In this paper, we propose a new scheme called Prototype Hyperplane Learning (PHL) for face verification in the wild using only weakly labeled training samples (i.e., we only know whether each pair of samples are from the same class or different classes without knowing the class label of each sample) ...

Recent advances in orbital localization algorithms are used to minimize the Pipek-Mezey localization function for both occupied and virtual Hartree-Fock orbitals. Virtual Pipek-Mezey orbitals for large molecular systems have previously not been considered in the literature. For this work, the Pipek-Mezey (PM) localization function is implemented for both the Mulliken ...

Motivated by a complex study design aiming at a definitive evidential setting, a panel forum among academia, industry, and US regulatory statistical scientists was held at the 7th International Conference on Multiple Comparison Procedures (MCP) to comment on the multiplicity problem. It is well accepted that studywise or familywise, type ...

Abstract Objectives: To determine the cost effectiveness of sevelamer versus calcium carbonate in patients with chronic kidney disease and not on dialysis (CKD-ND) from the perspective of the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. Methods: A Markov decision analytic model was developed to estimate (1) total life years (LYs), ...

There is great interest on the effects of habitat fragmentation, whereby habitat is lost and the spatial configuration of remaining habitat patches is altered, on individual breeding performance. However, we still lack consensus of how this important process affects reproductive success, and whether its effects are mainly due to reduced ...

Many theoretical frameworks seek to describe the dynamic process of the implementation of innovations. Little is known, however, about factors related to decisions to adopt innovations and how the likelihood of adoption of innovations can be increased. Using a narrative synthesis approach, this paper compared constructs theorized to be related ...

BACKGROUND: When an outcome of interest in a clinical trial is late-occurring or difficult to obtain, surrogate markers can extract information about the effect of the treatment on the outcome of interest. Understanding associations between the causal effect (CE) of treatment on the outcome and the causal effect of treatment ...

The problem of assessing the performance of a classifier, in the finite-sample setting, has been addressed by Vapnik in his seminal work by using data-independent measures of complexity. Recently, several authors have addressed the same problem by proposing data-dependent measures, which tighten previous results by taking in account the actual ...

Technical specifications appropriate for the recycling of agricultural plastic wastes (APWs), widely accepted by the recycling industry were developed. The specifications establish quality standards to be met by the agricultural plastics producers, users and the agricultural plastic waste management chain. They constitute the base for the best economical and environmental ...

The widespread destruction that follows large-scale natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, challenges the efficacy of traditional temporary housing methods in providing adequate solutions to housing needs. Recognising these housing challenges, the Congress of the United States allocated, in 2006, USD 400 million to the Department of ...

If animals moved randomly in space, the use of different habitats would be proportional to their availability. Hence, deviations from proportionality between use and availability are considered the tell-tale sign of preference. This principle forms the basis for most habitat selection and species distribution models fitted to use-availability or count ...

Novel theoretical models of movement have historically inspired the creation of new methods for the application of human movement. The landmark theoretical model of spinal stability by Panjabi in 1992 led to the creation of an exercise approach to spinal stability. This approach however was later challenged, most significantly due ...

Maternal thyroxine (T4) plays an essential role in fetal brain development, and even mild and transitory deficits in free-T4 in pregnant women can produce irreversible neurological effects in their offspring. Women of childbearing age are daily exposed to mixtures of chemicals disrupting the thyroid gland function (TGFDs) through the diet, ...

While more developed countries have a well-established systems to develop water quality criteria (WQC), little research has been done on the adequacy of the current WQC to protect endemic species of China. In order to maintain the health of aquatic ecosystems in China, a series of projects to establish national ...

In addition to general criticisms of scientific studies on empirical aesthetics, Bullot & Reber (B&R) particularly criticise two "representative studies" that manipulated paintings by Mondrian, those studies seemingly, "fail[ing] to consider the predictions suggested by a contextualist approach to the appreciation of imbalance" (sect. 4.2, para.2). Those criticisms are unjustified, ...

With the advent of multiple highly effective treatment options, minimal residual disease (MRD) measurements gained interest as a prognostic marker in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. This article provides a model explaining the clinical significance of MRD in different clinical situations and reviews available data to support that model. Factors with a ...

In our article about limitations of basing screening policy on screening trials, we offered several examples of ways in which modeling, using data from large screening trials and population trends, provided insights that differed somewhat from those based only on empirical trial results. In this editorial, we take a step ...

