Time Management

A survey on large language model based autonomous agents

Lei Wang, Chen Ma, Xueyang Feng +10 more · Frontiers of Computer Science · 2024 · 1,039 citations

This systematic review of over 200 papers on LLM-based autonomous agents found that agents built with a unified architecture (profiling, memory, planning, and action modules) can perform complex tasks across social science, natural science, and engineering — but their reliability, safety, and generalizability remain unproven, with no single benchmark or standardised evaluation framework yet established.

SPIRIT 2013 explanation and elaboration: guidance for protocols of clinical trials

A.-W. Chan, Jennifer Tetzlaff, Peter C Gøtzsche +10 more · BMJ · 2013 · 7,001 citations

High quality protocols facilitate proper conduct, reporting, and external review of clinical trials. However, the completeness of trial protocols is often inadequate. To help improve the content and quality of protocols, an international group of stakeholders developed the SPIRIT 2013 Statement (Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials). The SPIRIT Statement provides guidance in the form of a checklist of recommended items to include in a clinical trial protocol. This SPIRIT 2013 Explanation and Elaboration paper provides important information to promote full understanding of the checklist recommendations. For each checklist item, we provide a rationale and detailed description; a model example from an actual protocol; and relevant references supporting its importance. We strongly recommend that this explanatory paper be used in conjunction with the SPIRIT Statement. A website of resources is also available (www.spirit-statement.org). The SPIRIT 2013 Explanation and Elaboration paper, together with the Statement, should help with the drafting of trial protocols. Complete documentation of key trial elements can facilitate transparency and protocol review for the benefit of all stakeholders.

The effect of fall prevention exercise programmes on fall induced injuries in community dwelling older adults

F El-Khoury, Bernard Cassou, Marie‐Aline Charles +1 more · British Journal of Sports Medicine · 2013 · 422 citations

Fall prevention exercise programmes for older adults living at home reduce the rate of injurious falls by 37%, and more importantly, cut the rate of fall-related fractures by 61% — meaning that if you're over 60 and worried about breaking a hip, starting a structured balance-and-strength exercise programme is one of the most effective things you can do.

Comparative International Entrepreneurship

Siri Terjesen, Jolanda Hessels, Dan Li · Journal of Management · 2013 · 511 citations

Entrepreneurial activity varies dramatically across countries due to differences in culture, institutions, and economic conditions, and these national-level factors explain up to 40% of the variance in firm-level outcomes like export performance and financial success — meaning that where you start a business matters as much as how you run it.

Effect of Regional vs General Anesthesia on Incidence of Postoperative Delirium in Older Patients Undergoing Hip Fracture Surgery

Ting Li, Jun Li, Liyong Yuan +49 more · JAMA · 2021 · 374 citations

Regional anesthesia without sedation did not reduce the risk of postoperative delirium compared to general anesthesia in older adults undergoing hip fracture surgery — the delirium rate was 6.2% with regional vs 5.1% with general anesthesia, a statistically non-significant difference (risk difference 1.1%, 95% CI -1.7% to 3.8%, p=0.48). For someone running a self-experiment, this means that choosing one anesthesia type over another is unlikely to meaningfully change your delirium risk, and other factors (pain control, sleep quality, medication management) likely matter more.

A multifactorial interdisciplinary intervention reduces frailty in older people: randomized trial

Ian D. Cameron, Nicola Fairhall, Colleen Langron +6 more · BMC Medicine · 2013 · 432 citations

A 12-month program combining physiotherapy, nutritional support, and medical management reduced the proportion of frail older adults classified as frail by 14.7% compared to usual care, and prevented decline in physical mobility.

Standardized Rehabilitation and Hospital Length of Stay Among Patients With Acute Respiratory Failure

Peter E. Morris, Michael J. Berry, D. Clark Files +17 more · JAMA · 2016 · 406 citations

A structured daily rehabilitation program (passive range of motion, physical therapy, and progressive resistance exercise) for patients on mechanical ventilation did not shorten hospital stays or reduce time on the ventilator compared to usual care, but it did improve physical function and self-reported physical health at six months after discharge.

Effects of Exercise Programs on Falls and Mobility in Frail and Pre-Frail Older Adults: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial

Marjan J. Faber, Ruud J. Bosscher, Mai J. M. Chinapaw +1 more · Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation · 2006 · 519 citations

Responsible, Safe, and Effective Prescription ofOpioids for Chronic Non-Cancer Pain: AmericanSociety of Interventional Pain Physicians(ASIPP) Guidelines

