LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Early Intervention Options for Acute Low Back Pain Patients: A Randomized Clinical Trial with One-Year Follow-Up Outcomes

Introduction In an earlier study, Gatchel et al. (J Occup Rehabil 13:1–9, 2003) demonstrated that participants at high risk for developing chronic low back pain disability (CLBPD), who received a biopsychosocial early intervention treatment program, displayed significantly more symptom improvement, as well as cost savings, relative to participants receiving standard care. The purpose of the present study was to expand on these results by examining whether the addition of a work-transition component would further strengthen the effectiveness of this early intervention treatment. Methods Using an existing algorithm, participants were identified as being high-risk (HR) or low-risk (LR) for developing CLBPD. HR participants were then randomly assigned to one of three groups: early intervention (EI); early intervention with work transition (EI/WT); or standard care (SC). Participants provided information regarding pain, disability, work status, and psychosocial functioning at baseline, periodically during treatment, and again 1 year following completion of treatment. Results At 1-year follow-up, no significant differences were found between the EI and EI/WT groups in terms of occupational status, self-reports of pain and disability, coping ability or psychosocial functioning. However, significant differences in all these outcomes were found comparing these groups to standard care. Conclusion The addition of a work transition component to an early intervention program for the treatment of ALBP did not significantly contribute to improved work outcomes. However, results further support the effectiveness of early intervention for high-risk ALBP patients.
Psychopathology and functioning among children of treated depressed fathers and mothers.

OBJECTIVE
Recent findings suggest that remissions of maternal depression are associated with decrease in offspring psychopathology. Little is known about the offspring effects of decrease in paternal depression.


METHOD
The offspring of married fathers and married mothers were compared. The analysis was restricted to married parents to control for the confounding effect of single parenthood which was more prevalent among depressed mothers. At baseline all parents met criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD), and participated in a 3 month randomized controlled trial to treat depression with a 6 month follow-up. Married parents (N=43) and their children aged 7-17 years (N=78) were assessed independently through direct interviews of children and parents at baseline and followed for 9 months. Child assessors were blind to the clinical status of parents and uninvolved in their treatment.


RESULTS
At baseline, children of depressed fathers, compared to children of depressed mothers, had significantly fewer psychiatric disorders (11% vs. 37%; p=0.012) and less impairment as measured by the Columbia Impairment Scale (6.5 vs. 11.6; p=0.009). Over time, with treatment of parental depression, the prevalence of most child symptoms decreased among children of depressed mothers, but changed little among children of depressed fathers.


LIMITATIONS
The main limitation of the study is the small number of fathers and their offspring included in the study.


CONCLUSION
Maternal as compared to paternal depression had a greater impact on children. With treatment of parental depression the differential prevalence of child symptoms by parental gender narrowed over time. The clinical implication is that children may benefit from treatment of their depressed parents.
Targeted linkage map densification to improve cell wall related QTL detection and interpretation in maize

Several QTLs for cell wall degradability and lignin content were previously detected in the F288 × F271 maize RIL progeny, including a set of major QTLs located in bin 6.06. Unexpectedly, allelic sequencing of genes located around the bin 6.06 QTL positions revealed a monomorphous region, suggesting that these QTLs were likely “ghost” QTLs. Refining the positions of all QTLs detected in this population was thus considered, based on a linkage map densification in most important QTL regions, and in several large still unmarked regions. Re-analysis of data with an improved genetic map (173 markers instead of 108) showed that ghost QTLs located in bin 6.06 were then fractionated over two QTL positions located upstream and downstream of the monomorphic region. The area located upstream of bin 6.06 position carried the major QTLs, which explained from 37 to 59 % of the phenotypic variation for per se values and extended on only 6 cM, corresponding to a physical distance of 2.2 Mbp. Among the 92 genes present in the corresponding area of the B73 maize reference genome, nine could putatively be considered as involved in the formation of the secondary cell wall [bHLH, FKBP, laccase, fasciclin, zinc finger C2H2-type and C3HC4-type (two genes), NF-YB, and WRKY]. In addition, based on the currently improved genetic map, eight QTLs were detected in bin 4.09, while only one QTL was highlighted in the initial investigation. Moreover, significant epistatic interaction effects were shown for all traits between these QTLs located in bin 4.09 and the major QTLs located in bin 6.05. Three genes related to secondary cell wall assembly (ZmMYB42, COV1-like, PAL-like) underlay QTL support intervals in this newly identified bin 4.09 region. The current investigations, even if they were based only on one RIL progeny, illustrated the interest of a targeted marker mapping on a genetic map to improve QTL position.
Domain Ontology Based Automatic Question Answering

