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Automatic Melodic Reduction Using a Supervised Probabilistic Context-Free Grammar | This research explores a Natural Language Processing technique utilized for the automatic reduction of melodies: the Probabilistic Context-Free Grammar (PCFG). Automatic melodic reduction was previously explored by means of a probabilistic grammar [11] [1]. However, each of these methods used unsupervised learning to estimate the probabilities for the grammar rules, and thus a corpusbased evaluation was not performed. A dataset of analyses using the Generative Theory of Tonal Music (GTTM) exists [13], which contains 300 Western tonal melodies and their corresponding melodic reductions in tree format. In this work, supervised learning is used to train a PCFG for the task of melodic reduction, using the tree analyses provided by the GTTM dataset. The resulting model is evaluated on its ability to create accurate reduction trees, based on a node-by-node comparison with ground-truth trees. Multiple data representations are explored, and example output reductions are shown. Motivations for performing melodic reduction include melodic identification and similarity, efficient storage of melodies, automatic composition, variation matching, and automatic harmonic analysis. |
An overview of robot-sensor calibration methods for evaluation of perception systems | In this paper, an overview of methods that solve the robotsensor calibration problem of the forms AX = XB and AX = YB is given. Each form will be split into three solutions: separable closed-form solutions, simultaneous closed-form solutions, and iterative solutions. The advantages and disadvantages of each of the solutions in the case of evaluation of perception systems will also be discussed. |
Images of Eyes Enhance Investments in a Real-Life Public Good | A key issue in cooperation research is to determine the conditions under which individuals invest in a public good. Here, we tested whether cues of being watched increase investments in an anonymous public good situation in real life. We examined whether individuals would invest more by removing experimentally placed garbage (paper and plastic bottles) from bus stop benches in Geneva in the presence of images of eyes compared to controls (images of flowers). We provided separate bins for each of both types of garbage to investigate whether individuals would deposit more items into the appropriate bin in the presence of eyes. The treatment had no effect on the likelihood that individuals present at the bus stop would remove garbage. However, those individuals that engaged in garbage clearing, and were thus likely affected by the treatment, invested more time to do so in the presence of eyes. Images of eyes had a direct effect on behaviour, rather than merely enhancing attention towards a symbolic sign requesting removal of garbage. These findings show that simple images of eyes can trigger reputational effects that significantly enhance on non-monetary investments in anonymous public goods under real life conditions. We discuss our results in the light of previous findings and suggest that human social behaviour may often be shaped by relatively simple and potentially unconscious mechanisms instead of very complex cognitive capacities. |
Midface: Clinical Anatomy and Regional Approaches with Injectable Fillers. | The clinical approach towards the midface is one of the most important interventions for practitioners when treating age-related changes of the face. Currently a plethora of procedures are used and presented. However, few of these approaches have been validated or passed review board assigned evaluations. Therefore, it is the aim of this work to establish a guideline manual for practitioners for a safe and effective mid-face treatment based on the most current concepts of facial anatomy. The latter is based on the 5-layered structural arrangement and its understanding is the key towards the favoured outcome and for minimizing complications. |
Osteopontin, E-cadherin, and β-catenin expression as prognostic biomarkers in patients with radically resected gastric cancer | A correlation between osteopontin, E-cadherin, β-catenin, and cyclooxygenase 2 overexpression and poor clinicopathological features and prognosis has been previously suggested in gastric cancer. This translational study was aimed at assessing the correlation of these immunohistochemical biomarkers with outcome in patients with radically resected gastric cancer. We analyzed osteopontin, E-cadherin, β-catenin, and cyclooxygenase 2 expression by immunohistochemistry in 346 primary gastric tumor tissue samples from patients enrolled in the ITACA-S trial. This phase III study randomized patients with radically resected gastric cancer to receive adjuvant chemotherapy with either 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin or a sequential regimen of infusional 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin plus irinotecan followed by cisplatin and docetaxel. High expression of osteopontin was correlated with high histological grade, diffuse histotype, and peritoneal relapse, but not with TNM stage. Moreover, osteopontin overexpression was associated with higher risk of tumor recurrence and metastases, and was an independent prognostic factor for both relapse-free and overall survival of gastric cancer patients following adjuvant chemotherapy. Abnormal E-cadherin expression and abnormal β-catenin expression were correlated with more advanced disease stage, and as a consequence, with poor outcome. Our results suggest that osteopontin overexpression is a valuable independent predictor of tumor recurrence and survival in patients with radically resected gastric cancer. |
Circadian rhythmicity in emerging mood disorders: state or trait marker? | BACKGROUND
Circadian rhythm disturbances overlap with the symptoms of mood episodes and may trigger or prolong mood symptoms. There is limited research on the role of circadian disturbances in mood disorders in young people and/or first episode cases of unipolar and bipolar disorders.
METHODS
Actigraphy was undertaken for about 14 days in 63 post-pubertal individuals aged 13-25 years with a recent onset of a mood disorder meeting recognised diagnostic criteria. We examined associations between three easily interpretable markers of circadian rhythm activity (amplitude, acrophase and rhythmicity index) and demography and clinical characteristics. Then, circadian markers were compared between diagnostic groups, controlling for potential confounders.
RESULTS
Longer duration of illness was correlated with reduced circadian rhythmicity and lower levels of activity over 24 h. A delay in the timing of maximum activity was associated with the level of manic but not depressive symptoms. The circadian rhythmicity index differentiated unipolar from bipolar cases, and in bipolar but not unipolar disorder, the rhythmicity was less robust in those with more severe manic or depressive symptoms.
CONCLUSIONS
Less robust circadian rhythmicity, especially associated with increasing symptom severity, may represent a more specific or a trait marker of young people with mood disorders who are at higher risk of a bipolar course of illness. |
RHex: A Simple and Highly Mobile Hexapod Robot | In this paper, the authors describe the design and control of RHex, a power autonomous, untethered, compliant-legged hexapod robot. RHex has only six actuators—one motor located at each hip—achieving mechanical simplicity that promotes reliable and robust operation in real-world tasks. Empirically stable and highly maneuverable locomotion arises from a very simple clock-driven, openloop tripod gait. The legs rotate full circle, thereby preventing the common problem of toe stubbing in the protraction (swing) phase. An extensive suite of experimental results documents the robot’s significant “intrinsic mobility”—the traversal of rugged, broken, and obstacle-ridden ground without any terrain sensing or actively controlled adaptation. RHex achieves fast and robust forward locomotion traveling at speeds up to one body length per second and traversing height variations well exceeding its body clearance. |
Off-Treatment Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) DNA Levels and the Prediction of Relapse After Discontinuation of Nucleos(t)ide Analogue Therapy in Patients With Chronic Hepatitis B: A Prospective Stop Study. | Background
The optimal management remains unknown after nucleos(t)ide analogue (NA) discontinuation in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB). This prospective study investigated the role of off-treatment viral kinetics in predicting relapse after discontinuation of NA therapy.
Methods
A total of 82 noncirrhotic Asian patients with CHB who discontinued NA therapy according to international guidelines were prospectively followed. Patients with a hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA level of >2000 IU/mL and an alanine aminotransferase (ALT) level of >2 times the upper limit of normal (clinical relapse) were retreated.
Results
Sixty patients were HBV envelope antigen (HBeAg) positive at the start of treatment, and 22 were HBeAg negative. Clinical relapse developed in 28 patients (2-year rates, 31% among HBeAg-positive patients and 53% among HBeAg-negative patients). Age of ≤35 years (hazard ratio [HR], 0.37; P = .026) and end-of-treatment HBsAg level of ≤200 IU/mL (HR, 0.39; P = .078) were independently associated with lower relapse rates. A high risk of biochemical relapse (defined as an ALT level of >2 times the upper limit of normal) was observed if the HBV DNA level was >200000 IU/mL when the level was initially elevated, compared with HBV DNA levels of >2000 to ≤200000 IU/mL (HR, 8.42; P < .001). The risk of biochemical relapse was also high in patients with persistent elevation in the HBV DNA level (confirmed to be >2000 IU/mL within 3 months), compared with the group with transient elevation (HR, 6.87; P < .001).
Conclusions
After NA discontinuation, a lower relapse rate was observed in younger patients and in those with low end-of-treatment HBsAg levels. The level and persistence of off-treatment elevated HBV DNA levels were useful in the prediction of a subsequent biochemical relapse and may thus be used to guide off-treatment management. |
In-center hemodialysis attendance: patient perceptions of risks, barriers, and recommendations. | Missed hemodialysis treatments lead to increased morbidity and mortality in the end-stage renal disease population. Little is known about why patients have difficulty attending their scheduled in-center dialysis treatments. Semistructured interviews with 15 adherent and 15 nonadherent hemodialysis patients were conducted to determine patients' attitudes about dialysis, health beliefs and risk perception regarding missed treatments, barriers and facilitators to hemodialysis attendance, and recommendations to improve the system to facilitate dialysis attendance. Average time on dialysis was 2.5 years for the nonadherent group and 7.3 years in the adherent group. In both groups, patients felt that dialysis is life-saving and a necessity. A substantial number of patients in both groups understood that missing hemodialysis treatments is dangerous and several patients could clearly communicate the risk of skipping. The most common barriers to hemodialysis were inadequate or unreliable transportation (mentioned in both groups) and a lack of motivation to get to dialysis or that dialysis is not a priority (typically mentioned by the nonadherent group). Facilitators to hemodialysis attendance included explanations from the health care team regarding the risk of skipping and relationships with other dialysis patients. Patient recommendations to improve dialysis attendance included continued education about the risk of poor attendance and more accessible transportation. Patients did not feel that home dialysis would improve adherence. Hemodialysis patients must adhere to a complex and burdensome regimen. Through the elucidation of barriers and facilitators to hemodialysis attendance and through specific patient recommendations, at least three interventions may be further investigated to improve hemodialysis attendance: Improvement of the transportation system, education and supportive encouragement from the health care team, and peer support mentorship. |
Does the source of oil price shocks matter for South African stock returns? A structural VAR approach | In this paper, we investigate the dynamic relationship between different oil price shocks and the South African stock market using a sign restriction structural vector autoregression (VAR) approach for the period 1973:01 to 2011:07. The results show that for an oil-importing country like South Africa, stock returns only increase with oil prices when global economic activity improves. In response to oil supply shocks and speculative demand shocks, stock returns and the real price of oil move in opposite directions. The analysis of the variance decomposition shows that the oil supply shock contributes more to the variability in real stock prices. The main conclusion is that different oil price shocks affect stock returns differently and policy makers and investors should always consider the source of the shock before implementing policy and making investment decisions. JEL classifications: C32, C58, G1, Q43 |
Ibandronate Increases Sclerostin Levels and Bone Strength in Male Patients with Idiopathic Osteoporosis | The pathomechanism of male idiopathic osteoporosis (MIO) differs from postmenopausal osteoporosis with regard to alterations in osteoblast activity. We evaluated intravenous ibandronate (IBN) in 25 MIO patients with fragility fractures in a prospective, monocentric, single-arm, and open-label study for 24 months. The impact and changes of sclerostin (Scl), Dickkopf-1 (DKK-1), CTX, and PINP were examined. Additionally, volumetric cortical, trabecular and areal bone mineral density (BMD), trabecular bone score (TBS), and finite element analyses (FEA) were evaluated. Compared to baseline, median Scl levels were increased after 1 month (Δ 121 %, p < 0.0001) and remained elevated for 12 months. DKK-1 decreased (p < 0.001) to a lesser extent until month 9 with values comparable to baseline at study endpoint. Early changes (baseline–month 1) of Scl negatively correlated with early changes of DKK-1 (−0.72), CTX (−0.82), and PINP (−0.55; p < 0.005 for all). The overall changes over the 24 months study period of Scl negatively correlated with decreased CTX (−0.32) and DKK-1 levels (−0.57, p < 0.0001 for both); CTX and PINP changes positively correlated at each time point (p < 0.001). Volumetric hip BMD increased by 12 and 18 %, respectively (p < 0.0001 for both). Cross-sectional moment of inertia and section modulus for total hip significantly improved (p < 0.05 for all). Areal BMD at total hip, spine, and TBS increased. FEA displayed an increase in bone strength both in the hip (17 %) and vertebrae (13 %, all p < 0.0001) at anatomical sites susceptible for fragility fracture. IBN increases Scl and improves cortical and trabecular bone strength with early and ongoing vigorous suppression of bone resorption. |
Smaller and Faster: Parallel Processing of Compressed Graphs with Ligra+ | We study compression techniques for parallel in-memory graph algorithms, and show that we can achieve reduced space usage while obtaining competitive or improved performance compared to running the algorithms on uncompressed graphs. We integrate the compression techniques into Ligra, a recent shared-memory graph processing system. This system, which we call Ligra+, is able to represent graphs using about half of the space for the uncompressed graphs on average. Furthermore, Ligra+ is slightly faster than Ligra on average on a 40-core machine with hyper-threading. Our experimental study shows that Ligra+ is able to process graphs using less memory, while performing as well as or faster than Ligra. |
Facial Attributes Classification Using Multi-task Representation Learning | This paper presents a new approach for facial attribute classification using a multi-task learning approach. Unlike other approaches that uses hand engineered features, our model learns a shared feature representation that is wellsuited for multiple attribute classification. Learning a joint feature representation enables interaction between different tasks. For learning this shared feature representation we use a Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) based model, enhanced with a factored multi-task component to become Multi-Task Restricted Boltzmann Machine (MT-RBM). Our approach operates directly on faces and facial landmark points to learn a joint feature representation over all the available attributes. We use an iterative learning approach consisting of a bottom-up/top-down pass to learn the shared representation of our multi-task model and at inference we use a bottom-up pass to predict the different tasks. Our approach is not restricted to any type of attributes, however, for this paper we focus only on facial attributes. We evaluate our approach on three publicly available datasets, the Celebrity Faces (CelebA), the Multi-task Facial Landmarks (MTFL), and the ChaLearn challenge dataset. We show superior classification performance improvement over the state-of-the-art. |
Interactive Graph Cuts for Optimal Boundary and Region Segmentation of Objects in N-D Images | In this paper we describe a new technique for general purpose interactive segmentation of N-dimensional images . The user marks certain pixels as “object” or “background” to provide hard constraints for segmentation. Additional soft constraints incorporate both boundary and region information. Graph cuts are used to find the globally optimal segmentation of the N-dimensional image. The obtained solution gives the best balance of boundary and region properties among all segmentations satisfying the constraints . The topology of our segmentation is unrestricted and both “object” and “background” segments may consist of several isolated parts. Some experimental results are present ed in the context of photo/video editing and medical image segmentation. We also demonstrate an interesting Gestalt example. A fast implementation of our segmentation method is possible via a new max-flow algorithm in [2]. |
Humoral immunity against the proline-rich peptide epitope of the IgA1 hinge region in IgA nephropathy. | BACKGROUND
The human IgA1 hinge region is a unique mucin-like O-linked proline-rich glycopeptide, and its core peptide was found to be exposed aberrantly by the underglycosylation in IgA nephropathy (IgAN). We describe here the presence of humoral immunity against the IgA1 hinge peptide epitope in IgAN and evaluate the relationship between the underglycosylation of the IgA1 hinge region and humoral immunity.