Laxmaiah Manchikanti · Pain Physician · 2017 · 424 citations

BACKGROUND: Opioid use, abuse, and adverse consequences, including death, have escalated at an alarming rate since the 1990s. In an attempt to control opioid abuse, numerous regulations and guidelines for responsible opioid prescribing have been developed by various organizations. However, the US opioid epidemic is continuing and drug dose deaths tripled during 1999 to 2015. Recent data show a continuing increase in deaths due to natural and semisynthetic opioids, a decline in methadone deaths, and an explosive increase in the rates of deaths involving other opioids, specifically heroin and illicit synthetic fentanyl. Contrary to scientific evidence of efficacy and negative recommendations, a significant proportion of physicians and patients (92%) believe that opioids reduce pain and a smaller proportion (57%) report better quality of life. In preparation of the current guidelines, we have focused on the means to reduce the abuse and diversion of opioids without jeopardizing access for those patients suffering from non-cancer pain who have an appropriate medical indication for opioid use. OBJECTIVES: To provide guidance for the prescription of opioids for the management of chronic non-cancer pain, to develop a consistent philosophy among the many diverse groups with an interest in opioid use as to how appropriately prescribe opioids, to improve the treatment of chronic non-cancer pain and to reduce the likelihood of drug abuse and diversion. These guidelines are intended to provide a systematic and standardized approach to this complex and difficult arena of practice, while recognizing that every clinical situation is unique. METHODS: The methodology utilized included the development of objectives and key questions. The methodology also utilized trustworthy standards, appropriate disclosures of conflicts of interest, as well as a panel of experts from various specialties and groups. The literature pertaining to opioid use, abuse, effectiveness, and adverse consequences was reviewed, with a best evidence synthesis of the available literature, and utilized grading for recommendation as described by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).Summary of Recommendations:i. Initial Steps of Opioid Therapy 1. Comprehensive assessment and documentation. (Evidence: Level I; Strength of Recommendation: Strong) 2. Screening for opioid abuse to identify opioid abusers. (Evidence: Level II-III; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 3. Utilization of prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs). (Evidence: Level I-II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate to strong) 4. Utilization of urine drug testing (UDT). (Evidence: Level II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 5. Establish appropriate physical diagnosis and psychological diagnosis if available. (Evidence: Level I; Strength of Recommendation: Strong) 6. Consider appropriate imaging, physical diagnosis, and psychological status to collaborate with subjective complaints. (Evidence: Level III; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 7. Establish medical necessity based on average moderate to severe (≥ 4 on a scale of 0 - 10) pain and/or disability. (Evidence: Level II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 8. Stratify patients based on risk. (Evidence: Level I-II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 9. Establish treatment goals of opioid therapy with regard to pain relief and improvement in function. (Evidence: Level I-II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 10. Obtain a robust opioid agreement, which is followed by all parties. (Evidence: Level III; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate)ii. Assessment of Effectiveness of Long-Term Opioid Therapy 11. Initiate opioid therapy with low dose, short-acting drugs, with appropriate monitoring. (Evidence: Level II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 12. Consider up to 40 morphine milligram equivalent (MME) as low dose, 41 to 90 MME as a moderate dose, and greater than 91 MME as high dose. (Evidence: Level II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 13. Avoid long-acting opioids for the initiation of opioid therapy. (Evidence: Level I; Strength of Recommendation: Strong) 14. Recommend methadone only for use after failure of other opioid therapy and only by clinicians with specific training in its risks and uses, within FDA recommended doses. (Evidence: Level I; Strength of Recommendation: Strong) 15. Understand and educate the patients of the effectiveness and adverse consequences. (Evidence: Level I; Strength of Recommendation: Strong) 16. Similar effectiveness for long-acting and short-acting opioids with increased adverse consequences of long-acting opioids. (Evidence: Level I-II; Strength of recommendation: Moderate to strong) 17. Periodically assess pain relief and/or functional status improvement of ≥ 30% without adverse consequences. (Evidence: Level II; Strength of recommendation: Moderate) 18. Recommend long-acting or high dose opioids only in specific circumstances with severe intractable pain. (Evidence: Level I; Strength of Recommendation: Strong)iii. Monitoring for Adherence and Side Effects 19. Monitor for adherence, abuse, and noncompliance by UDT and PDMPs. (Evidence: Level I-II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate to strong) 20. Monitor patients on methadone with an electrocardiogram periodically. (Evidence: Level I; Strength of Recommendation: Strong). 21. Monitor for side effects including constipation and manage them appropriately, including discontinuation of opioids when indicated. (Evidence: Level I; Strength of Recommendation: Strong)iv. Final Phase 22. May continue with monitoring with continued medical necessity, with appropriate outcomes. (Evidence: Level I-II; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) 23. Discontinue opioid therapy for lack of response, adverse consequences, and abuse with rehabilitation. (Evidence: Level III; Strength of Recommendation: Moderate) CONCLUSIONS: These guidelines were developed based on comprehensive review of the literature, consensus among the panelists, in consonance with patient preferences, shared decision-making, and practice patterns with limited evidence, based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to improve pain and function in chronic non-cancer pain on a long-term basis. Consequently, chronic opioid therapy should be provided only to patients with proven medical necessity and stability with improvement in pain and function, independently or in conjunction with other modalities of treatments in low doses with appropriate adherence monitoring and understanding of adverse events.Key words: Chronic pain, persistent pain, non-cancer pain, controlled substances, substance abuse, prescription drug abuse, dependency, opioids, prescription monitoring, drug testing, adherence monitoring, diversionDisclaimer: The guidelines are based on the best available evidence and do not constitute inflexible treatment recommendations. Due to the changing body of evidence, this document is not intended to be a "standard of care."

Rapid versus traditional qualitative analysis using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR)

Andrea Nevedal, Caitlin M. Reardon, Marilla A. Opra Widerquist +4 more · Implementation Science · 2021 · 670 citations

BACKGROUND: Qualitative approaches, alone or in mixed methods, are prominent within implementation science. However, traditional qualitative approaches are resource intensive, which has led to the development of rapid qualitative approaches. Published rapid approaches are often inductive in nature and rely on transcripts of interviews. We describe a deductive rapid analysis approach using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) that uses notes and audio recordings. This paper compares our rapid versus traditional deductive CFIR approach. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted for two cohorts of the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Diffusion of Excellence (DoE). The CFIR guided data collection and analysis. In cohort A, we used our traditional CFIR-based deductive analysis approach (directed content analysis), where two analysts completed independent in-depth manual coding of interview transcripts using qualitative software. In cohort B, we used our new rapid CFIR-based deductive analysis approach (directed content analysis), where the primary analyst wrote detailed notes during interviews and immediately "coded" notes into a MS Excel CFIR construct by facility matrix; a secondary analyst then listened to audio recordings and edited the matrix. We tracked time for our traditional and rapid deductive CFIR approaches using a spreadsheet and captured transcription costs from invoices. We retrospectively compared our approaches in terms of effectiveness and rigor. RESULTS: Cohorts A and B were similar in terms of the amount of data collected. However, our rapid deductive CFIR approach required 409.5 analyst hours compared to 683 h during the traditional deductive CFIR approach. The rapid deductive approach eliminated $7250 in transcription costs. The facility-level analysis phase provided the greatest savings: 14 h/facility for the traditional analysis versus 3.92 h/facility for the rapid analysis. Data interpretation required the same number of hours for both approaches. CONCLUSION: Our rapid deductive CFIR approach was less time intensive and eliminated transcription costs, yet effective in meeting evaluation objectives and establishing rigor. Researchers should consider the following when employing our approach: (1) team expertise in the CFIR and qualitative methods, (2) level of detail needed to meet project aims, (3) mode of data to analyze, and (4) advantages and disadvantages of using the CFIR.

Randomised controlled trial of integrated care to reduce disability from chronic low back pain in working and private life

L.C. Lambeek, Willem van Mechelen, Dirk L. Knol +2 more · BMJ · 2010 · 296 citations

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of an integrated care programme, combining a patient directed and a workplace directed intervention, for patients with chronic low back pain. DESIGN: Population based randomised controlled trial. SETTING: Primary care (10 physiotherapy practices, one occupational health service, one occupational therapy practice) and secondary care (five hospitals). PARTICIPANTS: 134 adults aged 18-65 sick listed for at least 12 weeks owing to low back pain. INTERVENTION: Patients were randomly assigned to usual care (n=68) or integrated care (n=66). Integrated care consisted of a workplace intervention based on participatory ergonomics, involving a supervisor, and a graded activity programme based on cognitive behavioural principles. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome was the duration of time off work (work disability) due to low back pain until full sustainable return to work. Secondary outcome measures were intensity of pain and functional status. RESULTS: The median duration until sustainable return to work was 88 days in the integrated care group compared with 208 days in the usual care group (P=0.003). Integrated care was effective on return to work (hazard ratio 1.9, 95% confidence interval 1.2 to 2.8, P=0.004). After 12 months, patients in the integrated care group improved significantly more on functional status compared with patients in the usual care group (P=0.01). Improvement of pain between the groups did not differ significantly. CONCLUSION: The integrated care programme substantially reduced disability due to chronic low back pain in private and working life. Trial registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN28478651.

