Mixture models are widely used to fit complex and multimodal datasets. In this paper we study mixtures with high dimensional sparse parameter vectors and consider the problem of support recovery of those vectors. While parameter learning in mixture models is well-studied, the sparsity constraint remains relatively unexplored. Sparsity of parameter vectors is a natural constraint in variety of settings, and support recovery is a major step towards parameter estimation. We provide efficient algorithms for support recovery that have a logarithmic sample complexity dependence on the dimensionality of the latent space. Our algorithms are quite general, namely they are applicable to 1) mixtures of many different canonical distributions including Uniform, Poisson, Laplace, Gaussians, etc. 2) Mixtures of linear regressions and linear classifiers with Gaussian covariates under different assumptions on the unknown parameters. In most of these settings, our results are the first guarantees on the problem while in the rest, our results provide improvements on existing works.


Objective:To compare the fidelity of administrative data with clinical data when researching Down syndrome (DS). Methods:From outpatient, inpatient, and emergency department administrative claims within our institution, we identified 252 patients aged 18–45 years with encounters coded for DS by the ICD9=758.0 from 2000 to 2008. We evaluated these cases for false-positive errors—cases in which DS was not actually present in clinical descriptions. Subsequently, we identified false-negative errors (cases in which DS was present without encounters coded as such) by examination of the medical records for all patients within our study frame who had one of several common DS comorbidities, including congenital heart disease, hypothyroidism, and atlantoaxial instability. Results:Among the 252 people with an administrative code for DS, 53 (21%) did not have DS documented in their medical record (false-positive error). While searching for false-negative errors, 29 additional patients were discovered with DS documented in the medical record who had not been previously identified. This led to a final cohort of 228 patients with DS. The presence of a billing code for DS had moderate sensitivity (87%) and positive predictive value (79%), but high specificity (99.9%). Discussion:Administrative claims misclassify a sizeable proportion of patients with DS. Judgments about quality of care on the basis of samples identified using administrative claims may not accurately reflect the experience of patients with the conditions in question. When using administrative databases to study the quality of care for patients with DS, diagnostic verification within the clinical record is advisable whenever possible.


Nonword Repetition Task to Evaluate Syllable Stress as a Motor Class Emily R. Cobun Current speech therapy methods and theories are based on generalized motor program (GMP) theory (Schmidt, 1975). GMP theory states a single GMP, or motor program, directs multiple movements of speech (Maas et al., 2008). Additionally, GMP theory asserts these similar muscle movements are part of the same motor class, which allows a GMP to direct performance on novel, untrained patterns of movements (i.e., what is termed "transfer performance"; Chamberlin & Magill, 1992; Schmidt, 1975). Alternatively, movements outside of a learned motor class will be more difficult to perform because a different GMP is controlling these movements. Currently, syllable stress patterns are theorized as the GMP when planning motor speech tasks. This study aims to help clarify the method through which motor speech movements are learned. Meigh et al. (in press) conducted a study to learn more about speech motor planning. This study found that syllable stress, which was the expected GMP for speech production, did not direct transfer performance on untrained stimuli following training on a speech-like task. Instead, participants encoded speech sound (i.e., phoneme) information during training that influenced transfer results. In Meigh's study, participants were trained using a speech production task but the testing procedure was not speech-based. Meigh's results and interpretation may have been impacted by the study design because of the "mismatch" between modes of training and testing in this study. Therefore, the current study replicated and extended Meigh's experiment using a speech-based training and transfer task. Twenty-four participants (16 females and 3 males) produced nonsense words (i.e., nonwords) using a motor learning design, which included mass amounts of training followed by an evaluation of performance on untrained stimuli. During training, participants produced different syllable stress patterns while repeating a training list of nonwords. Following training, participants repeated a list of both trained and untrained nonwords that varied in similarity to the trained stimuli. All untrained stimuli varied by motor class (i.e., syllable stress pattern), as well as the phonemes (or sounds). Accuracy of nonword productions were evaluated across transfer stimuli sets, and results revealed participants had learned syllable stress and phoneme information during training. These results align with a GMP theory and Meigh (in press) suggesting that more than one GMP memory representation may be encoded during motor learning.


In this paper we evaluate the utility of sparseness as a criterion for selecting a sub-set of independent component filters (ICF). Four sparseness measures were presented more than a decade ago by Le Borgne et al., but have since been ignored for ICF selection. In this paper we present our evaluation in the context of texture retrieval. We compare the sparseness-based method with the dispersal-based method, also proposed by Le Borgne et al., and the clustering-based method previously proposed by us. We show that the sparse filters and highly dispersed filters are quite different. In fact we show that highly dispersed filters tend to have lower sparseness. We also show that the sparse filters give better results compared to the highly dispersed filters when applied to texture retrieval. However the sparseness measures are calculated over filter response energies, making this method susceptible to choosing a redundant filter set. This issue is demonstrated and we show that ICF selected using our clustering-based method, which chooses a filter set with much lower redundancy, outperforms the sparse filters.


ABCA1 (ATP-binding cassette transporter A1) mediates the release of cellular cholesterol and phospholipid to form high density lipoprotein. Functions of ABCA1 are highly regulated at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, and the synthesized ABCA1 protein turns over rapidly with a half-life of 1–2 h. To examine whether the functions of ABCA1 are modulated by associated proteins, a yeast two-hybrid library was screened with the C-terminal 120 amino acids of ABCA1. Two PDZ (PSD95-Discs large-ZO1) proteins, α1-syntrophin and Lin7, were found to interact with ABCA1. Immunoprecipitation revealed that α1-syntrophin interacted with ABCA1 strongly and that the interaction was via the C-terminal three amino acids SYV of ABCA1. Co-expression of α1-syntrophin in human embryonic kidney 293 cells retarded degradation of ABCA1 and made the half-life of ABCA1 five times longer than in the cells not expressing α1-syntrophin. This effect is not common among PDZ-containing proteins interacting with ABCA1, because Lin7, which was also found to interact with the C terminus region of ABCA1, did not have a significant effect on the half-life of ABCA1. Co-expression of α1-syntrophin significantly increased the apoA-I-mediated release of cholesterol. ABCA1 was co-immunoprecipitated with α1-syntrophin from mouse brain. These results suggest that α1-syntrophin is involved in intracellular signaling, which determines the stability of ABCA1 and modulates cellular cholesterol release.


As already deployed and proven technology, code-division multiple access has evolved to support competitive high-data-rate low-latency multimedia services over wireless cellular networks. In this article we introduce advanced signal processing techniques to enhance CDMA receiver performance further. In particular, we consider the possibility of optimal joint multiuser detection for long code WCDMA using fast inversion based on a state-space approach with reasonable complexity, and semi-blind channel estimation techniques to realize rate-efficient transmission for the latest 3G standards.


Based on positive deviance (examining the practices of successful individuals), we identified five primary themes from 36 strategies that help to maintain long-term weight loss (weight control) in 61 people. We conducted in-depth interviews to determine what successful individuals did and/or thought about regularly to control their weight. The themes included weight-control practices related to (a) nutrition: increase water, fruit, and vegetable intake, and consistent meal timing and content; (b) physical activity: follow and track an exercise routine at least 3x/week; (c) restraint: practice restraint by limiting and/or avoiding unhealthy foods; (d) self-monitor: plan meals, and track calories/weight progress; and (e) motivation: participate in motivational programs and cognitive processes that affect weight-control behavior. Using the extensive data involving both the practices and practice implementation, we used positive deviance to create a comprehensive list of practices to develop interventions for individuals to control their weight.


The overall aim of this article is to analyze the taxpayers' rights to confidentiality and privacy in exchange of information including the new global standard of automatic exchange of information. The first section will analyze the state of the art regarding the right to privacy and confidentiality in the OECD bilateral and multilateral instruments, in the Human Right Conventions and in case law by the European Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Justice. This first section will also analyze the application of the right to privacy and confidentiality in practice mainly by identifying the problems of confidentiality and privacy arising in the disclosure of information, the exchange of trade secrets and the leak of information to the press and third parties. Subsequently, the authors explore the possibility to introduce a multilateral instrument to remedy these shortcomings.


In this paper, we study the gradient descent-ascent method for convex-concave saddle-point problems. We derive a new non-asymptotic global convergence rate in terms of distance to the solution set by using the semidefinite programming performance estimation method. The given convergence rate incorporates most parameters of the problem and it is exact for a large class of strongly convex-strongly concave saddle-point problems for one iteration. We also investigate the algorithm without strong convexity and we provide some necessary and sufficient conditions under which the gradient descent-ascent enjoys linear convergence.


Synergistic antimicrobial effect of various ratios of ampicillin/cloxacillin combinations were investigated on susceptible clinical bacterial isolates of Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhi, Escherichia coli and Proteus spp. Agar diffusion method was employed in the study to determine the potency of the varying ratios of ampicillin/cloxacillin combination. Variation in the zone diameters of inhibition were observed among the different varied ratios. In these case of ratio with higher concentration of cloxacillin, the zone diameter of inhibition is higher than those ratio with higher concentration of ampicillin. When cloxacillin and ampicillin were tested separately, cloxacillin was found to be very much effective than ampicillin especially against S. aureus ithat is why they are used synergistically. The study showed increase in the zone diameter of inhibition in all ratio with high concentration of cloxacillin, more than that of the present ratio of 250mg ampicillin and 250mg cloxacillin, but at statistical level, there was no significant different. Therefore, as such the present ratio 250mg ampicllin and 250mg cloxacillin is still considered as appropriate.