Abstract Though initially applied in psychotherapy, a theory of living human systems (TLHS) and its systems-centered practice (SCT) offer a comprehensive conceptual framework replete with operational definitions and methods that is applicable in a wide range of contexts. This article elaborates the application of SCT in organizations by first summarizing ...

Abstract Telemedicine has become an increasingly popular option for long-distance/virtual medical care and education, but many telemedicine ventures fail to grow beyond the initial pilot stage. Studying the business models of successful telemedicine ventures can help develop business strategies for upcoming ventures. This article describes business models of eight telemedicine ...

The main purpose of this work is to analyze a Gause type predator-prey model in which two ecological phenomena are considered: the Allee effect affecting the prey growth function and the formation of group defence by prey in order to avoid the predation. We prove the existence of a separatrix ...

MICROORGANISMS HAVE BEEN COOPERATING WITH EACH OTHER FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS: by sharing resources, communicating with each other, and joining together to form biofilms and other large structures. These cooperative behaviors benefit the colony as a whole; however, they may be costly to the individuals performing them. This raises the ...

Background: The acceptance criteria for chromatographic bioassays are generally based upon the specifications found in the US FDA Guidance for Industry document, whereas regression analysis is a statistical process and, thus, most suited to large data populations, rather than the small populations used in assay calibration. Data that form part ...

Abstract Instance selection is becoming increasingly relevant due to the huge amount of data that is constantly produced in many fields of research. At the same time, most of the recent pattern recognition problems involve highly complex datasets with a large number of possible explanatory variables. For many reasons, this ...

Continuous processing and production in pharmaceutical manufacturing has received increased attention in recent years mainly due to the industries' pressing needs for more efficient, cost-effective processes and production, as well as regulatory facilitation. To achieve optimum product quality, the traditional trial-and-error method for the optimization of different process and formulation ...

Circadian clocks are ubiquitous mechanisms that provide an adaptive advantage by predicting subsequent environmental changes. In the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis), our understanding of the complex genetic network among clock components has considerably increased during these past years. Modeling has predicted the possibility of additional component to systematically and ...

The elimination of Triatoma infestans, the main Chagas disease vector in the Gran Chaco region, remains elusive. We implemented an intensified control strategy based on full-coverage pyrethroid spraying, followed by frequent vector surveillance and immediate selective insecticide treatment of detected foci in a well-defined rural area in northeastern Argentina with ...

The contextualist claim that universalism is irrelevant to the proper study of art can be evaluated by examining an analogous question in neuroscience. Taking the reductionist-holist debate in visual neuroscience as a model, we see that the analog of orthodox contextualism is untenable, whereas integrated approaches have proven highly effective. ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To reflect on and discuss the recent evidence of reliability of the challenge chamber results for real life, especially focusing on the validation of allergen concentrations being 'physiologic' and generating symptoms in the exposed volunteers comparable to the natural exposure during pollen season and to the home ...

Understanding virtually any process in cellular and molecular biology depends on knowledge of the rates of the biochemical reactions, so it is regrettable that few cellular and molecular biologists take advantage of kinetics experiments in their work. Fortunately, the kinetics experiments that are most useful for understanding cellular systems are ...

The Tidal model, created by Phil Barker and Poppy Buchanan-Barker, metaphorically employs the natural resource of water to describe the person in crisis and offer a model toward recovery. The model, a midrange nursing theory used primarily in mental health settings, is applied to a women in crisis related to ...

Over the last decade, a normative framework for making causal inferences, Bayesian Probabilistic Causal Networks, has come to dominate psychological studies of inference based on causal relationships. The following causal networks-[X→Y→Z, X←Y→Z, X→Y←Z]-supply answers for questions like, "Suppose both X and Y occur, what is the probability Z occurs?" or ...

ABSTRACT: A new modification of the prior human lung compartment plutonium model, Doses-2005, has been described. The modified model was named "Mayak Worker Dosimetry System-2008" (MWDS-2008). In contrast to earlier models developed for workers at the Mayak Production Association (Mayak PA), the new model more correctly describes plutonium biokinetics and ...

Multiple parameter optimisation in drug discovery is difficult, but Matched Molecular Pair Analysis (MMPA) can help. Computer algorithms can process data in an unbiased way to yield design rules and suggest better molecules, cutting the number of design cycles. The approach often makes more suggestions than can be processed manually ...

