LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Does organic farming face distinctive livestock welfare issues

The recent development and growth of organic livestock farming and the related development of national and international regulations has fuelled discussions among scientists and philosophers concerning the proper conceptualisation of animal welfare. These discussions on livestock welfare in organic farming draw on the conventional discussions and disputes on animal welfare, which involve issues such as different definitions of welfare (clinical health, absence of suffering, sum of positive and negative experiences, etc.), the possibility for objective measures of animal welfare and the acceptable level of welfare. It seems clear that livestock welfare is a value-laden concept and that animal welfare science cannot be made independent of questions of values and ethics. The question investigated here is whether those values that underpin organic farming, in particular, also affect the interpretation of livestock welfare and, if so, how. While some of the issues raised in connection with organic farming are relatively uncontroversial, others are not. The introduction of organic farming values seems to introduce new criteria for what counts a good animal welfare, as well as a different ethical basis for taking moral decisions on welfare. Organic farming embodies distinctive systemic or communitarian ethical ideas and the organic values are connected to a systemic conception of nature, of agriculture, of the farm and of the animal. The new criteria of welfare are related to concepts such as naturalness, harmony, integrity and care. While the organic values overlap with those involved in the conventional discussion of animal welfare, some of them suggest a need to set new priorities and to re-conceptualise animal welfare – for example, with respect to 'naturalness', in relation to the possibilities for expression of natural behaviour and in relation to animal integrity as a concept for organismic harmony. The organic perspective also seems to suggest a wider range of solutions to welfare problems than changes in farm routines or operations on the animals. The systemic solutions include the choice and reproduction of suitable breeds, changes in the farm structure, and changes in the larger production and consumption system including consumer perceptions and preferences. But the organic values may also call for sacrifices of individual welfare in a conventional sense in order to advance welfare from the perspective of organic farming. Whether this is good or bad cannot be decided without entering into an inquiry and discussion of the values and ethics involved.
Clinical and economic burden of surgical site infection (SSI) and predicted financial consequences of elimination of SSI from an English hospital.

BACKGROUND
Although surgical site infections (SSIs) are known to be associated with increased length of stay (LOS) and additional cost, their impact on the profitability of surgical procedures is unknown.


AIM
To determine the clinical and economic burden of SSI over a two-year period and to predict the financial consequences of their elimination.


METHODS
SSI surveillance and Patient Level Information and Costing System (PLICS) datasets for patients who underwent major surgical procedures at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust between April 2010 and March 2012 were consolidated. The main outcome measures were the attributable postoperative length of stay (LOS), cost, and impact on the margin differential (profitability) of SSI. A secondary outcome was the predicted financial consequence of eliminating all SSIs.


FINDINGS
The median additional LOS attributable to SSI was 10 days [95% confidence interval (CI): 7-13 days] and a total of 4694 bed-days were lost over the two-year period. The median additional cost attributable to SSI was £5,239 (95% CI: 4,622-6,719) and the aggregate extra cost over the study period was £2,491,424. After calculating the opportunity cost of eliminating all SSIs that had occurred in the two-year period, the combined overall predicted financial benefit of doing so would have been only £694,007. For seven surgical categories, the hospital would have been financially worse off if it had successfully eliminated all SSIs.


CONCLUSION
SSI causes significant clinical and economic burden. Nevertheless the current system of reimbursement provided a financial disincentive to their reduction.
Guiding Hypertension Management Using Central Blood Pressure: Effect of Medication Withdrawal on Left Ventricular Function.

BACKGROUND
Central blood pressure (BP) is an acknowledged contributor to end-organ damage and independent determinant of prognosis. Primary analysis from the BPGUIDE study demonstrated no detriment on left ventricular (LV) structure from central BP-guided hypertension management, despite significant medication withdrawal. However, the effect of this on LV function has not been investigated. In this study, we sought to investigate the impact of central BP-guided hypertension management on LV systolic and diastolic performance.


METHODS
A total of 286 enrollees with uncomplicated hypertension were randomized to therapeutic decisions guided by best-practice usual care (UC) or, in addition, by central BP intervention (CBP) for 12 months. Each participant underwent baseline and follow-up 2-dimensional echocardiography, with assessment undertaken by an expert blinded to participant allocation.


RESULTS
Antihypertensive medication quantity remained unchanged for UC but significantly decreased with intervention. However, no significant between-group differences were noted for changes during follow-up in both brachial and central BP, as well as other central hemodynamic parameters: augmentation index and augmented pressure. Similarly, there were no differences between groups in parameters of LV diastolic function: tissue e' velocity (∆UC vs. ∆CBP; P = 0.27) and E/e' ratio (∆UC vs. ∆CBP; P = 0.60), and systolic parameters: LV longitudinal strain (∆UC vs. ∆CBP; P = 0.55), circumferential strain (∆UC vs. ∆CBP; P = 0.79), and ejection fraction (∆UC vs. ∆CBP; P = 0.15).