Abstract : The author analyzes three bilateral relationships connecting China, Japan, and the United States to each other, taking into account vital U.S security and economic interests in Northeast Asia, one of the most dynamic regions of the world. He suggests that in the short range, Washington should avoid significant changes of policy; but in the long range, establish ways for the major states, particularly China and Japan, to assert greater initiative commensurate with their economic power within a stable political context. multilateral operational structures to supplement existing bilateral relations in Northeast Asia may provide a means for the United States to influence long-range trends and protect U.S. interests.


Using the Multidimensional Model of Leadership three aspects of a leaders' behavior need to be aligned in order to see an increase in member satisfaction and performance. These aspects include required behavior, preferred behavior and actual behavior. From this idea, the Leadership Scale for Sport was developed which broke down leadership styles of a coach into five categories. These include democratic behavior, social support, positive feedback training and instruction and autocratic behavior. It is evident that athletes at the youth level as well as the collegiate and professional level prefer four of these leadership styles. These four most preferred styles are democratic behavior, social support, positive feedback and training and instruction. There are also multiple ways that coaches can implement these styles with their athletes. This can include using goal setting, using the internet to increase knowledge, and using positive feedback to learn new skills. Understanding which styles are preferred, and implementing them can lead to an increase in member performance, team cohesion and motivation.


Occupation can be defined as all activities that occupy a person's time. The Satisfaction with Daily Occupations and Occupational Balance instrument evaluates the perceived satisfaction with performance and the balance in time dedicated to different occupations. The main aim was to translate the original instrument to Spanish and examine and establish the psychometric properties. This is a quantitative, cross-sectional study conducted in two stages: translation and cultural adaptation (forward translation, expert panel, back-translation, second expert panel and pre-testing and cognitive interviewing) and collecting data to evaluate psychometric properties (homogeneity, construct validity, known-groups validity, and floor/ceiling effects). One hundred participants took part in the study, adults with a diagnosis of a mental health disorder and adults without any known health problems. The Spanish version showed known-groups validity, acceptable internal consistency, and construct validity, although the relationships with some of the indicators of discriminant validity were somewhat higher than expected. The instrument shows promise as a useful screening tool for assessing activity level and satisfaction with daily occupations among a Spanish speaking population.


The goal of the UvA@Work team is to demonstrate that the KUKA youBot platform is capable of performing a Professional Task as defined in the Field Robot event 2012. This task specifies a robot that retrieves a flower as ordered by a customer. For this task three key components are required: Human Robot Interaction, Path Planning and Manipulation.


Title – Growth and Poverty Reduction in Developing and Transition Countries Abstract – The aim of the paper is to evaluate economic growth rates required in differentes regions of the world to reach the millenium development goal of halving global poverty rate by 2015. Current situation of poverty is briefly presented in the first part of the paper. The second part investigates the link amongst economic growth, inequality, and poverty reduction. Studying 99 episodes of growth or economic recession, we show that the greater the initial inequality the lower the elasticity of poverty to growth, and the higher the initial economic development the higher the elasticity. Based on these results, we evaluate that the per capita growth rate required to reach the millenium development goal in African, Asian and Latin American countries is around 50 %, much lower for Eastern European countries and the Middle East.


Objectives: Numerous CoQ10 preparations are on the market of which however, very little is known about their bioavailability and most of all there is no information regarding their efficacy on the mitochondrial electrical transport chain, being the prime driver for ATP synthesis. Methods: Aside from own experimental results, data from other papers were taken to evaluate various other CoQ10 formulations and their ingredients regarding bioavailability and their efficacy on the synthesis of ATP formation within the mitochondria. Results: Two Q10 formulations (Greenspeed® and Q10 Revolution®) do demonstrate a substantial increase in bioavailability, while at the same time also increase the formation of ATP within the mitochondria. Contrary, other formulations, in spite of their higher bioavailability, they however lack any kind of conclusive data demonstrating an increase in ATP formation, being a necessary constituent in the overall function of cells. Also, the touted higher efficacy of ubiquinol has never been demonstrated conclusively, and some of the ingredients within certain Q10 formulations, do contain toxic substances just to increase bioavailability however, having a toxic side effect on mitochondria. Conclusion: market have demonstrated to have a sufficiently high bioavailability while at the same time also showing a significant efficacy on cellular function in regard to ATP synthesis.


Between 24th March and 16th April 2014 Oxford Archaeology East undertook an excavation at Fawcett Primary School, Cambridge, in advance of the construction of new school buildings, access road and parking spaces. The excavation area covered approximately 0.2ha in the northern part of the school playing field, to the east of the existing buildings.
The development area sits within a rich archaeological landscape with extensive evidence for Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman activity. Excavations covering nearly 20ha at Clay Farm, directly to the east and north, have revealed extensive Middle Bronze Age field systems and settlement, with further occupation throughout the Iron Age and Roman periods. A portion of Middle Bronze Age field system in the field directly to the north subsequently saw Early Iron Age settlement constructed within it. A Middle Iron Age enclosure system with associated settlement activity was excavated within the field adjacent to the eastern boundary of the Fawcett School. A south-east to north-west oriented trackway or routeway, which originated at least as early as the Middle Bronze Age, was also discovered in the field to the east. A geophysical survey within the school playing field clearly shows the trackway continuing into the development area.
The excavation uncovered impressive prehistoric remains, dating between the Early Bronze Age and Middle Iron Age. The most surprising discovery was the ploughed-truncated remains of an Early Bronze Age double-ditched barrow in the east of the excavation area, which would once have enclosed a mound. The barrow was located on a natural promontory overlooking a shallow valley to the east. It had an internal diameter of 17.5m although only the northern side was uncovered, less than half of the monument. The outer ditch became the focus for a cemetery, with 38 cremation burials and one inhumation placed within it. A series of six radiocarbon dates indicate the burials span the Middle Bronze Age (the earliest being 1531 – 1417 cal. BC and the latest being 1257 – 1053 cal. BC, both at 95% confidence) but with a focus in the earlier part of the period. Approximately 35m to the north-west of the barrow was a much smaller ring-ditch, with an internal diameter of just over 4m and containing a single cremation burial. Although this feature has parallels with Middle Bronze Age Ardleigh-type burials from north-east Essex, the cremated bone returned a radiocarbon date of 781 – 520 cal. BC (95% confidence), dating it to the Early Iron Age. The surrounding ring ditch also contained a few sherds of Early Iron Age pottery.
The two burial monuments were positioned parallel to the Bronze Age routeway. Within the excavation area, the routeway was marked by two large ditches, measuring up to 3.1m wide and 1.7m deep. The dimensions and orientation of these are similar to those of the Middle Bronze Age ditches in the field to the north, and all the extant parts of the routeway may be Middle Bronze Age in date. The uppermost fill of the northern ditch consisted of midden-like material and included an assemblage of Early Iron Age pottery, which clearly dates the construction of the ditch to well before the Early Iron Age.
Other features included an area of Early Iron Age settlement and a short pit alignment, a small C-shaped enclosure, a possible oven, a group of quarry pits and at least one 4-post structure.


OBJECTIVES
To describe the incidence of alcohol and drug testing in adolescents admitted for traumatic injury and to analyze these results with reference to race, ethnicity, and gender differences.

METHODS
Data were collected on adolescents (aged 12 through 17 years) from the National Trauma Data Bank. Testing statuses for alcohol and drugs were the two primary outcome variables. The results of these tests were the secondary outcome variables. Additional casemix variables included: race, ethnicity, gender, age, Glasgow Coma Scale score, Injury Severity Score, day and time of arrival, and payment source. Hierarchical, multivariable logistic regression models were used to assess the relationship of race, ethnicity, and gender with the primary and secondary outcome variables.

RESULTS
Differences noted in the likelihood of alcohol and drug testing among the different racial, ethnic, and gender groups demonstrated an increased likelihood of Hispanic males and African American females to receive alcohol testing (odds ratio [OR]: 1.48; 95% CI = 1.06 to 2.06; and OR: 1.30; 95% CI = 1.01 to 1.67, respectively). Results of testing revealed that females of all races were less likely than males to test positive for alcohol and drugs. Drug and alcohol testing was more common during evenings, nights, and weekends, as well as in the presence of neurologic injury.

CONCLUSIONS
Whereas small disparities in alcohol and drug testing were noted in some minority race-based groupings, systematic racial bias is not evident in adolescent trauma patients.


Spontaneous resolution of a large renal stone burden in adults is a rare occurrence with few reports in the last 50 years. Improved imaging techniques and understanding of the pharmacology of dissolution therapy have led to a better understanding of which stones have the potential for spontaneous passage or targeted dissolution via medical treatment. Less is known regarding stone outcomes in children, and anecdotes of pediatric patients spontaneously passing large stones has been widely propagated. Here we report a case of spontaneous resolution of a large renal stone burden in a child with a congenital solitary kidney.


Revision with unchanged content. Since the seminal book by the Gang of Four, design patterns have proven an important tool in software development. Over time, more and more patterns have been discovered and developed for a plethora of design problems. The sheer amount of patterns available makes it hard to impossible to find patterns useful for solving a specific design problem. Hence, tools supporting searching and finding design patterns appropriate to a certain problem would be very useful. In order to develop such tooling, design patterns need to be described in a formal manner such that querying for them by the problem to be solved becomes feasible. Current approaches to formalising design patterns focus on the solution structure of the pattern rather than on the problem solved by the pattern. In this book, we present a formalisation of the intent of the 23 patterns from the Gang-of-Four book. Based on this formalisation we have developed a Design Pattern Wizard that proposes applicable design patterns based on a description of a design problem. This work is appealing both for the professional software developer, and the student of computer science.


