LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Additive effects of glucagon-like peptide 1 and pioglitazone in patients with type 2 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effect of combination therapy with pioglitazone and glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 in patients with type 2 diabetes.


RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Eight patients with type 2 diabetes (BMI 32.7 +/- 1.3 kg/m(2) and fasting plasma glucose 13.5 +/- 1.2 mmol/l) underwent four different treatment regimens in random order: saline therapy, monotherapy with continuous subcutaneous infusion of GLP-1 (4.8 pmol x kg(-1) x min(-1)), monotherapy with pioglitazone (30-mg tablet of Actos), and combination therapy with GLP-1 and pioglitazone. The observation period was 48 h. End points were plasma levels of glucose, insulin, glucagon, free fatty acids (FFAs), and sensation of appetite.


RESULTS
Fasting plasma glucose decreased from 13.5 +/- 1.2 mmol/l (saline) to 11.7 +/- 1.2 (GLP-1) and 11.5 +/- 1.2 (pioglitazone) and further decreased to 9.9 +/- 1.0 (combination) (P < 0.001). Eight-hour mean plasma glucose levels were reduced from 13.7 +/- 1.1 mmol/l (saline) to 10.6 +/- 1.0 (GLP-1) and 12.0 +/- 1.2 (pioglitazone) and were further reduced to 9.5 +/- 0.8 (combination) (P < 0.0001). Insulin levels increased during monotherapy with GLP-1 compared with monotherapy with pioglitazone (P < 0.01). Glucagon levels were reduced in GLP-1 and combination therapy compared with saline and monotherapy with pioglitazone (P < 0.01). FFAs during breakfast (area under the curve, 0-3 h) were reduced in combination therapy compared with saline (P = 0.03). Sensation of appetite was reduced during monotherapy with GLP-1 and combination therapy (P < 0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
GLP-1 and pioglitazone show an additive glucose-lowering effect. A combination of the two agents may, therefore, be a valuable therapeutic approach for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
Azo dyes – biological activity and synthetic strategy

Introduction Azo dyes – a fatal threat or a new generation of drugs? In 1858 Griss developed the azo coupling reaction and obtained first azo dye – Aniline Yellow. Nowadays, around 10 thousands of these compounds are described and more than 2 thousands are applied to color various materials. Azo dyes are characterized by the presence of the azo moiety (–N=N–) in their structure, conjugated with two, distinct or identical, monoor polycyclic aromatic systems. Because of their specific physico-chemical properties and biological activities, they have found a broad application in pharmaceutical, cosmetic, food, dyeing/textile industry and analytical chemistry. However, the most typical and popular field of utility remains their coloring function. Azo dyes are the largest and the most versatile class of dyes. They possess intense bright colors, in particular oranges, reds and yellows. In addition, azo dyes exhibit a variety of interesting biological activities. Medical importance of these compounds is well known for their antibiotic, antifungal and anti-HIV properties. On the other hand they bring a certain danger for health and environment because of canceroand mutagenicity. In this review, selected synthetic strategies and biological activities of azo dyes are presented, the latter in the context of a therapeutic potential and a hazard connected with their production and application.
Target acquisition in multiscale electronic worlds

Since the advent of graphical user interfaces, electronic information has grown exponentially, whereas the size of screen displays has stayed almost the same. Multiscale interfaces were designed to address this mismatch, allowing users to adjust the scale at which they interact with information objects. Although the technology has progressed quickly, the theory has lagged behind. Multiscale interfaces pose a stimulating theoretical challenge, reformulating the classic target-acquisition problem from the physical world into an infinitely rescalable electronic world. We address this challenge by extending Fitts’ original pointing paradigm: we introduce the scale variable, thus defining a multiscale pointing paradigm. This article reports on our theoretical and empirical results. We show that target-acquisition performance in a zooming interface must obey Fitts’ law, and more specifically, that target-acquisition time must be proportional to the index of difficulty. Moreover, we complement Fitts’ law by accounting for the effect of view size on pointing performance, showing that performance bandwidth is proportional to view size, up to a ceiling effect. The first empirical study shows that Fitts’ law does apply to a zoomable interface for indices of difficulty up to and beyond 30 bits, whereas classical Fitts’ law studies have been confined in the 2-10 bit range. The second study demonstrates a strong interaction between view size and task difficulty for multiscale pointing, and shows a surprisingly low ceiling. We conclude with implications of these findings for the design of multiscale user interfaces.
Head and neck cancer.

