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Recombinant adeno‐associated viruses (rAAVs) are promising vectors for the delivery of various genetic constructs into eukaryotic cells. rAAVs have a number of properties that make it possible to successfully use them both in vitro and in vivo. Purification and concentration of rAAV vectors are critical for achieving high viral titer, stability, efficiency, and purity. This review systematically analyses all available purification approaches. The purification methods described in this work differ substantially from each other in mechanisms, efficiency, labor time, and cost. Researchers have to choose a purification algorithm depending on the purpose of their work. We strive to simplify the choice of the necessary and sufficient technique based on the experimental needs and available resources of the laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of general studies in the university in a global and plural world, especially in the context of the end of work and job insecurity. It emphasizes that work should be at the service of man and not the other way around, and that man perfects himself through work. Additionally, it mentions that work has an objective and subjective dimension, and that action follows being. The difference between work and employment is also discussed, and alternatives such as self-management and cooperatives are mentioned. Finally, the crisis and precariousness of employment in Mexico and the world are addressed, especially in relation to permanent wage work and the increase in informal employment. The text also addresses concerns about the commercialization of higher education and the deterioration of universities, highlighting the importance of universities being critical and guiding changes for the benefit of society. The need to seek solutions and promote pluralism of thought in the university community is mentioned. It emphasizes that the university must maintain its autonomy and promote reflection on human coexistence in times of inequality and labor crisis. [Extracted from the article]

Walnut is one of the high yielding fruit crops grown in union territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in India. However, processing of walnuts in J&K is being carried out manually, which is very tedious, troublesome, and time and labor consuming. Thus, the present work was undertaken with an aim to develop a single mechanized continuous system for post‐harvest handling and processing of walnuts. The innovation composed of dehulling, bleaching, washing, drying, and grading units, besides conveyors to carry walnuts from one unit to another. The dehulling efficiency (95.70%), bleaching efficiency (96.28%), washing efficiency (99.10%), and grading efficiency (97.43%) recorded for the developed system are much higher than the manual processing. Furthermore, number of partially dehulled, un‐dehulled, partially bleached, unbleached, and damaged walnut percentages were recorded significantly (p < 0.05) lower whereas fully dehulled and fully bleached walnut percentages were recorded significantly (p < 0.05) higher in case of developed system as compared with manual processing. Overall capacity and efficiency of the developed system were recorded as 800 kg/day and 97.02%, respectively. The labor requirement for processing 1 ton of walnuts using developed system was determined to be 10 man h. The economic analysis indicated that adoption of developed system for walnut processing can be highly beneficial and economic. Thus, developed system can be a feasible alternative to minimize the post‐harvest losses, to maintain the quality, and to overcome the drudgery, boredom, and constraints associated with manual post‐harvest handling and processing of walnuts. Practical Applications: Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has the largest share in India's total walnut production. However, from the last few years, there has been a setback to the export trade potential of walnuts in India, mainly due to import of walnuts from China and California. The walnuts from California and China have better consumer acceptability than walnuts of J&K, which has badly affected the walnut trade in India. In J&K, post‐harvest handling of walnuts is being done manually without any scientific and mechanical arbitration, which leads to quality deterioration of walnuts. Therefore, in order to compete at international level, there is an immediate need to shift the post‐harvest handling of walnuts from manual to mechanized. Thus, the adoption of developed continuous inshelled walnut processing system can play a vital role in sustaining the rural economy of J&K through production and sale of good quality walnuts. Furthermore, the developed system can serve as a benchmark for establishment of modern walnut processing units, which can lead to employment generation and boost the walnut trade in J&K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of grammar-checking technology and algorithms, the grammar-checking system has been widely used in various fields. This paper designs and implements a grammar-checking system for English composition. The grammar-checking system adopts a multimodule design. The grammar-checking system is composed of a multilayer rule error-correcting module and a machine learning error-correcting module. This study aims to build a machine learning algorithm model that can detect English grammar errors by analysing and comparing different algorithm models currently applied in the field of education and then apply the trained model to the English composition grammar detection system. The results show that the system can save a lot of time and labor cost of manual marking, liberate teachers from heavy and repeated evaluation activities, and put more time and energy on teaching. At the same time, it can provide learners with more objective and timely feedback so that learners can intuitively and clearly know that they are prone to make grammatical mistakes in the process of English learning. It plays a certain assisting and guiding role in English learners' autonomous learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Nulliparous women contribute to increasing cesarean delivery in the Nordic countries and advanced maternal age has been suggested as responsible for rise in cesarean delivery rates in many developed countries. The aim was to describe changes in cesarean delivery rates among nulliparous women with singleton, cephalic, term births by change in sociodemographic factors across 50 years in Norway.Methods: We used data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway and included 1 067 356 women delivering their first, singleton, cephalic, term birth between 1967 and 2020. Cesarean delivery was described by maternal age (5-year groups), onset of labor (spontaneous, induced and pre-labor CD), and time periods: 1967-1982, 1983-1998 and 1999-2020. We combined women's age, onset of labor and time period into a compound variable, using women of 20-24 years, with spontaneous labor onset during 1967-1982 as reference. Multivariable regression models were used to estimate adjusted relative risk (ARR) of cesarean delivery with 95% confidence interval (CI).Results: Overall cesarean delivery increased both in women with and without spontaneous onset of labor, with a slight decline in recent years. The increase was mainly found among women < 35 years while it was stable or decreased in women >  = 35 years. In women with spontaneous onset of labor, the ARR of CD in women >  = 40 years decreased from 14.2 (95% CI 12.4-16.3) in 1967-82 to 6.7 (95% CI 6.2-7.4) in 1999-2020 and