LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Functional maturation of the exocytotic machinery at gerbil hair cell ribbon synapses

Auditory afferent fibre activity in mammals relies on neurotransmission at hair cell ribbon synapses. Developmental changes in the Ca(2+) sensitivity of the synaptic machinery allow inner hair cells (IHCs), the primary auditory receptors, to encode Ca(2+) action potentials (APs) during pre-hearing stages and graded receptor potentials in adult animals. However, little is known about the time course of these changes or whether the kinetic properties of exocytosis differ as a function of IHC position along the immature cochlea. Furthermore, the role of afferent transmission in outer hair cells (OHCs) is not understood. Calcium currents and exocytosis (measured as membrane capacitance changes: DeltaC(m)) were measured with whole-cell recordings from immature gerbil hair cells using near-physiological conditions. The kinetics, vesicle pool depletion and Ca(2+) coupling of exocytosis were similar in apical and basal immature IHCs. This could indicate that possible differences in AP activity along the immature cochlea do not require synaptic specialization. Neurotransmission in IHCs became mature from postnatal day 20 (P20), although changes in its Ca(2+) dependence occurred at P9-P12 in basal and P12-P15 in apical cells. OHCs showed a smaller DeltaC(m) than IHCs that was reflected by fewer active zones in OHCs. Otoferlin, the proposed Ca(2+) sensor in cochlear hair cells, was similarly distributed in both cell types despite the high-order exocytotic Ca(2+) dependence in IHCs and the near-linear relation in OHCs. The results presented here provide a comprehensive study of the function and development of hair cell ribbon synapses.
Self-administered, subcutaneous alemtuzumab to treat residual disease in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

BACKGROUND
Alemtuzumab is highly effective at treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in bone marrow, which is the usual site of residual disease after fludarabine-based treatment. Eliminating residual disease potentially is associated with longer remission and overall survival. The authors of this report evaluated the ability of subcutaneous alemtuzumab to treat residual disease.


METHODS
Patients in partial remission (PR), nodular PR (nPR), or complete remission (CR) who had disease in bone marrow established by 2-color flow cytometry analysis were enrolled and received alemtuzumab 30 mg subcutaneously 3 times weekly for 4 weeks, and patients had the option to self-administer alemtuzumab. Responders were patients in PR who converted to an nPR or a CR, patients in nPR who converted to a CR, and patients in CR who had no evidence of disease on 2-color flow cytometry analysis after treatment.


RESULTS
There were 31 patients enrolled, of whom 29 were evaluable, and there were 23 responders (4 of 4 patients who achieved a CR, 8 of 9 patients who achieved an nPR, and 11 of 16 patients who achieved a PR. Nonresponders had significantly lower plasma alemtuzumab levels at the end of treatment. Furthermore, higher plasma alemtuzumab levels at the end of treatment were correlated with a longer response duration. Compared with the results from an historic group that received intravenous alemtuzumab for residual disease, there was a trend toward a higher response rate but a shorter response duration with subcutaneous alemtuzumab.


CONCLUSIONS
The current results demonstrated that self-administered, subcutaneous alemtuzumab was safe and active for residual disease and that plasma alemtuzumab levels and real-time minimal residual disease evaluation are important endpoints to monitor in future alemtuzumab consolidation trials.
A Performance Evaluation of Lightweight Approaches to Virtualization

The growing prevalence of the microservice paradigm has initiated a shift away from operating single image appliances that host many services, towards encapsulating each service within individual, smaller images. As a result thereof, the demand for low-overhead virtualization techniques is increasing. While containerization approaches already enjoy great popularity, unikernels are emerging as alternative approaches. With both approaches undergoing rapid improvements, the current landscape of lightweight approaches to virtualization presents a confusing scenery, impeding the task of picking an adequate technology for an intended purpose. While previous work has mostly dealt with comparing the performance of either approach with whole-system virtualization, this work provides an overarching performance evaluation covering containers, unikernels, wholesystem virtualization, native hardware, and combinations thereof. Representing common workloads in cloud-based applications, we evaluate application performance by the example of HTTP servers and a key-value store. Keywords–Lightweight Virtualization; Performance; Unikernel; Container
Evaluating Reliability and Predictive Validity of the Persian Translation of Quantitative Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (Q-CHAT)

OBJECTIVE
Early screening of autism increases the chance of receiving timely intervention. Using the Parent Report Questionnaires is effective in screening autism. The Q-CHAT is a new instrument that has shown several advantages than other screening tools. Because there is no adequate tool for the early screening of autistic traits in Iranian children, we aimed to investigate the adequacy of the Persian translation of Q-CHAT.