Opinion Paper: “So what if ChatGPT wrote it?” Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy

Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Nir Kshetri, Laurie Hughes +70 more · International Journal of Information Management · 2023 · 3,487 citations

This opinion paper synthesises perspectives from 43 experts across 13 fields to map the opportunities, risks, and research gaps of generative AI like ChatGPT — concluding that while the technology can boost productivity in banking, hospitality, and marketing, it also introduces unresolved threats around bias, misinformation, privacy, and the erosion of human judgment, with no consensus on whether regulation is needed.

Anticholinergic Drug Exposure and the Risk of Dementia

Carol Coupland, Trevor Hill, Tom Dening +3 more · JAMA Internal Medicine · 2019 · 577 citations

IMPORTANCE: Anticholinergic medicines have short-term cognitive adverse effects, but it is uncertain whether long-term use of these drugs is associated with an increased risk of dementia. OBJECTIVE: To assess associations between anticholinergic drug treatments and risk of dementia in persons 55 years or older. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This nested case-control study took place in general practices in England that contributed to the QResearch primary care database. The study evaluated whether exposure to anticholinergic drugs was associated with dementia risk in 58 769 patients with a diagnosis of dementia and 225 574 controls 55 years or older matched by age, sex, general practice, and calendar time. Information on prescriptions for 56 drugs with strong anticholinergic properties was used to calculate measures of cumulative anticholinergic drug exposure. Data were analyzed from May 2016 to June 2018. EXPOSURES: The primary exposure was the total standardized daily doses (TSDDs) of anticholinergic drugs prescribed in the 1 to 11 years prior to the date of diagnosis of dementia or equivalent date in matched controls (index date). MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Odds ratios (ORs) for dementia associated with cumulative exposure to anticholinergic drugs, adjusted for confounding variables. RESULTS: Of the entire study population (284 343 case patients and matched controls), 179 365 (63.1%) were women, and the mean (SD) age of the entire population was 82.2 (6.8) years. The adjusted OR for dementia increased from 1.06 (95% CI, 1.03-1.09) in the lowest overall anticholinergic exposure category (total exposure of 1-90 TSDDs) to 1.49 (95% CI, 1.44-1.54) in the highest category (>1095 TSDDs), compared with no anticholinergic drug prescriptions in the 1 to 11 years before the index date. There were significant increases in dementia risk for the anticholinergic antidepressants (adjusted OR [AOR], 1.29; 95% CI, 1.24-1.34), antiparkinson drugs (AOR, 1.52; 95% CI, 1.16-2.00), antipsychotics (AOR, 1.70; 95% CI, 1.53-1.90), bladder antimuscarinic drugs (AOR, 1.65; 95% CI, 1.56-1.75), and antiepileptic drugs (AOR, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.22-1.57) all for more than 1095 TSDDs. Results were similar when exposures were restricted to exposure windows of 3 to 13 years (AOR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.41-1.52) and 5 to 20 years (AOR, 1.44; 95% CI, 1.32-1.57) before the index date for more than 1095 TSDDs. Associations were stronger in cases diagnosed before the age of 80 years. The population-attributable fraction associated with total anticholinergic drug exposure during the 1 to 11 years before diagnosis was 10.3%. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Exposure to several types of strong anticholinergic drugs is associated with an increased risk of dementia. These findings highlight the importance of reducing exposure to anticholinergic drugs in middle-aged and older people.

On the Road to 6G: Visions, Requirements, Key Technologies, and Testbeds

Cheng‐Xiang Wang, Xiaohu You, Xiqi Gao +15 more · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials · 2023 · 1,877 citations

This is a comprehensive survey paper that synthesises the current global consensus on what 6G mobile networks should be, what technical requirements they must meet, and which key technologies are being developed to achieve them — but it does not test any intervention or report experimental results, so it is not directly usable for running a personal experiment.

Effectiveness of a Therapeutic<i>Tai Ji Quan</i>Intervention vs a Multimodal Exercise Intervention to Prevent Falls Among Older Adults at High Risk of Falling

Fuzhong Li, Peter Harmer, Kathleen Fitzgerald +6 more · JAMA Internal Medicine · 2018 · 163 citations

A tailored tai chi program (Tai Ji Quan: Moving for Better Balance) reduced falls by 58% compared to stretching and by 31% compared to a standard multimodal exercise program in older adults at high risk of falling, over 24 weeks of twice-weekly classes.

Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior

Joon Sung Park, Joseph O’Brien, Carrie J. Cai +3 more · 2023 · 1,345 citations

Generative agents powered by large language models can simulate believable human-like social behaviors—including waking up, working, forming opinions, planning parties, and coordinating group events—without being explicitly programmed for each action, suggesting that AI-driven social simulations could be used to rehearse interpersonal interactions or prototype social dynamics before running real-world experiments.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy

Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Laurie Hughes, Elvira Ismagilova +32 more · International Journal of Information Management · 2019 · 3,908 citations

This is a multidisciplinary expert commentary, not an empirical study—it synthesises opinions from 22 contributors across academia, industry, and government to map the opportunities, challenges, and research agenda for AI across business, government, and science, concluding that AI will transform industries but faces critical barriers in trust, regulation, data quality, and workforce displacement.

Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention

Woosuk Kwon, Z. Li, Siyuan Zhuang +6 more · 2023 · 982 citations

High throughput serving of large language models (LLMs) requires batching sufficiently many requests at a time. However, existing systems struggle because the key-value cache (KV cache) memory for each request is huge and grows and shrinks dynamically. When managed inefficiently, this memory can be significantly wasted by fragmentation and redundant duplication, limiting the batch size. To address this problem, we propose PagedAttention, an attention algorithm inspired by the classical virtual memory and paging techniques in operating systems. On top of it, we build vLLM, an LLM serving system that achieves (1) near-zero waste in KV cache memory and (2) flexible sharing of KV cache within and across requests to further reduce memory usage. Our evaluations show that vLLM improves the throughput of popular LLMs by 2--4× with the same level of latency compared to the state-of-the-art systems, such as FasterTransformer and Orca. The improvement is more pronounced with longer sequences, larger models, and more complex decoding algorithms. vLLM's source code is publicly available at https://github.com/vllm-project/vllm.

Rethinking Semantic Segmentation from a Sequence-to-Sequence Perspective with Transformers

Sixiao Zheng, Jiachen Lu, Hengshuang Zhao +8 more · 2021 · 3,494 citations

Most recent semantic segmentation methods adopt a fully-convolutional network (FCN) with an encoder-decoder architecture. The encoder progressively reduces the spatial resolution and learns more abstract/semantic visual concepts with larger receptive fields. Since context modeling is critical for segmentation, the latest efforts have been focused on increasing the receptive field, through either dilated/atrous convolutions or inserting attention modules. However, the encoder-decoder based FCN architecture remains unchanged. In this paper, we aim to provide an alternative perspective by treating semantic segmentation as a sequence-to-sequence prediction task. Specifically, we deploy a pure transformer (i.e., without convolution and resolution reduction) to encode an image as a sequence of patches. With the global context modeled in every layer of the transformer, this encoder can be combined with a simple decoder to provide a powerful segmentation model, termed SEgmentation TRansformer (SETR). Extensive experiments show that SETR achieves new state of the art on ADE20K (50.28% mIoU), Pascal Context (55.83% mIoU) and competitive results on Cityscapes. Particularly, we achieve the first position in the highly competitive ADE20K test server leaderboard on the day of submission.