In this work, we investigate the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) based on natural dyes extracted from ten different plant seeds. The extracts were characterized by UV-VIS absorption spectra. The solar cells were assembled using a TiO2 mesoporous film on FTO-coated glass. The photovoltaic properties of the DSSCs were studied under an incident irradiation of 100 mW/cm2. The best performance was for the DSSC sensitized with Eruca sativa with a solar energy conversion efficiency of 0.725%. Moreover, the validity of these extracts was compared using two types of semiconductor layers (TiO2 and ZnO), and finally the photovoltaic properties of one of these dyes were studied using different types of electrolytes.


Fermentation process of glutamic acid is a very complicated industry process, which needs different environment parameters and has seriously nonlinear and instability. Studying the kinetic model and neural network model combining hybrid modeling of glutamic acid fermentation process, hybrid model consists of two parts, one is the mechanism model, through reasonable assumptions and limitations, simplifying the kinetics of biochemical reaction process, it is basis of hybrid model, describes the basic characteristics of glutamic acid fermentation process; the other part is a neural network model, using neural network training function of knowledge, and establishing glutamic acid fermentation process between the input and output mapping, this mapping only depends on the actual production data, and has nothing to do with the actual process, it is a secondary part of the hybrid model for correction kinetic model. Through simulation, respectively, glutamic acid fermentation process kinetic model and hybrid model to compare the results to prove the value of hybrid model predictions closer to the system actual output, the model is more accurate.


Collecting and annotating videos of realistic human actions is tedious, yet critical for training action recognition systems. We propose a method to actively request the most useful video annotations among a large set of unlabeled videos. Predicting the utility of annotating unlabeled video is not trivial, since any given clip may contain multiple actions of interest, and it need not be trimmed to temporal regions of interest. To deal with this problem, we propose a detection-based active learner to train action category models. We develop a voting-based framework to localize likely intervals of interest in an unlabeled clip, and use them to estimate the total reduction in uncertainty that annotating that clip would yield. On three datasets, we show our approach can learn accurate action detectors more efficiently than alternative active learning strategies that fail to accommodate the "untrimmed" nature of real video data.


Objective: This study examined to what extent differences exist in pre-college characteristics and academic performance between Black male student-athletes and their student-athlete peers. Method: Data provided by the Florida Department of Education's PK-20 Education Data Warehouse (EDW) were analyzed as a function of group membership (gender and race), using descriptive analysis, cross-tabulations, and a one-way ANOVA. The sample included 513 cases, with White females comprising 36.3% of the sample, White males 24.3%, Black females 15.5%, and Black males 14.3%. Student-athletes' academic performance was operationalized using four continuous variables (grade point average [GPA], course credit hours enrolled, course credit hours earned, and credit hours enrolled/earned ratio) and one dichotomous variable (degree completion). Results: Findings suggest that Black males earned 72% of the credit hours they attempted, which was less than all other examined groups. Within Black males, differences between socio-economic groups were also found. Individuals identified as high socio-economic status (SES) earned approximately 82% of credit hours enrolled, compared with those identified as low SES, which earned 67% of credit hours attempted. Between-group differences were also found when examining college readiness and percentage of degrees completed. Contributions: This study contributes to the extant literature on student-athletes at community and 2-year colleges by providing insight into the potential impact individual characteristics have on academic performance outcomes for Black male student-athletes. The author also provides thoughtful consideration concerning how institutions and policy changes can positively affect these outcomes.


Background & Objectives: The most common parasitic lung disease is echinococcosis, and usually young male patients suffer from this disease. Lung involvement is more common in children, and it is important to consider this involvement as a diagnosis. Anesthesia and surgical management are always challenging for both Anesthesiologist and surgeon. Case: In this case we report successful anesthetic and surgical management of a giant hydatid cyst in the lung of an eight-year-old boy. Conclusion: Successful anesthetic management during hydatid cyst surgery of lung in pediatrics using cuffed endobronchial tube is possible if the anesthesiologist and the surgeon are swift, well-coordinated, and synchronized.


Stress and vigor are endpoints on a continuum of the suitability of plants for insect herbivores. Senescence‐feeding insects, such as the chrysanthemum lace bug, Corythucha marmorata (Uhler) (Hemiptera: Tingidae, Tingitini), are hypothesized to benefit from any stressor hastening the senescence of plant tissues, such as drought. They are also hypothesized to prefer feeding and ovipositing on stressed plants, due to increased performance of themselves and their offspring. We conducted choice and no‐choice field‐cage experiments to test the effects of drought stress on the oviposition preference and nymph survival of C. marmorata on its goldenrod host, Solidago altissima L. (Asteraceae). We placed lace bugs on high‐ and low‐water treatment plants, surveyed egg and nymph densities twice weekly, and at the end of the experiment, collected newly developed adults, weighed them, and determined their nitrogen concentration. Low‐water treatment plants experienced decreased growth and increased leaf senescence. Lace bug nymphs had significantly greater survival, faster maturation, and higher adult mass on low‐water treatment plants than on high‐water treatment plants. We observed a non‐significant, though consistent trend toward increased oviposition preference for low‐water treatment plants. Nitrogen concentrations of lace bugs did not differ by treatment, but lace bugs from low‐water treatment plants contained more nitrogen in total due to their higher mass. These results suggest that lace bugs perform better on drought‐stressed plants due to mobilization of structural nitrogen increasing the nutritional quality of stressed tissues.


D-002 is a mixture of higher aliphatic primary alcohols purified from beeswax with antioxidant effects. Acute hepatotoxicity induced with CCl4 in rats has been related to increased hepatic lipid peroxidation and prevented with some antioxidants. This study investigated whether D-002 could prevent the acute CCl4-induced hepatotoxicity in rats. Animals were randomly distributed into four groups: a negative control treated orally with the vehicle and three groups injected with CCl4 (1 mL/kg) and treated orally either with the vehicle (positive control) or with D-002 (25 and 100 mg/kg). Eighteen hours after CCl4 dosing, rats were anesthetized, and livers were removed for histopathological studies. Some portions were taken and homogenized for assessing malondialdehyde (MDA) concentrations. Positive, but not negative, controls showed ballooned cells, swollen hepatocytes, and lipid-included hepatocytes, as well as necrotic areas and inflammatory infiltrates. D-002 (25 and 100 mg/kg) dose-dependently and significantly (P < .01) decreased the frequency of all abnormal liver cell types and increased that of normal hepatocytes compared with the positive controls, not showing necrotic areas or inflammatory infiltrates. D-002 dose-dependently decreased hepatic MDA levels, but only in the highest dose group were these levels significantly lower than in the positive control. In conclusion, D-002 effectively prevented the histological liver disturbances and lowered MDA levels, a marker of cellular lipid peroxidation, in rats treated with CCl4. Since increased liver lipid peroxidation has been postulated as a cause of CCl4-induced liver damage in rats, the preventive effects of D-002 could be due to its antioxidant action, but such a proposal still requires further research.


CD4 T cells are crucial effectors in the pathology of type 1 diabetes (T1D). Successful therapeutic interventions for prevention and cure of T1D in humans are still elusive. Recent research efforts have focused on the manipulation of T cells by treatment with DNA. In this paper, we studied the effects of a DNA treatment strategy designed to target antigenic peptides to the lysosomal compartment on a monospecific T cell population termed 2.5mi+ T cells that shares reactivity with the diabetogenic T cell clone BDC-2.5 in the NOD mouse. MHC class II tetramer analysis showed that repeated administrations were necessary to expand 2.5mi+ T cells in vivo. This expansion was independent of Ag presentation by B cells. A single peptide epitope was sufficient to induce protection against T1D, which was not due to Ag-specific T cell anergy. Typical Th2 cytokines such as IL-10 or IL-4 were undetectable in 2.5mi+ T cells, arguing against a mechanism of immune deviation. Instead, the expanded 2.5mi+ T cell population produced IFN-γ similar to 2.5mi+ T cells from naive mice. Protection against T1D by DNA treatment was completely lost in NOD.CD28−/− mice which are largely deficient of natural regulatory T cells (Treg). Although Ag-specific Foxp3+ Treg did not expand in response to DNA treatment, diabetes onset was delayed in Treg-reconstituted and DNA-treated NOD.SCID mice. These observations provide evidence for a Treg-mediated protective mechanism that is independent of the expansion or de novo generation of Ag-specific Treg.


OBJECTIVE
To explore whether there are different disease patterns of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in women and men.

METHODS
We studied 55 male case patients and 110 female control patients who developed RA between 1970 and 1985 and who resided and received medical care in Olmsted County, Minnesota, for at least 10 years after the diagnosis of RA. Case and control patients were matched for the date of first diagnosis. The pattern and extent of joint involvement, the frequency of joint surgeries, and the presence and type of extraarticular manifestations were determined by retrospective chart review.

RESULTS
Incidence rates in women were variable and age dependent, whereas the risk in men older than 36 years was constant over their lifetime. Erosive disease was more frequent in men than in women (72% versus 55%, respectively; P < 0.05) and tended to occur earlier (47% versus 31% for erosive disease within the first 4 years of RA). Although male sex was correlated with a higher risk of bony erosions and an accelerated course of RA, structural consequences of joint destruction were more pronounced in women. Joint surgery was performed more frequently in women (50%) than in men (27%) (P = 0.01). In particular, the frequencies of arthroplasties and arthrodeses of hand and foot joints were different (34 procedures in women versus 1 procedure in men; P < 0.001). Sex influenced the risk as well as the pattern of organ involvement in RA. Nodules and rheumatoid lung disease were typical manifestations in men (P = 0.001 and P < 0.001, respectively), whereas women typically developed sicca syndrome (P = 0.05). Despite differences in disease aggressiveness and disease pattern, there was little difference in the medical therapy in the men compared with the women.