from 7.0 (95% CI 6.4-7.8) to 5.0 (95% CI 4.7-5.2) in women aged 35-39 years, compared to the reference population. Despite the rise in induced onset of labor over time, the ARR of CD declined in induced women >  = 40 years from 17.6 (95% CI 14.4-21.4) to 13.4 (95% CI 12.5-14.3) while it was stable in women 35-39 years.Conclusion: Despite growing number of Norwegian women having their first birth at a higher age, the increase in cesarean delivery was found among women < 35 years, while it was stable or decreased in older women. The increase in cesarean delivery cannot be solely explained by the shift to an older population of first-time mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To assess the effectiveness in preventing cesarean section for failed induction by using Foley catheter for cervical ripening in comparison to Foley catheter with a weight attached to it. Methods: A randomized control trial conducted between November 2018 and July 2020, which looked at induction of labor with 30-ml Foley catheter in one arm and the Foley placed with a 500 ml weight attached to it in the other arm. Primary outcome was the cesarean section rate. Results: We randomized 399 women. Modes of delivery were similar in both groups. Numbers undergoing cesarean section for failed induction were higher in the group that underwent induction with Foley with weight but this was not statistically significant (45.7% vs 26.5%, P = 0.1). There was a shorter time to expulsion of the Foley with weight attached (mean ± standard deviation: 2.6 ± 3.3 h vs 10.9 ± 3.2 h, P < 0.001) but this did not translate into a difference in time to active labor or time to delivery. Conclusion: Placing a weight at the end of the Foley catheter for induction of labor does not affect the time to delivery or the rate of cesarean deliveries, although there is faster expulsion of the Foley. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We performed systematic surveys for members of the Eurycea quadridigitata (Dwarf Salamander) complex in Georgia to determine the distribution of member species. Over 409 person-hours of search effort, we sampled 211 locations in 38 counties, detecting 108 individuals, including many that bridge substantial distribution gaps. Molecular data document Georgia specimens belong to 2 species, E. hillisi and E. quadridigitata. No specimens attributable to E. chamberlaini were found in Georgia, indicating this species has a distribution restricted to South and North Carolina. We used color patterns and measures of body size and shape of specimens identified by molecular methods to separate 4 species of 4-toed Eurycea from the Coastal Plain of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Large body size and the presence of melanophores across the chin and surrounding the cloaca separated E. quadridigitata from all others. Additionally, E. sphagnicola and E. quadridigitata possessed dark sides to the body and tail, with these features being disrupted by irregular white stripes or spots. In contrast, E. chamberlaini and E. hillisi possessed light sides to the body and tail that lacked irregular white stripes. Small body size distinguished E. sphagnicola from E. quadridigitata, but no feature distinguished E. chamberlaini from E. hillisi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon the "new interpretation" of Marxian value theory, this paper provides the inverse transformation method to estimate the rate of surplus value at the industry level. Without assuming the equalized rate of surplus-value as a longperiod position, we can analyze the dynamic of unequal development between industries. As an empirical verification of the methodology, we also examine the South Korean economy through Marxian's perspective of value theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the economic policy in India in recent times and the labor, social and economic impact it has had. It begins with an analysis of the dirigiste regime after the independence, later emphasizing the neoliberal period that continues as the predominant economic regime. It also addresses the impact that the covid-19 pandemic has had. It concludes with an account of the challenges India is currently facing to unify the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Objectives: To evaluate the new ultrasound‐based signs for the diagnosis of post‐cesarean section uterine niche in nonpregnant women. Methods: We investigated prospectively a cohort of 160 consecutive women with one previous term cesarean delivery (CD) between December 2019 and 2020. All women were separated into two subgroups according to different stages of labor at the time of their CD: subgroup A (n = 109; 68.1%) for elective CD and CD performed in latent labor at a cervical dilatation (≤4 cm) and subgroup B (n = 51; 31.9%); for CD performed during the active stage of labor (>4 cm). Results: Overall, the incidence of a uterine niche was significantly (P <.001) higher in women who had an elective (20/45; 44.4%) compared with those who had an emergent (21/115; 18.3%) CD. Compared with subgroup B, subgroup A presented with a significantly (P =.012) higher incidence of uterine niche located above the vesicovaginal fold and with a significantly (P =.0002) lower proportion of cesarean scar positioned below the vesicovaginal fold. There was a significantly (P <.001) higher proportion of women with a residual myometrial thickness (RMT) > 3 mm in subgroup A than in subgroup B and a significant negative relationship was found between the RMT and the cervical dilatation at CD (r = −0.22; P =.008). Conclusions: Sonographic cesarean section scar assessment indicates that the type of CD and the stage of labor at which the hysterotomy is performed have an impact on the location of the scar and the scarification process including the niche formation and RMT. Access the CME test here and search by article title. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program within the United States. TANF mandated 60‐month lifetime time limits for federal cash assistance dollars. Because states reserve the right to set their own stricter or more generous time limits, the 60‐month lifetime limit did not bind in all cases. In recent years, however, several states imposed TANF time limits for the first time or made existing time limits more stringent. Using administrative and survey data, I find that stricter time limits decrease TANF participation within the past 12 months by 26%. Unlike previous research, I find heterogeneous effects of time limits on labor supply. I show that expected effects on employment and earnings decrease—and eventually become negative—as a state's unemployment rate increases. Evidence suggests that removing welfare recipients from TANF during periods of high unemployment inhibits their access to financial resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distinct technological trends seriously influence the modern software architectures. In this paper, four different software architectures and framework combinations were generally compared. The basis for the analysis is the developer's productivity. In a 3 year-long research and development project, a real-world telemedicine application was efficiently implemented four times with various software architectures and architectural patterns. More than 5,000 person-hours were spent on carrying out them. At present, a unique dataset is available, which provides the opportunity to compare the cost of spent person-hours in different approaches. The goal of this research is to describe the measurement approach, the dataset and the applied architectures considering the software