In the paper, we introduce a music knowledge question answering system based on ontology knowledge base. Users can propose a question about music knowledge in natural language, the system automatically extract relative knowledge to form answer based on FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and ontology knowledge base, and return the answer to users in natural language. The important modules in the question answering system are introduced in the paper. The domain ontology is base stone of the system. The improved Bayesian method based on ontology is adopted to classify the questions. The questions are located by index and search technology in FAQ firstly; it can rapidly locate the question and return answer. For question outside of FAQ, semantic meaning of questions need to be analyze, the question semantic representation method is adopted in the process. Two strategies are adopted to extract answer knowledge, and return the answer in natural language. Experimental results show that the system is effective in answering the question in music knowledge domain.
Electric vehicle simulator for energy consumption studies in electric mobility systems

One of the most important environmental problems in large cities is the vehicular emission. Electric Vehicles (EVs) are a growing alternative for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Since this kind of vehicle has low autonomy yet, it is important to optimize energy consumption, for instance by planning a suitable infrastructure of battery recharge and/or battery-switch stations. This paper presents an architecture for EV simulation, important to analyze traffic flow, its dynamics and the performance when there are obstructions or intense traffic. There are several tools for traffic simulation, SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) is one of them. But none of the existing traffic simulators integrates models of EV that allow, for example, perform simulation studies regarding energy consumption. SUMO is a portable open source simulator with multi-modal traffic feature capabilities that permit the simulation of various types of vehicles. This work is an extension of the SUMO, two-dimensional (2D) vehicular simulation package. To allow the simulation of energy consumption of EV, two extensions were incorporated in SUMO: EV models and modeling of altitude, transforming SUMO into a three-dimensional (3D) simulator. The energy model effectiveness and correctness with 3D capabilities has been validated using two driving schedules (Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule and Highway Fuel Economy Driving Schedule). This new tool will also support the study of better routes choice in 3D environment with EV aiming minimum energy consumption.
A gender based analysis of predictors of all cause death after transcatheter aortic valve implantation.

The impact of gender-related pathophysiologic features of severe aortic stenosis on transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) outcomes remains to be determined, as does the consistency of predictors of mortality between the genders. All consecutive patients who underwent TAVI at 6 institutions were enrolled in this study and stratified according to gender. Midterm all-cause mortality was the primary end point, with events at 30 days and at midterm as secondary end points. All events were adjudicated according to Valve Academic Research Consortium definitions. Eight hundred thirty-six patients were enrolled, 464 (55.5%) of whom were female. At midterm follow-up (median 365 days, interquartile range 100 to 516) women had similar rates of all-cause mortality compared with men (18.1% vs 22.6%, p = 0.11) and similar incidence of myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular accident. Gender did not affect mortality also on multivariate analysis. Among clinical and procedural features, glomerular filtration rate <30 ml/min/1.73 m(2) (hazard ratio [HR] 2.55, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.36 to 4.79) and systolic pulmonary arterial pressure >50 mm Hg (HR 2.26, 95% CI 1.26 to 4.02) independently predicted mortality in women, while insulin-treated diabetes (HR 3.45, 95% CI 1.47 to 8.09), previous stroke (HR 3.42, 95% CI 1.43 to 8.18), and an ejection fraction <30% (HR 3.82, 95% CI 1.41 to 10.37) were related to mortality in men. Postprocedural aortic regurgitation was independently related to midterm mortality in the 2 groups (HR 11.19, 95% CI 3.3 to 37.9). In conclusion, women and men had the same life expectancy after TAVI, but different predictors of adverse events stratified by gender were demonstrated. These findings underline the importance of a gender-tailored clinical risk assessment in TAVI patients.
Handwritten Arabic Numeral Recognition using a Multi Layer Perceptron

Handwritten numeral recognition is in general a benchmark problem of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence. Compared to the problem of printed numeral recognition, the problem of handwritten numeral recognition is compounded due to variations in shapes and sizes of handwritten characters. Considering all these, the problem of handwritten numeral recognition is addressed under the present work in respect to handwritten Arabic numerals. Arabic is spoken throughout the Arab World and the fifth most popular language in the world slightly before Portuguese and Bengali. For the present work, we have developed a feature set of 88 features is designed to represent samples of handwritten Arabic numerals for this work. It includes 72 shadow and 16 octant features. A Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP) based classifier is used here for recognition handwritten Arabic digits represented with the said feature set. On experimentation with a database of 3000 samples, the technique yields an average recognition rate of 94.93% evaluated after three-fold cross validation of results. It is useful for applications related to OCR of handwritten Arabic Digit and can also be extended to include OCR of handwritten characters of Arabic alphabet
Context Inferring in the Smart Home: An SWRL Approach

