LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Success of treatment modalities for labial fusion: a retrospective evaluation of topical and surgical treatments.

STUDY OBJECTIVE
Standard treatment for girls with labial fusion has included topical estrogen cream, manual separation, or surgery. Side effects may limit the use of topical estrogen. Betamethasone has recently shown efficacy at separating labial fusion. Local irritation and inflammation may be an initiator of labial fusion. No adverse effects of betamethasone treatment have been documented. Long-term side effects are unknown. This study compares therapies for conservative management of labial fusion for efficacy and focuses on the response rate, time to separation, recurrence, and side effects of treatment.


DESIGN
A retrospective chart review.


PARTICIPANTS
One hundred fifty-one prepubertal girls, mean age 3 years (range 0.25-8.75 years) diagnosed with labial fusion.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
To investigate the incidence of related symptoms, length of topical estrogen or betamethasone treatment, side effects, rate of successful separation, rates of recurrence, percentage requiring surgery, and postoperative outcomes in patients with labial adhesion who underwent treatment.


RESULTS
Of 151 patients with labial adhesion, 11 (7.3%) presented with urinary frequency, 30 (19.9%) with urinary tract infections, 13 (8.6%) with vaginitis, and 19 (12.6%) with post-void dripping. When compared to patients treated with betamethasone (1.3 months), patients treated primarily with premarin took nearly twice as long (2.2 months) for resolution of their adhesions. Rates of recurrence were lower for patients receiving betamethasone therapy. Side effects for estrogen therapy included breast budding and vaginal bleeding, and for betamethasone, local irritation was reported. Some patients went on to surgery and experienced recurrence after surgery.


CONCLUSION
Initial comparison of topical estrogen and betamethasone treatment of labial fusion suggests that betamethasone may separate fusion quicker with less recurrence and fewer side effects than topical estrogen therapy.
Program Synthesis Without Full Specifications for Novel Applications

Program Synthesis Without Full Specifications for Novel Applications Daniel Perelman Co-Chairs of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Daniel Grossman Computer Science & Engineering Affiliate Professor Sumit Gulwani Computer Science & Engineering Program synthesis is a family of techniques that generate programs from a description of what the program should do but not how it should do it. By designing a program synthesis algorithm together with the user interaction model we show that by accepting small increases in user effort, it is easier to write the synthesizer and the need for specialization of the synthesizer to a given domain is reduced without losing performance. In this work, we target three tasks to show the breadth of our methodology: code completion, end-user programming-by-example for data transformations, and feedback for introductory programming assignments. For each of these tasks, we develop an interaction model and program synthesis algorithm together to best support the user. In the first, we use partial expressions to allow programmers to express exactly what they don’t know and want the completion system to fill in. In the second, we use the sequence of examples to inform building up larger programs iteratively. In the last, we use attempts from other students on the same assignment to mine corrections.
Graph similarity and matching

Measures of graph similarity have a broad array of applications, including comparing chemical structures, navigating complex networks like the World Wide Web, and more recently, analyzing different kinds of biological data. This thesis surveys several different notions of similarity, then focuses on an interesting class of iterative algorithms that use the structural similarity of local neighborhoods to derive pairwise similarity scores between graph elements. We have developed a new similarity measure that uses a linear update to generate both node and edge similarity scores and has desirable convergence properties. This thesis also explores the application of our similarity measure to graph matching. We attempt to correctly position a subgraph GB within a graph GA using a maximum weight matching algorithm applied to the similarity scores between GA and GB. Significant performance improvements are observed when the topological information provided by the similarity measure is combined with additional information about the attributes of the graph elements and their local neighborhoods. Matching results are presented for subgraph matching within randomly-generated graphs; an appendix briefly discusses matching applications in the yeast interactome, a graph representing protein-protein interactions within yeast. Thesis Supervisor: George Verghese Title: Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Formation of e-satisfaction and repurchase intention: Moderating roles of computer self-efficacy and computer anxiety

The exploration of online customer satisfaction (called e-satisfaction hereafter) and repurchase becomes increasingly important in e-commerce. Yet, the process of e-satisfaction and repurchase formation and the context under which this process may vary have not been investigated rigorously. In order to fill this knowledge gap, this paper attempts to develop a conceptual model to decipher how e-satisfaction is formed. Furthermore, it investigates how computer-related individual differences such as computer self-efficacy and computer anxiety moderate this formation. The analysis results from a survey of 274 online buyers confirm that our antecedents play key roles in forming e-satisfaction and repurchase and the proposed moderators are important. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Reference-Dependent Job Search : Evidence from Hungary ∗