METHOD
The serum anti-IgA1 hinge peptide antibody (anti-alpha1HP ab) titre was measured and compared between the IgAN (n=37) and control groups (n=34) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using a synthetic peptide corresponding to the human IgA1 hinge region, PVPSTPPTPSPSTPPTPSPS, as an antigen. Next, to evaluate the relationship between the underglycosylation of the IgA1 hinge region and the humoral immunity, the reactivity of the serum IgG from the patients with IgAN against monoclonal IgA1 which had been digested enzymatically to remove the carbohydrates from the IgA1 hinge region was measured by ELISA.
RESULTS
The anti-alpha1HP ab titre was significantly higher in the IgAN group than in the control group (OD value: IgG class, 0.564+/-0.344 vs 0. 331+/-0.154, P=0.0014; IgM class, 0.272+/-0.148 vs 0.141+/-0.072, P<0.0001) and it was positive in approximately 40% of the patients with IgAN. In addition, the reactivity of the serum IgG from the IgAN patients against the monoclonal IgA1 was found to be increased as the carbohydrates were enzymatically removed from the IgA1 hinge region (when native=100; asialo, 122+/-9.5; agalacto, 167+/-11.5; naked, 188+/-3.9).
CONCLUSION
These results suggested that the peptide epitope of the IgA1 hinge region which was aberrantly exposed by underglycosylation could induce the humoral immune response in IgAN. |
Sensitivity of UHF PD measurements in power transformers | The reliability of electrical energy networks depends on the quality and availability of electrical equipment like power transformers. Local failures inside their insulation may lead to catastrophic breakdowns and might cause high outage and penalty costs. To prevent these destructive events power transformers are e.g. tested for partial discharge (PD) activity before commissioning and currently also during service. The current work deals with the electromagnetic PD detection method, also known as UHF method. The disadvantage of the UHF method is still the missing possibility for a calibration or at least a verification of the sensitivity. The so-called Sensitivity Check might show in future a relation between unconventionally measured UHF quantities to the apparent charge level in pico Coulomb. An important aspect is the attenuation of UHF signals within power transformers which is investigated in this paper. |
Triage, decision-making and follow-up of patients referred to a UK forensic service: validation of the DUNDRUM toolkit | BACKGROUND
Forensic medium secure services in the UK are a scarce but essential resource providing care for those in the criminal justice system with severe mental disorder. Appropriate allocation of beds to those most in need is essential to ensure efficient use of this resource. To improve decision-making processes in a UK forensic service, an admissions panel utilized the DUNDRUM 1&2 (D1 & D2) triage instruments.
METHODS
Demographic, diagnostic and clinical information on a prospective sample of referrals to a UK adult forensic service was gathered (n = 195). D1 and D2 measures were scored by a panel of clinical managers considering referral information and clinician opinion in reaching their ratings; those not admitted were also followed up.
RESULTS
Within the sample, D1 ratings were predictive of decisions to admit (AUC = .79) and also differentiated between levels of security (F(4) = 16.54, p < .001). Non-admission was not significantly associated with increased risk of offending at follow-up. Items relating to self-harm and institutional behaviour did not show a predictive relationship with the panel decision to admit.
CONCLUSIONS
Use of a structured professional judgement tool showing good predictive validity has improved transparency of decisions and appears to be associated with more efficient use of resources, without increased risk to the public. |
An Integrated Expert User with End User in Technology Acceptance Model for Actual Evaluation | Effective evaluation is necessary in order to ensure systems adequately meet the requirements and information processing needs of the users and scope of the system. Technology acceptance model is one of the most popular and effective models for evaluation. A number of studies have proposed evaluation frameworks to aid in evaluation work. The end users for evaluation the acceptance of new technology or system have a lack of knowledge to examine and evaluate some features in the new technology/system. This will give a fake evaluation results of the new technology acceptance. This paper proposes a novel evaluation model to evaluate user acceptance of software and system technology by modifying the dimensions of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and added additional success dimension for expert users. The proposed model has been validated by an empirical study based on a questionnaire. The results indicated that the expert users have a strong significant influence to help in evaluation and pay attention to some features that end users have lack of knowledge to evaluate it. |
Krüppel-like family of transcription factor 9, a differentiation-associated transcription factor, suppresses Notch1 signaling and inhibits glioblastoma-initiating stem cells. | Tumor-initiating stem cells (alternatively called cancer stem cells, CSCs) are a subpopulation of tumor cells that plays unique roles in tumor propagation, therapeutic resistance, and tumor recurrence. It is becoming increasingly important to understand the molecular signaling that regulates the self-renewal and differentiation of CSCs. Transcription factors are critical for the regulation of normal and neopolastic stem cells. Here, we examined the expression and function of the Krüppel-like family of transcription factors (KLFs) in human glioblastoma (GBM)-derived neurosphere lines and low-passage primary GBM-derived neurospheres that are enriched for tumor-initiating stem cells. We identify KLF9 as a relatively unique differentiation-induced transcription factor in GBM-derived neurospheres. KLF9 is shown to induce neurosphere cell differentiation, inhibit neurosphere formation, and inhibit neurosphere-derived xenograft growth in vivo. We also show that KLF9 regulates GBM neurosphere cells by binding to the Notch1 promoter and suppressing Notch1 expression and downstream signaling. Our results show for the first time that KLF9 has differentiating and tumor-suppressing functions in tumor-initiating stem cells. |
Machine learning: Trends, perspectives, and prospects | Machine learning addresses the question of how to build computers that improve automatically through experience. It is one of today’s most rapidly growing technical fields, lying at the intersection of computer science and statistics, and at the core of artificial intelligence and data science. Recent progress in machine learning has been driven both by the development of new learning algorithms and theory and by the ongoing explosion in the availability of online data and low-cost computation. The adoption of data-intensive machine-learning methods can be found throughout science, technology and commerce, leading to more evidence-based decision-making across many walks of life, including health care, manufacturing, education, financial modeling, policing, and marketing. |
Deep Face Recognition: A Survey | Deep learning applies multiple processing layers to learn representations of data with multiple levels of feature extraction. This emerging technique has reshaped the research landscape of face recognition (FR) since 2014, launched by the breakthroughs of Deepface method. Since then, deep FR technique, which leverages hierarchical architecture to stitch together pixels into invariant face representation, has dramatically improved the state-of-the-art performance and fostered successful real-world applications. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of the recent developments on deep FR, covering both broad topics on algorithm designs, databases and protocols, and application scenes. First, we summarize different network architectures and loss functions proposed in the rapid evolution of the deep FR methods. Second, the related face processing methods are categorized into two classes: “one-to-many augmentation” and “many-to-one normalization”. Then, we summarize and compare the commonly used databases for both model training and evaluation. Third, we review miscellaneous scenes in deep FR, such as cross-factor, heterogenous, multiplemedia and industry scenes. Finally, the technical challenges of current methods and several promising directions on biometric security, fusion, and privacy are highlighted. |
Advances in Capturing Child Fingerprints: A High Resolution CMOS Image Sensor with SLDR Method | The use of biometrics technology for person identification has become prevalent due to several innovations as a result of research and development in this field. The purpose of this study is to find a solution which realizes newborn and infant (younger than 12 months old) fingerprint (hereinafter called as "child print") identification under operational difficulties, especially as it relates to the capturing process. The focus here will be on design and prototyping of a fingerprint sensor for overcoming the difficulties in capturing newborn and infant fingerprints that have previously been difficult to obtain. |
Angle of Arrival Localization for Wireless Sensor Networks | Awareness of the physical location for each node is required by many wireless sensor network applications. The discovery of the position can be realized utilizing range measurements including received signal strength, time of arrival, time difference of arrival and angle of arrival. In this paper, we focus on localization techniques based on angle of arrival information between neighbor nodes. We propose a new localization and orientation scheme that considers beacon information multiple hops away. The scheme is derived under the assumption of noisy angle measurements. We show that the proposed method achieves very good accuracy and precision despite inaccurate angle measurements and a small number of beacons |
Physician Acceptance Behavior of the Electronic Medical Records Exchange: An Extended Decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior | In this study, we examined physician acceptance behavior of the electronic medical record (EMR) exchange. Although several prior studies have focused on factors that affect the adoption or use of EMRs, empirical study that captures the success factors that encourage physicians to adopt the EMR exchange is limited. Therefore, drawing on institutional trust integrated with the decomposed theory of planned behavior (TPB) model, we propose a theoretical model to examine physician intentions of using the EMR exchange. A field survey was conducted in Taiwan to collect data from physicians. Structural equation modeling (SEM) using the partial least squares (PLS) method was employed to test the research model. The results showed that the usage intention of physicians is significantly influenced by 4 factors (i.e., attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavior control, and institutional trust). These 4 factors were assessed by their perceived usefulness and compatibility, facilitating conditions and self-efficacy, situational normality, and structural assurance, respectively. The results also indicated that institutional trust integrated with the decomposed TPB model provides an improved method for predicting physician intentions to use the EMR exchange. Finally, the implications of this study are discussed. |
Tracking the World State with Recurrent Entity Networks | We introduce a new model, the Recurrent Entity Network (EntNet). It is equipped with a dynamic long-term memory which allows it to maintain and update a representation of the state of the world as it receives new data. For language understanding tasks, it can reason on-the-fly as it reads text, not just when it is required to answer a question or respond as is the case for a Memory Network (Sukhbaatar et al., 2015). Like a Neural Turing Machine or Differentiable Neural Computer (Graves et al., 2014; 2016) it maintains a fixed size memory and can learn to perform location and content-based read and write operations. However, unlike those models it has a simple parallel architecture in which several memory locations can be updated simultaneously. The EntNet sets a new state-of-the-art on the bAbI tasks, and is the first method to solve all the tasks in the 10k training examples setting. We also demonstrate that it can solve a reasoning task which requires a large number of supporting facts, which other methods are not able to solve, and can generalize past its training horizon. It can also be practically used on large scale datasets such as Children’s Book Test, where it obtains competitive performance, reading the story in a single pass. |
A multi-class SVM classification system based on learning methods from indistinguishable chinese official documents | 0957-4174/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2011.08.176 q This work is supported by NSC, Taiwan, ROC und 194-029-MY2. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Fu), sin Support Vector Machines (SVM) has been developed for Chinese official document classification in Oneagainst-All (OAA) multi-class scheme. Several data retrieving techniques including sentence segmentation, term weighting, and feature extraction are used in preprocess. We observe that most documents of which contents are indistinguishable make poor classification results. The traditional solution is to add misclassified documents to the training set in order to adjust classification rules. In this paper, indistinguishable documents are observed to be informative for strengthening prediction performance since their labels are predicted by the current model in low confidence. A general approach is proposed to utilize decision values in SVM to identify indistinguishable documents. Based on verified classification results and distinguishability of documents, four learning strategies that select certain documents to training sets are proposed to improve classification performance. Experiments report that indistinguishable documents are able to be identified in a high probability and are informative for learning strategies. Furthermore, LMID that adds both of misclassified documents and indistinguishable documents to training sets is the most effective learning strategy in SVM classification for large set of Chinese official documents in terms of computing efficiency and classification accuracy. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Frankie and Johnny in Chicago and Some Problems of Attribution | Chicago has long had strong theatre and music traditions, and at times has been an important dance city, even if for somewhat mysterious reasons it has never had a resident ballet company to equal the Chicago Symphony, the opera, or the newer Steppenwolf theatre company. Certainly there have been many distinguished teachers there, from Adolph Bolm, Laurent Novikoff, Andreas Pavley, and Serge Oukrainsky through Edna McRae, Berenice Holmes, Bentley Stone, and Walter Camryn to Maria Tallchief. The one important ballet to be created in Chicago, however, came out of a heady mix of the Depression, the WPA Federal Theatre Project, local artistic politics, and two of Chicago's most durable dance figures, Ruth Page and Bentley Stone. The subject was as American as Carl Sandburg, although rather less respectable, being based on the song about which Sandburg remarked, "If America has a classical gutter song, it is the one that tells of Frankie and her man."' The story of the creation of this ballet also raises a number of interesting points in attribution as part of the complex workings of collaboration in dance, especially apportioning the credits for choreography and design. Frankie and Johnny was first shown on a program presented by the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration |
Results of a pivotal phase II study of brentuximab vedotin for patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma. | PURPOSE
Brentuximab vedotin is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) that selectively delivers monomethyl auristatin E, an antimicrotubule agent, into CD30-expressing cells. In phase I studies, brentuximab vedotin demonstrated significant activity with a favorable safety profile in patients with relapsed or refractory CD30-positive lymphomas.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
In this multinational, open-label, phase II study, the efficacy and safety of brentuximab vedotin were evaluated in patients with relapsed or refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) after autologous stem-cell transplantation (auto-SCT). Patients had histologically documented CD30-positive HL by central pathology review. A total of 102 patients were treated with brentuximab vedotin 1.8 mg/kg by intravenous infusion every 3 weeks. In the absence of disease progression or prohibitive toxicity, patients received a maximum of 16 cycles. The primary end point was the overall objective response rate (ORR) determined by an independent radiology review facility.