developer's productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Creation of a simple, yet effective automated skull stripping tool for cats. • Easily customizable to be implemented in neuroimaging studies of other species. • Highly consistent, requiring minimal manual corrections. • Reduces the man-hours needed to skull strip large datasets. Skull stripping is a fundamental preprocessing step in modern neuroimaging analyses that consists of removing non-brain voxels from structural images. When performed entirely manually, this laborious step can be rate-limiting for analyses, with the potential to influence the population size chosen. This emphasizes the need for a fully- or semi-automated masking procedure to decrease man-hours without an associated decline in accuracy. These algorithms are plentiful in human neuroimaging but are relatively lacking for the plethora of animal species used in research. Unfortunately, software designed for humans cannot be easily transformed for animal use due to the high amount of tailoring required to accurately account for the considerable degree of variation within the highly folded human cortex. As most animals have a relatively less complex cerebral morphology, intersubject variability is consequently decreased, presenting the possibility to simply warp the brain mask of a template image into subject space for the purpose of skull stripping. This study presents the use of the Cat Automated Registration-based Skull Stripper (CARSS) tool on feline structural images. Validation metrics revealed that this method was able to perform on par with manual raters on >90 % of scans tested, and that its consistency across multiple runs was superior to that of masking performed by two independent raters. Additionally, CARSS outperformed three well-known skull stripping programs on the validation dataset. Despite a handful of manual interventions required, the presented tool reduced the man-hours required to skull strip 60 feline images over tenfold when compared to a fully manual approach, proving to be invaluable for feline neuroimaging studies, particularly those with large population sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing internationalization of economic activity has corroded the capacity of national institutions to regulate work and employment. In this changing context, established international institutions have generally not proved adequate to the resulting challenge. New initiatives have emerged to address the growing regulatory gap at the international level, variously aimed at cross-border flows of capital, labor, goods, and services. Most of these initiatives entail the addition of new institutional arrangements and regulation at the international level alongside, and not in place of, national frameworks. The resulting multilevel arrangements raise particular governance challenges. The solutions conventionally proposed neglect the role of power relations in shaping arrangements and hence their contested nature. This research and policy article examines the academic research on internationalization and work and employment regulation at the national level, the response of established international institutions, and the rise of new regulatory initiatives at the international level. It applies and modifies Streeck and Thelen’s framework for analyzing different types of gradual change and elaborates ways forward for new, multilevel arrangements that take account of power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent defect detection systems based on deep learning have great potential for industrial applications to ensure product quality. However, the success of such data-driven approaches relies heavily on well-established datasets that require considerable time and labor for fine-grained annotation. Actual industrial datasets are often roughly labeled with many inaccurate annotations, thus seriously hindering the performance of defect detection. In particular, the boundaries of surface defects are not only difficult to label reliably, but also to detect accurately. In this paper, a novel approach termed BTDNet (Boundary-guided Task Decomposition Network) is proposed to tackle the challenge posed by inaccurate annotations. BTDNet decomposes the inaccurate original annotation into two accurate annotations, introducing two reliable auxiliary tasks. These auxiliary tasks are supervised separately using the new annotations, enabling BTDNet to mitigate the negative impact of inaccurate annotations during training and learn robust features. An efficient statistics recalibration module is constructed in BTDNet to customize input features for different tasks, while an adaptive feature summation module is employed to merge the outputs of all tasks. As an essential part of BTDNet, both modules are designed with a strong focus on lightweight. Extensive experiments on three publicly available industrial datasets confirm the effectiveness of our method, showing that BTDNet can consistently achieve performance gains across different baselines and input scales. For example, BTDNet clearly improves the F1-score of DeepLabv3 and GCNet methods on the Magnetic-tile dataset by 5.77% and 5.40%, respectively. [Display omitted] • Unreliable annotations lead to poor defect detection, especially on boundaries. • Decomposing unreliable tasks on boundaries helps to learn robust features. • Simple but effective statistics recalibration module and adaptive summation module. • High focus on lightweight, introducing only negligible parameters and calculations. • Consistent performance improvements across different datasets and baselines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NMR lineshapes produced by half-integer quadrupolar nuclei are sensitive to 11 distinct fit parameters per inequivalent site. To date, automatic fitting routines have failed to replace manual parameter insertion and evaluation due to the importance of local minima and the need for fitting multiple-field magic-angle spinning (MAS) and static spectra simultaneously. Herein we introduce a new tool, AMES-Fit (Automatic Multiple Experiment Simulation and Fitting), to automatically find the global best-fit simulation parameters for a series of multiple-field NMR lineshapes. AMES-Fit uses an adaptive step size random search algorithm to dynamically probe parameter space and requires minimal human input. The best fits are obtained in a few minutes of computation time that would otherwise have required several person-hours of work. The program is freely available and open-source. [Display omitted] • Fitting NMR spectra affected by quadrupolar coupling and CSA is arduous. • The presence of local minima prevents the application of gradient descent. • We introduce a random-search algorithm to automate the fitting of multi-field data. • The algorithm is packaged in an open-source program: AMES-Fit. • Examples are given that demonstrate the utility and limitations of the software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patients with obesity experience an increased duration of labor with an increased risk for perinatal morbidity. When compared with parturients without obesity, they also experience fewer uterine contractions after administration of misoprostol. It is unclear if the same dose of misoprostol should be used for induction of labor in patients with obesity compared to non-obese patients. Therefore, we sought to investigate if a higher dose of misoprostol for patients with obesity is more effective. This study aimed to determine if 50 μg compared with 25 μg of vaginal misoprostol reduced the time from induction start to delivery among