Results: From 275 pts with sinonasal cancer, 31 were SNA. Patient median age was 70 yrs (49-108), 54.8% male. 38.7% had professional exposure to leather dust/wood/cork. Primary sites at diagnosis were: nasal cavity (48.4%), maxillary sinus (3.3%), ethmoid sinus (3.3%). Nasal obstruction (74.3%), epistaxis (45.2%) were the most common presenting symptoms. Most pts (54.8%) presented with stage III and stage IV disease at diagnosis and 45.2% with stage I/II. The Intestinal-Type SNA (ITAC) was the most common type of adenocarcinoma (61.3%) followed by tubulopapillary (22.6%). The median time between the first symptom and the definitive diagnosis was 5 months (0-39) and from the diagnosis to the initial treatment was 2 months (0-9). Surgery was the primary treatment in 77.4%. Adjuvant radiation was performed in 51.6% and chemotherapy in 3.3%. Recurrence was seen in 13 pts (41.9%): 28.7% recurred locally, 6.6% systemically, and 6.6% both. The median follow-up, overall survival (OS) and progression free-survival (PFS) were 3.5 yrs, 5.45 yrs and 3.41 yrs, respectively. Mucinous ITAC subtype had a dismal outcome (7/8 pts died), with a median OS and PFS of 4.76 yrs and 2.8 yrs, respectively.
Can machine-learning improve cardiovascular risk prediction using routine clinical data?

BACKGROUND
Current approaches to predict cardiovascular risk fail to identify many people who would benefit from preventive treatment, while others receive unnecessary intervention. Machine-learning offers opportunity to improve accuracy by exploiting complex interactions between risk factors. We assessed whether machine-learning can improve cardiovascular risk prediction.


METHODS
Prospective cohort study using routine clinical data of 378,256 patients from UK family practices, free from cardiovascular disease at outset. Four machine-learning algorithms (random forest, logistic regression, gradient boosting machines, neural networks) were compared to an established algorithm (American College of Cardiology guidelines) to predict first cardiovascular event over 10-years. Predictive accuracy was assessed by area under the 'receiver operating curve' (AUC); and sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) to predict 7.5% cardiovascular risk (threshold for initiating statins).


FINDINGS
24,970 incident cardiovascular events (6.6%) occurred. Compared to the established risk prediction algorithm (AUC 0.728, 95% CI 0.723-0.735), machine-learning algorithms improved prediction: random forest +1.7% (AUC 0.745, 95% CI 0.739-0.750), logistic regression +3.2% (AUC 0.760, 95% CI 0.755-0.766), gradient boosting +3.3% (AUC 0.761, 95% CI 0.755-0.766), neural networks +3.6% (AUC 0.764, 95% CI 0.759-0.769). The highest achieving (neural networks) algorithm predicted 4,998/7,404 cases (sensitivity 67.5%, PPV 18.4%) and 53,458/75,585 non-cases (specificity 70.7%, NPV 95.7%), correctly predicting 355 (+7.6%) more patients who developed cardiovascular disease compared to the established algorithm.