RESULTS
The ORR was 75% with complete remission (CR) in 34% of patients. The median progression-free survival time for all patients was 5.6 months, and the median duration of response for those in CR was 20.5 months. After a median observation time of more than 1.5 years, 31 patients were alive and free of documented progressive disease. The most common treatment-related adverse events were peripheral sensory neuropathy, nausea, fatigue, neutropenia, and diarrhea.
CONCLUSION
The ADC brentuximab vedotin was associated with manageable toxicity and induced objective responses in 75% of patients with relapsed or refractory HL after auto-SCT. Durable CRs approaching 2 years were observed, supporting study in earlier lines of therapy. |
Efficacy and safety of ipratropium bromide/albuterol delivered via Respimat inhaler versus MDI. | We compared the efficacy and safety of ipratropium bromide/albuterol delivered via Respimat inhaler, a novel propellant-free inhaler, versus chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)-metered dose inhaler (MDI) and ipratropium Respimat inhaler in patients with COPD. This was a multinational, randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, 12-week, parallel-group, active-controlled study. Patients with moderate to severe COPD were randomized to ipratropium bromide/albuterol (20/100mcg) Respimat inhaler, ipratropium bromide/albuterol MDI [36mcg/206mcg (Combivent Inhalation Aerosol MDI)], or ipratropium bromide (20mcg) Respimat inhaler. Each medication was administered four times daily. Serial spirometry was performed over 6h (0.15min, then hourly) on 4 test days. The primary efficacy variable was forced expiratory volume in 1s (FEV(1)) change from test day baseline at 12 weeks. A total of 1209 of 1480 randomized, treated patients completed the study; the majority were male (65%) with a mean age of 64 yrs and a mean screening pre-bronchodilator FEV(1) (percent predicted) of 41%. Ipratropium bromide/albuterol Respimat inhaler had comparable efficacy to ipratropium bromide/albuterol MDI for FEV(1) area under the curve at 0-6h (AUC(0-6)), superior efficacy to ipratropium Respimat inhaler for FEV(1) AUC(0-4) and comparable efficacy to ipratropium Respimat inhaler for FEV(1) AUC(4-6). All active treatments were well tolerated. This study demonstrates that ipratropium bromide/albuterol 20/100mcg inhaler administered four times daily for 12 weeks had equivalent bronchodilator efficacy and comparable safety to ipratropium bromide/albuterol 36mcg/206mcg MDI, and significantly improved lung function compared with the mono-component ipratropium bromide 20 mcg Respimat inhaler. [Clinical Trial Identifier Number: NCT00400153]. |
Making the stabilizer ZX-calculus complete for scalars | The ZX-calculus is a graphical language for quantum processes with built-in rewrite rules. The rewrite rules allow equalities to be derived entirely graphically, leading to the question of completeness: can any equality that is derivable using matrices also be derived graphically? The ZX-calculus is known to be complete for scalar-free pure qubit stabilizer quantum mechanics, meaning any equality between two pure stabilizer operators that is true up to a non-zero scalar factor can be derived using the graphical rewrite rules. Here, we replace those scalar-free rewrite rules with correctly scaled ones and show that, by adding one new diagram element and a new rewrite rule, the calculus can be made complete for pure qubit stabilizer quantum mechanics with scalars. This completeness property allows amplitudes and probabilities to be calculated entirely graphically. We also explicitly consider stabilizer zero diagrams, i.e. diagrams that represent a zero matrix, and show that two new rewrite rules suffice to make the calculus complete for those. |
Oligodendroglial tumor chemotherapy using "decreased-dose-intensity" PCV: a Singapore experience. | The authors propose "decreased-dose-intensity" PCV (procarbazine, lomustine [CCNU], and vincristine) chemotherapy for Asian patients with oligodendroglial tumors. In this study, all seven patients with oligodendroglioma (OD) and eight with anaplastic oligodendroglioma (AO) had objective responses or stable disease. Median progression-free survival was greater than 29 months (OD) and 36.5 months or greater (AO); 86% of patients with OD and 63% with AO remain progression-free. Twenty-four Common Toxicity Criteria Grade 3/4 adverse events were noted. |
Decrease of the atrial fibrillatory rate, increased organization of the atrial rhythm and termination of atrial fibrillation by AZD7009. | BACKGROUND
The atrial fibrillatory rate (AFR), on AZD7009 as compared to placebo, was investigated as a potential biomarker for electrophysiological effect in early antiarrhythmic drug development.
METHODS
Patients with permanent AF received infusions of AZD7009 and placebo in an exploratory two-way, single-blind, randomized cross-over study. The ECG was continuously recorded, and following QRST cancellation the AFR, its standard deviation (SD), the exponential decay and the atrial electrogram amplitude were determined as 3-min averages.
RESULTS
The mean AFR rapidly decreased by 43% from baseline (394 ± 38 to 225 ± 61 fibrillations/min, p=0.0003) on AZD7009, but not on placebo. The SD of the AFR and the exponential decay decreased in parallel. In 2 of 8 patients, termination of AF occurred after the AFR had decreased by 58% and 53%, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS
The AFR may potentially serve as a biomarker of electrophysiological effects in early evaluation of rhythm control agents. |
Flexible CASE and hypertext | Software design environments can and should be improved to serve better the needs of system developers. Emphasis should be placed on providing convivial support for knowledge structures echoing those found in the human mind. This paper describes an overall research cycle to determine how and to what extent the functionality of software design environments can be improved by using hypertext. It conceives a hypertext implementation for a full-blown CASE environment. Hypertext is incorporated into CASE tools as generic support functionality. A hypertext-based design rationale tool is also developed. These together integrate different degrees of information structures, and thus can support different uses of design information by individuals and groups. Generic objects and forms of hypertext of this kind improve the flexibility of software design environments. |
Lignin peroxidase of Phanerochaete chrysosporium. Evidence for an acidic ionization controlling activity. | The active site amino acid residues of lignin peroxidase are homologous to those of other peroxidases; however, in contrast to other peroxidases, no pH dependence is observed for the reaction of ferric lignin peroxidase with H2O2 to form compound I (Andrawis, A., Johnson, K.A., and Tien, M. (1988) J. Biol. Chem. 263, 1195-1198). Chloride binding is used in the present study to investigate this reaction further. Chloride binds to lignin peroxidase at the same site as cyanide and hydrogen peroxide. This is indicated by the following. 1) Chloride competes with cyanide in binding to lignin peroxidase. 2) Chloride is a competitive inhibitor of lignin peroxidase with respect to H2O2. The inhibition constant (Ki) is equal to the dissociation constant (Kd) of chloride at all pH values studied. Chloride binding is pH dependent: chloride binds only to the protonated form of lignin peroxidase. Transient-state kinetic studies demonstrate that chloride inhibits lignin peroxidase compound I formation in a pH-dependent manner with maximum inhibition at low pH. An apparent pKa was calculated at each chloride concentration; the pKa increased as the chloride concentration increased. Extrapolation to zero chloride concentration allowed us to estimate the intrinsic pKa for the ionization in the lignin peroxidase active site. The results reported here provide evidence that an acidic ionizable group (pKa approximately 1) at the active site controls both lignin peroxidase compound I formation and chloride binding. We propose that the mechanism for lignin peroxidase compound I formation is similar to that of other peroxidases in that it requires the deprotonated form of an ionizable group near the active site. |
From Cybernetics to Second-Order Cybernetics : A Comparative Analysis of Their Central Ideas | > Context • The enactive paradigm in the cognitive sciences is establishing itself as a strong and comprehensive alternative to the computationalist mainstream. However, its own particular historical roots have so far been largely ignored in the historical analyses of the cognitive sciences. > Problem • In order to properly assess the enactive paradigm’s theoretical foundations in terms of their validity, novelty and potential future directions of development, it is essential for us to know more about the history of ideas that has led to the current state of affairs. > Method • The meaning of the disappearance of the field of cybernetics and the rise of second-order cybernetics is analyzed by taking a closer look at the work of representative figures for each of the phases – Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow for the early wave of cybernetics, Ashby for its culmination, and von Foerster for the development of the second-order approach. > Results • It is argued that the disintegration of cybernetics eventually resulted in two distinct scientific traditions, one going from symbolic AI to modern cognitive science on the one hand, and the other leading from second-order cybernetics to the current enactive paradigm. > Implications • We can now understand that the extent to which the cognitive sciences have neglected their cybernetic parent is precisely the extent to which cybernetics had already carried the tendencies that would later find fuller expression in second-order cybernetics. > |
Hybrid polymer-CdS solar cell active layers formed by in situ growth of CdS nanoparticles | The integration of semiconductor nanoparticles (NPs) into a polymeric matrix has the potential to enhance the performance of polymer-based solar cells taking advantage of the physical properties of NPs and polymers. We synthesize a new class of CdS-NPs-based active layer employing a low-cost and low temperature route compatible with large-scale device manufacturing. Our approach is based on the controlled in situ thermal decomposition of a cadmium thiolate precursor in poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT). The casted P3HT:precursor solid foils were heated up from 200 to 300 °C to allow the precursor decomposition and the CdS-NP formation within the polymer matrix. The CdS-NP growth was controlled by varying the annealing temperature. The polymer:precursor weight ratio was also varied to investigate the effects of increasing the NP volume fraction on the solar cell performances. The optical properties were studied by using UV–Vis absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy at room temperature. To investigate the photocurrent response of P3HT:CdS nanocomposites, ITO/P3HT:CdS/Al solar cell devices were realized. We measured the external quantum efficiency (EQE) as a function of the wavelength. The photovoltaic response of the devices containing CdS-NPs showed a variation compared with the devices with P3HT only. By changing the annealing temperature the EQE is enhanced in the 400–600 nm spectral region. By increasing the NPs volume fraction remarkable changes in the EQE spectra were observed. The data are discussed also in relation to morphological features of the interfaces studied by Focused Ion Beam technique. |
Pathophysiological distortions in time perception and timed performance. | Distortions in time perception and timed performance are presented by a number of different neurological and psychiatric conditions (e.g. Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism). As a consequence, the primary focus of this review is on factors that define or produce systematic changes in the attention, clock, memory and decision stages of temporal processing as originally defined by Scalar Expectancy Theory. These findings are used to evaluate the Striatal Beat Frequency Theory, which is a neurobiological model of interval timing based upon the coincidence detection of oscillatory processes in corticostriatal circuits that can be mapped onto the stages of information processing proposed by Scalar Timing Theory. |
The Roles of Habit, Self-Efficacy, and Satisfaction in Driving Continued Use of Self-Service Technologies: A Longitudinal Study | Recent years have witnessed increased use of self-service technologies (SSTs) across the services sector, which has dramatically changed the nature of the service delivery process. Although an abundance of research has investigated how customers evaluate a new SST and what drives the initial adoption, little is known about how customers interact with, and adapt to, an SST after their first experience. Thus, this study focuses on the dynamic and complex process through which customers move from initial adoption to continued use, after repeated interactions with an SST. A three-wave longitudinal study examines how habit, self-efficacy, and satisfaction affect SST usage over time in a retailing context. The results indicate that as learning occurs and experience accumulates, customers’ continued use of an SST is initially largely rational driven (self-efficacy), then largely emotional driven (satisfaction), and, finally, habitual (habit). Over time, habit completely mediates the impact of intentions on future usage. The article concludes with a discussion of the managerial implications and directions for further research. |
Applications of data mining in robotics | From a high-level viewpoint, robotics is all about data. In other words, each robot agent for performing its designated tasks should deal with data in some form - from collecting data from the environment to generating internal data. For this reason and due to broad range of possible applications, managing and dealing with such data is an important issue in the field. On the other side, data - in its different types - is known as an invaluable treasure of knowledge and insight within any information system. In this regard, extracting such hidden knowledge through data mining has been in the center of focus for more than two decades. In fact, data mining could be considered as a super-influential phenomenon on all scientific fields and robotics is not an exception. Over the recent years, many studies have been conducted on different aspects of leveraging data mining techniques in the robotic domain to improve performance of robots in various ways. However, despite the current disparate and unorganized studies in different directions, there are some potential areas that have not received enough attention. In this paper, we provide a high-level overview of the field and try to organize the current studies as a reference point and road map for future works. Moreover, challenges and future possible directions will be studied. |
High-performance PMASynRM with ferrite magnet for EV/HEV applications | Although motors that use rare-earth permanent magnets typically exhibit high performance, high costs and concerns about the stability of raw material supplies can limit production. This paper proposes a permanent-magnet-assisted synchronous reluctance motor (PMASynRM) with ferrite magnets that do not use rare earth materials. The performance of the proposed PMASynRM is evaluated based on the 2-D finite element method and an experiment using a prototype machine. The motor parameters, torque, output power, and efficiency characteristics are discussed. The analysis and experimental results reveal that the proposed PMASynRM has an efficiency equivalent to that of conventional rare-earth permanent magnet synchronous motors used in EV/HEVs. |