We propose a model of job search with reference-dependent preferences, where the reference point is given by recent income. Newly unemployed individuals search hard given that they are at a loss, but over time they get used to lower income, and thus search less. They search harder again in anticipation of a benefit cut, only to ultimately get used to it. The model fits the typical shape of the exit from unemployment, including the spike at the UI exhaustion point. The model also makes unique predictions on the response to benefit changes. We provide evidence using a reform in the unemployment system in Hungary. In November 2005, Hungary switched from a single-step UI system to a two-step system, with unchanged overall generosity. We show that the system generated increased hazard rates in anticipation of, and especially following, benefit cuts in ways the standard model has a hard time fitting, even when allowing for unobserved heterogeneity. We structurally estimate the model and estimate a weight on gain-loss utility comparable to the weight on the standard utility term, and a speed of adjustment of the reference point in the order of eight months.The results suggest that a revenue-neutral shift to multiple-step UI systems can speed exit from unemployment. ∗We would like to thank Lajos Bódis, David Card, Sebastian Findeisen, Gábor Kézdi, Patrick Kline, Matthew Rabin, Hedvig Horváth, Edward O’Donoghue, Alex Rees-Jones, Emmanuel Saez, Mihály Szoboszlai, Owen Zidar and audiences at Boston University, at the UCSB Berhavioral Conference, and at the 2014 BEAM conference for very helpful comments. We are grateful for János Köllő, Kitti Varadovics, Mónika Bálint, Dániel Biró for giving us access to the administrative data and providing continuous help throughout the project. We also thank Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch, Jessica Shui, and Ferenc Szucs for excellent research assistance and Gautam Rao for sharing his code. Financial support from support from the Center for Equitable Growth at UC Berkeley is gratefully acknowledged. All errors are our own. § sdellavi@econ.berkeley.edu, ‡ lindner@econ.berkeley.edu, §§reizer_balazs@ceu-budapest.edu,† johannes@bu.edu
Visual navigation and obstacle avoidance using a steering potential function

Humans have a remarkable ability to navigate using only vision, but mobile robots have not been nearly as successful. We propose a new approach to vision-guided local navigation, based upon a model of human navigation. Our approach uses the relative headings to the goal and to obstacles, the distance to the goal, and the angular width of obstacles, to compute a potential field over the robot heading. This potential field controls the angular acceleration of the robot, steering it towards the goal and away from obstacles. Because the steering is controlled directly, this approach is well suited to local navigation for nonholonomic robots. The resulting paths are smooth and have continuous curvature. This approach is designed to be used with single-camera vision without depth information but can also be used with other kinds of sensors. We have implemented and tested our method on a differential-drive robot and present our experimental results. c © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Diatom Autofocusing in Brightfield Microscopy: a Comparative Study

We present a number of autofocusing methods in lighting microscopy for its use in diatom identi cation. Among these, the Tenengrad method has been considered one of the best. The basic requirements for a practical autofocusing system are speed, sharpness and robustness to noise. Recently other focus measures based on a modi ed Laplacian method are said to perform better than Tenengrad. We investigate two sound methods based on a modi ed Tenengrad and a modied Laplacian. Measurements show that they provide a reliable and suitable focus measure that outperform similar methods. We investigate the window size analysis dependency and perform an univariate analysis on the focus measures. The focusing techniques are implemented in an automatic slide scanning system for diatom detection and identi cation for its use in the ADIAC project. 1
Cumulative iron dose and resistance to erythropoietin.

INTRODUCTION
Optimizing anemia treatment in hemodialysis (HD) patients remains a priority worldwide as it has significant health and financial implications. Our aim was to evaluate in a large cohort of chronic HD patients in Fresenius Medical Care centers in Spain the value of cumulative iron (Fe) dose monitoring for the management of iron therapy in erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA)-treated patients, and the relationship between cumulative iron dose and risk of hospitalization.


METHODS
Demographic, clinical and laboratory parameters from EuCliD(®) (European Clinical Dialysis Database) on 3,591 patients were recorded including ESA dose (UI/kg/week), erythropoietin resistance index (ERI) [U.I weekly/kg/gr hemoglobin (Hb)] and hospitalizations. Moreover the cumulative Fe dose (mg/kg of bodyweight) administered over the last 2 years was calculated. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify the main predictors of ESA resistance and risk of hospitalization. Patients belonging to the 4th quartile of ERI were defined as hypo-responders.