Reporting animal research: Explanation and elaboration for the ARRIVE guidelines 2.0

Nathalie Percie du Sert, Amrita Ahluwalia, Sabina Alam +25 more · PLoS Biology · 2020 · 2,747 citations

Improving the reproducibility of biomedical research is a major challenge. Transparent and accurate reporting is vital to this process; it allows readers to assess the reliability of the findings and repeat or build upon the work of other researchers. The ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) were developed in 2010 to help authors and journals identify the minimum information necessary to report in publications describing in vivo experiments. Despite widespread endorsement by the scientific community, the impact of ARRIVE on the transparency of reporting in animal research publications has been limited. We have revised the ARRIVE guidelines to update them and facilitate their use in practice. The revised guidelines are published alongside this paper. This explanation and elaboration document was developed as part of the revision. It provides further information about each of the 21 items in ARRIVE 2.0, including the rationale and supporting evidence for their inclusion in the guidelines, elaboration of details to report, and examples of good reporting from the published literature. This document also covers advice and best practice in the design and conduct of animal studies to support researchers in improving standards from the start of the experimental design process through to publication.

fairseq: A Fast, Extensible Toolkit for Sequence Modeling

Myle Ott, Sergey Edunov, Alexei Baevski +5 more · 2019 · 2,498 citations

Myle Ott, Sergey Edunov, Alexei Baevski, Angela Fan, Sam Gross, Nathan Ng, David Grangier, Michael Auli. Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Demonstrations). 2019.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): A Survey on Civil Applications and Key Research Challenges

Hazim Shakhatreh, Ahmad Sawalmeh, Ala Al‐Fuqaha +6 more · IEEE Access · 2019 · 2,189 citations

This survey paper maps the current and near-future civil applications of drones (UAVs) across nine major domains, identifies the key technical bottlenecks—battery life, collision avoidance, secure networking, and swarming coordination—and estimates a $45+ billion market for civil infrastructure alone, providing a roadmap for anyone wanting to understand where drone technology stands and what practical limits still exist for personal or small-scale experimentation.

Federated Learning With Differential Privacy: Algorithms and Performance Analysis

Kang Wei, Jun Li, Ming Ding +6 more · IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security · 2020 · 2,165 citations

Federated learning (FL), as a type of distributed machine learning, is capable of significantly preserving clients’ private data from being exposed to adversaries. Nevertheless, private information can still be divulged by analyzing uploaded parameters from clients, e.g., weights trained in deep neural networks. In this paper, to effectively prevent information leakage, we propose a novel framework based on the concept of differential privacy (DP), in which artificial noise is added to parameters at the clients’ side before aggregating, namely, noising before model aggregation FL (NbAFL). First, we prove that the NbAFL can satisfy DP under distinct protection levels by properly adapting different variances of artificial noise. Then we develop a theoretical convergence bound on the loss function of the trained FL model in the NbAFL. Specifically, the theoretical bound reveals the following three key properties: 1) there is a tradeoff between convergence performance and privacy protection levels, i.e., better convergence performance leads to a lower protection level; 2) given a fixed privacy protection level, increasing the number <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of overall clients participating in FL can improve the convergence performance; and 3) there is an optimal number aggregation times (communication rounds) in terms of convergence performance for a given protection level. Furthermore, we propose a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -client random scheduling strategy, where <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1\leq K&lt; N$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) clients are randomly selected from the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$ </tex-math></inline-formula> overall clients to participate in each aggregation. We also develop a corresponding convergence bound for the loss function in this case and the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -client random scheduling strategy also retains the above three properties. Moreover, we find that there is an optimal <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$ </tex-math></inline-formula> that achieves the best convergence performance at a fixed privacy level. Evaluations demonstrate that our theoretical results are consistent with simulations, thereby facilitating the design of various privacy-preserving FL algorithms with different tradeoff requirements on convergence performance and privacy levels.

PVT v2: Improved baselines with pyramid vision transformer

Wenhai Wang, Enze Xie, Xiang Li +6 more · Computational Visual Media · 2022 · 2,132 citations

Transformers have recently lead to encouraging progress in computer vision. In this work, we present new baselines by improving the original Pyramid Vision Transformer (PVT v1) by adding three designs: (i) a linear complexity attention layer, (ii) an overlapping patch embedding, and (iii) a convolutional feed-forward network. With these modifications, PVT v2 reduces the computational complexity of PVT v1 to linearity and provides significant improvements on fundamental vision tasks such as classification, detection, and segmentation. In particular, PVT v2 achieves comparable or better performance than recent work such as the Swin transformer. We hope this work will facilitate state-of-the-art transformer research in computer vision. Code is available at https://github.com/whai362/PVT .

CellProfiler 4: improvements in speed, utility and usability

David R. Stirling, Madison J. Swain-Bowden, Alice Lucas +3 more · BMC Bioinformatics · 2021 · 2,121 citations

BACKGROUND: Imaging data contains a substantial amount of information which can be difficult to evaluate by eye. With the expansion of high throughput microscopy methodologies producing increasingly large datasets, automated and objective analysis of the resulting images is essential to effectively extract biological information from this data. CellProfiler is a free, open source image analysis program which enables researchers to generate modular pipelines with which to process microscopy images into interpretable measurements. RESULTS: Herein we describe CellProfiler 4, a new version of this software with expanded functionality. Based on user feedback, we have made several user interface refinements to improve the usability of the software. We introduced new modules to expand the capabilities of the software. We also evaluated performance and made targeted optimizations to reduce the time and cost associated with running common large-scale analysis pipelines. CONCLUSIONS: CellProfiler 4 provides significantly improved performance in complex workflows compared to previous versions. This release will ensure that researchers will have continued access to CellProfiler's powerful computational tools in the coming years.

Internet of Things: A Survey on Enabling Technologies, Protocols, and Applications

Ala Al‐Fuqaha, Mohsen Guizani, Mehdi Mohammadi +2 more · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials · 2015 · 8,240 citations

This paper provides an overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) with emphasis on enabling technologies, protocols, and application issues. The IoT is enabled by the latest developments in RFID, smart sensors, communication technologies, and Internet protocols. The basic premise is to have smart sensors collaborate directly without human involvement to deliver a new class of applications. The current revolution in Internet, mobile, and machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies can be seen as the first phase of the IoT. In the coming years, the IoT is expected to bridge diverse technologies to enable new applications by connecting physical objects together in support of intelligent decision making. This paper starts by providing a horizontal overview of the IoT. Then, we give an overview of some technical details that pertain to the IoT enabling technologies, protocols, and applications. Compared to other survey papers in the field, our objective is to provide a more thorough summary of the most relevant protocols and application issues to enable researchers and application developers to get up to speed quickly on how the different protocols fit together to deliver desired functionalities without having to go through RFCs and the standards specifications. We also provide an overview of some of the key IoT challenges presented in the recent literature and provide a summary of related research work. Moreover, we explore the relation between the IoT and other emerging technologies including big data analytics and cloud and fog computing. We also present the need for better horizontal integration among IoT services. Finally, we present detailed service use-cases to illustrate how the different protocols presented in the paper fit together to deliver desired IoT services.