A 200-mA Digital Low Drop-Out Regulator With Coarse-Fine Dual Loop in Mobile Application Processor | This paper proposes a coarse-fine dual-loop architecture for the digital low drop-out (LDO) regulators with fast transient response and more than 200-mA load capacity. In the proposed scheme, the output voltage is coregulated by two loops, namely, the coarse loop and the fine loop. The coarse loop adopts a fast current-mirror flash analog to digital converter and supplies high output current to enhance the transient performance, while the fine loop delivers low output current and helps reduce the voltage ripples and improve the regulation accuracies. Besides, a digital controller is implemented to prevent contentions between the two loops. Fabricated in a 28-nm Samsung CMOS process, the proposed digital LDO achieves maximum load up to 200 mA when the input and the output voltages are 1.1 and 0.9 V, respectively, with a chip area of 0.021 mm2. The measured output voltage drop of around 120 mV is observed for a load step of 180 mA. |
Learning question classifiers: the role of semantic information | In order to respond correctly to a free form factual question given a large collection of text data, one needs to understand the question to a level that allows determining some of the constraints the question imposes on a possible answer. These constraints may include a semantic classification of the sought after answer and may even suggest using different strategies when looking for and verifying a candidate answer. This work presents the first work on a machine learning approach to question classification. Guided by a layered semantic hierarchy of answer types, we develop a hierarchical classifier that classifies questions into fine-grained classes. This work also performs a systematic study of the use of semantic information sources in natural language classification tasks. It is shown that, in the context of question classification, augmenting the input of the classifier with appropriate semantic category information results in significant improvements to classification accuracy. We show accurate results on a large collection of free-form questions used in TREC 10 and 11. |
Unusual phenomenology of autoerotic fatalities. | Between 1983 and 2003 forty accidental autoerotic deaths (all males, 13-79 years old) have been investigated at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Hamburg. Three cases with a rather unusual scenery are described in detail: (1) a 28-year-old fireworker was found hanging under a bridge in a peculiar bound belt system. The autopsy and the reconstruction revealed signs of asphyxiation, feminine underwear, and several layers of plastic clothing. (2) A 16-year-old pupil dressed with feminine plastic and rubber utensils fixed and strangulated himself with an electric wire. (3) A 28-year-old handicapped man suffered from progressive muscular dystrophy and was nearly unable to move. His bizarre sexual fantasies were exaggerating: he induced a nurse to draw plastic bags over his body, close his mouth with plastic strips, and put him in a rubbish container where he died from suffocation. |
Randomized comparison of the Personality Assessment Inventory and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 in the epilepsy monitoring unit | The two most common personality measures used in evaluation of patients on epilepsy monitoring units (EMUs) are the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). Both have been evaluated separately for their ability to distinguish patients with epilepsy from patients with psychogenic events, but they have never been compared directly. The primary aim of this study was to provide comparison data in an EMU population between the PAI, MMPI-2, and the MMPI-2-RF (MMPI-2 Restructured Form). Results show that the PAI Somatic Complaints (SOM) scale and the Conversion subscale (SOM-C), with classification rates of 79%, outperform other indicators from the PAI and indicators from the MMPI-2 and the MMPI-2-RF. Given its other strengths combined with better diagnostic validity performance, the PAI may be the better personality assessment measure for use in distinguishing patients with epilepsy from those with psychogenic seizures in the EMU. |
No-Needle, Single-Visit Adult Male Circumcision with Unicirc: A Multi-Centre Field Trial | BACKGROUND
Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) is a priority HIV preventive intervention. Current adult circumcision methods need improvement.
METHODS
Field trial in 3 primary care centres. Minimally invasive VMMC using the Unicirc instrument following topical lidocaine/prilocaine anesthetic. Men were followed up at 1 and 4 weeks.
RESULTS
We circumcised 110 healthy volunteers. Two men complained of transient burning pain during circumcision, but none required injectable anaesthesia. Median blood loss was 1ml and median procedure time was 9.0 min. There were 7 (6.3%) moderate complications (5 (4.5%) post-operative bleeds requiring suture and 2 (1.8%) post-operative infections) affecting 7 men. No men experienced significant wound dehiscence. 90.4% of men were fully healed at 4 weeks of follow-up and all were highly satisfied.
CONCLUSIONS
Use of topical anaesthesia obviates the need for injectable anesthetic and makes the Unicirc procedure nearly painless. Unicirc is rapid, easy to learn, heals by primary intention with excellent cosmetic results, obviates the need for a return visit for device removal, and is potentially cheaper and safer than other methods. Use of this method will greatly facilitate scale-up of mass circumcision programs.
TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02091726. |
Effects of β-alanine supplementation and high-intensity interval training on endurance performance and body composition in men; a double-blind trial | BACKGROUND
Intermittent bouts of high-intensity exercise result in diminished stores of energy substrates, followed by an accumulation of metabolites, promoting chronic physiological adaptations. In addition, beta-alanine has been accepted has an effective physiological hydrogen ion (H+) buffer. Concurrent high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and beta-alanine supplementation may result in greater adaptations than HIIT alone. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of combining beta-alanine supplementation with high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on endurance performance and aerobic metabolism in recreationally active college-aged men.
METHODS
Forty-six men (Age: 22.2 +/- 2.7 yrs; Ht: 178.1 +/- 7.4 cm; Wt: 78.7 +/- 11.9; VO2peak: 3.3 +/- 0.59 l.min-1) were assessed for peak O2 utilization (VO2peak), time to fatigue (VO2TTE), ventilatory threshold (VT), and total work done at 110% of pre-training VO2peak (TWD). In a double-blind fashion, all subjects were randomly assigned into one either a placebo (PL - 16.5 g dextrose powder per packet; n = 18) or beta-alanine (BA - 1.5 g beta-alanine plus 15 g dextrose powder per packet; n = 18) group. All subjects supplemented four times per day (total of 6 g/day) for the first 21-days, followed by two times per day (3 g/day) for the subsequent 21 days, and engaged in a total of six weeks of HIIT training consisting of 5-6 bouts of a 2:1 minute cycling work to rest ratio.
RESULTS
Significant improvements in VO2peak, VO2TTE, and TWD after three weeks of training were displayed (p < 0.05). Increases in VO2peak, VO2TTE, TWD and lean body mass were only significant for the BA group after the second three weeks of training.
CONCLUSION
The use of HIIT to induce significant aerobic improvements is effective and efficient. Chronic BA supplementation may further enhance HIIT, improving endurance performance and lean body mass. |
Advanced grid requirements for the integration of wind turbines into the German transmission system | In Germany 18 GW wind power will have been installed by the end of 2005. Until 2020, this figure reaches the 50 GW mark. Based on the results of recent studies and on the experience with existing wind projects modification of the existing grid code for connection and operation of wind farms in the high voltage grid is necessary. The paper discusses main issues of the suggested requirements by highlighting major changes and extensions. The topics considered are fault ride-through, grid voltage maintenance respective voltage control, system monitoring and protection as well as retrofitting of old units. The new requirements are defined taking into account some new developments in wind turbine technologies which should be utilized in the future to meet grid requirement. Monitoring and system protection is defined under the aspect of sustainability of the measures introduced |
A Broadband Dual-Polarized Base Station Antenna With Sturdy Construction | A broadband dual-polarized base station antenna with sturdy construction is presented in this letter. The antenna mainly contains four parts: main radiator, feeding baluns, bedframe, and reflector. First, two orthogonal dipoles are etched on a substrate as main radiator forming dual polarization. Two baluns are then introduced to excite the printed dipoles. Each balun has four bumps on the edges for electrical connection and fixation. The bedframe is designed to facilitate the installation, and the reflector is finally used to gain unidirectional radiation. Measured results show that the antenna has a 48% impedance bandwidth with reflection coefficient less than –15 dB and port isolation more than 22 dB. A four-element antenna array with 6° ± 2° electrical down tilt is also investigated for wideband base station application. The antenna and its array have the advantages of sturdy construction, high machining accuracy, ease of integration, and low cost. They can be used for broadband base station in the next-generation wireless communication system. |
A Brief Review of Network Embedding | Learning the representations of nodes in a network can benefit various analysis tasks such as node classification, link prediction, clustering, and anomaly detection. Such a representation learning problem is referred to as network embedding, and it has attracted significant attention in recent years. In this article, we briefly review the existing network embedding methods by two taxonomies. The technical taxonomy focuses on the specific techniques used and divides the existing network embedding methods into two stages, i.e., context construction and objective design. The non-technical taxonomy focuses on the problem setting aspect and categorizes existing work based on whether to preserve special network properties, to consider special network types, or to incorporate additional inputs. Finally, we summarize the main findings based on the two taxonomies, analyze their usefulness, and discuss future directions in this area. |
Culturally Responsive Teaching : Implications for Educational Justice | Educational justice is a major global challenge. In most underdeveloped countries, many students do not have access to education and in most advanced democracies, school attainment and success are still, to a large extent, dependent on a student’s social background. However, it has often been argued that social justice is an essential part of teachers’ work in a democracy. This article raises an important overriding question: how can we realize the goal of educational justice in the field of teaching? In this essay, I examine culturally responsive teaching as an educational practice and conclude that it is possible to realize educational justice in the field of teaching because in its true implementation, culturally responsive teaching conceptualizes the connection between education and social justice and creates the space needed for discussing social change in society. |
Augmented Reality Projects in Automotive and Aerospace Industry | In 2003 the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR) was accompanied by a workshop on Potential Industrial Applications (PIA). The organizers wisely called it "potential" because the real use of augmented reality (AR) in an industrial context is still in its infancy. Our own experience in this field clearly supports this viewpoint. We have been actively involved in the research, development and deployment of AR systems in the automotive, aviation and astronautics industries for more than five years and have developed and implemented AR systems in a wide variety of environments. In this paper we have selected ten AR projects from those we have managed and implemented in the past to examine the main challenges faced and to share some of the lessons learned. We will conclude with some guidelines for successfully deploying AR in an industrial context. Introduction: Augmented Reality in an industrial context Bringing research results out of the laboratory and into an industrial context is always a challenge. And if this process eventually leads to success on the market it is usually called innovation. Innovations in the technological area of augmented reality are rare. On the one hand research and development (R&D) is still in its early days. On the other hand the academic and industry partners both agree that there is huge potential for the technology in a broad variety of applications. As a result various attempts to bring R&D and “real world use” of AR together have been made and are still top of the list for potential innovations. It can be said that the application of augmented reality in an industrial context started with Boeing’s wire bundle assembly project in the early 90’s (Mizell, 2001) followed by several smaller projects until the end of the last century. While numerous academic projects evolved in the following years, industrial augmented reality (IAR) IEEE COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND APPLICATIONS FINAL MANUSCRIPT November / December 2005 Page 2 of 14 Regenbrecht_etal_AR_in_AutomotiveAerospace.doc applications are still rare. In some cases, AR technology was applied successfully in certain use cases. For instance in supporting welding processes (Echtler et al., 2003) or in some training scenarios (see Doerner et al., 2002). To date there have been two major initiatives for AR innovation. The Mixed Reality Systems Laboratory in Japan, with its focus set on the development of mixed reality prototype applications comprising hardware and software, has demonstrated the potential for the real-world use of AR (see Tamura, Yamamoto, & Katayama, 2001). The successes of this project lead to the release of the mixed reality platform, a comprehensive toolkit consisting of display, tracking, and AR software technology. The other initiative being the German project “ARVIKA” lead by Siemens which included the majority of the manufacturing industry in the country as well as selected partners in academia and small and medium enterprises (see Friedrich, 2004). The focus here was on the application of AR in the fields of design, production, and servicing. All these initiatives brought forward various prototypes and demonstrated applications and have therefore been valuable in progressing the field of AR. The lessons learned in these projects have had a strong influence on the direction of AR R&D worldwide. As part of this international community we