CONCLUSIONS
Machine-learning significantly improves accuracy of cardiovascular risk prediction, increasing the number of patients identified who could benefit from preventive treatment, while avoiding unnecessary treatment of others.
Features for Audio-Visual Speech Recognition

Human speech perception considers both the auditory and visual nature of speech. Speech is more intelligible if the face of the talker can be seen and this is especially so in noisy conditions. More robust automatic speech recognition is possible if visual speech cues can be integrated with traditional acoustic systems. This thesis discusses the problems of visual speech parameterisation from mouth image sequences for use in audio-visual speech recognition. Five new lipreading techniques are evaluated using a hidden Markov model based visual-only recognition task and compared with an enhanced implementation of a previous lip contour tracker. The best methods are tested on two different multi-talker audio-visual databases to compare performance across different tasks. Combined audio-visual performance is tested using both early and late integration schemes. The addition of visual information to automatic speech recognition is found to improve accuracy and this is most pronounced in acoustically noisy conditions. Real-time implementations of two of the proposed methods demonstrate that the extension to audio-visual speech recognition is not impractical using current desktop technology.
Effects of environmental enrichment on cognitive performance of pigs in a spatial holeboard discrimination task

This study investigated the effects of environmental enrichment on the cognitive performance of female conventional farm (growing) pigs in a spatial holeboard task. Ten pairs of littermates matched for weight were used. From each litter, one piglet was randomly assigned to a barren environment; the other was assigned to an enriched environment from 4 weeks of age. The enriched environment was double the size of the barren environment, had a floor covered with straw, a rooting area filled with peat, and one of the four different enrichment toys which were exchanged daily. Starting at 11 weeks of age, all pigs were tested in a spatial holeboard discrimination task in which 4 out of 16 holes were baited. Furthermore, basal salivary cortisol levels of all pigs were determined after the end of all testing. All pigs were able to acquire the pattern of baited holes (acquisition phase, 40 trials) and the diagonally mirrored pattern (reversal phase, 20 trials). During the acquisition phase, the reference memory performance of the enriched-housed pigs was better than that of their barren-housed littermates, i.e. they reduced visits to the unbaited set of holes. During the reversal phase, enriched-housed pigs had a better general working memory performance than the barren-housed pigs as indicated by reduced revisits to holes already visited during a trial, irrespective of whether they were of the baited or the unbaited set. The enriched-housed pigs also searched for the hidden bait faster during both phases. The environments did not affect basal salivary cortisol levels. In conclusion, environmental enrichment slightly improved the cognitive performance of pigs in a spatial learning task. We hypothesise that the long period of habituation to and testing in the holeboard acted as enrichment that partially reduced the effects of barren housing.
Nanoscale simulation of shale transport properties using the lattice Boltzmann method: permeability and diffusivity

Porous structures of shales are reconstructed using the markov chain monte carlo (MCMC) method based on scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of shale samples from Sichuan Basin, China. Characterization analysis of the reconstructed shales is performed, including porosity, pore size distribution, specific surface area and pore connectivity. The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is adopted to simulate fluid flow and Knudsen diffusion within the reconstructed shales. Simulation results reveal that the tortuosity of the shales is much higher than that commonly employed in the Bruggeman equation, and such high tortuosity leads to extremely low intrinsic permeability. Correction of the intrinsic permeability is performed based on the dusty gas model (DGM) by considering the contribution of Knudsen diffusion to the total flow flux, resulting in apparent permeability. The correction factor over a range of Knudsen number and pressure is estimated and compared with empirical correlations in the literature. For the wide pressure range investigated, the correction factor is always greater than 1, indicating Knudsen diffusion always plays a role on shale gas transport mechanisms in the reconstructed shales. Specifically, we found that most of the values of correction factor fall in the slip and transition regime, with no Darcy flow regime observed.
Multi-array multi-band base-station antennas

In this paper, two miniaturized base-station antenna elements working in the high- and low-frequency bands respectively are proposed firstly. Then, several kinds of subarray arrangements and decoupling techniques are demonstrated explicitly. Finally, three types of multi-array multi-band antennas with good performances are presented to meet the practical base-station applications.
Bilingual Word Representations with Monolingual Quality in Mind