METHOD
At first, we prepared the Persian translation of the Quantitative Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (Q-CHAT). After that, an appropriate sample was selected and the check list was administered. Our sample included 100 children in two groups (typically developing and autistic children) who had been selected conveniently. Pearson's r was used to determine test-retest reliability, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to explore the internal consistency of Q-CHAT. We used the receiver operating characteristics curve (ROC) to investigate whether Q-CHAT can adequately discriminate between typically developing and ASD children or not. Data analysis was carried out by SPSS 19.


RESULT
The typically developing group consisted of 50 children with the mean age of 27.14 months, and the ASD group included50 children with the mean age of 29.62 months. The mean of the total score for the typically developing group was 22.4 (SD=6.26) on Q-CHAT and it was 50.94 (SD=12.35) for the ASD group, which was significantly different (p=0.00).The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the checklist was 0.886, and test-retest reliability was calculated as 0.997 (p<0.01). The estimated area under the curve (AUC) was 0.971. It seems that the total score equal to 30 can be a good cut point to identify toddlers who are at risk of autism (sensitivity= 0.96 and specificity= 0.90).


CONCLUSION
The Persian translation of Q-CHAT has good reliability and predictive validity and can be used as a screening tool to detect 18 to 24 months old children who are at risk of autism.
The COACH prompting system to assist older adults with dementia through handwashing: An efficacy study

BACKGROUND
Many older adults with dementia require constant assistance from a caregiver when completing activities of daily living (ADL). This study examines the efficacy of a computerized device intended to assist people with dementia through ADL, while reducing caregiver burden. The device, called COACH, uses artificial intelligence to autonomously guide an older adult with dementia through the ADL using audio and/or audio-video prompts.


METHODS
Six older adults with moderate-to-severe dementia participated in this study. Handwashing was chosen as the target ADL. A single subject research design was used with two alternating baseline (COACH not used) and intervention (COACH used) phases. The data were analyzed to investigate the impact of COACH on the participants' independence and caregiver burden as well as COACH's overall performance for the activity of handwashing.


RESULTS
Participants with moderate-level dementia were able to complete an average of 11% more handwashing steps independently and required 60% fewer interactions with a human caregiver when COACH was in use. Four of the participants achieved complete or very close to complete independence. Interestingly, participants' MMSE scores did not appear to robustly coincide with handwashing performance and/or responsiveness to COACH; other idiosyncrasies of each individual seem to play a stronger role. While the majority (78%) of COACH's actions were considered clinically correct, areas for improvement were identified.


CONCLUSION
The COACH system shows promise as a tool to help support older adults with moderate-levels of dementia and their caregivers. These findings reinforce the need for flexibility and dynamic personalization in devices designed to assist older adults with dementia. After addressing identified improvements, the authors plan to run clinical trials with a sample of community-dwelling older adults and caregivers.
Measuring patient-perceived continuity of care for patients with long-term conditions in primary care

BACKGROUND
Continuity of care is widely acknowledged as important for patients with multi-morbidity but simple, service-orientated indices cannot capture the full impact of continuity in complex care delivery systems. The patient's perspective is important to assess outcomes fully and this is challenging because generic measures of patient-perceived continuity are lacking. We investigate the Chao Perception of Continuity (Chao PC) scale to determine its suitability as a measure of continuity of care for patients with a long-term condition (stroke), and co-morbidity, in a primary care setting.


METHODS



DESIGN AND SETTING
A questionnaire study embedded in a prospective observational cohort study of outcomes for patients following acute stroke.


PARTICIPANTS
168 community dwelling patients (58% male) mean age 68 years a minimum one year post-stroke. Functional status: Barthel Index mean =16.


INTERVENTION
A 23-item questionnaire, the Chao Perception of Continuity (Chao PC) scale, sent by post to their place of residence or administered face to face as part of the final cohort study assessment.


RESULTS
310 patients were invited to participate; 168 (54%) completed a questionnaire. All 23 questionnaire items were entered into a Principal Component Analysis. Emergent factors from the exploratory analysis were (1) inter-personal trust (relational continuity); (2) interpersonal knowledge and information (informational and relational continuity) and (3) the process of care (managerial continuity). The strongest of these was inter-personal trust.