have developed prototypes of AR applications in the realm of automotive and aerospace industry. A majority of our projects are presented here. Servicing and Maintenance Today’s products are getting more and more complex. The days when a plan of the electrical circuits of a car fit onto one large sheet of paper have long gone, modern high-tech cars now require a database system and state of the art computer equipment for electric and electronic diagnosis. A printout of such a database is as thick as an encyclopedia. How can one bring the right information to the right place at the right time? The use of augmented reality technology seems to be obvious. The service personnel is equipped with a (wearable) computer unit and gets the appropriate information displayed next to or overlaid onto the object being inspected. Not only can this do away with the need for a paper schematic, but a far richer information resource can be provided via online access to dedicated information and multi-media content. The promise is to increase effectiveness (fewer errors) and efficiency (shorter time to complete the task) through the use of context-sensitive, up-to-date, and media-rich information. All major manufacturing enterprises are thinking about how to make use of AR technology in their maintenance and servicing areas. The more complex the product is, the greater the potential benefit of AR. We have selected three areas where we applied AR technology for service personnel. IEEE COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND APPLICATIONS FINAL MANUSCRIPT November / December 2005 Page 3 of 14 Regenbrecht_etal_AR_in_AutomotiveAerospace.doc Figure 1: Servicing projects from left to right: Space station filter change and engine maintenance Space station filter change The European Columbus module of the International Space Station (ISS) is intended to be inhabited (part-time) by astronauts from different countries. As one can imagine this module is a very complex system and requires many maintenance tasks to be undertaken by the astronauts. The augmentation of service information could help decrease the workload. The client for this application (German and European Aerospace industry: DASA RI, EADS Astrium) decided on a step-by-step approach for testing the use of AR technology in space. A fairly simple application scenario was chosen to test the validity of the concept: providing instructions and support for monitoring the state of the air filter and changing the filter if required. Our research and development involved the implementation of an optical see-through solution, the connection of this to a content delivery system, and the identification of opportunities and limitations of AR use in this context. The content delivery was entirely based on an existing virtual reality system. All information displayed was in the form of three-dimensional geometry modeled as a whole or in part beforehand. Together with developers in the client group, a whole wearable AR system was developed consisting of a rugged backpack computer, a modified COTS headmounted display with optical see-through capabilities (Sony Glasstron), and an ultrasonic/inertial tracking system. Although it was intended to display threedimensional content, in the end 2D content aligned to 3D space was provided (see figure 1 above). The system was successfully demonstrated at an international aerospace fair, but the system never made it into space. This was due to the difficulty in meeting the rigorous requirements of aerospace standards, which include being able to withstand extreme operating conditions (e.g. high g-forces), the required unobtrusiveness of the technology within the module (almost no instrumentation of the environment is possible), or the failure-free linkage to the onboard information infrastructure. |
Visual SLAM with Line and Corner Features | We propose a new vision-based SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) technique using both line and corner features as landmarks in the scene. The proposed SLAM algorithm uses an extended Kalman filter based framework to localize and reconstruct 3D line and corner landmarks at the same time and in real time. It provides more accurate localization and map building results than conventional corner feature only-based techniques. Moreover, the reconstructed 3D line landmarks enhance the performance of the robot relocation when robot's pose remains uncertain with corner information only. Experimental results show that the hybrid landmark based SLAM, using lines and corners, produces better performance than corner only one's |
Health co-benefits and risks of public health adaptation strategies to climate change: a review of current literature | Many public health adaptation strategies have been identified in response to climate change. This report reviews current literature on health co-benefits and risks of these strategies to gain a better understanding of how they may affect health. A literature review was conducted electronically using English language literature from January 2000 to March 2012. Of 812 articles identified, 22 peer-reviewed articles that directly addressed health co-benefits or risks of adaptation were included in the review. The co-benefits and risks identified in the literature most commonly relate to improvements in health associated with adaptation actions that affect social capital and urban design. Health co-benefits of improvements in social capital have positive influences on mental health, independently of other determinants. Risks included reinforcing existing misconceptions regarding health. Health co-benefits of urban design strategies included reduced obesity, cardiovascular disease and improved mental health through increased physical activity, cooling spaces (e.g., shaded areas), and social connectivity. Risks included pollen allergies with increased urban green space, and adverse health effects from heat events through the use of air conditioning. Due to the current limited understanding of the full impacts of the wide range of existing climate change adaptation strategies, further research should focus on both unintended positive and negative consequences of public health adaptation. |
Design and Performance Analysis of Superconducting Rim-Driven Synchronous Motors for Marine Propulsion | Rim-driven thrusters have received much attention concerning the potential benefits in vibration and hydrodynamic characteristics, which are of great importance in marine transportation systems. In this sense, the rim-driven permanent magnet, brushless dc, and induction motors have been recently suggested to be employed as marine propulsion motors. On the other hand, high-temperature superconducting (HTS) synchronous motors are becoming much fascinating, particularly in transport applications, regarding some considerable advantages such as low loss, high efficiency, and compactness. However, the HTS-type rim-driven synchronous motor has not been studied yet. Therefore, this paper is devoted to a design practice of rim-driven synchronous motors with HTS field winding. A detailed design procedure is developed for the HTS rim-driven motors, and the design algorithm is validated applying the finite element (FE) method. The FE model of a three-phase 2.5-MW HTS rim-driven synchronous motor is utilized, and the electromagnetic characteristics of the motor are then evaluated. The goal is to design an HTS machine fitted in a thin duct to minimize the hydrodynamic drag force. The design problem exhibits some difficulties while considering various constraints. |
Use of calcium-binding proteins to map inputs in vestibular nuclei of the gerbil. | We wished to determine whether calbindin and/or calretinin are appropriate markers for vestibular afferents, a population of neurons in the vestibular nuclear complex, or cerebellar Purkinje inputs. To accomplish this goal, immunocytochemical staining was observed in gerbils after lesions of the vestibular nerve central to the ganglion, the cerebellum, or both. Eleven to fourteen days after recovery, the brain was processed for immunocytochemical identification of calretinin and calbindin. After lesion of the vestibular nerve, no calretinin staining was seen in any of the vestibular nuclei except for a population of intrinsic neurons, which showed no obvious change in number or staining pattern. Calbindin staining was reduced in all nuclei except the dorsal part of the lateral vestibular nuclei. The density of staining of each marker, measured in the magnocellular medial vestibular nucleus, was significantly reduced. After the cerebellar lesion, no differences in calretinin staining were noted. However, calbindin staining was greatly reduced in all nuclei. The density of staining, measured in the caudal medial vestibular nucleus, was significantly lower. After a combined lesion of the cerebellum and vestibular nerve, the distribution and density of calretinin staining resembled that after vestibular nerve section alone, whereas calbindin staining was no longer seen. This study demonstrates that calretinin and calbindin are effective markers for the identification of vestibular afferents. |
Fatigue characteristics of McKibben artificial muscle actuators | The McKibben artificial muscle is a pneumatic actuator whose properties include a very high force to weight ratio. This characteristic makes it very attractive for a wide range of applications such as mobile robots and prosthetic appliances for the disabled. Typical applications often require a significant number of repeated contractions and extensions or cycles of the actuator. This repeated action leads to fatigue and failure of the actuator, yielding a life span that is often shorter than its more common robotic counterparts such as electric motors or pneumatic cylinders. In this paper, we develop a model that predicts the maximum number of life cycles of the actuator based on available uniaxial tensile properties of the actuator’s inner bladder. Experimental results, which validate the model, reveal McKibben actuators fabricated with natural latex rubber bladders have a fatigue limit 24 times greater than actuators fabricated with synthetic silicone rubber at large contraction ratios. |
Electricity from methane by reversing methanogenesis | Given our vast methane reserves and the difficulty in transporting methane without substantial leaks, the conversion of methane directly into electricity would be beneficial. Microbial fuel cells harness electrical power from a wide variety of substrates through biological means; however, the greenhouse gas methane has not been used with much success previously as a substrate in microbial fuel cells to generate electrical current. Here we construct a synthetic consortium consisting of: (i) an engineered archaeal strain to produce methyl-coenzyme M reductase from unculturable anaerobic methanotrophs for capturing methane and secreting acetate; (ii) micro-organisms from methane-acclimated sludge (including Paracoccus denitrificans) to facilitate electron transfer by providing electron shuttles (confirmed by replacing the sludge with humic acids), and (iii) Geobacter sulfurreducens to produce electrons from acetate, to create a microbial fuel cell that converts methane directly into significant electrical current. Notably, this methane microbial fuel cell operates at high Coulombic efficiency. |
Named Entity Recognition from Biomedical Text Using SVM | NA |
Autonomous boids | The classical work of bird-like objects of Reynolds [1] simulates polarized motion of groups of oriented particles, bird-like objects, or simply boids. To do this, three steering vectors are introduced. Cohesion is the tendency of boids to stay in the center of the flock, alignment smoothes their velocities to similar values, and separation helps them to avoid mutual collisions. If no impetus is introduced the boids wander somewhat |
Dislocation/separation injuries among US high school athletes in 9 selected sports: 2005-2009. | OBJECTIVE
To investigate the epidemiology of dislocations/separations in a nationally representative sample of high school student-athletes participating in 9 sports.
DESIGN
Descriptive epidemiologic study.
SETTING
Sports injury data for the 2005-2009 academic years were collected using an Internet-based injury surveillance system, Reporting Information Online (RIO).
PARTICIPANTS
A nationally representative sample of 100 US high schools.
ASSESSMENT OF RISK FACTORS
Injuries sustained as a function of sport and gender.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Dislocation/separation rates, body site, outcome, surgery, and mechanism.
RESULTS
Dislocations/separations represented 3.6% (n = 755) of all injuries. The most commonly injured body sites were the shoulder (54.9%), wrist/hand (16.5%), and knee (16.0%); 18.4% of dislocations/separations were recurrences of previous injuries at the same body site; 32.3% of injuries were severe (ie, student-athletes unable to return to play within 3 weeks of the injury date), and 11.8% required surgical repair. The most common mechanisms of injury were contact with another player (52.4%) and contact with the playing surface (26.4%). Injury rates varied by sport. In gender-comparable sports, few variations in patterns of injury existed. Rates were highest in football (2.10 per 10 000 athletic exposures) and wrestling (1.99) and lowest in baseball (0.24) and girls' soccer (0.27).
CONCLUSIONS
Although dislocation/separation injuries represent a relatively small proportion of all injuries sustained by high school student-athletes, the severity of these injuries indicates a need for enhanced injury prevention efforts. Developing effective targeted preventive measures depends on increasing our knowledge of dislocation/separation rates, patterns, and risk factors among high school athletes. |
Designing a theory- and evidence-based tailored eHealth rehabilitation aftercare program in Germany and the Netherlands: study protocol | BACKGROUND
Cardiac rehabilitation programs aim to improve health status and to decrease the risk of further cardiac events. Persons undergoing rehabilitation often have difficulties transferring the learned health behaviors into their daily routine after returning home and maybe to work. This includes physical activity as well as fruit and vegetable consumption. Computer-based tailored interventions have been shown to be effective in increasing physical activity as well as fruit and vegetable consumption. The aim of this study is, to support people in transferring these two learned behavior changes and their antecedents into their daily life after cardiac rehabilitation.
METHODS
The study will have a randomized controlled design and will be conducted among German and Dutch people who participated in cardiac rehabilitation. The study will consist of one intervention group which will be compared to a waiting list control group. During the eight week duration of the intervention, participants will be invited to participate in the online after-care program once per week. The intervention encourages participants to define individual health behavior goals as well as action, and coping plans to reach these self-determined goals. The effectiveness of the program will be compared between the intervention condition and the control group in terms of behavior change, antecedents of behavior change (e.g., self-efficacy), ability to return to work and increased well-being. Further, subgroup-differences will be assessed including differences between the two countries, socioeconomic inequalities and across age groups.