Recent work in learning bilingual representations tend to tailor towards achieving good performance on bilingual tasks, most often the crosslingual document classification (CLDC) evaluation, but to the detriment of preserving clustering structures of word representations monolingually. In this work, we propose a joint model to learn word representations from scratch that utilizes both the context coocurrence information through the monolingual component and the meaning equivalent signals from the bilingual constraint. Specifically, we extend the recently popular skipgram model to learn high quality bilingual representations efficiently. Our learned embeddings achieve a new state-of-the-art accuracy of 80.3 for the German to English CLDC task and a highly competitive performance of 90.7 for the other classification direction. At the same time, our models outperform best embeddings from past bilingual representation work by a large margin in the monolingual word similarity evaluation.1
Gaze based user authentication for personal computer applications

This paper presents a simple PIN-like approach to user authentication, using the gaze sequence of an observer when presented with a previously seen image on a personal computer screen. The method relies on the principle that the human visual system requires the eye to rest motionless for short periods, to assimilate detail at a given location in a visual scene. By deliberately looking at certain features or objects in a scene following a pre-defined sequence specified by the observer, an independent signature for personal identification can be established. Points of gaze fixation can be identified using a simple eye-tracker based on images from a typical webcam, and processed to extract a compact representation of the significant screen locations from the gaze sequence. Experimental results demonstrate that these "signatures" can be reliably and rapidly computed, and offer the advantage that they are difficult to detect by covert means.
An improved compressive sensing reconstruction algorithm using linear/non-linear mapping

We describe an improved algorithm for signal reconstruction based on the Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) algorithm. In contrast with the traditional implementation of OMP in compressive sensing (CS) we introduce a preprocessing step that converts the signal into a distribution that can be more easily reconstructed. This preprocessing introduces negligible additional complexity, but enables a significant performance improvement in the reconstruction accuracy.
Leaf Recognition using Texture Features for Herbal Plant Identification

Received Aug 22, 2017 Revised Nov 12, 2017 Accepted Dec 1, 2017 This research investigates the application of texture features for leaf recognition for herbal plant identification. Malaysia is rich with herbal plants but not many people can identify them and know about their uses. Preservation of the knowledge of these herb plants is important since it enables the general public to gain useful knowledge which they can apply whenever necessary. Leaf image is chosen for plant recognition since it is available and visible all the time. Unlike flowers that are not always available or roots that are not visible and not easy to obtain, leaf is the most abundant type of data available in botanical reference collections. A comparative study has been conducted among three popular texture features that are Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG), Local Binary Pattern (LBP) and Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF) with multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. A new leaf dataset has been constructed from ten different herb plants. Experimental results using the new constructed dataset and Flavia, an existing dataset, indicate that HOG and LBP produce similar leaf recognition performance and they are better than SURF.
Probabilistic Encryption and How to Play Mental Poker Keeping Secret All Partial Information

This paper proposes an Encryption Scheme that possess the following property : An adversary, who knows the encryption algorithm and is given the cyphertext, cannot obtain any information about the clear-text.
 Any implementation of a Public Key Cryptosystem, as proposed by Diffie and Hellman in [8], should possess this property.
 Our Encryption Scheme follows the ideas in the number theoretic implementations of a Public Key Cryptosystem due to Rivest, Shamir and Adleman [13], and Rabin [12].
Psychology and education : parallel and interactive approaches

Preliminary Considerations: What Is Educational Psychology? The Quality of United States Schools. Psychological Viewpoints and Related Paradigms of Learning: Functionalism. Associationism. Russian DialecticalMaterialist Psychology. Behaviorism. Gestalt Psychology. Criticisms of Psychoanalysis by Jung, Adler, and Sullivan. Cognitive Psychology. Professional Aspects of Teaching: Instructional Methods and Nomenclature. Dos and Don'ts of Effective Teaching. Fundamentals of Testing. Fundamentals of Readings. Epilogue and Prologue. Index.
Direct observation of respectful maternity care in five countries: a cross-sectional study of health facilities in East and Southern Africa

BACKGROUND
Poor quality of care at health facilities is a barrier to pregnant women and their families accessing skilled care. Increasing evidence from low resource countries suggests care women receive during labor and childbirth is sometimes rude, disrespectful, abusive, and not responsive to their needs. However, little is known about how frequently women experience these behaviors. This study is one of the first to report prevalence of respectful maternity care and disrespectful and abusive behavior at facilities in multiple low resource countries.