patients with obesity. We performed a double-blinded, pragmatic randomized controlled trial, between June 1, 2022, and July 17, 2023. Patients with a body mass index ≥30 kg/m2 who underwent labor induction at ≥ 36 weeks' gestation, had a singleton gestation, and a cervical dilation ≤3 cm at admission were included. Patients were excluded if they had a contraindication to vaginal delivery or misoprostol administration. Patients were randomized to 25 or 50 μg of vaginal misoprostol, stratified by parity, body mass index <40 kg/m2 or ≥40 kg/m2, and provider intent to use mechanical dilation at the onset of labor induction. Usual labor management was followed at the discretion of the provider. The primary outcome was time from induction to delivery. A priori, we estimated that 90 subjects per group (N=180) were needed for an 85% power to detect a 3-hour difference between groups with a type I error of 5%. Analysis was by intention-to-treat. A 2-sample t test was used for the primary outcome, Cohen's d was used as a measure of effect, and P values were reported. Of the 180 patients randomized, 88 were assigned to the 25 μg group and 92 were assigned to the 50 μg group. Of those, 96.1% of patients received the designated intervention. The baseline characteristics were similar between groups. No difference was found in the primary outcome of time to delivery (21.6 hours vs 18.6 hours; d=.28; 95% confidence interval, −0.02 to 0.57). In a planned subgroup analysis, multiparous patients delivered faster in the 50 μg group (15.2 hours vs 12.0 hours; d=.51; 95% confidence interval, 0.04–0.97). The risk for tachysystole associated with fetal heart tracing changes was rare overall (2.2%) and not significantly different between groups. No differences in maternal or neonatal adverse effects were observed. Patients with obesity who underwent cervical ripening with 50 μg of vaginal misoprostol experienced a similar time to delivery when compared with those who received 25 μg of misoprostol. However, multiparous patients had a significantly reduced time to delivery when 50 μg was used. A higher dose of misoprostol may be a promising intervention for reducing time in labor, which warrants further study. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by the practical supply chain management of the automobile industry, we study the car sequencing problem (CSP) that minimizes the conflicts occur when sequentially manufacturing cars on an assembly line. The CSP is a well-established problem, subject to the paint batching constraints to decrease the energy consumption for color changeovers and production rate constraints in the assembly shop to ensure a smooth usage of car options. However, the existing solution algorithms to this problem do not take into account the block batches, which desires a consecutive production batch of cars requiring a certain option. This requirement often occurs when specialized labor time window is short in the customized car production scenario, and renders additional complexities to the traditional car sequencing problem. In this paper, we present a novel model to deal with these constraints and simultaneously generate the sequencing and replenishment decisions. Besides, we develop two math-heuristic algorithms to solve the proposed large-scale CSP. The presented heuristics are on the basis of relax-and-fix procedures, fix-and-optimize procedures and adaptive variable neighborhood search. To solve the large-sized instances (commercial solvers, i.e., Cplex, cannot obtain a feasible result within 1 h), we design and implement a reinforced parameter tuning mechanism to dynamically select the parameter values, so as to speed up the search process. The proposed models and heuristics are tested on representative instances generated from the benchmark in the literature (CSPLib), as well as large-sized instances generated from real-world cases. We report on extensive computational experiments and provide basic managerial insights into the planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the historical evolution of China's gender relations through the lens of housework time allocation. In particular, we highlight the role played by social class and income. Drawing upon data from the Chinese Health and Nutrition Survey, we find that during the period 1991–2011, being a peasant or earning less than the spouse was increasingly associated with a higher share of housework. The market process appears to have indirectly improved the social status of women (most likely rural women) married to peasant husbands as measured by the former's declining housework share. Such changes, however, have not challenged traditional patriarchal norms in the countryside and have even facilitated the rise of a new market-based patriarchy. Policy makers should empower women by tackling the different faces of patriarchy as a whole. JEL Classification: B51, J16, P16 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A complete denture (CD) can be duplicated with a conventional or digital protocol. However, there are no comparative studies of these methods. This study aimed to compare the trueness and efficiency of conventional and digital CD duplication methods. Methods: A mandibular CD was digitized as the virtual reference model and duplicated using five methods (n = 10). The trueness (root mean square (RMS)) was calculated for the whole denture and across the dentition, cameo denture extension, and intaglio portions. The manual labor time spent during denture duplication was also recorded at different steps. The trueness and labor time comparisons were statistically analyzed among the five groups (α = 0.05). Results: The conventional group was the least true with the largest RMS (mean, 95% CI) in all of the comparisons. The four digital groups yielded similar trueness values across the dentition, cameo denture extension, and intaglio areas, yet they had a significant difference in the whole denture comparison between the Digital-CBCT-SLA printer (0.17, 0.15–0.19 mm) and Digital-Laboratory Scanner-SLA printer (0.13, 0.11–0.15 mm). The conventional protocol required longer trimming and finishing time (7.55 ± 1.02 min), as well as total labor time (27.64 ± 1.72 min) than the other four digital techniques. Conclusions: The conventional CD duplication method was less true and efficient than digital techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text clustering is the task of grouping a set of texts so that text in the same group will be more similar than those from a different group. The process of grouping text manually requires a significant amount of time and labor. Therefore, automation utilizing machine learning is necessary. One of the most frequently used method to represent textual data is Term Frequency Inverse Document Frequency (TFIDF). However, TFIDF cannot consider the position and context of a word in a sentence. Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers (BERT) model can produce text representation that incorporates the position and context of a word in a sentence. This research analyzed the performance of the BERT model as data representation for text. Moreover, various feature extraction and normalization methods are also applied for the data representation of the BERT model. To examine the performances of BERT, we use four clustering algorithms, i.e., k-means clustering, eigenspace-based fuzzy c-means, deep embedded clustering, and improved deep embedded clustering. Our simulations show that BERT outperforms TFIDF method in 28 out of 36 metrics. Furthermore, different feature extraction and normalization produced varied performances. The usage of these feature extraction and normalization must be altered depending on the text clustering algorithm used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skeleton creation is an important phase in the character animation pipeline. However, handcrafting skeleton takes extensive labor time and domain knowledge. Automatic skeletonization provides a solution. However, most of the current approaches are far from real-time and lack the flexibility to control the skeleton complexity. In this paper, we present an efficient skeletonization method, which can be seamlessly integrated into the sketch-based modeling process in real-time. The method contains three steps: (i) local sub-skeleton extraction; (i i) sub-skeleton connection; and (i i i) global skeleton refinement. Firstly, the local skeleton is extracted from processed polygon stroke and forms a subpart along with the sub-mesh. Then, local sub-skeletons are connected according to the intersecting relationships and modeling sequence of subparts. Lastly, a global refinement method is proposed to gives users coarse-to-fine control on the connected skeleton. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on a variety of examples created from both novices and professionals. [Display omitted] • A real-time skeletonization algorithm for immediately constructing an animatable skeleton from user sketch. • A flexible solution for skeleton complexity control. • An easy-to-use system for creating animatable models featured by sketch-based shape modeling and automatic rigging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Articles published in medical and dental journals may be broadly classified as either research-based articles i.e., original publications or non-research articles i.e., other than original publications. Original research involves conception, data collection, analysis, article writing and publication. It is an uphill task especially for novice researchers. In contrast to original articles, non-research articles are both time and labor efficient and have many formats/sub-types. Although journals provide information about article formats accepted by them to prospective authors in their 'instructions to authors' section available in print and online, unfortunately, many young researchers have little awareness about this. By writing this article, we intend to facilitate the research journey of our early career researchers'. The objective of this study was to increase their awareness about the different categories of publications in which they may disseminate their scholarly work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate whether outpatient cervical ripening with a balloon catheter results in a shorter amount of time in the labor and delivery unit when compared with use in the inpatient setting.Data Sources: PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Library, and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched from their inception until December 2020. No restrictions for language or geographic location were applied.Methods Of Study Selection: Using a predefined protocol and search strategy, 1,152 titles were identified and screened. Randomized controlled trials that compared outpatient and inpatient cervical ripening with balloon catheters were included.Tabulation, Integration, and Results: Data extraction and risk of bias assessments were performed by two reviewers. Meta-analysis was performed to produce mean difference for continuous data and risk ratio (RR) for dichotomous data, both with a 95% CI. The primary outcome was the amount of time from admission to the labor ward until delivery. Additional secondary maternal and neonatal outcomes were evaluated. Eight trials (740 patients) were included; six studies (571 patients) reported on our primary outcome. Compared with the inpatient group, outpatient balloon cervical ripening was associated with significantly less time in the labor and delivery unit (outpatient 16.3±9.7 hours vs inpatient 23.8±14.0 hours; mean difference -7.24 hours, 95% CI -11.03 to -3.34). There were no differences in total induction time or total hospital admission. The outpatient group was significantly less likely than the inpatient group to undergo cesarean delivery (21% vs 27%), RR 0.76 (95% CI 0.59-0.98). There were no differences in other maternal or neonatal outcomes. There were no deliveries outside of the hospital and no stillbirths.Conclusion: Outpatient balloon cervical ripening in low-risk patients is associated with a decreased amount of time from admission to labor and delivery until delivery. Outpatient balloon cervical ripening is a safe alternative for low-risk patients and has the potential for significant benefits to patients, and labor and delivery units.Systematic Review Registration: PROSPERO, CRD42019140503. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating the need for instrumentation bulk material which can amount to thousands of items, is a job that requires much effort, especially in the short tender phase. This situation becomes critical when faced with dynamic project needs where no single project needs precisely the same process control. The engineer concerned is always required to use his technical knowledge in selecting the appropriate hook-up type before bulk material estimation can be made. Easy Hook-up is a digital solution that makes bulk material estimation activity more accurate, efficient, and cost-effective. Easy Hook-up can save man-hours up to 93.3%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There are few studies on the differences in clinical outcomes with implant guides made by different methods in cases with a single tooth loss and adjacent tooth supportOBJECTIVE: To compare the use of digital and traditional implant guides in patients whose first molars are absent and who are undergoing implant restoration.Methods: This study included 42 patients with first molars missing who were randomly divided into two groups: the digital group (n= 21) and the control group (n= 21). A CAD/CAM digital implant guide was used in the digital group, whereas a traditional impression was used in the control group. Then, the labor time, the intraoral fit of the implant guide, and the deviation of the screw access channel position were compared between the two groups.Results: The impression time and implant surgery time in the digital group were less than in the traditional group. The intraoral first fit of the guide in the digital group was higher than in the control group (P< 0.05). The one-time satisfaction rate of the digital group was 100%, while five cases in the control group needed to be redone. In the digital group, there was no significant difference in the deviation of the screw access channel position between implants on the left and right sides. In the control group, the deviation of the screw access channel position on the right side was significantly lower than on the left side. Overall, the deviation of the screw access channel position was significantly lower in the digital group than in the control group.Conclusions: In a first molar implant, the digital implant guide can effectively reduce the clinical operative time and the screw access deviation and improve efficiency. The clinical results with the digital guide provide a basis for its use in implant therapy for single missing teeth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fine-grained annotations are indispensable for sequence tagging tasks like named entity recognition and aspect-based sentiment analysis, which may incur extremely high time and labor costs. Recent efforts are towards data augmentation which