ABSTRACT
In 1935, as Europe witnessed the rise of fascism, Paul Valéry tried to identify the origins of the crisis in a lecture titled “Le bilan de l'intelligence.” Things were better, he claimed, ...when people were able to understand their present moment as the result of past events—that is, when “continuity reigned in the minds.” In this article, I discuss why that sense of continuity with the past is, in fact, indispensable for individuals and societies alike; using instances from great works of fiction, ranging from
Don Quixote
to the novels of Toni Morrison and Abdulrazak Gurnah, I suggest that fiction—the literary imagination of the historical past—might be uniquely adept at restoring continuity when it is broken.
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2.
Multimodal Assessment of Parkinson's Disease: A Deep Learning Approach Vasquez-Correa, Juan Camilo; Arias-Vergara, Tomas; Orozco-Arroyave, J. R. ...
IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics,
2019-July, 2019-07-00, 2019-7-00, 20190701, Volume:
23, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a variety of motor symptoms. Particularly, difficulties to start/stop movements have been observed in patients. From a ...technical/diagnostic point of view, these movement changes can be assessed by modeling the transitions between voiced and unvoiced segments in speech, the movement when the patient starts or stops a new stroke in handwriting, or the movement when the patient starts or stops the walking process. This study proposes a methodology to model such difficulties to start or to stop movements considering information from speech, handwriting, and gait. We used those transitions to train convolutional neural networks to classify patients and healthy subjects. The neurological state of the patients was also evaluated according to different stages of the disease (initial, intermediate, and advanced). In addition, we evaluated the robustness of the proposed approach when considering speech signals in three different languages: Spanish, German, and Czech. According to the results, the fusion of information from the three modalities is highly accurate to classify patients and healthy subjects, and it shows to be suitable to assess the neurological state of the patients in several stages of the disease. We also aimed to interpret the feature maps obtained from the deep learning architectures with respect to the presence or absence of the disease and the neurological state of the patients. As far as we know, this is one of the first works that considers multimodal information to assess Parkinson's disease following a deep learning approach.
States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a ...state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research Incentive Program increased research production at a set of state universities as measured by total research spending, federally-funded research spending, the number of scholarly publications, and the share of publications published in high impact factor journals. Using a novel dataset and difference-in-differences analytic strategy, we found that TRIP adoption was associated with a 19%-25% increase in research expenditures at emerging research universities in Texas relative to a matched set of comparable universities. However, TRIP did not influence federally-funded research expenditures or journal publication outputs. We also show that federally-funded research expenditures influence publication outputs - both in amount and quality - and that number of full-time faculty influences both federal research expenditures and publication outputs. We discuss contributions to the literature on regional public universities, loose coupling, and research production, as well as implications for policy.
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Background
Effective hemostasis is essential to prevent rebleeding. We evaluated the efficacy and feasibility of the Over-The-Scope Clip (OTSC) system compared to combined therapy (through-the-scope ...clips with epinephrine injection) as a first-line endoscopic treatment for high-risk bleeding peptic ulcers.
Methods
We retrospectively analyzed data of 95 patients from a single, tertiary center and underwent either OTSC (
n
= 46) or combined therapy (
n
= 49). The primary outcome of the present study was the efficacy of the OTSC system as a first-line therapy in patients with high-risk bleeding peptic ulcers compared to combined therapy with TTS clips and epinephrine injection. The secondary outcomes included the rebleeding rate, perforation rate, mean procedure time, reintervention rate, mean procedure cost and days of hospitalization in the two study groups within 30 days of the index procedure.
Results
All patients achieved hemostasis within the procedure; two patients in the OTSC group and four patients in the combined therapy group developed rebleeding (
p
= 0.444). No patients experienced gastrointestinal perforation. OTSC had a shorter median procedure time than combined therapy (11 min versus 20 min;
p
< 0.001). The procedure cost was superior for OTSC compared to combined therapy ($102,000 versus $101,000;
p
< 0.001). We found no significant difference in the rebleeding prevention rate (95.6% versus 91.8%,
p
= 0.678), hospitalization days (3 days versus 4 days;
p
= 0.215), and hospitalization costs ($108,000 versus $240,000,
p
= 0.215) of the OTSC group compared to the combined therapy group.