CONCLUSION
RA is a heterogeneous disease with variations in phenotype. Sex-associated factors influence disease severity as well as disease pattern. Because sex-related effects influence treatment goals, treatment responses, and side effects, they should be considered in clinical study design and analysis as well as in the treatment decisions for individual patients with RA.


Large igneous provinces (LIP) are often found in close temporal and spatial proximity with continental breakups, supporting the model, that an arriving mantle plume produces large amounts of melt and has a massive influence on the breakup process. The South Atlantic is a classical example, with flood basalts on both adjacent continents and a paired age progressing ridge system connecting them with the current hotspot location at Tristan da Cunha.

To estimate the influence of the plume on the preexisting continental crust, a large-scale geophysical experiment was conducted in 2011 at the intersection of Walvis Ridge with the African continent. We present four P-wave velocity models derived from seismic refraction data. One extends 430 km along the ridge crest and continues onshore to a total length of 730 km, while the other three crossing the ridge perpendicular: one (480 km long) far offshore in the oceanic regime, one (600 km) close to shelf break and the last one (400 km) onshore.

Crustal velocities beneath Walvis Ridge range between 5.5 km/s and 7.0 km/s, which are typical velocities for oceanic crust. The crustal thickness, however, is approximately three times larger than of normal oceanic crust: 17 km in the western part increasing to 22 km towards the continent.

The continent ocean transition is characterized by 30 km thick crust with a high velocity body (HVB) in the lower crust and seismic velocities up to 7.5 km/s. The western extend of the HVB is to a similar distance from shore as for HVBs observed south of Walvis Ridge. In contrast, the eastern boundary lies well within the continental domain, at the 40 km thick crust of the Kaoko fold belt. Here, the variation of seismic velocities indicates that hot material intruded the continental crust during the initial rifting stage. However, beyond this relatively sharp boundary (40 km wide), the remaining continental crust seems unaffected by intrusions and the root of the Kaoko belt is no eroded.

The cross-profile indicates that Walvis Ridge might be broader than its topographic expression and that the northward lying seamounts are part of the ridge. A HVB can only be found at the northern flank of the ridge, but not at its base.

We conclude, that the postulated arriving plume head did not modify the continental crust on a large scale, but was a rather regional anomaly.


This paper presents an experimental study on the impact of low class prevalence on the neural network based classifier performance as measured using receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis. Two methods of dealing with the problem are investigated: oversampling and undersampling in the context of varying the class prevalence and the size of training datasets with uncorrelated and correlated features. The results show that the class imbalance can significantly decrease the classifier performance especially in the case of small training datasets. Furthermore, the oversampling method is shown to be more effective than the undersampling method in compensating the class imbalance. Statistically significant differences, however, are observed only in the cases with large total number of samples and very low prevalence.


Self-cleaning, air-purifying pervious concrete pavement is a promising technology that can be constructed with air-cleaning agents with superhydrophilic photocatalyst capabilities, such as titanium dioxide. Although this technology has the potential of supporting environment-friendly road infrastructure, its effectiveness depends on a number of design and operational parameters that need to be evaluated. The objective of this study was to evaluate the mechanical, environmental, and mix design parameters that influence the performance and effectiveness of photocatalytic pervious concrete pavement. To achieve this objective, an experimental program was conducted in which the effects of relative humidity level, pollutants' flow rate, and mix design parameters, including void ratio and depth of the photocatalytic layer, were investigated. Mechanical performance tests included porosity, unit weight, permeability, and compressive strength. The environmental efficiency of the samples to remove nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the atmosphere was measured in the laboratory. Results of the experimental program showed that increasing the depth of the photocatalytic layer increased NOx reduction efficiency. In addition, NOx removal efficiency decreased with the increase in the pollutant flow rate and increased with the increase in ultraviolet light intensity.


Spirulina maxima, which is used as a food additive, is a microalga rich in protein and other essential nutrients. Spirulina contains phenolic acids, tocopherols and fl-carotene which are known to exhibit antioxidant properties. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the antioxidant capacity of a Spirulina extract. The antioxidant activity of a methanolic extract of Spirulina was determined in vitro and in vivo. The in vitro antioxidant capacity was tested on a brain homogenate incubated with and without the extract at 37 o C. The IC50 (concentration which causes a 50% reduction of oxidation) of the extract in this system was 0.18 mg/ml. The in vivo antioxidant capacity was evaluated in plasma and liver of animals receiving a daily dose of 5 mg for 2 and 7 weeks. Plasma antioxidant capacity was measured in brain homogenate incubated for 1 h at 37 o C. The production of oxidized compounds in liver after 2 h of incubation at 37 o C was measured in terms of thiobarbituric acid reactant substances (TBARS) in control and experimental groups. Upon treatment, the antioxidant capacity of plasma was 71% for the experimental group and 54% for the control group. Data from liver spontaneous peroxidation studies were not significantly different between groups. The amounts of phenolic acids, α-tocopherol and fl-carotene were determined in Spirulina extracts. The results obtained indicate that Spirulina provides some antioxidant protection for both in vitro and in vivo systems.


This study estimates blueberry consumer reaction to a potential honey bee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) management strategy; increased reliance upon native pollinators like the common Eastern Bumble bee (Bombus impatiens). A survey of 498 consumers was conducted using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Respondents were asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 5, four different blueberry "packages" each containing five attributes; price, pollination method (native bee, commercial honey bee), fresh or frozen, produced in or out of state and variety (wild, cultivated). Statistical analysis suggests that the average consumer surveyed was willing to pay between $0.51 and $0.74 extra per dry liter for native pollination. Consumer willingness to pay of $0.51 extra per dry liter for an average hectare of blueberries was conservatively 1.75 times the annual cost per hectare for producers to plant wildflower pastures for native bees. Consequently, native pollination may be an economically viable alternative for blueberry producers facing the consequences of CCD and other causes of increased honey bee colony losses.


We present AntesCollider, an environment harnessing Antescofo, a score following system extended with a real-time synchronous programming language, and SuperCol-lider, a client-server programming environment for real-time audio synthesis. The environment enables the definition of a centralized executable score specifying complex timelines driving sophisticated controls, audio synthesis and their synchronization with a performer. The audio processing information is distributed to the SuperCollider servers using the OSC protocol under the supervision of the Antescofo scheduler taking care of the synchronizations with external events. Audio processing can be distributed over several SuperCollider servers to maximize CPU efficiency. We showcase the system on a new piece, Curvatura II for live electroacoustics.


ABSTRACT Rapid diagnosis and treatment of infectious meningitis and encephalitis are critical to minimize morbidity and mortality. Comprehensive testing of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) often includes Gram stain, culture, antigen detection, and molecular methods, paired with chemical and cellular analyses. These methods may lack sensitivity or specificity, can take several days, and require significant volume for complete analysis. The FilmArray Meningitis/Encephalitis (ME) Panel is a multiplexed in vitro diagnostic test for the simultaneous, rapid (∼1-h) detection of 14 pathogens directly from CSF specimens: Escherichia coli K1, Haemophilus influenzae, Listeria monocytogenes, Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Streptococcus agalactiae, cytomegalovirus, enterovirus, herpes simplex virus 1 and 2, human herpesvirus 6, human parechovirus, varicella-zoster virus, and Cryptococcus neoformans/Cryptococcus gattii. We describe a multicenter evaluation of 1,560 prospectively collected CSF specimens with performance compared to culture (bacterial analytes) and PCR (all other analytes). The FilmArray ME Panel demonstrated a sensitivity or positive percentage of agreement of 100% for 9 of 14 analytes. Enterovirus and human herpesvirus type 6 had agreements of 95.7% and 85.7%, and L. monocytogenes and N. meningitidis were not observed in the study. For S. agalactiae, there was a single false-positive and false-negative result each, for a sensitivity and specificity of 0 and 99.9%, respectively. The specificity or negative percentage of agreement was 99.2% or greater for all other analytes. The FilmArray ME Panel is a sensitive and specific test to aid in diagnosis of ME. With use of this comprehensive and rapid test, improved patient outcomes and antimicrobial stewardship are anticipated.


Polylactide (PLA), whose crystallinity could be easily tuned, was selected to examine the effect of polymer crystallization on thermal conductivity (TC) of the polymer composites. Compression-molded PLA/boron nitride (BN) were heat-treated at 120 °C to fabricate highly crystalline samples. It demonstrated crystallization of the PLA significantly affects TC of the PLA/BN composites. With increased BN content, the improvement of the TC of PLA/BN composites via crystallization is more obvious. TCs of the crystalline PLA/BN composites with 5 wt% and 40 wt% BN are increased by 23 % and 47 % in the in-plane direction and are increased by 21 % and 54 % in the through-plane direction compared to those of amorphous PLA/BN, while TC of pure PLA is increased by 17 % via crystallization. When BN content is 40 wt%, the in-plane and through-plane TCs of the crystalline PLA/BN are 4.7 W/mK and 0.8 W/mK, respectively. Both the amorphous and crystallized PLA/BN exhibit high breakdown strengths. RESEARCH PAPER


Abstract : This report describes a new dataflow-based technology and associated design tools for high-productivity design, analysis, and optimization of layered sensing software for signal processing systems. Our approach provides novel capabilities, based on the principles of task-level dataflow analysis, for exploring and optimizing interactions across application behavior; operational context; high performance embedded processing platforms, and implementation constraints. Particularly, we introduce and deliver novel software tools, called the targeted dataflow interchange format (TDIF) and Dataflow Interchange Format Markup Language (DIFML), for design and implementation of layered sensing and signal processing systems. The TDIF-CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) environment is a graphics processing unit targeted software synthesis tool that provides a unique integration of dynamic dataflow modeling; retargetable actor construction; software synthesis; and instrumentation-based schedule evaluation and tuning. The DIFML package is a software package for the DIFML format, which is an Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based format for exchanging information between DIF and other tools.