DISCUSSION
The present study will make a contribution to understanding how such an online-based tailored interventions enables study participants to adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Implications can include how such an online program could enrich cardiac rehabilitation aftercare further.
TRIAL REGISTRATION
NTR 3706, NCT01909349. |
Additivity models for suprathreshold distortion in quantized wavelet-coded images | The additivity of wavelet subband quantization distortions was investigated in an unmasked detection task and in masked detection and discrimination tasks. Contrast thresholds were measured for both simple targets (artifacts induced by uniform quantization of individual discrete wavelet transform subbands) and compound targets (artifacts induced by uniform quantization of pairs of discrete wavelet transform subbands) in the presence of no mask and eight different natural image maskers. The results were used to assess summation between wavelet subband quantization distortions on orientation and spatial-frequency dimensions. In the unmasked detection experiment, subthreshold quantization distortions pooled in a non-linear fashion and the amount of summation agreed with those of previous summation-atthreshold experiments (ß=2.43; relative sensitivity=1.33). In the masked detection and discrimination experiments, suprathreshold quantization distortions pooled in a linear fashion. Summation increased as the distortions became increasingly suprathreshold but quickly settled to near-linear values. Summation on the spatial-frequency dimension was greater than summation on the orientation dimension for all suprathreshold contrasts. A high degree of uncertainty imposed by the natural image maskers precludes quantifying an absolute measure of summation. |
Alterations of the CD4+, CD8+ T Cell Subsets, Interleukins-1β, IL-10, IL-17, Tumor Necrosis Factor-α and Soluble Intercellular Adhesion Molecule-1 in Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis: Preliminary Observations | Rheumatoid arthritis is a multisystem disease with underlying immune mechanisms. Osteoarthritis is a debilitating, progressive disease of diarthrodial joints associated with the aging process. Although much is known about the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, our understanding of some immunologic changes remains incomplete. This study tries to examine the numeric changes in the T cell subsets and the alterations in the levels of some cytokines and adhesion molecules in these lesions. To accomplish this goal, peripheral blood and synovial fluid samples were obtained from 24 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, 15 patients with osteoarthritis and six healthy controls. The counts of CD4 + and CD8 + T lymphocytes were examined using flow cytometry. The levels of some cytokines (TNF-α, IL1-β, IL-10, and IL-17) and a soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1) were measured in the sera and synovial fluids using enzyme linked immunosorbant assay. We found some variations in the counts of T cell subsets, the levels of cytokines and sICAM-1 adhesion molecule between the healthy controls and the patients with arthritis. High levels of IL-1β, IL-10, IL-17 and TNF-α (in the serum and synovial fluid) were observed in arthritis compared to the healthy controls. In rheumatoid arthritis, a high serum level of sICAM-1 was found compared to its level in the synovial fluid. A high CD4+/CD8+ T cell ratio was found in the blood of the patients with rheumatoid arthritis. In rheumatoid arthritis, the cytokine levels correlated positively with some clinicopathologic features. To conclude, the development of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis is associated with alteration of the levels of some cytokines. The assessment of these immunologic changes may have potential prognostic roles. |
"They brought in the horrible key ring thing!" Analysing the Usability of Two-Factor Authentication in UK Online Banking | To prevent password breaches and guessing attacks, banks increasingly turn to two-factor authentication (2FA), requiring users to present at least one more factor, such as a one-time password generated by a hardware token or received via SMS, besides a password. We can expect some solutions – especially those adding a token – to create extra work for users, but little research has investigated usability, user acceptance, and perceived security of deployed 2FA. This paper presents an in-depth study of 2FA usability with 21 UK online banking customers, 16 of whom had accounts with more than one bank. We collected a rich set of qualitative and quantitative data through two rounds of semi-structured interviews, and an authentication diary over an average of 11 days. Our participants reported a wide range of usability issues, especially with the use of hardware tokens, showing that the mental and physical workload involved shapes how they use online banking. Key targets for improvements are (i) the reduction in the number of authentication steps, and (ii) removing features that do not add any security but negatively affect the user experience. |
Hierarchical Text Classication using Methods from Machine Learning | Due to the permantently growing amount of textual data, automatic methods for organizing the data are needed. Automatic text classification is one of this methods. It automatically assigns documents to a set of classes based on the textual content of the document. Normally, the set of classes is hierarchically structured but today’s classification approaches ignore hierarchical structures, thereby loosing valuable human knowledge. This thesis exploits the hierarchical organization of classes to improve accuracy and reduce computational complexity. Classification methods from machine learning, namely BoosTexter and the newly introduced CentroidBoosting algorithm, are used for learning hierarchies. In doing so, error propagation from higher level nodes and comparing decisions between independently trained leaf nodes are two problems which are considered in this thesis. Experiments are performed on the Reuters 21578, the Reuters Corpus Volume 1 and the Ohsumed data set, which are well known in literature. Rocchio and Support Vector Machines, which are state of the art algorithms in the field of text classification, serve as base line classifiers. Comparing algorithms is done by applying statistical significance tests. Results show that, depending on the structure of a hierarchy, accuracy improves and computational complexity decreases due to hierarchical classification. Also, the introduced model for comparing leaf nodes yields an increase in performance. |
An FPGA Implementation of Incremental Clustering for Radar Pulse Deinterleaving | Background A military aircraft in a hostile environment may need to use radar jamming in order to avoid being detected or engaged by the enemy. Effective jamming can require knowledge of the number and type of enemy radars; however, the radar receiver on the aircraft will observe a single stream of pulses from all radar emitters combined. It is advantageous to separate this collection of pulses into individual streams each corresponding to a particular emitter in the environment; this process is known as pulse deinterleaving. Pulse deinterleaving is critical for effective electronic warfare (EW) signal processing such as electronic attack (EA) and electronic protection (EP) because it not only aids in the identification of enemy radars but also permits the intelligent allocation of processing resources. |
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Towards Monocular Vision based Obstacle Avoidance through Deep Reinforcement Learning | Obstacle avoidance is a fundamental requirement for autonomous robots which operate in, and interact with, the real world. When perception is limited to monocular vision avoiding collision becomes significantly more challenging due to the lack of 3D information. Conventional path planners for obstacle avoidance require tuning a number of parameters and do not have the ability to directly benefit from large datasets and continuous use. In this paper, a dueling architecture based deep double-Q network (D3QN) is proposed for obstacle avoidance, using only monocular RGB vision. Based on the dueling and double-Q mechanisms, D3QN can efficiently learn how to avoid obstacles in a simulator even with very noisy depth information predicted from RGB image. Extensive experiments show that D3QN enables twofold acceleration on learning compared with a normal deep Q network and the models trained solely in virtual environments can be directly transferred to real robots, generalizing well to various new environments with previously unseen dynamic objects. |
Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis Using Convolutional Neural Network and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory | In order to improve performance of previous aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) on restaurant reviews in Indonesian language, this paper adapts the research achieving the highest F1 at SemEval 2016. We use feedforward neural network with one-vs-all strategy for aspect category classification (Slot 1), Conditional Random Field (CRF) for opinion target expression extraction (Slot 2), and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for sentiment polarity classification (Slot 3). Aside from lexical features we also use additional features learned from neural networks. We train our model on 992 sentences and evaluate them on 382 sentences. Higher performances are achieved for Slot 1 (F1 0.870) and Slot 3 (F1 0.764) but lower on Slot 2 (F1 0.787). |
A triangle histogram for object classification by tactile sensing | We present a new descriptor for tactile 3D object classification. It is invariant to object movement and simple to construct, using only the relative geometry of points on the object surface. We demonstrate successful classification of 185 objects in 10 categories, at sparse to dense surface sampling rate in point cloud simulation, with an accuracy of 77.5% at the sparsest and 90.1% at the densest. In a physics-based simulation, we show that contact clouds resembling the object shape can be obtained by a series of gripper closures using a robotic hand equipped with sparse tactile arrays. Despite sparser sampling of the object's surface, classification still performs well, at 74.7%. On a real robot, we show the ability of the descriptor to discriminate among different object instances, using data collected by a tactile hand. |
Preoperative evaluation of patients with liver disease | Patients with end-stage liver disease often undergo surgery for indications other than liver transplantation. These patients have an increased risk of morbidity and mortality that is related to their underlying liver disease. Assessments of surgical risk provide a basis for discussion of risks and benefits, treatment decision making, and for optimal management of patients for whom surgery is planned. The most useful indicators of surgical risk are indices that predict advanced disease, such as the Child–Turcotte–Pugh score, or those that predict prognosis, such as the Model for End-stage Liver Disease score. Careful preoperative risk assessment, patient selection, and management of various manifestations of advanced disease might decrease morbidity and mortality from nontransplant surgery in patients with liver disease. |
Differential role of the orbital frontal lobe in emotional versus cognitive perspective-taking | Lesions of the orbital frontal lobe, particularly its medial sectors, are known to cause deficits in empathic ability, whereas the role of this region in theory of mind processing is the subject of some controversy. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study with healthy participants, emotional perspective-taking was contrasted with cognitive perspective-taking in order to examine the role of the orbital frontal lobe in subcomponents of theory of mind processing. Subjects responded to a series of scenarios presented visually in three conditions: emotional perspective-taking, cognitive perspective-taking and a control condition that required inferential reasoning, but not perspective-taking. Group results demonstrated that the medial orbitofrontal lobe, defined as Brodmann's areas 11 and 25, was preferentially involved in emotional as compared to cognitive perspective-taking. This finding is both consistent with the lesion literature, and resolves the inconsistency of orbital frontal findings in the theory of mind literature. |
Database Servers on Chip Multiprocessors: Limitations and Opportunities | Prior research shows that database system performance is dominated by off-chip data stalls, resulting in a concerted effort to bring data into on-chip caches. At the same time, high levels of integration have enabled the advent of chip multiprocessors and increasingly large (and slow) on-chip caches. These two trends pose the imminent technical and research challenge of adapting high-performance data management software to a shifting hardware landscape. In this paper we characterize the performance of a commercial database server running on emerging chip multiprocessor technologies. We find that the major bottleneck of current software is data cache stalls, with L2 hit stalls rising from oblivion to become the dominant execution time component in some cases. We analyze the source of this shift and derive a list of features for future database designs to attain maximum |
Type-Safe Delegation for Run-Time Component Adaptation | The aim of component technology is the replacement of large monolithic applications with sets of smaller software components, whose particular functionality and interoperation can be adapted to users’ needs. However, the adaptation mechanisms of component software are still limited. Most proposals concentrate on adaptations that can be achieved either at compile time or at link time. Current support for dynamic component adaptation, i.e. unanticipated, incremental modifications of a component system at run-time, is not sufficient. This paper proposes object-based inheritance (also known as delegation) as a complement to purely forwarding-based object composition. It presents a typesafe integration of delegation into a class-based object model and shows how it overcomes the problems faced by forwarding-based component interaction, how it supports independent extensibility of components and unanticipated, dynamic component adaptation. |
Alexander Georg Supan – v Sloveniji spregledan geograf slovenskega rodu | Paper presents life and work of Alexander Supan, geographer of Slovenian origin, and his influence on global and Slovenian geography. He was one of the more important geographers of the second half of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. His scientific work took place, in contrast to geographers who were then working in present-day Slovenian territory, in accordance with contemporary geographic approaches. He built his career abroad, but he started it in Ljubljana. Because of that and because of his origin, we can consider him one of the more important links in the history of modern geography in Slovenian territory. |
ADVISE: Symbolism and External Knowledge for Decoding Advertisements | In order to convey the most content in their limited space, advertisements embed references to outside knowledge via symbolism. For example, a motorcycle stands for adventure (a positive property the ad wants associated with the product being sold), and a gun stands for danger (a negative property to dissuade viewers from undesirable behaviors). We show how to use symbolic references to better understand the meaning of an ad. We further show how anchoring ad understanding in general-purpose object recognition and image captioning improves results. We formulate the ad understanding task as matching the ad image to human-generated statements that describe the action that the ad prompts, and the rationale it provides for taking this action. Our proposed method outperforms the state of the art on this task, and on an alternative formulation of question-answering on ads. We show additional applications of our learned representations for matching ads to slogans, and clustering ads according to their topic, without extra training. |
Mast cell transcriptional networks. | Unregulated activation of mast cells can contribute to the pathogenesis of inflammatory and allergic diseases, including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis. Absence of mast cells in animal models can lead to impairment in the innate immune response to parasites and bacterial infections. Aberrant clonal accumulation and proliferation of mast cells can result in a variety of diseases ranging from benign cutaneous mastocytosis to systemic mastocytosis or mast cell leukemia. Understanding mast cell differentiation provides important insights into mechanisms of lineage selection during hematopoiesis and can provide targets for new drug development to treat mast cell disorders. In this review, we discuss controversies related to development, sites of origin, and the transcriptional program of mast cells. |
Routine Drainage of the Operative Bed Following Elective Distal Pancreatectomy Does Not Reduce the Occurrence of Complications | : Routine drainage of the operative bed following elective pancreatectomy remains controversial. Data specific to distal pancreatectomy (DP) have not been examined in a multi-institutional collaborative. : Data from the American College of Surgeons-National Surgical Quality Improvement Program Pancreatectomy Demonstration Project were utilized. The impact of drain placement on development of pancreatectomy-related and overall morbidity were analyzed. Propensity scores for drain placement were calculated, and nearest neighbor matching was used to create a matched cohort. Groups were compared using bivariate and logistic regression analyses. : Over 14 months, 761 patients undergoing DP were accrued; 606 were drained. Propensity score matching was possible in 116 patients. Drain and no drain groups were not different with respect to multiple preoperative and operative variables. All pancreatic fistulas (p < 0.01) and overall morbidity (p < 0.05) were more common in patients who received a drain. The placement of a drain did not reduce the incidence of clinically relevant pancreatic fistula nor the need for postoperative procedures. : Placement of drains following elective distal pancreatectomy was associated with a higher overall morbidity and pancreatic fistulas. Drains did not reduce intra-abdominal septic morbidity, clinically relevant pancreatic fistulas, nor the need for postoperative therapeutic intervention. |
A Non-Inclusive Memory Permissions architecture for protection against cross-layer attacks | Protecting modern computer systems and complex software stacks against the growing range of possible attacks is becoming increasingly difficult. The architecture of modern commodity systems allows attackers to subvert privileged system software often using a single exploit. Once the system is compromised, inclusive permissions used by current architectures and operating systems easily allow a compromised high-privileged software layer to perform arbitrary malicious activities, even on behalf of other software layers. This paper presents a hardware-supported page permission scheme for the physical pages that is based on the concept of non-inclusive sets of memory permissions for different layers of system software such as hypervisors, operating systems, and user-level applications. Instead of viewing privilege levels as an ordered hierarchy with each successive level being more privileged, we view them as distinct levels each with its own set of permissions. Such a permission mechanism, implemented as part of a processor architecture, provides a common framework for defending against a range of recent attacks. We demonstrate that such a protection can be achieved with negligible performance overhead, low hardware complexity and minimal changes to the commodity OS and hypervisor code. |
Implicit crowds: optimization integrator for robust crowd simulation | Large multi-agent systems such as crowds involve inter-agent interactions that are typically anticipatory in nature, depending strongly on both the positions and the velocities of agents. We show how the nonlinear, anticipatory forces seen in multi-agent systems can be made compatible with recent work on energy-based formulations in physics-based animation, and propose a simple and effective optimization-based integration scheme for implicit integration of such systems. We apply this approach to crowd simulation by using a state-of-the-art model derived from a recent analysis of human crowd data, and adapting it to our framework. Our approach provides, for the first time, guaranteed collision-free motion while simultaneously maintaining high-quality collective behavior in a way that is insensitive to simulation parameters such as time step size and crowd density. These benefits are demonstrated through simulation results on various challenging scenarios and validation against real-world crowd data. |
Psychological well-being status among medical and dental students in Makkah, Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional study. | OBJECTIVES
Medical and dental students experience poor psychological well-being relative to their peers. This study aimed to assess the psychological well-being among medical and dental students in Saudi Arabia, identify the high-risk groups and assess the association between the psychological well-being and the academic performance.