Conclusion
OTSC treatment is an effective and feasible first-line therapy for high-risk bleeding peptic ulcers. OTSC confers comparable costs and patient outcomes as combined treatments, with a shorter procedure time.
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Purpose
To determine the current status of surgical training amongst European Urology Residents, including their satisfaction with training and their confidence in performing procedures.
Methods
A ...23-item survey was distributed to the 15th European Urology Residents Education Programme (EUREP) 2017 participants. An analysis of demographics, workload, training resources, surgical exposure, surgical caseload, satisfaction and confidence in performing each procedure was performed.
Results
A total of 152/350 participants completed the survey (response rate 43%), of which 14% think they perform enough surgeries during their training, and 83% would like to continue training with a fellowship. Confidence in performing procedures without supervision and satisfaction with training was associated with higher surgical caseloads. Confidence in all laparoscopic/robotic procedures (except for laparoscopic/robotic partial nephrectomy) was associated with laparoscopic and robotics training, participation in practical courses and having training resources in hospitals. Satisfaction with surgical training was statistically associated with working ≤ 50 h per week, laparoscopic training and having laparoscopic training boxes.
Conclusions
Surgical exposure of European Urology residents for major/minimally invasive procedures, confidence in performing these procedures, and overall satisfaction with training is low. A higher volume of cases, as well as resources for training are associated with higher individual confidence and satisfaction with training.
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The growth in online child exploitation material is a significant challenge for European Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). One of the most important sources of such online information corresponds to ...audio material that needs to be analyzed to find evidence in a timely and practical manner. That is why LEAs require a next-generation AI-powered platform to process audio data from online sources. We propose the use of speech recognition and keyword spotting to transcribe audiovisual data and to detect the presence of keywords related to child abuse. The considered models are based on two of the most accurate neural-based architectures to date: Wav2vec2.0 and Whisper. The systems were tested under an extensive set of scenarios in different languages. Additionally, keeping in mind that obtaining data from LEAs are very sensitive, we explore the use of federated learning to provide more robust systems for the addressed application, while maintaining the privacy of the data from LEAs. The considered models achieved a word error rate between 11% and 25%, depending on the language. In addition, the systems are able to recognize a set of spotted words with true-positive rates between 82% and 98%, depending on the language. Finally, federated learning strategies show that they can maintain and even improve the performance of the systems when compared to centralized trained models. The proposed systems set the basis for an AI-powered platform for automatic analysis of audio in the context of forensic applications of child abuse. The use of federated learning is also promising for the addressed scenario, where data privacy is an important issue to be managed.
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In this paper, we present 4 major contributions to ARX ciphers and in particular, to the Salsa/ChaCha family of stream ciphers:
We propose an improved differential-linear distinguisher against ...ChaCha. To do so, we propose a new way to approach the derivation of linear approximations by viewing the algorithm in terms of simpler subrounds. Using this idea, we show that it is possible to derive almost all linear approximations from previous works from just 3 simple rules. Furthermore, we show that with one extra rule, it is possible to improve the linear approximations proposed by Coutinho and Souza at Eurocrypt 2021 (Coutinho and Neto, in: Canteaut, Standaert (eds) Advances in cryptology—EUROCRYPT 2021—40th annual international conference on the theory and applications of cryptographic techniques, Zagreb, Croatia, October 17–21, 2021, proceedings, Part I. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 12696, Springer, 2021).
We propose a technique called Bidirectional Linear Expansions (BLE) to improve attacks against Salsa. While previous works only considered linear expansions moving forward into the rounds, BLE explores the expansion of a single bit in both forward and backward directions. Applying BLE, we propose the first differential-linear distinguishers reaching 7 and 8 rounds of Salsa and we improve Probabilistic Neutral Bit (PNB) key-recovery attacks against 8 rounds of Salsa.
At Eurocrypt 2022 (Dey et al in Revamped differential-linear cryptanalysis on reduced round chacha, Springer, 2022), Dey et al. proposed a technique to combine two input–output positions in a PNB attack. In this paper, we generalize this technique for an arbitrary number of input–output positions. Combining this approach with BLE, we are able to improve key recovery attacks against 7 rounds of Salsa.