Declines in mitochondrial mass are thought to be a hallmark of mammalian aging, and a ketogenic diet (KD) may prevent the age-related decreases in mitochondrial content. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of a KD on markers of mitochondrial mass. Mice were fed an isocaloric control diet (CD) or KD from 12 months of age. Tissues were collected after 1 month and 14 months of intervention, and a panel of commonly used markers of mitochondrial mass (mitochondrial enzyme activities and levels, mitochondrial to nuclear DNA ratio, and cardiolipin content) were measured. Our results showed that a KD stimulated activities of marker mitochondrial enzymes including citrate synthase, Complex I, and Complex IV in hindlimb muscle in aged mice. KD also increased the activity of citrate synthase and prevented an age-related decrease in Complex IV activity in aged brain. No other markers were increased in these tissues. Furthermore, the impacts of a KD on liver and kidney were mixed with no pattern indicative of a change in mitochondrial mass. In conclusion, results of the present study suggest that a KD induces tissue-specific changes in mitochondrial enzyme activities, or structure, rather than global changes in mitochondrial mass across tissues.


The objective of this study is to develop an efficient washing system to remove cutting oil from machining part surface. The proposed washing system consists of two processes: the dipping process and the modified automatic ultrasonic washing process. The automatic ultrasonic washing process is redesigned and developed to reduce operating cost and increase productivity from the previously developed machine. For this proposed system, experiments have been performed to determine the washing conditions that yield satisfactory proportion of defectives due to oil contamination. Under the suggested operating conditions, the proportion of defectives due to oil contamination is reduced from 12.8% to 1.78%, which leads to $16,800 defective cost reduction. The proposed washing system yields 42.9% increase in washing productivity. Furthermore, it as has more standard procedure than the current washing process.


Velocity-squared drag forces are common in describing an object moving through a granular material. The resulting force law is a nonlinear differential equation, and closed-form solutions of the dynamics are typically obtained by making simplifying assumptions. Here, we consider a generalized version of such a force law which has been used in many studies of granular impact. We show that recasting the force law into an equation for the kinetic energy vs. depth, K(z), yields a linear differential equation, and thus general closed-form solutions for the velocity vs. depth. This approach also has several advantages in fitting such models to experimental data, which we demonstrate by applying it to data from 2D impact experiments. We also present new experimental results for this model, including shape and depth dependence of the velocity-squared drag force.


Power Doppler sonography (PD) can accurately depict tissue perfusion, recognize slow flows, and is relatively angle independent. The monitoring of local blood flow by Doppler ultrasonography is helpful in differentiating prostatic physio-pathological conditions, but the recognizing of physiological variables that could affect it is crucial to apply this technique in clinical practice. This study aimed to evaluate if ejaculation affects blood flow to the prostate and to state how long this effect lasts. Serial PD examinations of prostate were performed in 18 dogs (1-5 years, 6-40 kg) immediately before (T0) and after (T1) the ejaculation, and repeated 6 (T2), 18 (T3) and 24 (T4) hours later. For each examination, two representative PD images were chosen and ranked by two independent observers according to the following scoring system: 0 = mild subcapsular (S) vascularization without clear evidence of parenchymal (P) vascularization; 1 = moderate P and S vascularization; 2 = severe S and moderate P vascularization; 3 = severe P and moderate S vascularization; 4 = severe P and S vascularization. Interobserver agreement was assessed using Kappa of Cohen. Ranked data, grouped according to time, were compared by ANOVA and Tukey HSD test (p < .05). Variations in the vascular flow pattern at different times were observed for all dogs. The statistical analysis evidenced a significant difference for T0 vs T1 and vs T2 and vs T3 (p < .01), with no significant difference for T0 vs T4 (p > .05). Interobserver agreement was very good (Kappa of Cohen = 0.86). This study demonstrated a definite increase in vascular flow to the prostate after ejaculation. The present results suggest a minimum of 24 hr sexual rest before the PD examination of the gland. This result should be taken into account whenever Doppler sonography is used to evaluate potential hyperaemia in dogs suspected of having prostate abnormalities.


: According to Rowlands, personhood in nonhuman animals calls for a unified mental life and pre-reflective self-awareness provides this. The concept of "person" is fuzzy. Any attempt to define it with necessary and sufficient conditions faces the problem of borderline cases satisfying only some of the conditions to varying degrees. We ask about the implications of a metaphysical sense of personhood for its moral and legal sense. Finally, we address Rowlands's reliance on pre-reflective self-awareness and present our own criteria for personhood.


Paddy fields play very important environmental roles in food security, water resource management, biodiversity conservation, and climate change. Therefore, reliable broad-scale paddy field maps are essential for understanding these issues related to rice and paddy fields. Here, we propose a novel paddy field mapping method that uses Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) time series that are robust for cloud cover, supplemented by Sentinel-2 optical images that are more reliable than SAR data for extracting irrigated paddy fields. Paddy fields were provisionally specified by using the Sentinel-1 SAR data and a conventional decision tree method. Then, an additional mask using water and vegetation indexes based on Sentinel-2 optical images was overlaid to remove non-paddy field areas. We used the proposed method to develop a paddy field map for Japan in 2018 with a 30 m spatial resolution. The producer's accuracy of this map (92.4%) for non-paddy reference agricultural fields was much higher than that of a map developed by the conventional method (57.0%) using only Sentinel-1 data. Our proposed method also reproduced paddy field areas at the prefecture scale better than existing paddy field maps developed by a remote sensing approach.


We revisit and advance visual prompting (VP), an input prompting technique for vision tasks. VP can reprogram a fixed, pre-trained source model to accomplish downstream tasks in the target domain by simply incorporating universal prompts (in terms of input perturbation patterns) into downstream data points. Yet, it remains elusive why VP stays effective even given a ruleless label mapping (LM) between the source classes and the target classes. Inspired by the above, we ask: How is LM interrelated with VP? And how to exploit such a relationship to improve its accuracy on target tasks? We peer into the influence of LM on VP and provide an affirmative answer that a better 'quality' of LM (assessed by mapping precision and explanation) can consistently improve the effectiveness of VP. This is in contrast to the prior art where the factor of LM was missing. To optimize LM, we propose a new VP framework, termed ILM-VP (iterative label mapping-based visual prompting), which automatically re-maps the source labels to the target labels and progressively improves the target task accuracy of VP. Further, when using a contrastive language-image pretrained (CLIP) model for VP, we propose to integrate an LM process to assist the text prompt selection of CLIP and to improve the target task accuracy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our proposal significantly outperforms state-of-the-art VP methods. As highlighted below, we show that when reprogramming an ImageNet-pretrained ResNet-18 to 13 target tasks, ILM-VP outperforms baselines by a substantial margin, e.g., 7.9% and 6.7% accuracy improvements in transfer learning to the target Flowers102 and CIFAR100 datasets. Besides, our proposal on CLIP-based VP provides 13.7% and 7.1% accuracy improvements on Flowers102 and DTD respectively. Code is available at https://github.com/OPTML-Group/ILM-VP.


Background: EUSOMA undertook the commitment of defining the requirements for a specialist breast centre, which has become the reference document for the implementation of breast centres. Summary: The EUSOMA requirements for a specialist breast centre give clear indications regarding the requisite caseload, dedicated team composition (core and non-core team), organisation, availability of services and equipment throughout the patient pathway, quality control, and application of a multidisciplinary approach. The minimum number of cases is 150 newly diagnosed breast cancer cases per year. Based on the EUSOMA requirements, a voluntary and accredited certification scheme has been developed. In Europe, other voluntary certification schemes are available, such as those developed by the German Cancer Society and German Society for Breast Disease, the National Cancer Peer Review Programme in the UK, and the "label de qualité" established by the Swiss Anticancer League and the Swiss Senology Society. The European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) has overseen the development of a European Quality Assurance Scheme. Key Messages: Nearly 20 years after the initial publication of the EUSOMA requirements, ensuring that all breast cancer patients in Europe are treated only in certified breast centres should be considered a high priority and eventually achieved through collaborative efforts.


Classification and clustering are frequently-used methods in data excavation technology. Entropy model is the base structure of automated word categorizing. In this model, words appear consecutive frequently will place in different groups. Although this method is not correct always, in the most cases, obtained results simulate real situation. Text-based matching is performed to generate "soft" seeds, which are then used to guide clustering in the basic feature space. Because of NP-Complete structure of clustering problems, the entropy model cannot be solved by an optimal algorithm, so a number of heuristic algorithms were developed to solve this problem. Some examples of these heuristics are artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, greedy algorithms and so on. In this paper, we used a clustering ensemble method for text categorization. The method uses a new feature space generated by k-means for clustering. The results show that an improvement in categorization is obtained.


Infertility is a problem affecting almost 15% of couples. There are many causes for this condition, among which urogenital bacterial infections seem to play an important role. Many studies have explained the mechanisms by which bacteria cause infertility both in men and women. Therefore we undertook this study to evaluate the presence of genito-urinary infections in infertile couples who sought counselling to investigate their condition. Microbiological analysis was performed on semen and vaginal/cervical samples of both partners of each couple. The percentage of individuals affected by a urogenital bacterial infection was between 14 and 20%. More significantly, most of the species isolated both in men and women have been described in the literature as potential causes of infertility.