aims to generate synthetic labeled instances. However, most existing methods adopt the random replacement or perturbation strategy under pre-defined constraints, and thus often lead to unstable performance. More importantly, these methods focus on producing more artificial samples yet neglect to make good use of real training samples. In this paper, we propose a novel description and demonstration guided data augmentation (D3A) approach for sequence tagging. On one hand, we collect dependency paths as descriptions to supervise the instance-level augmentation process, such that we can consistently generate high-quality synthetic data. On the other hand, we retrieve semantic or syntactic related features as demonstrations to enhance the learning capability of neural networks under limited training data. We conduct extensive experiments on four sequence tagging datasets with various sizes of training data. The results demonstrate that our proposed D3A approach can significantly improve the performance of sequence tagging, especially in low-resource scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HLA molecules are expressed in almost all nucleated cells of the body. These molecules are extremely variable and responsible for tissue specificity recognition. Precise HLA typing is crucial for tissue and organ transplantation. Usually, HLA‐typing NGS methods are based on the assignment of reads to a certain previously reported HLA allele presented in the IPD‐IMGT/HLA Database. But there is a limited number of tools able to identify novel alleles that have not yet been reported and thus absent in the database. Such alleles carry mismatches distinguishing them from all known alleles in the database. Therefore, manual evaluation of the identified HLA alleles in the genome browser is a compulsory step in the analysis, and one that is labor intensive and time consuming. We present the development and validation of a freely available web‐application for the identification of novel HLA alleles in the most relevant HLA class I and II genes from NGS data. The tool can also be used for automated data quality assessment. The software was validated by analyzing 330 alleles. The results are concordant with orthogonal methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among physical attributes, dimensions and weight of agricultural products are important parameters that are useful for designing grading/packaging systems. Size and weight measurements usually require extensive time and labor. Moreover, it is often difficult to accurately do the measurements for the products having irregular shapes, such as sweet potatoes. Even though there are many previous works on the topic, they either lack accuracy or require multiple captures and computing power to reconstruct the three-dimensional representation of the products. This paper proposes the measurement of sweet potato features, including the body length, width, and thickness, by using a simple vision system that requires only a single camera to capture a top-view image of the products. After the background segmentation step, the product is virtually sliced into many equal slices along the longitudinal axis. The volume of the product is calculated as the summation of the volumes of these individual slices. Since there is a high correlation between the products' weight and volume, the weight of the product can be calculated. The experimental results obtained show that the proposed approach is accomplished with highly competitive results, which have an accuracy of up to 96% (with an R2 of 0.98) for the volume estimation task and an accuracy of up to 95% (with an R2 of 0.96) for the weight estimation task. Due to its simplicity, this model can be used to design and develop the sizing/weighing/packaging systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociología del Trabajo is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Apuntes Universitarios: Revista de Investigación is the property of Universidad Peruana Union Filiar Tarapoto and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuaderno Activa is the property of Tecnologico de Antioquia, Institucion Universitari and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Soil depth (depth of soil) is a key factor to evaluate the potential of land for farming. Observation of soil depth has been performed by field work over the long term, consuming enormous time and huge labor. Prediction of the soil depth using digital terrain analysis could be conducted not only with less time and labors, but without solum destruction, compared to conventional field observation. In the present study, we analyzed various relationships between soil depth and digital terrain attributes with parent materials dataset, and established a useful model for spatial prediction of the soil depth in the Pongsang Creek Watershed. Prediction models for soil depth were built based on simple linear regression (SLR) and selection-wise non-linear regression (SWNR), respectively, and their results were compared with each other. Use of the SWNR significantly improved the SLR, for every parent material. Globally, the SWNR improved validation performance by 0.36 for R2 and 23.21 for RMSE (R2 = 0.65, RMSE = 5.95), compared to the SLR. This finding confirms high potential of parent material dataset and the SWNR in digital terrain analysis for soil depth prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, by utilizing Ricardo's numerical examples, derives theoretical statements about the deviations of relative values (prices) from relative labor times. These deviations result from the presence of capital and the distributive variables (rate of profit and wage) and production (turnover) times. Furthermore, Ricardo argued that the intertemporal changes in relative (market) prices were no different from the respective changes in natural (or equilibrium) prices. Both depend primarily on changes in unit labor values and secondarily on capital intensities. The article continues by testing the extent to which Ricardo's thesis holds by utilizing input-output data from the US and Chinese economies. The derived empirical results lend overwhelming support to Ricardo's thesis, which is conformable with major aspects of Marx's theory of value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In traditional neural network integration, people adopt Boosting, Bagging and other methods to integrate traditional neural networks. The integration is complex, time-consuming and laborious, difficult to popularize and apply. This paper is not a continuation of this method, but another integration which is called by us morphological neural network integration (MNNI) or morphological associative memory integration (MAMI). These networks used in MAMI are a network family, with 10 family members, unified in the morphological associative memory framework. Various morphological associative memory networks can be directly used as individual networks to learn and work separately, and then synthesize to draw conclusions. The results of some experiments show that this method is not only feasible in theory, but also effective in practice. It can avoid the complexity of traditional integration method, make the integration structure simple and clear, easy to operate, save time, and therefore is a method of neural network integration with research and application value. The contribution of this paper lies in that: (1) it proposed the concept and method of MNNI and, (2) verified the effectiveness of MNNI through experiments and, (3) it has the characteristics of simplicity, saving time and labor and cost, with a good application prospect