify a number of implementation challenges posed by the current language. These issues are important for designers of other representation languages for the Semantic Web, be they competitors or successors of DAML+OIL, such as the language currently under definition by W3C. |
Direct Prediction of 3D Body Poses from Motion Compensated Sequences | We propose an efficient approach to exploiting motion information from consecutive frames of a video sequence to recover the 3D pose of people. Previous approaches typically compute candidate poses in individual frames and then link them in a post-processing step to resolve ambiguities. By contrast, we directly regress from a spatio-temporal volume of bounding boxes to a 3D pose in the central frame. We further show that, for this approach to achieve its full potential, it is essential to compensate for the motion in consecutive frames so that the subject remains centered. This then allows us to effectively overcome ambiguities and improve upon the state-of-the-art by a large margin on the Human3.6m, HumanEva, and KTH Multiview Football 3D human pose estimation benchmarks. |
Towards Music Structural Segmentation across Genres: Features, Structural Hypotheses, and Annotation Principles | This article faces the problem of how different audio features and segmentation methods work with different music genres. A new annotated corpus of Chinese traditional Jingju music is presented. We incorporate this dataset with two existing music datasets from the literature in an integrated retrieval system to evaluate existing features, structural hypotheses, and segmentation algorithms outside a Western bias. A harmonic-percussive source separation technique is introduced to the feature extraction process and brings significant improvement to the segmentation. Results show that different features capture the structural patterns of different music genres in different ways. Novelty- or homogeneity-based segmentation algorithms and timbre features can surpass the investigated alternatives for the structure analysis of Jingju due to their lack of harmonic repetition patterns. Findings indicate that the design of audio features and segmentation algorithms as well as the consideration of contextual information related to the music corpora should be accounted dependently in an effective segmentation system. |
Wheat grass juice in the treatment of active distal ulcerative colitis: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial. | BACKGROUND
The use of wheat grass (Triticum aestivum) juice for treatment of various gastrointestinal and other conditions had been suggested by its proponents for more than 30 years, but was never clinically assessed in a controlled trial. A preliminary unpublished pilot study suggested efficacy of wheat grass juice in the treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC).
METHODS
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. One gastroenterology unit in a tertiary hospital and three study coordinating centers in three major cities in Israel. Twenty-three patients diagnosed clinically and sigmoidoscopically with active distal UC were randomly allocated to receive either 100 cc of wheat grass juice, or a matching placebo, daily for 1 month. Efficacy of treatment was assessed by a 4-fold disease activity index that included rectal bleeding and number of bowel movements as determined from patient diary records, a sigmoidoscopic evaluation, and global assessment by a physician.
RESULTS
Twenty-one patients completed the study, and full information was available on 19 of them. Treatment with wheat grass juice was associated with significant reductions in the overall disease activity index (P=0.031) and in the severity of rectal bleeding (P = 0.025). No serious side effects were found. Fresh extract of wheat grass demonstrated a prominent tracing in cyclic voltammetry methodology, presumably corresponding to four groups of compounds that exhibit anti-oxidative properties.
CONCLUSION
Wheat grass juice appeared effective and safe as a single or adjuvant treatment of active distal UC. |
Component-Based Software Engineering | Component based software development approach is based on the idea to develop software systems by selecting appropriate off-the shelf components and then to assemble them with a well-defined software architecture. Software community faces a major challenge that is raised by fast growing demand for rapid and cost-effective development and maintenance of large scale and complex software systems. To overcome the challenge, the new trend is to adopt component based software engineering (CBSE).The key difference between CBSE and traditional software engineering is that CBSE views a software system as a set of off-the-shelf components integrated within appropriate software architecture. CBSE promotes large-scale reuse, as it focuses on building software on building software systems by assembling |
Premature termination of nursing secondary to Serratia marcescens breast pump contamination. | BACKGROUND
Serratia marcescens, a known pathogen associated with postpartum mastitis, may be identified by its characteristic pigmentation.
CASE
A 36-year-old P0102 woman presented postpartum and said that her breast pump tubing had turned bright pink. S marcescens was isolated, indicating colonization. She was started on antibiotics. After viewing an Internet report in which a patient nearly died from a Serratia infection, she immediately stopped breastfeeding.
CONCLUSION
Serratia colonization may be noted before the development of overt infection. Because this pathogen can be associated with mastitis, physicians should be ready to treat and should encourage patients to continue nursing after clearance of the organism. Exposure to sensational Internet reports may make treatment recommendations difficult. |
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