In this paper we present a Linda implementation on a distributed memory parallel computer. Linda is a parallel programming paradigm providing a small set of extensions to any of the sequential languages such as C, FORTRAN: : : . This paradigm allows the porting of programs between various architectures of parallel computers. It is based on a shared associative memory, namely the tuple space. On distributed memory systems, this shared memory has to be simulated. Our implementation runs on a transputer network with any underlying topology. We first present the Linda operators, then the protocol used to manage the tuple space is described, and a dynamic load balancing scheme is also presented.


Although blood cultures (BCs) are an important component of diagnostic practice for antibiotic management in patients with pneumonia, several studies have questioned whether they should be performed. The objective of this study was to evaluate the predictive factors of bacteremia and the role of BCs in patients with community-onset pneumonia (community-acquired pneumonia and healthcare-associated pneumonia).This study was retrospectively conducted in patients with community-onset pneumonia who were hospitalized at Jeju National University Hospital between January 2012 and December 2014. A true bacteremia (TB) group and a contaminants or negative bacteremia (CNB) group were classified according to the bacterial growth on the BC media and were investigated for the clinical relevance of the BCs.We enrolled 785 patients; the TB group and the CNB group contained 36 patients (4.5%) and 749 (95.4%) patients, respectively. Only 10 patients (1.2%) required a change in antibiotic therapy based on the BC results (3 patients with an escalation, 7 with a de-escalation). There was no significant difference between the community-acquired pneumonia and the healthcare-associated pneumonia groups with regard to the rate of antibiotic change due to the BC results (1.1% vs 1.4%; P = 0.751). Chronic liver disease (odds ratio [OR] 2.973, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.099-8.037), a confusion, urea, respiratory rate, blood pressure, age ≥65 (CURB-65) score of 4 to 5 points (OR 3.484, 95% CI 1.304-9.307), and Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) class V (OR 2.405, 95% CI 1.007-5.743) were independently associated with TB. In patients with PSI class V and a CURB-65 score of 4 to 5 points, the TB group tended to show a higher inhospital mortality rate than the CNB group (50.0% vs 29.4%; P = 0.060, 60.0% vs 42.5%; P = 0.480). The areas under the curve for PSI score and CURB-65 score for predicting TB revealed an increased tendency compared with that of C-reactive protein (0.72, 95% CI 0.630-0.809; and 0.72, 95% CI 0.622-0.819 vs 0.629, 95% CI 0.522-0.735, respectively).It seemed reasonable to selectively conduct BC in patients hospitalized with severe community-onset pneumonia based upon its low overall positive rate, its effects on antimicrobial modification, and the associations of TB with the severity indices of pneumonia.


A three-step radiographic procedure is described for the determination of left ventricle volumes, based on one lateral and two angled single plane images. The first angled image is taken to yield a minimally foreshortened LV image and the second image, at the same angle, is taken of a calibration sphere. Five sources of operator-related, or 'input', error are analysed, two of which are normally removable. The remaining three input errors are assessed using a commercial digital subtraction angiography system and comparisons with the analysis are given. A summary result is that relative errors in end-systolic and end-diastolic LV volumes, as well as cardiac output, should normally be less than 13% under reasonable operator care. The input errors should not contribute to errors in calculated ejection fractions.


Interactive narratives suffer from the narrative paradox: the tension that exists between providing a coherent narrative experience and allowing a player free reign over what she can manipulate in the environment. Knowing what actions a player in such an environment intends to carry out would help in managing the narrative paradox, since it would allow us to anticipate potential threats to the intended narrative experience and potentially mediate or eliminate them. The process of observing player actions and attempting to come up with an explanation for those actions (i.e. the plan that the player is trying to carry out) is the problem of plan recognition. We adopt the framing of narratives as plans and leverage recent advances that cast plan recognition as planning to develop a symbolic plan recognition system as a proof-of-concept model of a player's reasoning in an interactive narrative environment. In this paper we outline the system architecture, report on performance metrics that demonstrate adequate performance for non-trivial domains, and discuss the implications of treating players as plan recognizers.


Tasks classically performed by human–human teams in today's workplaces are increasingly given to human–technology teams instead. The role of technology is not only played by classic decision support systems (DSSs) but more and more by artificial intelligence (AI). Reliability is a key factor influencing trust in technology. Therefore, we investigated the reliability participants require in order to perceive the support agents (human, AI, and DSS) as "highly reliable." We then examined how trust differed between these highly reliable agents. Whilst there is a range of research identifying trust as an important determinant in human–DSS interaction, the question is whether these findings are also applicable to the interaction between humans and AI. To study these issues, we conducted an experiment (N = 300) with two different tasks, usually performed by dyadic teams (loan assignment and x-ray screening), from two different perspectives (i.e., working together or being evaluated by the agent). In contrast to our hypotheses, the required reliability if working together was equal regardless of the agent. Nevertheless, participants trusted the human more than an AI or DSS. They also required that AI be more reliable than a human when used to evaluate themselves, thus illustrating the importance of changing perspective.


type="main"> Allowing provinces to find their own way forward was central to Vietnam's progress in institutional and economic development. This article examines who drives this process of economic reform and finds that, in those provinces making the most progress, the private sector played an important role, not against, but with government. Both national and foreign enterprises played a role, but small enterprises tended to be marginalised. Some of the best insights come from comparing provinces and observing how different alignments of interest influenced the reform process.


Atmospheric levoglucosan has been determined as a proxy for "biomass smoke" in samples from six background stations on a west–east transect extending from the Atlantic (Azores) to the mid-European background site KPZ (K-Puszta, Hungary). Concentration levels of levoglucosan (biannual averages) in the west–east transect range from 0.005 μg/m3 at the oceanic background site AZO (Azores) to 0.52 μg/m3 at AVE (Aveiro, Portugal). The atmospheric concentration of "biomass smoke" (biannual averages) was derived from the levoglucosan data with wood-type-specific conversion factors. Annual averages of wood smoke levels ranged from 0.05 μg/m3 at AZO to 4.3 μg/m3 at AVE. Winter (DJF) averages at the low-level sites AVE and KPZ were 10.8 and 6.7 μg/m3, respectively. Relative contributions of biomass smoke to organic matter (OM) range from around 9–11% at the elevated sites SIL, PDD and SBO, as well as for AZO, to 36% at the low-level site AVE and 28% at KPZ. Surprisingly high relative concentrations of biomass smoke in OM (68 and 47%) were observed for wintry conditions at the continental low-level CARBOSOL sites AVE and KPZ. Thus biomass smoke is a very important constituent of the organic material in the mid and west European background with summer contributions to organic matter of around 1–6% and winter levels of around 20% at the elevated mountain sites and 47–68% at rural flat terrain sites, not including secondary organic aerosol from biomass combustion sources.


Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential in vivo antiplatelet and thromboprotective properties of the antihypertensive drug losartan in mice. Methods: Aggregometry studies were performed on platelets obtained from mice administered losartan for 5 days, via tail vein to examine the ex vivo effects (dose dependence) of this agent and to select an appropriate dose for the in vivo studies. Next, the tail bleeding time test and the time for occlusion in a carotid artery injury thrombosis model (ferric chloride) were also performed to assess the in vivo effects of losartan treatment. Results: These data indicate that the antihypertensive agent losartan exerts dose-dependent inhibition of the thromboxane receptor-mediated (U46619/agonist)-induced platelet aggregation (ex vivo), whereas it produced no detectable effects on aggregation triggered by adenosine diphosphate or the thrombin receptor activating peptide 4. Findings from the in vivo analysis revealed that tail bleeding time of losartan-treated mice was not different from vehicle-treated mice. On the other hand, in the carotid artery injury thrombosis model, it was found that the losartan-treated mice had significantly longer time for occlusion in comparison with those treated with vehicle control. Conclusions: These findings provide evidence that administration of the antihypertensive drug losartan into live mice produces thromboxane A2 receptor–specific antiplatelet effects. Furthermore, interestingly, this antiplatelet activity appears to translate into thromboprotective properties, without resulting in a bleeding phenotype. Consequently, aside from its potential use as an antithrombotic agent, losartan's chemistry may provide a "blueprint" for designing or repurposing novel derivatives which may have the potential to serve as an antiplatelet and thromboprotective agents but are deprived of the usually concomitant bleeding adverse effects.


Limited resources and other factors pose major challenges for engineering, technology, and science educators ability to provide adequate laboratory experience for students. An Internet accessible remote laboratory, which is an arrangement that allows laboratory equipment to be controlled remotely, addresses these difficulties and allows more efficient laboratory management.Internet Accessible Remote Laboratories: Scalable E-Learning Tools for Engineering and Science Disciplines collects current developments in the multidisciplinary creation of Internet accessible remote laboratories. This book offers perspectives on teaching with online laboratories, pedagogical design, system architectures for remote laboratories, future trends, and policy issues in the use of remote laboratories. It is useful resource for graduate and undergraduate students in electrical and computer engineering and computer science programs, as well as researchers who are interested in learning more about the current status of the field, as well as various approaches to remote laboratory design.


Biological, technical, and environmental confounders are ubiquitous in the high-dimensional, high-throughput functional genomic measurements being used to understand cellular biology and disease processes, and many approaches have been developed to estimate and correct for unmeasured confounders... High-throughput measurements of molecular phenotypes provide an unprecedented opportunity to model cellular processes and their impact on disease. These highly structured datasets are usually strongly confounded, creating false positives and reducing power. This has motivated many approaches based on principal components analysis (PCA) to estimate and correct for confounders, which have become indispensable elements of association tests between molecular phenotypes and both genetic and nongenetic factors. Here, we show that these correction approaches induce a bias, and that it persists for large sample sizes and replicates out-of-sample. We prove this theoretically for PCA by deriving an analytic, deterministic, and intuitive bias approximation. We assess other methods with realistic simulations, which show that perturbing any of several basic parameters can cause false positive rate (FPR) inflation. Our experiments show the bias depends on covariate and confounder sparsity, effect sizes, and their correlation. Surprisingly, when the covariate and confounder have ρ2≈10%, standard two-step methods all have >10-fold FPR inflation. Our analysis informs best practices for confounder correction in genomic studies, and suggests many false discoveries have been made and replicated in some differential expression analyses.