Using all the knowledge acquired studying the cryptanalysis of these ciphers, we propose some modifications in order to provide better diffusion per round and higher resistance to cryptanalysis, leading to a new stream cipher named Forró. We show that Forró has higher security margin; this allows us to reduce the total number of rounds while maintaining the security level, thus creating a faster cipher in many platforms, especially in constrained devices.
Finally, we developed
CryptDances
, a new tool for the cryptanalysis of Salsa, ChaCha, and Forró designed to be used in high performance environments with several GPUs. With
CryptDances
it is possible to compute differential correlations, to derive new linear approximations for ChaCha automatically, to automate the computation of the complexity of PNB attacks, among other features. We make
CryptDances
available for the community at
https://github.com/murcoutinho/cryptDances
.
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Conflicts between rural people and the Endangered Black-and-chestnut Eagle (Spizaetus isidori) are a prominent conservation concern in the northern Andes, as at least 60 eagles were poached between ...2000 and 2022 in response to poultry predation. Here, we conducted direct observations to analyze the Black-and-chestnut Eagle diet and evaluated how forest cover affects the feeding habits of the species during nestling-rearing periods in 16 nests located in different human-transformed Andean landscapes of Ecuador and Colombia. We analyzed 853 prey items (46 species) delivered to nestlings. We used Generalized Linear Models to test whether the percent forest cover calculated within varying buffer distances around each nest and linear distances from the nest to the nearest settlement and pasture areas were predictors of diet diversity and biomass contribution of prey. Forest cover was not a factor that affected the consumption of poultry; however, the eagle regularly preyed on chickens (Gallus gallus) (i.e., domestic Galliformes) which were consumed by 15 of the 16 eagle pairs, with biomass contributions (14.57% ± 10.55) representing 0.6–37% of the total prey consumed. The Black-and-chestnut Eagle is an adaptable generalist able to switch from mammalian carnivores to guans (i.e., wild Galliformes) in human-dominated landscapes, and eagles nesting in sites with low forest cover had a less diverse diet than those in areas with more intact forests. Management actions for the conservation of this avian top predator require studies on the eagle’s diet in areas where human persecution is suspected or documented, but also maintaining forest cover for the wild prey of the species, development of socio-economic and psychological assessments on the drivers behind human-eagle conflicts, and the strengthening of technical capacities of rural communities, such as appropriate poultry management.
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Aim
Our aim is to document the dimensions of current squamate reptile biodiversity in the Americas by integrating taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional data, and assessing how this may vary across ...phylogenetic scales. We also explore the potential underlying mechanisms that may be responsible for the observed geographical diversity patterns.
Location
The Americas.
Time period
Present.
Major taxa
Squamate reptiles.
Methods
We used published data on the distribution, phylogeny, and body size of squamate reptiles to document the current dimensions of their alpha diversity in the Americas. We overlapped species ranges to estimate taxonomic diversity (TD) and calculated phylogenetic diversity (PD) using mean pairwise phylogenetic distance (MPD), speciation rate (DivRate) and Faith's phylogenetic index (PD). We estimated functional diversity (FD) as trait dispersion in the multivariate space using body size and leg development data. We implemented a deconstructive macroecological approach to understand how spatial mismatches between the three facets of diversity vary across phylogenetic scales, and the potential eco‐evolutionary mechanisms driving these patterns across space.
Results
We found a strong latitudinal gradient of TD with a large accumulation in tropical regions. PD and FD patterns were largely similar likely due to the high phylogenetic signal in the traits used, and higher values tended to be concentrated in harsh and/or heterogeneous environments. We found differences between major clades within Squamata that display contrasting geographical patterns. Several regions across the continent shared the same spatial mismatches between dimensions across clades, suggesting that similar eco‐evolutionary processes are shaping these regional reptile assemblages. However, we also found evidence that non‐mutually exclusive processes can operate differently across clades.
Main conclusions
The deconstructive approach implemented here is based on a solid macroecological framework. We can extend this to other taxonomic groups to establish whether there are particularities about how different eco‐evolutionary mechanisms shape biodiversity facets in a spatially explicit context.
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