The mechanism by which inhaled anesthetics work is not fully understood, although they have been extensively used. Much research has been done showing the likelihood that there is more than one pathway or mechanism of action. A long-term goal of our laboratory is to decipher these mechanisms using Drosophila melanogaster, ...

Model-based estimates of tumor growth inhibition (TGI) metrics have the potential to enhance learning in early (phase II) clinical studies. They can be used as end points and biomarkers to predict treatment effect on clinical outcome measures-e.g., overall survival (OS)-and support phase II study design, end-of-phase II decisions, and phase ...

By performing strand-passages on DNA, type II topoisomerases are known to resolve topological constraints that impede normal cellular functions. The full details of this enzyme-DNA interaction mechanism are, however, not completely understood. To better understand this mechanism, researchers have proposed and studied a variety of random polygon models of enzyme-induced strand-passage. ...

Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide a model for how elements of group relations and organization development perspectives can be combined in a successful organizational consultancy and to demonstrate through a case analysis what blending the two can look like in practice. The further aim of this ...

Abstract The toxicological profiles of monopropylene glycol (MPG), dipropylene glycol (DPG), tripropylene glycol (TPG) and polypropylene glycols (PPG; including tetra-rich oligomers) are collectively reviewed, and assessed considering regulatory toxicology endpoints. The review confirms a rich data set for these compounds, covering all of the major toxicological endpoints of interest. The ...

Two models of opinion dynamics are entangled in order to build a more realistic model of inflexibility. The first one is the Galam unifying frame (GUF), which incorporates rational and inflexible agents, and the other one is the Continuous Opinions and Discrete Actions model. While initially in GUF, inflexibility is ...

We analyze the problem of agents' interactions in a given population. The purpose of this paper is twofold. Starting from a scheme proposed by Galam [Physica A 320, 571 (2003)], which is based on a majority rule to treat the individuals' interactions, we first study some of its relevant properties. ...

The spatial arrangement of individuals is thought to overcome the dilemma of cooperation: When cooperators engage in clusters, they might share the benefit of cooperation while being more protected against noncooperating individuals, who benefit from cooperation but save the cost of cooperation. This is paradigmatically shown by the spatial prisoner's ...

Introduction: The revolution in computational chemistry greatly impacted the drug design and delivery fields, in general, and recently the utilization of the prodrug approach in particular. The use of ab initio, semiempirical and molecular mechanics methods to understand organic reaction mechanisms of certain processes, especially intramolecular reactions, has opened the ...

Simon's two-stage design is commonly used in phase II single-arm clinical trials because of its simplicity and smaller sample size under the null hypothesis compared to the one-stage design. Some studies extend this design to accommodate more interim analyses (i.e., three-stage or four-stage designs). However, most of these studies, together ...

In this paper the concept of incentive motivational salience is briefly described, pioneering studies on the subject of the mesolimbic motivational system are reviewed, and studies we have been involved in conducting which elaborate on this subject are discussed. In particular, we aim to show that the mesolimbic motivational system ...

Advances done in "-Omics" technologies in the last 20 years have made available to the researches huge amounts of data spanning a wide variety of biological processes from gene sequences to the metabolites present in a cell at a particular time. The management, analysis and representation of these data have ...

A Thurstonian model for ranking data assumes that observed rankings are consistent with those of a set of underlying continuous variables. This model is appealing since it renders ranking data amenable to familiar models for continuous response variables-namely, linear regression models. To date, however, the use of Thurstonian models for ...

Mathematical modeling represents an important tool for analyzing cardiovascular function during spaceflight. This review describes how modeling of the cardiovascular system can contribute to space life science research and illustrates this process via modeling efforts to study postflight orthostatic intolerance (POI), a key issue for spaceflight. Examining this application also ...

Floodplains perform a variety of ecosystem functions and services - more than many other ecosystems. One of these ecosystem services is the reduction in nitrogen (N) loads and a subsequent improvement to the water quality. Since diffuse and also point nitrogen sources continue to cause a variety of problems in ...

In network approaches to psychopathology, disorders result from the causal interplay between symptoms (e.g., worry → insomnia → fatigue), possibly involving feedback loops (e.g., a person may engage in substance abuse to forget the problems that arose due to substance abuse). The present review examines methodologies suited to identify such ...

Times are changing. One third of our downloads come from readers in the United States: North America accounts for roughly 40% of all downloads. This is remarkable, since Acta Physiologica is still widely recognized as a journal with Scandinavian roots. However, interesting trends are taking place: The United States is ...