With the increase in current densities, electromigration has become a critical concern in high-performance designs. Typically, electromigration has involved the process of time-domain simulation of drivers and interconnect to obtain average, root mean square (r.m.s.), and peak current values for each wire segment. However, this approach cannot be applied to large problem sizes where hundreds of thousands of nets must be analyzed, each consisting of many thousands of RC elements. The authors propose a static electromigration analysis approach. They show that the charge transfer through wire segments of a net can be calculated directly by solving a system of linear equations, derived from the nodal formulation of the circuit, thereby eliminating the need for time domain simulation. The authors account for the different possible switching scenarios that give rise to unidirectional or bidirectional current by separating the charge transfer from the rising and falling transitions and also propose approaches for modeling multiple simultaneous switching drivers. They implemented the proposed static analysis approach in an industrial electromigration analysis tool that was used on a number of industrial circuits, including a large microprocessor.


The Board of Education will cooperate with the County Office of Education, as appropriate and feasible, in the education of children temporarily displaced by domestic violence. Any pupil attending the schools of this district, whether regularly enrolled in this or another district, who has been admitted to a shelter for victims of domestic violence will be permitted and encouraged to continue an appropriate educational program with minimal disruption. The Board will cooperate with other educational institutions in the sharing of pertinent pupil records and in the establishment of sending-receiving relationships on behalf of displaced children. The confidentiality of all matters concerning displaced children will be strictly observed, and no information regarding the present residence of the child will be released.


Becoming key symbols for diversity in Norden, young Muslims are struggling for recognition as full citizens while reclaiming their senses of multifaceted identities and belongings. This paper examines young women who act and speak as 'Muslims' in Sweden, either by engaging in Muslim youth organizations or through actively engendering public visibility through frequent media appearances. Drawing on ethnological fieldwork, the paper illuminates how these young women are affected by various politics of visibility and representation. The analysis revolves around three central arguments: 1) there has been a shift from adult Muslim men and women converts as public front-figures, to the young ones now inhabiting this representative position; 2) particularly young women are involved in such 'identity politics', which leads beyond the frames of their local youth associations and into TV studios and other mass media; 3) these women's fashion looks are being developed and made public in close relation to mass media.


Using Bessel-Muirhead system, we can express the K-bessel function defined on a Jordan algebra as linear combination of the J-solutions. We determine explicitly the coefficients when the rank of this Jordan algebra is three after a reduction to the rank two. The main tools are some algebraic identities developed for the occasion.


Lightning has a profound impact on many aspects of modern day society. Understanding its spatial distributions is fundamental in learning to coexist with its tremendous power. This study examined the spatial distribution of cloud-to-ground lightning over southern Michigan using data provided by DTE Energy Corporation in Detroit, Michigan. Flash density and 'lightning day' maps were produced for every year of the 1985 to 1995 study period and then averaged to determine long-term trends. A temporal analysis determined the distribution of lightning from the inter-annual to the diurnal scale. The spatial analysis uncovered both climatological patterns in lightning strikes and limitations in the efficiency of the lightning detection system. High inter-annual variability and a welldefined diurnal cycle are presented in the temporal analysis. The mean flash density for southern Michigan was determined to be 1.99 flashes per year/km 2 , while the mean days with lightning per year in each analysis grid cell was 3.46 days.


The sustainable development of brownfields reflects a fundamental, yet logical, shift in thinking and policymaking regarding pollution prevention. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to assist in determining the conformity of brownfield development projects to the sustainability paradigm. LCA was applied to the process of a real brownfield redevelopment project, now known as the Chicago Center for Green Technology, to determine the cumulative energy required to complete the following redevelopment stages: (1) brownfield assessment and remediation, (2) building rehabilitation and site development and (3) ten years of operation. The results of the LCA have shown that operational energy is the dominant life-cycle stage after ten years of operation. The preservation and rehabilitation of the existing building, the installation of renewable energy systems (geothermal and photovoltaic) on-site and the use of more sustainable building products resulted in 72 terajoules (TJ) of avoided energy impacts, which would provide 14 years of operational energy for the site.


Nodes in mobile ad hoc networks communicate with one another via packet radios on wireless multihop links. Because of node mobility and power limitations, the network topology changes frequently. Routing protocols therefore play an important role in mobile multihop network communications. A trend in ad hoc network routing is the reactive on-demand philosophy where routes are established only when required. Most of the protocols in this category, however, use a single route and do not utilize multiple alternate paths. We propose a scheme to improve existing on-demand routing protocols by creating a mesh and providing multiple alternate routes. Our algorithm establishes the mesh and multipaths without transmitting any extra control message. We apply our scheme to the Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol and evaluate the performance improvements by simulation.


BACKGROUND
There is plenty of evidence supporting the clinical benefits of mHealth interventions for type 2 diabetes, but despite often being promoted as cost-effective or cost-saving, there is still limited research to support such claims. The objective of this review was to summarize and critically analyze the current body of economic evaluation (EE) studies for mHealth interventions for type 2 diabetes.

METHODS
Using a comprehensive search strategy, five databases were searched for full and partial EE studies for mHealth interventions for type 2 diabetes from January 2007 to March 2022. "mHealth" was defined as any intervention that used a mobile device with cellular technology to collect and/or provide data or information for the management of type 2 diabetes. The CHEERS 2022 checklist was used to appraise the reporting of the full EEs.

RESULTS
Twelve studies were included in the review; nine full and three partial evaluations. Text messages smartphone applications were the most common mHealth features. The majority of interventions also included a Bluetooth-connected medical device, eg, glucose or blood pressure monitors. All studies reported their intervention to be cost-effective or cost-saving, however, most studies' reporting were of moderate quality with a median CHEERS score of 59%.

CONCLUSION
The current literature indicates that mHealth interventions for type 2 diabetes can be cost-saving or cost-effective, however, the quality of the reporting can be substantially improved. Heterogeneity makes it difficult to compare study outcomes, and the failure to report on key items leaves insufficient information for decision-makers to consider.


We propose a method for determining an arbitrage-free density implied by Hagan's formula. Our technique is based on the stochastic collocation method. The principle is to determine a few collocation points on the implied survival distribution function (SDF) and project them on a polynomial of an arbitrage-free variable for which we choose the Gaussian variable. In this way we have equality in probability at the collocation points while the generated density is arbitrage-free. Analytic European option prices are available and the implied volatilities stay very close to those initially obtained by Hagan's formula. The proposed method is very fast and straightforward to implement as it only involves 1D Lagrange interpolation and inversion of a linear system of equations. The technique is generic and may be applied to other variants or other models that generate arbitrage.


Markedly increased circulating concentrations of pyridoxal-5'-phosphate (PLP) were found in each of 14 patients representing all clinical forms of hypophosphatasia, an inborn error characterized by deficient activity of the tissue nonspecific (bone/liver/kidney) isoenzyme of alkaline phosphatase (AP). The mean PLP concentration in plasma was 1174 nM (range, 214-3839 nM) in the patients and 57 +/- 26 nM (mean +/- SD) in 38 control subjects. In four affected children, urinary excretion of the PLP degradation product, 4-pyridoxic acid, was unremarkable during consumption of normal quantities of dietary vitamin B6. Our findings identify increased circulating PLP concentration as a marker for hypophosphatasia and provide further evidence that tissue nonspecific AP acts in vitamin B6 metabolism. Tissue nonspecific AP appears to function as an ectoenzyme to regulate extracellular but not intracellular levels of PLP substrate. Performing assays of circulating PLP concentration alone to assess vitamin B6 nutrition may be misleading in disorders associated with altered AP activity.


Solar hybrid power plants have a significant potential for cost reduction when the solar energy is introduced into a gas turbine system. The introduction into gas turbine systems could be realized with pressurized volumetric air receivers heating the compressed air of the gas turbine before it enters the combustor. A receiver module, consisting of a secondary concentrator and a volumetric receiver unit, was tested at the Plataforma Solar de Almeria, Spain. Air exit temperatures up to 815°C and power levels of 410 kW were achieved. Total solar test time summed up to 400 hours. Receiver efficiencies were in the range of 70%. A new secondary concentrator with improved efficiency was designed and built. Based on an inexpensive manufacturing technology, the secondary concentrator geometry was optimized to reduce the optical losses: Performance tests with this new secondary concentrator and a cold-water calorimeter proved the expected increase in efficiency of about 10%. Maximum operation power was 450 kW at the exit aperture. The dependency of performance on the incidence-angle showed good agreement with the predictions, as well as the results of a special photographic measurement campaign. Several configurations of solar-hybrid gas turbine cycles in the low to medium power range are examined for performance and costs. The results confirm the promising potential of this technology to reach competitiveness in certain power markets; a comparison between a 30 MW solar-hybrid combined cycle plant and an ISCCS power plant are presented. Future developments for system improvement and cost reduction are discussed.


This paper examines the extent of variation in regulatory stringency below the state level, using establishment-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey to estimate a county-level index of environmental compliance costs. County-level variation is found to explain 11 to 18 times more of the variation in environmental compliance costs than state-level variation alone, and the range of environmental compliance costs within a state is often large. At least 34% of U.S. counties have environmental compliance costs that are statistically different from their states'. Results suggest that important spatial variation is lost in state-level studies of environmental regulation. (JEL Q52, R52)


The collaborative character of discourse has been studied for different activities and linguistic levels. The present article discusses the relevance of this perspective to a better understanding of storytelling events. The focus is on metadiscursive interactions that result from the teller's difficulty to evoke a word or linguistic form at a certain point of the story. Two different collaborative solutions are identified and analyzed, and its connections to framing and participation framework discussed.