METHODS
In this cross-sectional study, 422 preclinical medical and dental students at Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia, were recruited to assess their depression, anxiety, stress, self-efficacy and satisfaction with life levels using 21-items Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21), General Self-Efficacy (GSE) scale and Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Students' academic weighted grades were obtained later. Descriptive statistics and univariate general linear model were used to analyse data.
RESULTS
High levels of depression (69.9%), anxiety (66.4%) and stress (70.9%) were indicated, whereas self-efficacy (mean = 27.22, sd = 4.85) and life satisfaction (mean = 23.60, sd = 6.37) were within the normal range. Female medical students had higher psychological distress in contrast to dental students. In general, third-year students were more depressed and stressed in comparison with second-year students, except for stress among dental students. Moreover, all females had higher self-efficacy than males. Life satisfaction was higher within the second-year and high family income students. Depression was the only psychological variable correlated with the academic performance.
CONCLUSION
High levels of psychological distress were found. Female medical students had higher psychological distress than males, whereas male dental students had higher distress than female. Medical students at third year were more depressed and stressed. Dental students were more depressed in the third year, but more stressed in the second year. Attention should be directed towards reducing the alarming levels of depression, anxiety and stress among medical and dental students. |
An ambient assisted living framework for mobile environments | Ambient assisted living (AAL) delivers IT solutions that aim to facilitate and improve lives of the disabled, elderly, and chronically ill people. Mobility is a key issue for elderly people because their physical activity, in general, improves their quality of life and keep health status. Then, this paper presents an AAL framework for caregivers and elderly people that allow them to maintain an active lifestyle without limiting their mobility. This framework includes four AAL tools for mobility environments: i) a fall detection mobile application; ii) a biofeedback monitoring system trough wearable sensors; iii) an outdoor location service through a shoe equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS); and iv) a mobile application for caregivers that take care of several elders confined to a home environment. The proposal is evaluated and demonstrated and it is ready for use. |
DEEP REINFORCEMENT LEARNING | When encountering novel objects, humans are able to infer a wide range of physical properties such as mass, friction and deformability by interacting with them in a goal driven way. This process of active interaction is in the same spirit as a scientist performing experiments to discover hidden facts. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have yielded machines that can achieve superhuman performance in Go, Atari, natural language processing, and complex control problems; however, it is not clear that these systems can rival the scientific intuition of even a young child. In this work we introduce a basic set of tasks that require agents to estimate properties such as mass and cohesion of objects in an interactive simulated environment where they can manipulate the objects and observe the consequences. We found that deep reinforcement learning methods can learn to perform the experiments necessary to discover such hidden properties. By systematically manipulating the problem difficulty and the cost incurred by the agent for performing experiments, we found that agents learn different strategies that balance the cost of gathering information against the cost of making mistakes in different situations. We also compare our learned experimentation policies to randomized baselines and show that the learned policies lead to better predictions. |
Uniqueness via the adjoint problems for systems of conservation laws | We prove a result of uniqueness of the entropy weak solution to the Cauchy problem for a class of nonlinear hyperbolic systems of conservation laws, that includes in particular the p-system of isentropic gas dynamics. Our result concerns weak solutions satisfying the, as we call it, Wave Entropy Condition or WEC, for short, introduced in this paper. The main feature of this condition is that it concerns both shock waves and rarefaction waves present in a solution. For the proof of uniqueness, we derive an existence result (respectively a uniqueness result) for the backward (resp. forward) adjoint problem associated with the nonlinear system. Our method also applies to obtain results of existence or uniqueness for some linear hyperbolic systems with discontinuous coeecients. |
An Ontology-Based Cybersecurity Framework for the Internet of Things | The use of sensors and actuators as a form of controlling cyber-physical systems in resource networks has been integrated and referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT). However, the connectivity of many stand-alone IoT systems through the Internet introduces numerous cybersecurity challenges as sensitive information is prone to be exposed to malicious users. This paper focuses on the improvement of IoT cybersecurity from an ontological analysis, proposing appropriate security services adapted to the threats. The authors propose an ontology-based cybersecurity framework using knowledge reasoning for IoT, composed of two approaches: (1) design time, which provides a dynamic method to build security services through the application of a model-driven methodology considering the existing enterprise processes; and (2) run time, which involves monitoring the IoT environment, classifying threats and vulnerabilities, and actuating in the environment ensuring the correct adaptation of the existing services. Two validation approaches demonstrate the feasibility of our concept. This entails an ontology assessment and a case study with an industrial implementation. |
On-Orbit Geometric Calibration Model and Its Applications for High-Resolution Optical Satellite Imagery | On-orbit geometric calibration is a key technology to guarantee the geometric quality of high-resolution optical satellite imagery. In this paper, we present an approach for the on-orbit geometric calibration of high-resolution optical satellite imagery, focusing on two core problems: constructing an on-orbit geometric calibration model and proposing a robust calculation method. First, a rigorous geometric imaging model is constructed based on the analysis of the major error sources. Second, we construct an on-orbit geometric calibration model through performing reasonable optimizing and parameter selection of the rigorous geometric imaging model. On this basis, the calibration parameters are partially calculated with a stepwise iterative method by dividing them into two groups: external and internal calibration parameters. Furthermore, to verify the effectiveness of the proposed calibration model and methodology, on-orbit geometric calibration experiments for ZY1-02C panchromatic camera and ZY-3 three-line array camera are conducted using the reference data of the Songshan calibration test site located in the Henan Province, China. The experimental results demonstrate a certain deviation of the on-orbit calibration result from the initial design values of the calibration parameters. Therefore, on-orbit geometric calibration is necessary for optical satellite imagery. On the other hand, by choosing multiple images, which cover different areas and are acquired at different points in time to verify their geometric accuracy before and after calibration, we find that after on-orbit geometric calibration, the geometric accuracy of these images without ground control points is significantly OPEN ACCESS Remote Sens. 2014, 6 4392 improved. Additionally, due to the effective elimination of the internal distortion of the camera, greater geometric accuracy was achieved with less ground control points than before calibration. |
Episodic memory--from brain to mind. | Neuronal mechanisms of episodic memory, the conscious recollection of autobiographical events, are largely unknown because electrophysiological studies in humans are conducted only in exceptional circumstances. Unit recording studies in animals are thus crucial for understanding the neurophysiological substrate that enables people to remember their individual past. Two features of episodic memory--autonoetic consciousness, the self-aware ability to "travel through time", and one-trial learning, the acquisition of information in one occurrence of the event--raise important questions about the validity of animal models and the ability of unit recording studies to capture essential aspects of memory for episodes. We argue that autonoetic experience is a feature of human consciousness rather than an obligatory aspect of memory for episodes, and that episodic memory is reconstructive and thus its key features can be modeled in animal behavioral tasks that do not involve either autonoetic consciousness or one-trial learning. We propose that the most powerful strategy for investigating neurophysiological mechanisms of episodic memory entails recording unit activity in brain areas homologous to those required for episodic memory in humans (e.g., hippocampus and prefrontal cortex) as animals perform tasks with explicitly defined episodic-like aspects. Within this framework, empirical data suggest that the basic structure of episodic memory is a temporally extended representation that distinguishes the beginning from the end of an event. Future research is needed to fully understand how neural encodings of context, sequences of items/events, and goals are integrated within mnemonic representations of autobiographical events. |
Association of the recurrence of vocal leukoplakia with MDM2-309 variants over a 2-year period: a prospective study. | CONCLUSION
MDM2-309 polymorphism variant genotypes decrease the risk of recurrence in vocal leukoplakia.
OBJECTIVE
The results of a previous study 2 years ago showed the effect of mouse double minute 2 homolog (MDM2) SNP309 polymorphisms in people with laryngeal carcinoma and vocal leukoplakia (a pre-cancerous laryngeal carcinoma lesion). This prospective, clinical trial was performed to assess the relationship between MDM2-309 polymorphism variants and recurrence/cancerization rates in people with vocal leukoplakia over a 2-year period.
PARTICIPANTS AND METHOD
A total of 61 post-operative patients with vocal leukoplakia participated in this prospective, observational, 2-year, follow-up study, and were genotyped for the MDM2-309 gene using pyrosequencing. Recurrence and cancerization rates were used to assess the relationship between the clinical outcome and the genotype variants.
RESULTS
The recurrence rate in the GT genotypes group was lower than that in the normal TT genotype group (17.2% vs 50%, p = 0.05) and there was a significantly lower recurrence rate in the GG genotype group than in the normal TT genotype group (10% vs 50%, p = 0.03). However, there was no statistically significant difference in the cancerization rate between the MDM2-309 variant (GT + GG) genotypes group and the normal TT genotype group (12.2% vs 8.3%, p > 0.05) over the 2-year follow-up period. |
A CD8 T Cell/Indoleamine 2,3-Dioxygenase Axis Is Required for Mesenchymal Stem Cell Suppression of Human Systemic Lupus Erythematosus | OBJECTIVE
Allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) exhibit therapeutic effects in human autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate how allogeneic MSCs mediate immunosuppression in lupus patients.
METHODS
The effects of allogeneic umbilical cord-derived MSCs (UC-MSCs) on inhibition of T cell proliferation were determined. MSC functional molecules were stimulated with peripheral blood mononuclear cells from healthy controls and SLE patients and examined by real-time polymerase chain reaction. CD4+ and CD8+ T cells were purified using microbeads to stimulate MSCs in order to determine cytokine expression by MSCs and to further determine which cell subset(s) or which molecule(s) is involved in inhibition of MSC-mediated T cell proliferation. The related signaling pathways were assessed. We determined levels of serum cytokines in lupus patients before and after UC-MSC transplantation.