RESULTS
The 2-year iron cumulative dose was significantly higher in the 4th quartile of ERI. In hypo-responders, 2-year cumulative iron dose was the only iron marker associated with ESA resistance. At case-mix adjusted multivariate analysis, 2-year iron cumulative dose was an independent predictor of hospitalization risk.


DISCUSSION
In ESA-treated patients cumulative Fe dose could be a useful tool to monitor the appropriateness of Fe therapy and to prevent iron overload. To establish whether the associations between cumulative iron dose, ERI and hospitalization risk are causal or attributable to selection bias by indication, clinical trials are necessary.
Wideband metal mount UHF RFID tag

This paper presents a wideband UHF RFID tag designed for operating on multiple materials including metal. We describe the antenna structure and present the comparison of modeling and simulation results with experimental data.
Collaborative Filtering via Group-Structured Dictionary Learning

Structured sparse coding and the related structured dictionary learning problems are novel research areas in machine learning. In this paper we present a new application of structured dictionary learning for collaborative filtering based recommender systems. Our extensive numerical experiments demonstrate that the presented method outperforms its state-of-the-art competitors and has several advantages over approaches that do not put structured constraints on the dictionary elements.
Detecting and Locating Wormhole Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Beacon Nodes

This paper focuses on wormhole attacks detection in wireless sensor networks. The wormhole attack is particularly challenging to deal with since the adversary does not need to compromise any nodes and can use laptops or other wireless devices to send the packets on a low latency channel. This paper introduces an easy and effective method to detect and locate the wormholes: Since beacon nodes are assumed to know their coordinates, the straight line distance between each pair of them can be calculated and then compared with the corresponding hop distance, which in this paper equals hop counts × node’s transmission range R. Dramatic difference may emerge because of an existing wormhole. Our detection mechanism is based on this. The approximate location of the wormhole can also be derived in further steps based on this information. To the best of our knowledge, our method is much easier than other wormhole detecting schemes which also use beacon nodes, and to those have special requirements on each nodes (e.g., GPS receivers or tightly synchronized clocks or directional antennas), ours is more economical. Simulation results show that the algorithm is successful in detecting and locating wormholes when the density of beacon nodes reaches 0.008 per m. Keywords—Beacon node, Wireless sensor network, Wormhole attack.
Feedback Linearization Direct Torque Control With Reduced Torque and Flux Ripples for IPMSM Drives

This paper designs a feedback linearization direct torque control (FL-DTC) based on the space vector modulation (SVM) which can noticeably reduce the electromagnetic torque and stator flux ripples that affect the system efficiency on interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) drives. First, a decoupled linear IPMSM model with two state variables (i.e., the stator flux and electromagnetic torque) is derived to implement the proposed FL-DTC strategy that preserves some advantages such as fast torque control, high torque at low speed, and fast speed response. Also, the proposed technique greatly alleviates the torque and stator flux ripples which are the major concerns of the classical hysteresis-based DTC scheme and have an effect on the stator current distortion. The system stability with the designed FL-DTC method is mathematically analyzed using the Lyapunov stability theory. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed control law is validated through simulation results with MATLAB/Simulink and experimental results obtained from a prototype 1-HP IPMSM drive with TI TMS320F28335 digital signal processor (DSP). The verification results demonstrate that the proposed FL-DTC scheme achieves faster torque response, smaller torque ripple, and lower stator flux ripple than the conventional SVM-based PI-DTC approach under parameter uncertainties and external disturbances.
A Fast Emulation-Based NoC Prototyping Framework

This paper presents an FPGA emulation-based fast network on chip (NoC) prototyping framework, called dynamic reconfigurable NoC (DRNoC) emulation platform. The main, distinguishing, characteristic of this approach is that design exploration does not requires re-synthesis, accelerating the process. For this aim, partial reconfiguration capabilities of some state of the art FPGAs have been developed and applied. The paper describes all the building elements of the proposed solution: the used partial reconfiguration approach, the design space exploration framework itself, and the data measuring system. Results and a use case are shown.
Surveillance and violence from afar: The politics of drones and liminal security-scapes