Towards 6G wireless communication networks: vision, enabling technologies, and new paradigm shifts

Xiaohu You, Cheng‐Xiang Wang, Jie Huang +47 more · Science China Information Sciences · 2020 · 1,915 citations

Abstract The fifth generation (5G) wireless communication networks are being deployed worldwide from 2020 and more capabilities are in the process of being standardized, such as mass connectivity, ultra-reliability, and guaranteed low latency. However, 5G will not meet all requirements of the future in 2030 and beyond, and sixth generation (6G) wireless communication networks are expected to provide global coverage, enhanced spectral/energy/cost efficiency, better intelligence level and security, etc. To meet these requirements, 6G networks will rely on new enabling technologies, i.e., air interface and transmission technologies and novel network architecture, such as waveform design, multiple access, channel coding schemes, multi-antenna technologies, network slicing, cell-free architecture, and cloud/fog/edge computing. Our vision on 6G is that it will have four new paradigm shifts. First, to satisfy the requirement of global coverage, 6G will not be limited to terrestrial communication networks, which will need to be complemented with non-terrestrial networks such as satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication networks, thus achieving a space-air-ground-sea integrated communication network. Second, all spectra will be fully explored to further increase data rates and connection density, including the sub-6 GHz, millimeter wave (mmWave), terahertz (THz), and optical frequency bands. Third, facing the big datasets generated by the use of extremely heterogeneous networks, diverse communication scenarios, large numbers of antennas, wide bandwidths, and new service requirements, 6G networks will enable a new range of smart applications with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technologies. Fourth, network security will have to be strengthened when developing 6G networks. This article provides a comprehensive survey of recent advances and future trends in these four aspects. Clearly, 6G with additional technical requirements beyond those of 5G will enable faster and further communications to the extent that the boundary between physical and cyber worlds disappears.

Confronting the Environmental Kuznets Curve

Susmita Dasgupta, Benoı̂t Laplante, Hua Wang +1 more · The Journal of Economic Perspectives · 2002 · 1,744 citations

The environmental Kuznets curve posits an inverted-U relationship between pollution and economic development. Pessimistic critics of empirically estimated curves have argued that their declining portions are illusory, either because they are cross-sectional snapshots that mask a long-run “race to the bottom” in environmental standards, or because industrial societies will continually produce new pollutants as the old ones are controlled. However, recent evidence has fostered an optimistic view by suggesting that the curve is actually flattening and shifting to the left. The driving forces appear to be economic liberalization, clean technology diffusion, and new approaches to pollution regulation in developing countries.

The<i>Gaia</i>mission

T. Prusti, J. H. J. de Bruijne, A. G. A. Brown +97 more · Astronomy and Astrophysics · 2016 · 6,910 citations

Gaia is a cornerstone mission in the science programme of the EuropeanSpace Agency (ESA). The spacecraft construction was approved in 2006, following a study in which the original interferometric concept was changed to a direct-imaging approach. Both the spacecraft and the payload were built by European industry. The involvement of the scientific community focusses on data processing for which the international Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) was selected in 2007. Gaia was launched on 19 December 2013 and arrived at its operating point, the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth-Moon system, a few weeks later. The commissioning of the spacecraft and payload was completed on 19 July 2014. The nominal five-year mission started with four weeks of special, ecliptic-pole scanning and subsequently transferred into full-sky scanning mode. We recall the scientific goals of Gaia and give a description of the as-built spacecraft that is currently (mid-2016) being operated to achieve these goals. We pay special attention to the payload module, the performance of which is closely related to the scientific performance of the mission. We provide a summary of the commissioning activities and findings, followed by a description of the routine operational mode. We summarise scientific performance estimates on the basis of in-orbit operations. Several intermediate Gaia data releases are planned and the data can be retrieved from the Gaia Archive, which is available through the Gaia home page.

PCT: Point cloud transformer

Meng-Hao Guo, Jun-Xiong Cai, Zheng-Ning Liu +3 more · Computational Visual Media · 2021 · 1,738 citations

The irregular domain and lack of ordering make it challenging to design deep neural networks for point cloud processing. This paper presents a novel framework named Point Cloud Transformer (PCT) for point cloud learning. PCT is based on Transformer, which achieves huge success in natural language processing and displays great potential in image processing. It is inherently permutation invariant for processing a sequence of points, making it well-suited for point cloud learning. To better capture local context within the point cloud, we enhance input embedding with the support of farthest point sampling and nearest neighbor search. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the PCT achieves the state-of-the-art performance on shape classification, part segmentation, semantic segmentation, and normal estimation tasks.

Image Super-Resolution Via Iterative Refinement

Chitwan Saharia, Jonathan Ho, William Chan +3 more · IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence · 2022 · 1,622 citations

We present SR3, an approach to image Super-Resolution via Repeated Refinement. SR3 adapts denoising diffusion probabilistic models (Ho et al. 2020), (Sohl-Dickstein et al. 2015) to image-to-image translation, and performs super-resolution through a stochastic iterative denoising process. Output images are initialized with pure Gaussian noise and iteratively refined using a U-Net architecture that is trained on denoising at various noise levels, conditioned on a low-resolution input image. SR3 exhibits strong performance on super-resolution tasks at different magnification factors, on faces and natural images. We conduct human evaluation on a standard 8× face super-resolution task on CelebA-HQ for which SR3 achieves a fool rate close to 50%, suggesting photo-realistic outputs, while GAN baselines do not exceed a fool rate of 34%. We evaluate SR3 on a 4× super-resolution task on ImageNet, where SR3 outperforms baselines in human evaluation and classification accuracy of a ResNet-50 classifier trained on high-resolution images. We further show the effectiveness of SR3 in cascaded image generation, where a generative model is chained with super-resolution models to synthesize high-resolution images with competitive FID scores on the class-conditional 256×256 ImageNet generation challenge.

Noisy intermediate-scale quantum algorithms

Kishor Bharti, Alba Cervera-Lierta, Thi Ha Kyaw +11 more · Reviews of Modern Physics · 2022 · 1,595 citations

Noisy quantum computers can in principle perform reliable quantum computations, but truly scalable systems require noise levels lower than are presently achieved. Still, moderate-complexity computations can be performed. This review discusses what is possible in this ``noisy intermediate scale'' quantum (NISQ) era. Topic areas include the simulation of many-body physics and chemistry, combinatorial optimization, and machine learning. It is evident that the NISQ era has produced new paradigms for programming that will be built upon as quantum computers are further perfected.