and, (4) thus promoting the development of morphological neural networks in theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To investigate the influence of labor process time and intervention on postpartum hemorrhage caused by uterine atony in singleton full-term primipara. Methods: Singleton full-term primipara were chosen in the period from January 2017 to December 2020 in our hospital and were grouped according to the first stage time of labor and matched by PSM method included ＜8 h group and ≥ 8 h group each with 771 cases. The general information, duration of labor and uterine atony postpartum hemorrhage were analyzed and the relationship between the time and intervention of labor process and the occurrence of postpartum hemorrhage due to uterine inertia were evaluated. Results: There was no significant difference in age, gestational times and gestational weeks between 2 groups P>0.05 . The second stage time of labor and the first stage + second stage of labor in gestational weeks between 2 groups inertia were evaluated. relations P<0.05 . The postpartum hemorrhage rate of tage + second stage of labor in gestational weeks between 2 groups inertia h group P<0.05 . The second stage of labor and the first stage + second stage of labor in ional weeks between 2 groups inertia were evaluated. relationship between intervention P<0.05 . The first, second and first stage + second stages of labor of f laboroup and < 8 h group with labor intervention were significantly longer than without labor intervention P<0.05 . The postpartum hemorrhage rate of rvention were significantly longer than without laborhigher than without labor intervention P<0.05 . Conclusion: The incidence of postpartum hemorrhage due to uterine atony in singleton term primipara increased with the increased of the first stage time of labor, while the second stage time of labor often increased with the increased of the first stage time of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To compare the effect and safety of oxycodone and sufentanil after delivery epidural controlled analgesia (PCEA). Methods: Choose ASA level Ⅰ～Ⅱ primipara 210, were randomly divided into 3 groups. The oxycodone (O) group was treated with 0.1% ropivacaine combined with oxycodone, the sufentanil (S) group was treated with 0.1 % ropivacaine combined with sufentanil, and the ropivacaine (C) group was treated with 0.1 % ropivacaine epidural analgesia, 70 cases in each group. Record the hemodynamic indexes and VAS scores when the patients entered the room (T0), were given the first dose for 10 min (T1), 30 min (T2), and cervix were open (T3), the labor analgesia onset time, duration of analgesia, labor duration and Apgar score of newborns 1 and 5 min after birth. Venous blood of T0 and T2 mothers and newborn babies after delivery (T4) were extracted, and serum cortisol and NO concentrations were tested respectively. Results: Maternal pain relief from delivery analgesia, the VAS scores of group O, group S and group C showed statistically significant differences at corresponding time points (P<0.05), the onset time of group S was faster than that of group O and group C, and the duration of group O was longer than that of group S and group C (P<0.05). The concentration of NO in group S and group C was significantly lower than that in group O, and the concentration of cortisol in group O was significantly lower than that in group S and group C (P<0.05). The vital signs of the three groups were stable, and there was no significant difference in labor time or newborn Apgar score (P>0.05). Conclusion: Oxycodone has a fast onset time and a long analgesic time, which can delay the decrease of NO in infants and mothers, reduce the concentration of cortisol, and reduce the maternal stress response, and the analgesic effect is better than sufentanil and ropivacaine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Stroking calves during the postnatal period could effectively improve humancalf relationships. The objective of this study is to examine how daily calf stroking frequency during the postnatal period affects the establishment of human-calf relationships. Methods: Six calves were stroked by a trainer for 6 minutes once daily for 5 days after birth (D1). Six calves were stroked by a trainer for 3 minutes twice daily for 5 days after birth (D2). A further four calves were stared at but not stroked as the control group. The overall stroking or staring duration was the same for all groups, at 6 min/d and 30 min over 5 days. The tests for reactions to the stationary trainer in an unfamiliar environment and avoidance distance measurements for an approaching trainer were conducted at 1 month and 3 months after the treatment. Results: Calves in both stroking groups approached significantly closer to the stationary trainer, vocalized less, and looked at the trainer shorter than the control group at 1 month. However, at 3 months, there was no significant difference between the D1 and the control group, whereas the D2 approached significantly closer to the trainer and vocalized less, and looked at the trainer for a shorter time than the control group. For the avoidance distance, the trainer could approach closer to both stroking groups than the control at 1 month, however, there was no difference among groups at 3 months. Conclusion: Our results suggested that the difference in the calf stroking procedure affected the established human-calf relationships, even though the total stroking duration was the same for all stroked calves. It is likely to be more effective to stroke more frequently than intensively when the aim is to establish better human-calf relationships within limited labor time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines officer losses during the first three months of Operation Barbarossa. It uses original, never-published German officer casualty data extracted and statistically analyzed from 13 by-name reports prepared by the Army Group Center Adjutant for Officer Personnel (IIa) during the summer of 1941. The list, comprising 7,644 names, proposes a periodization of the first phase of Operation Barbarossa in the Army Group Center zone of operations and presents an innovative perspective that uses the rise and fall of officer casualties as a one-of-a-kind measure of combat intensity. In other words, periods of differing casualty rates are seen as discrete operational phases when equated to neighboring intervals. To make the losses comparable across time, the article proposes the concept of division-days, which, in a manner similar to man-hours, records effective activity of these units in daily intervals. The casualty rate compared to total number of division-days is a measure of intensity. The analysis indicates that although there are three operational periods, two later phases see higher odds for officer losses, indicating intensified combat. In addition, the article considers several under-studied aspects of operational military history. First, it analyzes the distribution of casualties across divisions as a function of their posture (attack, defense, movement, reserve). The article further reveals that battle posture does not always follow the precept that 'movement is the best defense'. In fact, overall analysis shows that units maneuvering (attack and move) were more likely to lose officers than those stationary (defend and reserve). Overall, the article is a first attempt to judge the nature and intensity of Barbarossa as a function of complex, over-time data, broken down by types of unit and posture, revealing how dear the officer casualty toll was for the Germans, setting the tone for a