CONCLUSION
The context-specific items in the Chao PC scale are difficult for respondents to interpret in a United Kingdom Primary Care setting resulting in missing data and low response rates. The Chao-PC therefore cannot be recommended for wider application as a general measure of continuity of care without significant modification. Our findings reflect the acknowledged dimensions of continuity and support the concept of continuity of care as a multi-dimensional construct. We demonstrate the overlapping boundaries across the dimensions in the factor structure derived. Trust and interpersonal knowledge are clearly identified as valuable components of any patient-perceived measure of continuity of care.
A phase I study of S-1 administration and a 24-h infusion of cisplatin plus paclitaxel in patients with advanced gastric cancer.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to determine the dose-limiting toxicity (DLT), the maximum tolerated dose (MTD), the recommended dose (RD) and the preliminary antitumor activity of S-1, oral dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase inhibitory fluoropyrimide, in combination with cisplatin and paclitaxel for advanced gastric cancer.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
Paclitaxel was administered on day 1. A fixed dose of S-1 (70 mg/m2/day) was orally administered for 14 consecutive days from day 1 and a 24-h infusion of a fixed dose of cisplatin (60 mg/m2) was administered on day 14 of every 28-day cycle. Four dose escalation levels of paclitaxcel were studied (120, 140, 160 and 180 mg/m2).


RESULTS
Twenty patients were enrolled. The toxicities were generally mild no grade 4 hematological toxicity or grade 3 non-hematological toxicity were observed. Level 4 was considered as the MTD because of a treatment delay of more than 2 weeks in 3 out of 6 patients. The RD of paclitaxcel was 160 mg/m2. The overall response rate was 75%.


CONCLUSION
A triple combination chemotherapy consisting of S-1, cisplatin and paclitaxel showed a tolerable level of adverse reactions and favorable antitumor activity.
WITS: A Wireless Sensor Network for Intelligent Transportation System

Transportation information collection and communication plays a key role in intelligent transportation system (ITS). Unfortunately, most conventional ITSs can only detect the vehicle in a fixed position, and their communication cables and power cables elevate the cost of construction and maintenance. Because of the advantages of the wireless sensor network (WSN) such as low power consumption, wireless distribution, and flexibility without cable restrictions., the usage of WSN in ITSs is expected to be able to overcome the above difficulties. This paper proposes a WSN-based transportation information collection and communication system. Hardware and software WSN modules are designed and prototyped
Current benefits and future directions of NFC services

Near Field Communication (NFC), as an emerging and promising technology, is an integration of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology with mobile devices. NFC-enabled mobile devices can act as contactless smart cards and are also capable to read and write data from/to those cards. Research endeavours concerning NFC appear to focus mainly on development of NFC enabled services and applications. On the other hand, benefits and underlying values associated with different NFC applications' service is not yet well elaborated. In this paper we examined existing NFC applications, prototypes and studies from both academia and industry. We analyzed these applications by classifying them into NFC operating modes to surface the nature of underlying value-added services and benefits that they provide. Moreover we emphasized possible future usage scenarios together with directions and questions for future research based on the identified benefits.
Oxidants, oxidative stress and the biology of ageing

Living in an oxygenated environment has required the evolution of effective cellular strategies to detect and detoxify metabolites of molecular oxygen known as reactive oxygen species. Here we review evidence that the appropriate and inappropriate production of oxidants, together with the ability of organisms to respond to oxidative stress, is intricately connected to ageing and life span.
Real-Time Vision Using a Smart Sensor System

This paper presents a real-time data processing concept for asynchronous "address event" image sensors in highspeed machine vision applications. In the implemented system, a dual-line temporal contrast vision sensor asynchronously responds to relative illumination intensity changes in the visual scene, and encodes the information in the form of "timed address event" representation (TAE) data. The TAE stream consists of the event generation time concatenated to the address event (AE), which encodes the coordinates of the pixel in the 2times256 matrix. The event data processing includes object detection, denoising and scaling, and feature extraction. The feature extraction step comprises circle fit and orientation estimation techniques that enable robust recognition of a wide range of objects. The data processing algorithms take advantage of the efficient information encoding in the TAE data protocol, yielding a flexible, compact and low-cost real-time machine vision system for high-speed shape detection, object orientation extraction and monitoring.
Stent for Life in Portugal: This initiative is here to stay.

AIMS
Portugal has one of the lowest rates of primary percutaneous coronary intervention (p-PCI) in Western Europe. This study assessed the progress of Portuguese p-PCI performance indicators one year after Portugal joined the Stent for Life (SFL) initiative.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Two national surveys were carried out, each covering a period of one month: the first when Portugal joined the SFL in 2011 (Moment Zero), and the second one year later (Moment One). A total of 397 consecutive patients with probable ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction were enrolled (201 at Moment Zero and 196 at Moment One) from 15 centers. During this period, the number of patients who arrived at a local hospital without p-PCI decreased (62-47%; p=0.004) and transportation to a p-PCI hospital by the National Institute for Medical Emergencies (INEM) increased significantly (13-37%; p<0.001). Shorter times to revascularization were observed, due to shorter patient delay (118-102 min; p=0.008). Door-to-balloon delay and system delay remained unchanged.