This paper deals with a context awareness system based on a service-oriented architecture dedicated to the Smart Home. In our approach, a Smart Home must be able to provide services adapted to the needs of its inhabitants. To achieve this, we propose to build a Smart environment that takes into account the ambient context of its inhabitants, providing contextually-aware services. In previous work [18], we described a four-layer architecture to manage data acquisition and context information in distributed sensor network for smart home environments. In this paper, we focus on the context model based on an OWL ontology and then on the inference layer, based on SWRL rules language. Finally, we present our current implementation.
Trophic interaction between an introduced (peacock bass) and a native (dogfish) piscivorous fish in a Neotropical impounded river

In order to investigate trophic interactions, the diets of peacock bass (Cichla kelberi) and dogfish (Galeocharax knerii) were studied in the Corumbá Reservoir between 1997 and 2000. This dietary study was performed to assess the niche breadth of each species and to determine the degree of niche overlap during different phases of reservoir colonization. During Period I, peacock bass were absent or recorded only in low numbers; during Periods II and III, peacock bass reached high abundances in the reservoir. Interactions between the species were weak during period I, but, during Periods II and III, they were found to interact intensively. The diet overlap was highest during Period II. The niche breadth fluctuated for both species in the different phases. Greater niche breadth was observed for dogfish during periods of low peacock abundance (i.e., Period I), and the lowest niche breadth value was observed during Period II. During the same period, the peacock bass exhibited a wide foraging niche. During Period III, the dogfish showed an increase of its niche breadth, while for the peacock bass a simultaneous decrease in the niche breadth, caused by increasing rates of cannibalism, was recorded. These results show that the presence of peacock bass induces changes in the diet of dogfish, probably due to a restricted number of prey items.
Efficacy and safety of bevacizumab in Chinese patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the efficacy and safety of bevacizumab in the treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).


METHODS
In a single-center, observational study of 91 Chinese patients with mCRC who received bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy was conducted. OBJECTIVE response rates (ORRs), progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and adverse events were recorded, and the relationships between various clinical factors and PFS or OS were evaluated by Cox proportional hazards models.


RESULTS
Treatment with bevacizumab and chemotherapy was effective and tolerable. Univariate analysis showed that PFS and OS were significantly associated with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status (ECOG- PS) score, duration of bevacizumab exposure, and whether chemotherapy was continued after discontinuation of bevacizumab treatment. A multivariate analysis showed that the duration of bevacizumab exposure and whether chemotherapy was continued after discontinuation of bevacizumab were independent prognostic factors for PFS and OS.


CONCLUSION
In Chinese mCRC population, the shorter the duration of exposure to bevacizumab and chemotherapy, the worse the prognosis is.
Modified Net Present Value ( MNPV ) : A New Technique for Capital Budgeting

In this paper we show that, when the firm's opportunity rate of reinvestment is different from its financing rate. The risk-adjusted discount rate method (RADR) of computing Net Present Value (!\'PV) leads to the same type of incorr(;ct results that required ne,,' methodology for modifying Internal Rate of Return (IRR) calculations (i.e. Modified Internal Rate of Return (MIRR)). Specifically, the current method of calculating NPV is biased in favour of (against) high-risk projects and against (in favour ot) low-risk projects when the risk-adjusted discount rate is greater (less) than the firm's average marginal cost of capital (WACC) for two reasons. First, it incorrectly assumes that the reinvestment rate for project cash inflows is the risk-adjusted discount rate of the project instead of the firm's opportunity rate of reinvestment. Sccond, it incorrectly assumes that projected cash outflows, for the time periods alier the initial outlay, are also discounted at the risk-adjusted discount rate. We propose a new methodology to establish a MNPV to eliminate the RADR methodology bias and derive a generalised rate of return (k*) under all combinations of reinvestment and iinancing rates for a firm. In addition we derive and demonstrate the linkages and consistency between the new MNPV, k*, Profitability Index (PI) and MIRR methodologies. JEL Classification: 1'.121, M41
Peer management for iTrust over Wi-Fi Direct

This paper describes peer management for the iTrust peer-to-peer information publication, search and retrieval system using Wi-Fi Direct in a mobile ad-hoc network. We present the fundamental concept of the iTrust mobile ad-hoc network, the capabilities and limitations of Wi-Fi Direct on the Android platform, and our novel algorithm for managing peer connections. Specifically, we discuss how to acquire MAC addresses and associate peers with IP addresses in order to discover, connect and transfer data using Wi-Fi Direct on Android mobile devices. An Android device with Wi-Fi Direct hardware capabilities can automatically create and maintain a mobile ad-hoc network with nearby similarly configured mobile devices to enable peers to share information.
Anaerobic co-digestion of sewage sludge and food waste.