long and ultimately unwinnable war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated maternal copeptin level's usefulness in prediction of preterm birth. Materials and methods: The study was comprised of 97 pregnant women hospitalized for threatened preterm labor and 35 healthy pregnant women without preterm labor. Serum copeptin were compared with likelihood of threatened preterm labor timing of delivery and time interval to delivery. Result: Copeptin level of threatened preterm labor group was higher than of control group [7.76(0.39–35.62) ng/mL, 6.23(1.64–36.88) ng/mL, respectively, p =.04]. Copeptin levels of women did not differ according to preterm or term birth [7.76(0.69–35.62) ng/mL, 6.73(0.39–36.88) ng/mL, respectively, p =.22). Quartiles of copeptin levels were not associated with risk status or preterm birth. Conclusions: Serum copeptin is higher in threatened preterm labor. It does not differentiate those with threatened preterm labor verses preterm birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, ultra-widefield (UWF) 200° fundus imaging by Optos cameras has gradually been introduced because of its broader insights for detecting more information on the fundus than regular 30° - 60° fundus cameras. Compared with UWF fundus images, regular fundus images contain a large amount of high-quality and well-annotated data. Due to the domain gap, models trained by regular fundus images to recognize UWF fundus images perform poorly. Hence, given that annotating medical data is labor intensive and time consuming, in this paper, we explore how to leverage regular fundus images to improve the limited UWF fundus data and annotations for more efficient training. We propose the use of a modified cycle generative adversarial network (CycleGAN) model to bridge the gap between regular and UWF fundus and generate additional UWF fundus images for training. A consistency regularization term is proposed in the loss of the GAN to improve and regulate the quality of the generated data. Our method does not require that images from the two domains be paired or even that the semantic labels be the same, which provides great convenience for data collection. Furthermore, we show that our method is robust to noise and errors introduced by the generated unlabeled data with the pseudo-labeling technique. We evaluated the effectiveness of our methods on several common fundus diseases and tasks, such as diabetic retinopathy (DR) classification, lesion detection and tessellated fundus segmentation. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method simultaneously achieves superior generalizability of the learned representations and performance improvements in multiple tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the issue of serving written documents during the employee's temporary incapacity for work in the conditions of the Slovak Republic. The author points to the issues occurring when the place of the employee's stay during their temporary incapacity for work differs from their address hitherto known to their employer. The given issue has been analysed by the author from the perspective of the term "address for service", in connection with which the Slovak legislation explicitly imposes the notification obligation on the employee. Following the given difference between the Slovak and Czech legislation, the author investigates the possibilities of application of Czech Decision R 25/2016 in the conditions of the Slovak Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying symptoms of tar spot of corn has been conducted through visual-based estimations of the proportion of leaf area covered by the pathogenic structures generated by Phyllachora maydis (stromata). However, this traditional approach is costly in terms of time and labor, as well as prone to human subjectivity. An objective and accurate method, which is also time and labor-efficient, is of an urgent need for tar spot surveillance and high-throughput disease phenotyping. Here, we present the use of contour-based detection of fungal stromata to quantify disease intensity using Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images of tar spot-infected corn leaves. Image blocks (n = 1,130) generated by uniform partitioning the RGB images of leaves, were analyzed for their number of stromata by two independent, experienced human raters using ImageJ (visual estimates) and the experimental stromata contour detection algorithm (SCDA; digital measurements). Stromata count for each image block was then categorized into five classes and tested for the agreement of human raters and SCDA using Cohen's weighted kappa coefficient (κ). Adequate agreements of stromata counts were observed for each of the human raters to SCDA (κ = 0.83) and between the two human raters (κ = 0.95). Moreover, the SCDA was able to recognize "true stromata," but to a lesser extent than human raters (average median recall = 90.5%, precision = 89.7%, and Dice = 88.3%). Furthermore, we tracked tar spot development throughout six time points using SCDA and we obtained high agreement between area under the disease progress curve (AUDPC) shared by visual disease severity and SCDA. Our results indicate the potential utility of SCDA in quantifying stromata using RGB images, complementing the traditional human, visual-based disease severity estimations, and serve as a foundation in building an accurate, high-throughput pipeline for the scoring of tar spot symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In one-of-a-kind production (OKP), how to coordinate workforce allocations to obtain reasonable man-hour has the practical significance. However, plenty of variables and complicated operation relationships are involved, which implies the man-hour optimisation in OKP belongs to a constrained mixed discrete optimisation problem. In this article, to deal with the man-hour optimisation in large-scale OKP which often refers to complex production, e.g. shipbuilding, we introduce a top-down refinement method to specialise the product design and production decomposition in OKP, which also indicates the operation relationships of the interim product production processes. Consequently, we suggest three basic task structures which are with wide adaptability in OKP industry: tandem structure, parallel structure and double-level-nested parallel structure. Meanwhile, for the double-level-nested parallel structure, a method based on matrix real-coded genetic algorithm and dynamic programming is presented to solve the man-hour optimisation and labour force allocation problem. Through the case studies, including an industrial implementation in the shipbuilding interim product (i.e. a hull block) production, our optimisation method demonstrates significant potential to improve the production efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. workweeks are long compared to workweeks in other rich countries. Much less well-known is that Americans are more likely to work at night and on weekends. The authors examine the relationship between these two phenomena using the American Time Use Survey and time-diary data from France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Only small portions of the U.S.–European differences are attributable to observable characteristics. Adjusting for demographic and occupational differences, Americans’ incidence of night and weekend work would drop by no more than 10% if the average European workweek prevailed. Even if no Americans worked long hours, the incidence of unusual work times in the United States would far exceed those in continental Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]