SLIM: Simultaneous Logic-in-Memory Computing Exploiting Bilayer Analog OxRAM Devices

Sandeep Kaur Kingra, Vivek Parmar, Che‐Chia Chang +3 more · Scientific Reports · 2020 · 1,438 citations

von Neumann architecture based computers isolate computation and storage (i.e. data is shuttled between computation blocks (processor) and memory blocks). The to-and-fro movement of data leads to a fundamental limitation of modern computers, known as the Memory wall. Logic in-Memory (LIM)/In-Memory Computing (IMC) approaches aim to address this bottleneck by directly computing inside memory units thereby eliminating energy-intensive and time-consuming data movement. Several recent works in literature, propose realization of logic function(s) directly using arrays of emerging resistive memory devices (example- memristors, RRAM/ReRAM, PCM, CBRAM, OxRAM, STT-MRAM etc.), rather than using conventional transistors for computing. The logic/embedded-side of digital systems (like processors, micro-controllers) can greatly benefit from such LIM realizations. However, the pure storage-side of digital systems (example SSDs, enterprise storage etc.) will not benefit much from such LIM approaches as when memory arrays are used for logic they lose their core functionality of storage. Thus, there is the need for an approach complementary to existing LIM techniques, that's more beneficial for the storage-side of digital systems; one that gives compute capability to memory arrays not at the cost of their existing stored states. Fundamentally, this would require memory nanodevice arrays that are capable of storing and computing simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a novel 'Simultaneous Logic in-Memory' (SLIM) methodology which is complementary to existing LIM approaches in literature. Through extensive experiments we demonstrate novel SLIM bitcells (1T-1R/2T-1R) comprising non-filamentary bilayer analog OxRAM devices with NMOS transistors. Proposed bitcells are capable of implementing both Memory and Logic operations simultaneously. Detailed programming scheme, array level implementation, and controller architecture are also proposed. Furthermore, to study the impact of proposed SLIM approach for real-world implementations, we performed analysis for two applications: (i) Sobel Edge Detection, and (ii) Binary Neural Network- Multi layer Perceptron (BNN-MLP). By performing all computations in SLIM bitcell array, huge Energy Delay Product (EDP) savings of ≈75× for 1T-1R (≈40× for 2T-1R) SLIM bitcell were observed for edge-detection application while EDP savings of ≈3.5× for 1T-1R (≈1.6× for 2T-1R) SLIM bitcell were observed for BNN-MLP application respectively, in comparison to conventional computing. EDP savings owing to reduction in data transfer between CPU ↔ memory is observed to be ≈780× (for both SLIM bitcells).

Satellite Communications in the New Space Era: A Survey and Future Challenges

Oltjon Kodheli, Eva Lagunas, Nicola Maturo +11 more · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials · 2020 · 1,291 citations

This survey maps the current state and future trajectory of satellite communications, identifying that the shift from a few large geostationary satellites to massive low-Earth-orbit (LEO) constellations (e.g., Starlink, OneWeb) is the dominant technological shift, with implications for latency, coverage, and network integration that anyone running a personal experiment on connectivity or remote sensing should understand.

The European guideline on management of major bleeding and coagulopathy following trauma: fifth edition

Donat R. Spahn, Bertil Bouillon, Vladimír Černý +10 more · Critical Care · 2019 · 1,282 citations

Background: Severe traumatic injury continues to present challenges to healthcare systems around the world, and post-traumatic bleeding remains a leading cause of potentially preventable death among injured patients. Now in its fifth edition, this document aims to provide guidance on the management of major bleeding and coagulopathy following traumatic injury and encourages adaptation of the guiding principles described here to individual institutional circumstances and resources.

A Survey of Deep Learning-Based Object Detection

Licheng Jiao, Fan Zhang, Fang Liu +4 more · IEEE Access · 2019 · 1,280 citations

Object detection is one of the most important and challenging branches of computer vision, which has been widely applied in people’s life, such as monitoring security, autonomous driving and so on, with the purpose of locating instances of semantic objects of a certain class. With the rapid development of deep learning algorithms for detection tasks, the performance of object detectors has been greatly improved. In order to understand the main development status of object detection pipeline thoroughly and deeply, in this survey, we analyze the methods of existing typical detection models and describe the benchmark datasets at first. Afterwards and primarily, we provide a comprehensive overview of a variety of object detection methods in a systematic manner, covering the one-stage and two-stage detectors. Moreover, we list the traditional and new applications. Some representative branches of object detection are analyzed as well. Finally, we discuss the architecture of exploiting these object detection methods to build an effective and efficient system and point out a set of development trends to better follow the state-of-the-art algorithms and further research.

Filter Pruning via Geometric Median for Deep Convolutional Neural Networks Acceleration

Yang He, Ping Liu, Ziwei Wang +2 more · 2019 · 1,232 citations

Previous works utilized “smaller-norm-less-important” criterion to prune filters with smaller norm values in a convolutional neural network. In this paper, we analyze this norm-based criterion and point out that its effectiveness depends on two requirements that are not always met: (1) the norm deviation of the filters should be large; (2) the minimum norm of the filters should be small. To solve this problem, we propose a novel filter pruning method, namely Filter Pruning via Geometric Median (FPGM), to compress the model regardless of those two requirements. Unlike previous methods, FPGM compresses CNN models by pruning filters with redundancy, rather than those with“relatively less” importance. When applied to two image classification benchmarks, our method validates its usefulness and strengths. Notably, on CIFAR-10, FPGM reduces more than 52% FLOPs on ResNet-110 with even 2.69% relative accuracy improvement. Moreover, on ILSVRC-2012, FPGM reduces more than 42% FLOPs on ResNet-101 without top-5 accuracy drop, which has advanced the state-of-the-art. Code is publicly available on GitHub: https://github.com/he-y/filter-pruning-geometric-median

COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in low- and middle-income countries

Julio S. Solís Arce, Shana S. Warren, Niccolò F. Meriggi +71 more · Nature Medicine · 2021 · 1,126 citations

Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-income country) and the United States, including a total of 44,260 individuals. We find considerably higher willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine in our LMIC samples (mean 80.3%; median 78%; range 30.1 percentage points) compared with the United States (mean 64.6%) and Russia (mean 30.4%). Vaccine acceptance in LMICs is primarily explained by an interest in personal protection against COVID-19, while concern about side effects is the most common reason for hesitancy. Health workers are the most trusted sources of guidance about COVID-19 vaccines. Evidence from this sample of LMICs suggests that prioritizing vaccine distribution to the Global South should yield high returns in advancing global immunization coverage. Vaccination campaigns should focus on translating the high levels of stated acceptance into actual uptake. Messages highlighting vaccine efficacy and safety, delivered by healthcare workers, could be effective for addressing any remaining hesitancy in the analyzed LMICs.