CONCLUSIONS
Improvements in performance indicators for p-PCI demonstrate the success of the first year of the local SFL plan, which was mainly focused on raising public awareness of the need to use the INEM emergency services, which has reduced patient delay, and on improving secondary transportation.
Validation of Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System Version 2 Using an MRI-Ultrasound Fusion Biopsy in Prostate Cancer Diagnosis.

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of our study was to prospectively assess Prostate Imaging Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) version 2 using an MRI-ultrasound fusion biopsy.


SUBJECTS AND METHODS
This study included 295 consecutive patients with 478 lesions who underwent multiparametric MRI and subsequent MRI-ultrasound fusion biopsy between December 2014 and September 2016. Lesions were assessed by using an overall score of PI-RADS version 2. One radiologist assessed the presence or absence of clinically significant prostate cancer in the whole gland and in subgroups of the peripheral zone and transition zone by using cutoff values of ≥ 4 and ≥ 3. Histologic examination of MRI-ultrasound fusion biopsy specimens was used as the reference standard. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and accuracy were calculated to assess the utility of PI-RADS version 2 for the diagnosis of clinically significant prostate cancer.


RESULTS
The overall PI-RADS version 2 scores showed an accuracy of 82.2% (393/478) for the whole gland, with a cutoff value of ≥ 4 granting sensitivity of 90.0% (90/100), specificity of 80.1% (303/378), PPV of 83.3% (90/108), and NPV of 81.8% (303/370). The overall scores showed accuracies of 84.7% (301/355) in the peripheral zone and 74.7% (92/123) in the transition zone. When we applied an arbitrary overall score of ≥ 3, accuracy was 68.6% (328/478), sensitivity was 94.6% (124/131), specificity was 58.7% (204/347), PPV was 51.6% (124/240), and NPV was 85.7% (204/238).


CONCLUSION
PI-RADS version 2 has an overall good performance for the diagnosis of clinically significant prostate cancer.
Reasons for discharges against medical advice: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND
There is limited information in the literature about reasons for discharges against medical advice (DAMA) as supplied by patients and providers. Information about the reasons for DAMA is necessary for identifying workable strategies to reduce the likelihood and health consequences of DAMA. The objective of this study is to identify the reasons for DAMA based on patient and multicategory provider focus-group interviews (FGIs).


METHODS
Patients who discharged against medical advice between 2006 and 2008 from a large, academic medical centre along with hospital providers reporting contact with patients who left against medical advice were recruited. Three patient-only groups, one physician-only group and one nurse/social worker group were held. Focus-group interviews were transcribed, and a thematic analysis was performed to identify themes within and across groups. Participants discussed the reasons for patient DAMA and identified potential solutions.


RESULTS
Eighteen patients, five physicians, six nurses and four social workers participated in the FGIs. Seven themes emerged across the separate patient, doctor, nurse/social worker FGIs of reasons why patients leave against medical advice: (1) drug addiction, (2) pain management, (3) external obligations, (4) wait time, (5) doctor's bedside manner, (6) teaching hospital setting and (7) communication. Solutions to tackle DAMA identified by participants revolved mainly around enhanced communication and provider education.


CONCLUSIONS
In a large, academic medical centre, the authors find some differences and many similarities across patients and providers in identifying the causes of and solutions to DAMA, many of which relate to communication.
Undertreatment of people with major depressive disorder in 21 countries.

BACKGROUND
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide.


AIMS
To examine the: (a) 12-month prevalence of DSM-IV MDD; (b) proportion aware that they have a problem needing treatment and who want care; (c) proportion of the latter receiving treatment; and (d) proportion of such treatment meeting minimal standards.


METHOD
Representative community household surveys from 21 countries as part of the World Health Organization World Mental Health Surveys.


RESULTS
Of 51 547 respondents, 4.6% met 12-month criteria for DSM-IV MDD and of these 56.7% reported needing treatment. Among those who recognised their need for treatment, most (71.1%) made at least one visit to a service provider. Among those who received treatment, only 41.0% received treatment that met minimal standards. This resulted in only 16.5% of all individuals with 12-month MDD receiving minimally adequate treatment.


CONCLUSIONS
Only a minority of participants with MDD received minimally adequate treatment: 1 in 5 people in high-income and 1 in 27 in low-/lower-middle-income countries. Scaling up care for MDD requires fundamental transformations in community education and outreach, supply of treatment and quality of services.