RESULTS
Allogeneic UC-MSCs suppressed T cell proliferation in lupus patients by secreting large amounts of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO). We further found that interferon-γ (IFNγ), which is produced predominantly by lupus CD8+ T cells, is the key factor that enhances IDO activity in allogeneic MSCs and that it is associated with IFNGR1/JAK-2/STAT signaling pathways. Intriguingly, bone marrow-derived MSCs from patients with active lupus demonstrated defective IDO production in response to IFNγ and allogeneic CD8+ T cell stimulation. After allogeneic UC-MSC transplantation, serum IDO activity increased in lupus patients.
CONCLUSION
We found a previously unrecognized CD8+ T cell/IFNγ/IDO axis that mediates the therapeutic effects of allogeneic MSCs in lupus patients. |
Detecting short periods of elevated workload: A comparison of nine workload assessment techniques | The present experiment tested the merits of 9 common workload assessment techniques with relatively short periods of workload in a car-driving task. Twelve participants drove an instrumented car and performed a visually loading task and a mentally loading task for 10,30, and 60 s. The results show that 10-s periods of visual and mental workload can be measured successfully with subjective ratings and secondary task performance. With respect to longer loading periods (30 and 60 s), steering frequency was found to be sensitive to visual workload, and skin conductance response (SCR) was sensitive to mental workload. The results lead to preliminary guidelines that will help applied researchers to determine which techniques are best suited for assessing visual and mental workload. |
Privacy as information access and illusory control: The case of the Facebook News Feed privacy outcry | Increasingly, millions of people, especially youth, post personal information in online social networks (OSNs). In September 2006, one of the most popular sites—Facebook.com—introduced the features of News Feed and Mini Feed, revealing no more information than before, but resulting in immediate criticism from users. To investigate the privacy controversy, we conducted a survey among 172 current Facebook users in a large US university to explore their usage behaviors and privacy attitudes toward the introduction of the controversial News Feed and Mini Feed features. We examined the degree to which users were upset by the changes, explored the reasons as to why, and examined the influences of the News Feed privacy outcry on user behavior changes. The results have demonstrated how an easier information access and an ‘‘illusory” loss of control prompted by the introduction of News Feed features, triggered users’ privacy concerns. In addition to enhancing our theoretical understanding of privacy issues in the online social networks, this research is also potentially useful to privacy advocates, regulatory bodies, service providers, and marketers to help shape or justify their decisions concerning the online social networks. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. |
Mediterranean diet, traditional risk factors, and the rate of cardiovascular complications after myocardial infarction: final report of the Lyon Diet Heart Study. | BACKGROUND
The Lyon Diet Heart Study is a randomized secondary prevention trial aimed at testing whether a Mediterranean-type diet may reduce the rate of recurrence after a first myocardial infarction. An intermediate analysis showed a striking protective effect after 27 months of follow-up. This report presents results of an extended follow-up (with a mean of 46 months per patient) and deals with the relationships of dietary patterns and traditional risk factors with recurrence.
METHODS AND RESULTS
Three composite outcomes (COs) combining either cardiac death and nonfatal myocardial infarction (CO 1), or the preceding plus major secondary end points (unstable angina, stroke, heart failure, pulmonary or peripheral embolism) (CO 2), or the preceding plus minor events requiring hospital admission (CO 3) were studied. In the Mediterranean diet group, CO 1 was reduced (14 events versus 44 in the prudent Western-type diet group, P=0.0001), as were CO 2 (27 events versus 90, P=0.0001) and CO 3 (95 events versus 180, P=0. 0002). Adjusted risk ratios ranged from 0.28 to 0.53. Among the traditional risk factors, total cholesterol (1 mmol/L being associated with an increased risk of 18% to 28%), systolic blood pressure (1 mm Hg being associated with an increased risk of 1% to 2%), leukocyte count (adjusted risk ratios ranging from 1.64 to 2.86 with count >9x10(9)/L), female sex (adjusted risk ratios, 0.27 to 0. 46), and aspirin use (adjusted risk ratios, 0.59 to 0.82) were each significantly and independently associated with recurrence.
CONCLUSIONS
The protective effect of the Mediterranean dietary pattern was maintained up to 4 years after the first infarction, confirming previous intermediate analyses. Major traditional risk factors, such as high blood cholesterol and blood pressure, were shown to be independent and joint predictors of recurrence, indicating that the Mediterranean dietary pattern did not alter, at least qualitatively, the usual relationships between major risk factors and recurrence. Thus, a comprehensive strategy to decrease cardiovascular morbidity and mortality should include primarily a cardioprotective diet. It should be associated with other (pharmacological?) means aimed at reducing modifiable risk factors. Further trials combining the 2 approaches are warranted. |
Treatment with parathyroid peptides and estrogen replacement for severe postmenopausal vertebral osteoporosis: prediction of long-term responses in spine and femur | Fifteen women with severe vertebral osteoporosis were treated with daily parathyroid peptide (hPTH) plus hormone-replacement co-therapy (HRT) for 1 year. Eight other patients were randomized to HRT alone. Co-therapy with hPTH and HRT resulted in an impressive mean treatment response at the spine (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry DXA) 15% above baseline; P < 0.015 compared with the HRT group) at 2 years, while at the proximal femur and radius there were smaller increases. hPTH co-therapy led to a significantly positive metabolic calcium balance at 1 year (by 2.13 mmol Ca/day, equivalent to a 5% annual increment in total body calcium; P = 0.015). The magnitude of the lumbar spine DXA response at 2 years depended statistically on the increase in bone formation rate, measured with 85Sr (r 2 adjusted 0.48; P < 0.005) and patients with a large spine DXA response had larger calcium balance improvements (P < 0.03). Plasma osteocalcin changes tracked closely with increases in bone formation rate (r 2 = 0.87). In seven patients treated throughout with HRT alone, and in eight hPTH-treated patients (three of whom switched to bisphosphonate therapy at year 4), DXA spine changes seen in years 3–5 were minimal, with no evidence of a statistically significant difference between groups. It is concluded that hPTH or comparable PTH receptor activators remain the most promising anabolic treatment for osteoporosis currently under clinical evaluation and a 6- or 12-month measurement of bone formation or a marker predicts the 2–5 year bone density outcome. Post-hPTH treatment, loss of bone appeared preventable with anti-resorptive therapy. |
The challenge of indication extrapolation for infliximab biosimilars. | A biosimilar is intended to be highly similar to a reference biologic such that any differences in quality attributes (i.e., molecular characteristics) do not affect safety or efficacy. Achieving this benchmark for biologics, especially large glycoproteins such as monoclonal antibodies, is challenging given their complex structure and manufacturing. Regulatory guidance on biosimilars issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada and European Medicines Agency indicates that, in addition to a demonstration of a high degree of similarity in quality attributes, a reduced number of nonclinical and clinical comparative studies can be sufficient for approval. Following a tiered approach, clinical studies are required to address concerns about possible clinically significant differences that remain after laboratory and nonclinical evaluations. Consequently, a critical question arises: can clinical studies that satisfy concerns regarding safety and efficacy in one condition support "indication extrapolation" to other conditions? This question will be addressed by reviewing the case of a biosimilar to infliximab that was approved recently in South Korea, Europe, and Canada for multiple indications through extrapolation. The principles discussed should also apply to biosimilars of other monoclonal antibodies that are approved to treat multiple distinct conditions. |
Positive characteristic Manin-Mumford theorem | We prove a version of the Manin-Mumford conjecture for semiabelian varieties over fields of positive characteristic. The proof presented here contains the details of the proof sketched by the author in the article "Diophantine geometry from model theory," BSL 7 (2001) no. 1, 37 - 57; using the model theory of difference fields along the lines of Hrushovski. Algebraic proofs have been presented by Pink & Roessler and Pillay. |
A Novel Transformer Structure for High power, High Frequency converter | Power transformer structure is a key factor for the high power, high frequency converter performance which includes efficiency, thermal performance and power density. This paper proposes a novel transformer structure for the kilo-watt level, high frequency converter which is reinforce insulation needed for the secondary side to primary side. The transformer has spiral-wound primary layers using TIW (triple insulation wire) and PCB-winding secondary layers. All the windings are arranged by full interleaving structure to minimize the leakage inductance and eddy current loss. Further more, the secondary rectifiers and filter capacitors are mounted in PCB-winding secondary layers to further minimize the termination effect. A 1.2 KW (O/P: 12 V/100 A, I/P: 400 V) Mega Hz LLC converter prototype employed the proposed transformer structure is constructed, and over 96% efficiency achieved. |
Improvements in LED-based fluorescence analysis systems | This paper presents results from an electronic interface that significantly improves the stability, power output, and spectral flexibility of light emitting diode (LED)-based systems used to excite fluorescence or other forms of luminescence. LEDs are an attractive alternative to conventional white-light sources used in fluorescence analysis because of reduced power of operation, enhanced modularity, reduced optical loss, fewer imaging artifacts, and increased flexibility in spectral control without the need for high overhead optics. Drawbacks of previously presented LED-based systems include insufficient light output, instability (poor lifetime), and limited flexibility in broadband spectral output. T ld increase i le spectral o on in power, s appropriate o igns. © |
An Evolutionary Many-Objective Optimization Algorithm Based on Dominance and Decomposition | Achieving balance between convergence and diversity is a key issue in evolutionary multiobjective optimization. Most existing methodologies, which have demonstrated their niche on various practical problems involving two and three objectives, face significant challenges in many-objective optimization. This paper suggests a unified paradigm, which combines dominance- and decomposition-based approaches, for many-objective optimization. Our major purpose is to exploit the merits of both dominance- and decomposition-based approaches to balance the convergence and diversity of the evolutionary process. The performance of our proposed method is validated and compared with four state-of-the-art algorithms on a number of unconstrained benchmark problems with up to 15 objectives. Empirical results fully demonstrate the superiority of our proposed method on all considered test instances. In addition, we extend this method to solve constrained problems having a large number of objectives. Compared to two other recently proposed constrained optimizers, our proposed method shows highly competitive performance on all the constrained optimization problems. |
Exploring the Impacts of Social Networking Sites on Academic Relations in the University | Social networking sites (SNS) affordances for persistent interaction, collective generation of knowledge, and formation of peer-based clusters for knowledge sharing render them useful for developing constructivist knowledge environments. However, notwithstanding their academic value, these environments are not necessarily insulated from the exercise of academic/ power. Despite a growing corpus of literature on SNS’s capacity to enhance social capital formation, foster trust, and connect interactants in remote locations, there is a dearth of research on how SNS potentially leverages academic /power relations in university settings. Mindful of the unsubstantiated nexus between power relations, knowledge construction, and academic appropriation of SNS, unraveling the impact of SNS on lecturer-student and student-peer power relations in the university can illuminate the understanding of this academic connection/puzzle. This work employs Critical Theory of Technology (CTT) and virtual case study method to explore the influence of SNS use on power relations of lecturers, students, and their peers in a blended (Facebookenhanced) Information Technology course at a middle-sized South African university. The findings demonstrate that academic appropriation of SNS differentially empower academics and students at different times, and students employ various forms of sophisticated authorial language to territorialise power in their interactions with lecturers and peers. Academics and instructional designers are urged to examine different forms of language employed in lecturer-student and student-peer discourses to grasp student learning needs and to foster meaningful, knowledge-rich learning environments. |
Psychometric evaluation of the Stroke Impact Scale 3.0. | BACKGROUND
The Stroke Impact Scale 3.0 (SIS 3.0) is widely used to measure quality of life in stroke survivors; however, previous studies have not tested the original 8-factor structure of the scale. In addition, previous studies have shown floor and ceiling effect and weak reliability within the scale.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric characteristics of the SIS 3.0, including its construct validity (factorial structure, concurrent and contrasting group validity), floor and ceiling effect, and reliability.
METHOD
A cross-sectional design was used to study 392 stroke survivors enrolled in 16 rehabilitation facilities across Italy. Factorial structure of the SIS 3.0 was tested with confirmatory factor analysis. Concurrent and contrasting group validities were evaluated with other scales measuring functional capacities, neurological functions, cognition, anxiety, depression, and generic quality of life. Floor and ceiling effects were evaluated by determining the percentages of patients with the minimum and the maximum score at SIS 3.0. Reliability was determined by Cronbach's α and test-retest.
RESULTS
Participants were 71 years old on average (SD, 11 years); 55% were men. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a new 4-factor structure that fitted the data better than the original 8-factor structure did. Concurrent and contrasting group validity of the new 4-factor structure was supportive and no floor and ceiling effects were found. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability ranged between 0.79 and 0.98.
CONCLUSION
The new factorial structure of the SIS 3.0 with 4 factors showed better psychometric properties than the original 8-factor structure did. This evidence supports further use of the SIS 3.0 in clinical practice and research. |
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