As surveillance and military devices, drones—or ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’—offer a prism for theorizing the technological politics of warfare and governance. This prism reveals some violent articulations of US imperialism and nationalism, the dehumanizing translation of bodies into ‘targets’ for remote monitoring and destruction, and the insidious application of militarized systems and rationalities to domestic territories and populations. In this article, we analyze the deployment of drones within warzones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan and borderzones and urban areas in the USA. What we call ‘the drone stare’ is a type of surveillance that abstracts people from contexts, thereby reducing variation, difference, and noise that may impede action or introduce moral ambiguity. Through these processes, drones further normalize the ongoing subjugation of those marked as Other.
Analysis of the effect of the mitochondrial prohibitin complex, a context-dependent modulator of longevity, on the C. elegans metabolome☆

The mitochondrial prohibitin complex, composed of two proteins, PHB-1 and PHB-2, is a context-dependent modulator of longevity. Specifically, prohibitin deficiency shortens the lifespan of otherwise wild type worms, while it dramatically extends the lifespan under compromised metabolic conditions. This extremely intriguingly phenotype has been linked to alterations in mitochondrial function and in fat metabolism. However, the true function of the mitochondrial prohibitin complex remains elusive. Here, we used gas chromatography coupled to a flame ionization detector (GC/FID) and ¹H NMR spectroscopy to gain molecular insights into the effect of prohibitin depletion on the Caenorhabditis elegans metabolome. We analysed the effect of prohibitin deficiency in two different developmental stages and under two different conditions, which result in opposing longevity phenotypes, namely wild type worms and daf-2(e1370) insulin signalling deficient mutants. Prohibitin depletion was shown to alter the fatty acid (GC/FID) and ¹H NMR metabolic profiles of wild type animals both at the fourth larval stage of development (L4) and at the young adult (YA) stage, while being more pronounced at the later stage. Furthermore, wild type and the diapause mutant daf-2(e1370), either expressing or not prohibitin, were clearly distinguishable based on their metabolic profiles, revealing changes in fatty acid composition, as well as in carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism. Moreover, the metabolic data indicate that daf-2(e1370) mutants are more robust than the wild type animals to changes induced by prohibitin depletion. The impact of prohibitin depletion on the C. elegans metabolome will be discussed herein in the scope of its effect on longevity. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Aging. Guest Editor: Aleksandra Trifunovic.
Occupational noise exposure and sensorineural hearing loss among workers of a steel rolling mill

Hearing loss is one of the most common chronic health conditions and has important implications for the patient’s quality of life. However, hearing loss is substantially underestimated and under treated. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of sensorineural hearing loss among the workers in a steel rolling mill in Nigeria. Each of the 150 randomly selected subjects had a structured questionnaire administered to them, followed by a full otological examination. Of these, 116 had tympanometry and pure-tone audiometry. Also a noise mapping of their respective work units was done. The workers were exposed to noise levels varying from 49  to 93 dBA. About 28.2% of the 103 who had their audiogram analysed had mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss in their better ear and 56.8% of them had mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss in their worse ear. The pure-tone average and the average hearing thresholds at 4 kHz for the groups significantly increased with an increasing noise exposure level. The prevalence of sensorineural hearing loss among the study population is high; and noise exposure is at least contributory. Pre-employment and regular audiometry while on the job is highly recommended.
Multidisciplinary approaches to the management of high blood pressure.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW
Studies on collaborative and multidisciplinary approaches to the management of hypertension published in the past 2 years are summarized. Expanding scopes of practice for nonphysician health professionals, a need to build capacity in the healthcare system, and a movement toward multidisciplinary care warrant an examination of the evidence in this area.


RECENT FINDINGS
Multidisciplinary care for hypertension management, across the majority of studies identified, resulted in improved blood pressure (BP) outcomes and the timeliness of achieving treatment targets. Interventions involving therapeutic decision-making by nonphysician health professionals consistently resulted in significant BP improvements compared with usual care, whereas more passive approaches, such as education and lifestyle monitoring programs, were unable to significantly benefit participants' BP.


SUMMARY
Our findings support recent efforts to integrate collaborative care approaches into chronic disease management, with the strongest evidence for pharmacist care. Expanding scopes of practice and clinical decision-making protocols for nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, and physiotherapists have the potential to further improve hypertension care.
A Statistical Analysis of Cryptocurrencies

Stephen Chan 1, Jeffrey Chu 1, Saralees Nadarajah 1,* and Joerg Osterrieder 2 1 School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK; stephen.chan@manchester.ac.uk (S.C.); jeffrey.chu@manchester.ac.uk (J.C.) 2 School of Engineering, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, 8401 Winterthur, Switzerland; joerg.osterrieder@zhaw.ch * Correspondence: saralees.nadarjah@manchester.ac.uk; Tel.: +44-161-275-5912