Anaerobic co-digestion of organic matter improves digester operating characteristics and its performance. In the present work, food waste was collected from the institute cafeteria. Two types of sludge (before centrifuge and after centrifuge) were collected from the fluidised bed reactor of the institute treating sewage wastewater. Food waste and sludge were studied for their physico-chemical characteristics, such as pH, chemical oxygen demand, total solids, volatile solids, ammoniacal nitrogen, and total nitrogen. A biomethane potential assay was carried out to find out the optimum mixing ratio of food waste and sludge for anaerobic co-digestion. Results indicated that food waste mixed with sludge in the ratio of 1:2 produced the maximum biogas of 823 ml gVS(-1)(21 days) with an average methane content of 60%. Batch studies were conducted in 5 L lab-glass reactors at a mesophilic temperature. The effect of different substrate loading rates on biogas production was investigated. The mixing ratio of food waste and sludge was 1:2. A loading rate of 1 gVS L d(-1)gave the maximum biogas production of 742 ml g(-1)VS L d(-1)with a methane content of 50%, followed by 2 gVS L d(-1)with biogas of 539 ml g(-1)VS L d(-1) Microbial diversity of the reactor during fed batch studies was investigated by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism. A pilot-scale co-digestion of food waste and sludge (before centrifuge) indicated the process stability of anaerobic digestion.
Measuring self-disclosure online: Blurring and non-response to sensitive items in web-based surveys

People are increasingly required to disclose personal information to computerand Internetbased systems in order to register, identify themselves or simply for the system to work as designed. In the present paper, we outline two different methods to easily measure people’s behavioral self-disclosure to web-based forms. The first, the use of an ‘I prefer not to say’ option to sensitive questions is shown to be responsive to the manipulation of level of privacy concern by increasing the salience of privacy issues, and to experimental manipulations of privacy. The second, blurring or increased ambiguity was used primarily by males in response to an income question in a high privacy condition. Implications for the study of self-disclosure in human–computer interaction and web-based research are discussed. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Reducing bias in open-label trials where blinded outcome assessment is not feasible: strategies from two randomised trials

BACKGROUND
Blinded outcome assessment is recommended in open-label trials to reduce bias, however it is not always feasible. It is therefore important to find other means of reducing bias in these scenarios.


METHODS
We describe two randomised trials where blinded outcome assessment was not possible, and discuss the strategies used to reduce the possibility of bias.


RESULTS
TRIGGER was an open-label cluster randomised trial whose primary outcome was further bleeding. Because of the cluster randomisation, all researchers in a hospital were aware of treatment allocation and so could not perform a blinded assessment. A blinded adjudication committee was also not feasible as it was impossible to compile relevant information to send to the committee in a blinded manner. Therefore, the definition of further bleeding was modified to exclude subjective aspects (such as whether symptoms like vomiting blood were severe enough to indicate the outcome had been met), leaving only objective aspects (the presence versus absence of active bleeding in the upper gastrointestinal tract confirmed by an internal examination).TAPPS was an open-label trial whose primary outcome was whether the patient was referred for a pleural drainage procedure. Allowing a blinded assessor to decide whether to refer the patient for a procedure was not feasible as many clinicians may be reluctant to enrol patients into the trial if they cannot be involved in their care during follow-up. Assessment by an adjudication committee was not possible, as the outcome either occurred or did not. Therefore, the decision pathway for procedure referral was modified. If a chest x-ray indicated that more than a third of the pleural space filled with fluid, the patient could be referred for a procedure; otherwise, the unblinded clinician was required to reach a consensus on referral with a blinded assessor. This process allowed the unblinded clinician to be involved in the patient's care, while reducing the potential for bias.


CONCLUSIONS
When blinded outcome assessment is not possible, it may be useful to modify the outcome definition or method of assessment to reduce the risk of bias.


TRIAL REGISTRATION TRIGGER
ISRCTN85757829. Registered 26 July 2012.TAPPS: ISRCTN47845793. Registered 28 May 2012.
Geometric Modeling Based on Polygonal Meshes

While traditional computer aided design (CAD) is mainly based on piecewise polynomial surface representations, the recent advances in the efficient handling of polygonal meshes have made available a set of powerful techniques which enable sophisticated modeling operations on freeform shapes. In this tutorial we are going to give a detailed introduction into the various techniques that have been proposed over the last years. Those techniques address important issues such as surface generation from discrete samples (e.g. laser scans) or from control meshes (ab initio design); complexity control by adjusting the level of detail of a given 3D-model to the current application or to the available hardware resources; advanced mesh optimization techniques that are based on the numerical simulation of physical material (e.g. membranes or thin plates) and finally the generation and modification of hierarchical representations which enable sophisticated multiresolution modeling functionality.