METHODS
Structured, standardized clinical observation checklists were used to directly observe quality of care at facilities in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, and the United Republic of Tanzania. Respectful care was represented by 10 items describing actions the provider should take to ensure the client was informed and able to make choices about her care, and that her dignity and privacy were respected. For each country, percentage of women receiving these practices and delivery room privacy conditions were calculated. Clinical observers' open-ended comments were also analyzed to identify examples of disrespect and abuse.


RESULTS
A total of 2164 labor and delivery observations were conducted at hospitals and health centers. Encouragingly, women overall were treated with dignity and in a supportive manner by providers, but many women experienced poor interactions with providers and were not well-informed about their care. Both physical and verbal abuse of women were observed during the study. The most frequently mentioned form of disrespect and abuse in the open-ended comments was abandonment and neglect.


CONCLUSIONS
Efforts to increase use of facility-based maternity care in low income countries are unlikely to achieve desired gains if there is no improvement in quality of care provided, especially elements of respectful care. This analysis identified insufficient communication and information sharing by providers as well as delays in care and abandonment of laboring women as deficiencies in respectful care. Failure to adopt a patient-centered approach and a lack of health system resources are contributing structural factors. Further research is needed to understand these barriers and develop effective interventions to promote respectful care in this context.
Type III procollagen-N-peptide as a predictor of persistent atrial fibrillation recurrence after cardioversion.

AIMS
Fibrosis and inflammation may play a significant role in the pathogenesis of atrial fibrillation (AF) recurrence. Type III procollagen-N-peptide (PIIINP) may be related to atrial fibrosis and play a role in predicting the recurrence of AF. We investigated whether PIIINP as a fibrosis marker predicts the recurrence of AF after cardioversion.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Serum PIIINP, interleukin-6, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, brain natriuretic peptide, renin and aldosterone were measured at baseline and 24 months in 88 patients (62%) with sinus rhythm (SR) maintenance and 54 patients (38%) with AF recurrence. Furthermore, the root mean square voltage in the last 20 ms (RMS20) via P-wave signal-averaged electrocardiogram (P-SAECG) was measured and the relationship between fibrosis biomarkers and RMS20 was examined. Baseline PIIINP with AF recurrence was significantly higher than for those with SR maintenance (0.664 vs. 0.581 U/mL, P = 0.001). However, there were no significant differences in other biomarkers. A logistic regression identified PIIINP (odds ratio 2.61, P = 0.008) as an independent predictor of AF recurrence. The RMS20 as measured by P-SAECG with SR maintenance and PIIINP levels <0.72 U/mL (at baseline) was significantly higher after 24 months than at baseline. Furthermore, the RMS20 with AF recurrence and PIIINP levels >0.72 U/mL (at baseline) was significantly lower after 24 months than baseline.


CONCLUSIONS
Elevated baseline PIIINP concentration is an independent predictor for AF recurrence after cardioversion. Furthermore, there is a relationship between PIIINP and RMS20 and the fibrosis of AF.
High precision pulsed selective laser sintering of metallic powders

The generative process of selective laser sintering of powders such as Titanium, Platinum alloys and steel can in comparison to cw radiation significantly be improved by using pulsed radiation. With an appropriate energy deposition in the metallic powder layer, the material properties of the selective laser sintered parts can locally be tailored to the requirements of the finished work piece. By adapting the laser parameters of a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser, notably pulse duration and local intensity, the degree of porosity, density and even the crystalline microstructure can be controlled. Pulsed interaction allows minimizing the average power needed for consolidation of the metallic powder, and leads to less residual thermal stresses. With laser post processing, the surface can achieve bulk-like density. Furthermore, we present the possibility of forming metallic glass components by sintering amorphous metallic powders.© (2005) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.