Frailty Intervention Trial (FIT)

Nicola Fairhall, Christina Aggar, Susan Kurrle +5 more · BMC Geriatrics · 2008 · 161 citations

BACKGROUND: Frailty is a term commonly used to describe the condition of an older person who has chronic health problems, has lost functional abilities and is likely to deteriorate further. However, despite its common use, only a small number of studies have attempted to define the syndrome of frailty and measure its prevalence. The criteria Fried and colleagues used to define the frailty syndrome will be used in this study (i.e. weight loss, fatigue, decreased grip strength, slow gait speed, and low physical activity). Previous studies have shown that clinical outcomes for frail older people can be improved using multi-factorial interventions such as comprehensive geriatric assessment, and single interventions such as exercise programs or nutritional supplementation, but no interventions have been developed to specifically reverse the syndrome of frailty.We have developed a multidisciplinary intervention that specifically targets frailty as defined by Fried et al. We aim to establish the effects of this intervention on frailty, mobility, hospitalisation and institutionalisation in frail older people. METHODS AND DESIGN: A single centre randomised controlled trial comparing a multidisciplinary intervention with usual care. The intervention will target identified characteristics of frailty, functional limitations, nutritional status, falls risk, psychological issues and management of chronic health conditions. Two hundred and thirty people aged 70 and over who meet the Fried definition of frailty will be recruited from clients of the aged care service of a metropolitan hospital. Participants will be followed for a 12-month period. DISCUSSION: This research is an important step in the examination of specifically targeted frailty interventions. This project will assess whether an intervention specifically targeting frailty can be implemented, and whether it is effective when compared to usual care. If successful, the study will establish a new approach to the treatment of older people at risk of further functional decline and institutionalisation. The strategies to be examined are readily transferable to routine clinical practice and are applicable broadly in the setting of aged care health services. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trails Registry: ACTRN12608000250336.

TrackMate: An open and extensible platform for single-particle tracking

Jean-Yves Tinévez, Nick Perry, Johannes Schindelin +6 more · Methods · 2016 · 3,713 citations

We present TrackMate, an open source Fiji plugin for the automated, semi-automated, and manual tracking of single-particles. It offers a versatile and modular solution that works out of the box for end users, through a simple and intuitive user interface. It is also easily scriptable and adaptable, operating equally well on 1D over time, 2D over time, 3D over time, or other single and multi-channel image variants. TrackMate provides several visualization and analysis tools that aid in assessing the relevance of results. The utility of TrackMate is further enhanced through its ability to be readily customized to meet specific tracking problems. TrackMate is an extensible platform where developers can easily write their own detection, particle linking, visualization or analysis algorithms within the TrackMate environment. This evolving framework provides researchers with the opportunity to quickly develop and optimize new algorithms based on existing TrackMate modules without the need of having to write de novo user interfaces, including visualization, analysis and exporting tools. The current capabilities of TrackMate are presented in the context of three different biological problems. First, we perform Caenorhabditis-elegans lineage analysis to assess how light-induced damage during imaging impairs its early development. Our TrackMate-based lineage analysis indicates the lack of a cell-specific light-sensitive mechanism. Second, we investigate the recruitment of NEMO (NF-κB essential modulator) clusters in fibroblasts after stimulation by the cytokine IL-1 and show that photodamage can generate artifacts in the shape of TrackMate characterized movements that confuse motility analysis. Finally, we validate the use of TrackMate for quantitative lifetime analysis of clathrin-mediated endocytosis in plant cells.

P <scp>SI4</scp> 1.4: Open-source software for high-throughput quantum chemistry

Daniel G. A. Smith, Lori A. Burns, Andrew C. Simmonett +32 more · The Journal of Chemical Physics · 2020 · 979 citations

PSI4 is a free and open-source ab initio electronic structure program providing implementations of Hartree-Fock, density functional theory, many-body perturbation theory, configuration interaction, density cumulant theory, symmetry-adapted perturbation theory, and coupled-cluster theory. Most of the methods are quite efficient, thanks to density fitting and multi-core parallelism. The program is a hybrid of C++ and Python, and calculations may be run with very simple text files or using the Python API, facilitating post-processing and complex workflows; method developers also have access to most of PSI4's core functionalities via Python. Job specification may be passed using The Molecular Sciences Software Institute (MolSSI) QCSCHEMA data format, facilitating interoperability. A rewrite of our top-level computation driver, and concomitant adoption of the MolSSI QCARCHIVE INFRASTRUCTURE project, makes the latest version of PSI4 well suited to distributed computation of large numbers of independent tasks. The project has fostered the development of independent software components that may be reused in other quantum chemistry programs.

Plasma Concentration of the Neurofilament Light Protein (NFL) is a Biomarker of CNS Injury in HIV Infection: A Cross-Sectional Study

Magnus Gisslén, Richard W. Price, Ulf Andréasson +7 more · EBioMedicine · 2015 · 474 citations

BACKGROUND: Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) neurofilament light chain protein (NFL) is a sensitive marker of neuronal injury in a variety of neurodegenerative conditions, including the CNS dysfunction injury that is common in untreated HIV infection. However, an important limitation is the requirement for lumbar puncture. For this reason, a sensitive and reliable blood biomarker of CNS injury would represent a welcome advance in both clinical and research settings. METHODS: To explore whether plasma concentrations of NFL might be used to detect CNS injury in HIV infection, an ultrasensitive Single molecule array (Simoa) immunoassay was developed. Using a cross-sectional design, we measured NFL in paired CSF and plasma samples from 121 HIV-infected subjects divided into groups according to stage of their systemic disease, presence of overt HIV-associated dementia (HAD), and after antiretroviral treatment (ART)-induced viral suppression. HIV-negative controls were also examined. FINDINGS: Plasma and CSF NFL concentrations were very highly correlated (r = 0.89, P < 0.0001). While NFL was more than 50-fold lower plasma than CSF it was within the quantifiable range of the new plasma assay in all subjects, including the HIV negatives and the HIV positives with normal CSF NFL concentrations. The pattern of NFL changes were almost identical in plasma and CSF, both exhibiting similar age-related increases in concentrations along with highest values in HAD and substantial elevations in ART-naïve neuroasymptomatic subjects with low blood CD4(+) T cells. INTERPRETATION: These results show that plasma NFL may prove a valuable tool to evaluate ongoing CNS injury in HIV infection that may be applied in the clinic and in research settings to assess the presence if active CNS injury. Because CSF NFL is also elevated in a variety of other CNS disorders, sensitive measures of plasma NFL may similarly prove useful in other settings.

librosa: Audio and Music Signal Analysis in Python

Brian McFee, Colin Raffel, Dawen Liang +4 more · Proceedings of the Python in Science Conferences · 2015 · 2,901 citations

This document describes version 0.4.0 of librosa: a Python package for audio and music signal processing. At a high level, librosa provides implementations of a variety of common functions used throughout the field of music information retrieval. In this document, a brief overview of the library's functionality is provided, along with explanations of the design goals, software development practices, and notational conventions.