Outbreaks of alopecia with unusually high morbidity occurred among calves reared on milk substitutes on two unrelated farms in Suffolk. On one farm alopecia occurred for three consecutive years; during the winter of 1981-82 there were also clinical signs of muscular dystrophy among the same calves. On the second farm calves with alopecia also showed signs of muscular dystrophy. The apparent relationship between alopecia and milk substitute feeding is discussed together with the possible involvement of vitamin E.


Hashed Timelock (HTLC)-based atomic swap protocols enable the exchange of coins between two or more parties without relying on a trusted entity. This protocol is like the American call option without premium. It allows the finalization of a deal within a certain period. This puts the swap initiator at liberty to delay before deciding to proceed with the deal. If she finds the deal unprofitable, she just waits for the time-period of the contract to elapse. However, the counterparty is at a loss since his assets remain locked in the contract. The best he can do is to predict the initiator's behavior based on the asset's price fluctuation in the future. But it is difficult to predict as cryptocurrencies are quite volatile, and their price fluctuates abruptly. We perform a game theoretic analysis of HTLC-based atomic cross-chain swap to predict whether a swap will succeed or not. From the strategic behavior of the players, we infer that this model lacks fairness. We propose Quick Swap, a two-party protocol based on hashlock and timelock that fosters faster settlement of the swap. The parties are required to lock griefing-premium along with the principal amount. If the party griefs, he ends up paying the griefing-premium. If a party finds a deal unfavorable, he has the provision to cancel the swap. We prove that Quick Swap is more participant-friendly than HTLC-based atomic swap. Our work is the first to propose a protocol to ensure fairness of atomic-swap in a cyclic multi-party setting.


Structural DNA nanotechnology has recently gained significant momentum, as diverse design tools for producing custom DNA shapes have become more and more accessible to numerous laboratories worldwide. Most commonly, researchers are employing a scaffolded DNA origami technique by "sculpting" a desired shape from a given lattice composed of packed adjacent DNA helices. Albeit relatively straightforward to implement, this approach contains its own apparent restrictions. First, the designs are limited to certain lattice types. Second, the long scaffold strand that runs through the entire structure has to be manually routed. Third, the technique does not support trouble-free fabrication of hollow single-layer structures that may have more favorable features and properties compared to objects with closely packed helices, especially in biological research such as drug delivery. In this focused review, we discuss the recent development of wireframe DNA nanostructures—methods relying on meshing and rendering DNA—that may overcome these obstacles. In addition, we describe each available technique and the possible shapes that can be generated. Overall, the remarkable evolution in wireframe DNA structure design methods has not only induced an increase in their complexity and thus expanded the prevalent shape space, but also already reached a state at which the whole design process of a chosen shape can be carried out automatically. We believe that by combining cost-effective biotechnological mass production of DNA strands with top-down processes that decrease human input in the design procedure to minimum, this progress will lead us to a new era of DNA nanotechnology with potential applications coming increasingly into view.


The final book in his acclaimed trilogy on the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, Richard J. Evans' "The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster" shows how Germany rushed headlong into destroying itself, shattering an entire continent. In 1939 Hitler mobilized Germany into all-out war. Richard Evans' astonishing, acclaimed history conjures up a whole society plunged into conflict - from generals and front-line soldiers to Hitler Youth activists and middle-class housewives - tracing events from the invasion of Poland and the Battle of Stalingrad to Hitler's plans for genocide and his eventual suicide. "Masterly ...will surely be the standard history for many years to come...This is a warning for the future, as much as a judgement on the past". (Richard Overy, "Daily Telegraph"). "We all know how the story ends ...but Richard Evans brings it masterfully home ...magnificent". (Peter Preston, "Observer"). "A chilling, brilliant read". (Dominic Sandbrook, "Sunday Telegraph" Books of the Year). "It is hard to do justice to the humanity and scholarly range of "The Third Reich at War" ...triumphant ...a masterful historical narrative and the most comprehensive account of Nazi Germany". (Nicholas Stargardt, "The Times Literary Supplement"). "It gives the reader persuasive answers to questions asked for so long, that will continue to be asked, about this most violent and inexplicable of regimes". (Mark Mazower, "Guardian"). Sir Richard J. Evans is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. His previous books include "In Defence of History", "Telling Lies about Hitler" and the companions to this title, "The Coming of the Third Reich" and "The Third Reich in Power".


Investigations of the link between the Big Five personality traits and vocational interests have typically found no consistent relationships between personality traits and Realistic interests. The present article uses intraindividual criterion profile analysis in two studies to identify patterns in the relationships between personality traits and Realistic interests not found by previous investigations. In the first study, personality scores from two inventories were used to predict Realistic overall, basic, and occupational interests for 574 adults. Realistic–Producing interests were driven by high intraindividual Openness and low Extraversion. Realistic-Adventuring interests were marked by low intraindividual Agreeableness and high Extraversion. The Intellect aspect of Openness, not the Experiencing aspect, drove the Openness–Producing relationship. In the second study, reanalysis of 19 additional samples from the literature confirmed the important role of Openness to Intellect, but not Experiencing, in driving Producing interests. Gender moderated profile pattern shapes. Generally, personality profile pattern, not absolute levels of traits, drove the validity of personality traits in explaining Realistic vocational interests.


Precise and rapid categorization of images in the B-scan ultrasound modality is vital for diagnosing ocular diseases. Nevertheless, distinguishing various diseases in ultrasound still challenges experienced ophthalmologists. Thus a novel contrastive disentangled network (CDNet) is developed in this work, aiming to tackle the fine-grained image categorization (FGIC) challenges of ocular abnormalities in ultrasound images, including intraocular tumor (IOT), retinal detachment (RD), posterior scleral staphyloma (PSS), and vitreous hemorrhage (VH). Three essential components of CDNet are the weakly-supervised lesion localization module (WSLL), contrastive multi-zoom (CMZ) strategy, and hyperspherical contrastive disentangled loss (HCD-Loss), respectively. These components facilitate feature disentanglement for fine-grained recognition in both the input and output aspects. The proposed CDNet is validated on our ZJU Ocular Ultrasound Dataset (ZJUOUSD), consisting of 5213 samples. Furthermore, the generalization ability of CDNet is validated on two public and widely-used chest X-ray FGIC benchmarks. Quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed CDNet, which achieves state-of-the-art performance in the FGIC task.


A comprehensive linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE) approach for parametric speech enhancement is developed. The proposed algorithms aim at joint LMMSE estimation of signal power spectra and phase spectra, as well as exploitation of correlation between spectral components. The major cause of this interfrequency correlation is shown to be the prominent temporal power localization in the excitation of voiced speech. LMMSE estimators in time domain and frequency domain are first formulated. To obtain the joint estimator, we model the spectral signal covariance matrix as a full covariance matrix instead of a diagonal covariance matrix as is the case in the Wiener filter derived under the quasi-stationarity assumption. To accomplish this, we decompose the signal covariance matrix into a synthesis filter matrix and an excitation matrix. The synthesis filter matrix is built from estimates of the all-pole model coefficients, and the excitation matrix is built from estimates of the instantaneous power of the excitation sequence. A decision-directed power spectral subtraction method and a modified multipulse linear predictive coding (MPLPC) method are used in these estimations, respectively. The spectral domain formulation of the LMMSE estimator reveals important insight in interfrequency correlations. This is exploited to significantly reduce computational complexity of the estimator. For resource-limited applications such as hearing aids, the performance-to-complexity trade-off can be conveniently adjusted by tuning the number of spectral components to be included in the estimate of each component. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm is able to reduce more noise than a number of other approaches selected from the state of the art. The proposed algorithm improves the segmental SNR of the noisy signal by 13 dB for the white noise case with an input SNR of 0 dB.


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Mobile and ubiquitous learning has been a key focus in e-learning and practising broadly worldwide. Among the research publications in this area, a majority of them focused on evaluating the effectiveness of relevant practices and reported positive outcomes. To interpret such results, the contexts in which mobile devices were used for learning and the indicators of effectiveness adopted for evaluation are of prime importance. However, the use of those indicators in relation to the contexts of practice has not been adequately studied. This paper presents a systematic review on the use of various indicators of effectiveness for the practices of mobile and ubiquitous learning. The review covers a total of 50 cases from relevant literature for the period 2007–2016. Regarding the contexts of practice, the results show that 92% of the cases involved the use of mobile devices for accessing online or offline information; 40% involved social interaction among peers or between students and teachers; and 74% involved the apps or learning materials developed for specific courses. The indicators of effectiveness revolved around 10 categories, namely learning achievements, perceived usefulness, motivation, ease of use, satisfaction, learning attitude, cognitive load, system usage, self-efficacy, and social engagement. Results also show that studies of mobile and ubiquitous learning practices mostly focused on specific courses with less than 100 participants. Based on the findings, a number of limitations in interpreting the success of mobile learning practices are discussed.


Third-person imitation learning (TPIL) is a variant of generative adversarial imitation learning and can learn an expert-like policy from third-person expert demonstrations. Third-person expert demonstrations usually exist in the form of videos recorded in a third-person perspective, and there is a lack of direct correspondence with samples generated by agent. To alleviate this problem, we improve TPIL by applying image difference and variational discriminator bottleneck. Empirically, our new method has better performance than TPIL on two MuJoCo tasks, Reacher and Inverted Pendulum.