The Community Earth System Model: A Framework for Collaborative Research

James W. Hurrell, Marika M. Holland, P. R. Gent +20 more · Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2013 · 2,810 citations

By simulating biogeochemical cycles, the Greenland ice sheet, and more-with reach to the lower thermosphere-this system gives the research community a flexible, state-of-thescience tool for understanding climate variability and change.

2017 HRS/EHRA/ECAS/APHRS/SOLAECE expert consensus statement on catheter and surgical ablation of atrial fibrillation

Hugh Calkins, Gerhard Hindricks, Riccardo Cappato +57 more · Heart Rhythm · 2017 · 2,701 citations

This expert consensus statement synthesises evidence from hundreds of studies to define when catheter or surgical ablation is appropriate for atrial fibrillation (AF), reporting that ablation is superior to antiarrhythmic drug therapy for maintaining sinus rhythm in paroxysmal AF (approximately 70–80% success at 1 year vs. 30–50% with drugs), but the statement is a clinical guideline, not a single experiment, so it cannot prove causation for any individual outcome.

LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray

M. P. van Haarlem, M. W. Wise, A. W. Gunst +97 more · Astronomy and Astrophysics · 2013 · 2,656 citations

LOFAR, the LOw-Frequency ARray, is a new-generation radio interferometer constructed in the north of the Netherlands and across europe. Utilizing a novel phased-array design, LOFAR covers the largely unexplored low-frequency range from 10–240 MHz and provides a number of unique observing capabilities. Spreading out from a core located near the village of Exloo in the northeast of the Netherlands, a total of 40 LOFAR stations are nearing completion. A further five stations have been deployed throughout Germany, and one station has been built in each of France, Sweden, and the UK. Digital beam-forming techniques make the LOFAR system agile and allow for rapid repointing of the telescope as well as the potential for multiple simultaneous observations. With its dense core array and long interferometric baselines, LOFAR achieves unparalleled sensitivity and angular resolution in the low-frequency radio regime. The LOFAR facilities are jointly operated by the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) foundation, as an observatory open to the global astronomical community. LOFAR is one of the first radio observatories to feature automated processing pipelines to deliver fully calibrated science products to its user community. LOFAR’s new capabilities, techniques and modus operandi make it an important pathfinder for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). We give an overview of the LOFAR instrument, its major hardware and software components, and the core science objectives that have driven its design. In addition, we present a selection of new results from the commissioning phase of this new radio observatory.

Millimeter Wave Channel Modeling and Cellular Capacity Evaluation

Mustafa Riza Akdeniz, Yuanpeng Liu, Mathew K. Samimi +4 more · IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications · 2014 · 2,575 citations

With the severe spectrum shortage in conventional cellular bands, millimeter wave (mmW) frequencies between 30 and 300 GHz have been attracting growing attention as a possible candidate for next-generation micro- and picocellular wireless networks. The mmW bands offer orders of magnitude greater spectrum than current cellular allocations and enable very high-dimensional antenna arrays for further gains via beamforming and spatial multiplexing. This paper uses recent real-world measurements at 28 and 73 GHz in New York, NY, USA, to derive detailed spatial statistical models of the channels and uses these models to provide a realistic assessment of mmW micro- and picocellular networks in a dense urban deployment. Statistical models are derived for key channel parameters, including the path loss, number of spatial clusters, angular dispersion, and outage. It is found that, even in highly non-line-of-sight environments, strong signals can be detected 100-200 m from potential cell sites, potentially with multiple clusters to support spatial multiplexing. Moreover, a system simulation based on the models predicts that mmW systems can offer an order of magnitude increase in capacity over current state-of-the-art 4G cellular networks with no increase in cell density from current urban deployments.

Assessing agricultural risks of climate change in the 21st century in a global gridded crop model intercomparison

Cynthia Rosenzweig, Joshua Elliott, Delphine Deryng +14 more · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2013 · 2,304 citations

Here we present the results from an intercomparison of multiple global gridded crop models (GGCMs) within the framework of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project and the Inter-Sectoral Impacts Model Intercomparison Project. Results indicate strong negative effects of climate change, especially at higher levels of warming and at low latitudes; models that include explicit nitrogen stress project more severe impacts. Across seven GGCMs, five global climate models, and four representative concentration pathways, model agreement on direction of yield changes is found in many major agricultural regions at both low and high latitudes; however, reducing uncertainty in sign of response in mid-latitude regions remains a challenge. Uncertainties related to the representation of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and high temperature effects demonstrated here show that further research is urgently needed to better understand effects of climate change on agricultural production and to devise targeted adaptation strategies.

Review of selective laser melting: Materials and applications

Chor Yen Yap, Chee Kai Chua, Zhili Dong +4 more · Applied Physics Reviews · 2015 · 2,254 citations

Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is a particular rapid prototyping, 3D printing, or Additive Manufacturing (AM) technique designed to use high power-density laser to melt and fuse metallic powders. A component is built by selectively melting and fusing powders within and between layers. The SLM technique is also commonly known as direct selective laser sintering, LaserCusing, and direct metal laser sintering, and this technique has been proven to produce near net-shape parts up to 99.9% relative density. This enables the process to build near full density functional parts and has viable economic benefits. Recent developments of fibre optics and high-power laser have also enabled SLM to process different metallic materials, such as copper, aluminium, and tungsten. Similarly, this has also opened up research opportunities in SLM of ceramic and composite materials. The review presents the SLM process and some of the common physical phenomena associated with this AM technology. It then focuses on the following areas: (a) applications of SLM materials and (b) mechanical properties of SLM parts achieved in research publications. The review is not meant to put a ceiling on the capabilities of the SLM process but to enable readers to have an overview on the material properties achieved by the SLM process so far. Trends in research of SLM are also elaborated in the last section.

Brave new world: service robots in the frontline

Jochen Wirtz, Paul G. Patterson, Werner H. Kunz +4 more · Journal of service management · 2018 · 2,062 citations

Purpose The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the eighteenth century. Robotics in combination with rapidly improving technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), mobile, cloud, big data and biometrics will bring opportunities for a wide range of innovations that have the potential to dramatically change service industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential role service robots will play in the future and to advance a research agenda for service researchers. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, robotics and AI literature. Findings The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, it provides a definition of service robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts their features and capabilities with those of frontline employees, and provides an understanding for which types of service tasks robots will dominate and where humans will dominate. Second, this paper examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to service robots, and advances the service robot acceptance model. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered services at the individual, market and societal level. Practical implications This paper helps service organizations and their management, service robot innovators, programmers and developers, and policymakers better understand the implications of a ubiquitous deployment of service robots. Originality/value This is the first conceptual paper that systematically examines key dimensions of robot-delivered frontline service and explores how these will differ in the future.