CONCLUSIONS
Hypertension management guided by central BP, resulting in significant withdrawal of medication to maintain appropriate BP control, had no adverse effect on LV systolic or diastolic function. Clinical trials registration: Australia New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry Number ACTRN12608 000041358.
A Comprehensive Survey on Bengali Phoneme Recognition

 SUST, ICERIE Abstract: Hidden Markov model based various phoneme recognition methods for Bengali language is reviewed. Automatic phoneme recognition for Bengali language using multilayer neural network is reviewed. Usefulness of multilayer neural network over single layer neural network is discussed. Bangla phonetic feature table construction and enhancement for Bengali speech recognition is also discussed. Comparison among these methods is discussed.
CHECKER: on-site checking in RFID-based supply chains

Counterfeit detection in RFID-based supply chains aims at preventing adversaries from injecting fake products that do not meet quality standards. This paper introduces CHECKER, a new protocol for counterfeit detection in RFID-based supply chains through on-site checking. While RFID-equipped products travel through the supply chain, RFID readers can verify product genuineness by checking the validity of the product's path. CHECKER uses a polynomial-based encoding to represent paths in the supply chain. Each tag T in CHECKER stores an IND-CCA encryption of T's identifier ID and a signature of ID using the polynomial encoding of T's path as secret key. CHECKER is provably secure and privacy preserving. An adversary can neither inject fake products into the supply chain nor trace products. Moreover, RFID tags in CHECKER can be cheap read/write only tags that do not perform any computation. Per tag, only 120 Bytes storage are required.
Invariant Human Action Recognition Using Histograms of 3 D Joints

In this paper, we present a novel approach for human action recognition with histograms of 3D joint locations (HOJ3D) as a compact representation of postures. We extract the 3D skeletal joint locations from Kinect depth maps using Shotton et al.'s method [6]. The HOJ3D computed from the action depth sequences are reprojected using LDA and then clustered into k posture visual words, which represent the prototypical poses of actions. The temporal evolutions of those visual words are modeled by discrete hidden Markov models (HMMs). In addition, due to the design of our spherical coordinate system and the robust 3D skeleton estimation from Kinect, our method demonstrates significant view invariance on our 3D action dataset. Our dataset is composed of 200 3D sequences of 10 indoor activities performed by 10 individuals in varied views. Our method is real-time and achieves superior results on the challenging 3D action dataset. We also tested our algorithm on the MSR Action3D dataset and our algorithm outperforms Li et al. [25] on most of the cases.
Seroadaptive Practices: Association with HIV Acquisition among HIV-Negative Men Who Have Sex with Men

BACKGROUND
Although efficacy is unknown, many men who have sex with men (MSM) attempt to reduce HIV risk by adapting condom use, partner selection, or sexual position to the partner's HIV serostatus. We assessed the association of seroadaptive practices with HIV acquisition.


METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
We pooled data on North American MSM from four longitudinal HIV-prevention studies. Sexual behaviors reported during each six-month interval were assigned sequentially to one of six mutually exclusive risk categories: (1) no unprotected anal intercourse (UAI), (2) having a single negative partner, (3) being an exclusive top (only insertive anal sex), (4) serosorting (multiple partners, all HIV negative), (5) seropositioning (only insertive anal sex with potentially discordant partners), and (6) UAI with no seroadaptive practices. HIV antibody testing was conducted at the end of each interval. We used Cox models to evaluate the independent association of each category with HIV acquisition, controlling for number of partners, age, race, drug use, and intervention assignment. 12,277 participants contributed to 60,162 six-month intervals with 663 HIV seroconversions. No UAI was reported in 47.4% of intervals, UAI with some seroadaptive practices in 31.8%, and UAI with no seroadaptive practices in 20.4%. All seroadaptive practices were associated with a lower risk, compared to UAI with no seroadaptive practices. However, compared to no UAI, serosorting carried twice the risk (HR = 2.03, 95%CI:1.51-2.73), whereas seropositioning was similar in risk (HR = 0.85, 95%CI:0.50-1.44), and UAI with a single negative partner and as an exclusive top were both associated with a lower risk (HR = 0.56, 95%CI:0.32-0.96 and HR = 0.55, 95%CI:0.36-0.84, respectively).


CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE
Seroadaptive practices appear protective when compared with UAI with no seroadaptive practices, but serosorting appears to be twice as risky as no UAI. Condom use and limiting number of partners should be advocated as first-line prevention strategies, but seroadaptive practices may be considered harm-reduction for men at greatest risk.
Chaos Engineering

Modern software-based services are implemented as distributed systems with complex behavior and failure modes. Many large tech organizations are using experimentation to verify such systems' reliability. Netflix engineers call this approach chaos engineering. They've determined several principles underlying it and have used it to run experiments. This article is part of a theme issue on DevOps.
Deep neural network based demand side short term load forecasting

In smart grid, one of the most important research areas is load forecasting; it spans from traditional time series analysis to recent machine learning approach and mostly focuses on forecasting aggregated electricity consumption. However, the importance of demand side energy management including individual load forecasting is becoming critical. In this paper, we propose deep neural network (DNN) based load forecasting models, and apply them to demand side empirical load database. DNNs are trained by two different ways: pre-training restricted Boltzmann machine and using rectified linear unit without pre-training. DNN forecasting models are trained by individual customer's electricity consumption data and regional meteorological elements. To verify the performance of DNNs, forecasting results are compared with shallow neural network (SNN), and double seasonal Holt-Winters (DSHW) model. The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and relative root mean square error (RRMSE) are used for verification. The results show that DNNs exhibit accurate and robust forecasts compared to other forecasting models, e.g., MAPE and RRMSE are reduced by up to 17% and 22% compared to SNN, and 9% and 29% compared to DSHW.
Effects of lixisenatide once daily on gastric emptying in type 2 diabetes — Relationship to postprandial glycemia

OBJECTIVES
To determine the effects of lixisenatide, a new once-daily (QD) glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist, on postprandial glucose (PPG) and gastric emptying, and the relationship between these effects in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).


METHODS
Data were obtained from a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study with treatment duration of 28 days in patients with T2DM receiving ≤2 oral antidiabetic drugs. Lixisenatide was injected subcutaneously using an ascending dose range (5-20 μg) increased every fifth day in increments of 2.5 μg. Blood glucose was determined before and after three standardized meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Gastric emptying of the standardized breakfast was determined by a (13)C-octanoic acid breath test at baseline (Day-1) and at Day 28.


RESULTS
A total of 21 and 22 patients were randomized to lixisenatide 20 μg QD and placebo, respectively. With lixisenatide 20 μg QD, there was a reduction in PPG when compared with placebo after breakfast (p<0.0001), lunch (p<0.001) and dinner (p<0.05). Hence, lixisenatide 20 μg administered in the morning exhibited a pharmacodynamic effect on blood glucose throughout the day. Gastric emptying (50% emptying time) increased substantially from baseline with lixisenatide 20 μg QD, but not with placebo (change from baseline ± SD: -24.1 ± 133.1 min for placebo and 211.5 ± 278.5 min for lixisenatide; p<0.01). There was an inverse relationship between PPG area under the curve after breakfast and gastric emptying with lixisenatide 20 μg QD (n=17, r(2)=0.51, p<0.05), but not with placebo.


CONCLUSIONS
In this study, lixisenatide at a dose of 20 μg QD reduced postprandial glycemic excursions in patients with T2DM, possibly as a result of sustained slowing of gastric emptying.
Religion and political conflict in Latin America

The authors examine popular religion as a vital source of new values and experiences as well as a source of pressure for change in the church, political life, and the social order as a whole and deal with the issues of poverty and the role of the poor within the church and political structures. Exploring areas from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Chile, the authors analyze the transformation in popular religion and reevaluate the growth of grassroots organizations. |Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in History, this book recreates and analyzes the dramatic political and religious confrontations that transformed Virginia in the second half of the eighteenth-century. (Please see cloth edition published 5/82.)
The association of registered nurse staffing levels and patient outcomes: systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the association between registered nurse (RN) staffing and patient outcomes in acute care hospitals.


STUDY SELECTION
Twenty-eight studies reported adjusted odds ratios of patient outcomes in categories of RN-to-patient ratio, and met inclusion criteria. Information was abstracted using a standardized protocol.


DATA SYNTHESIS
Random effects models assessed heterogeneity and pooled data from individual studies. Increased RN staffing was associated with lower hospital related mortality in intensive care units (ICUs) [odds ratios (OR), 0.91; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.86-0.96], in surgical (OR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.80-0.89), and in medical patients (OR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.94-0.95) per additional full time equivalent per patient day. An increase by 1 RN per patient day was associated with a decreased odds ratio of hospital acquired pneumonia (OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.56-0.88), unplanned extubation (OR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.36-0.67), respiratory failure (OR, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.27-0.59), and cardiac arrest (OR, 0.72; 95% CI, 0.62-0.84) in ICUs, with a lower risk of failure to rescue (OR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.79-0.90) in surgical patients. Length of stay was shorter by 24% in ICUs (OR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.62-0.94) and by 31% in surgical patients (OR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.55-0.86).


CONCLUSIONS
Studies with different design show associations between increased RN staffing and lower odds of hospital related mortality and adverse patient events. Patient and hospital characteristics, including hospitals' commitment to quality of medical care, likely contribute to the actual causal pathway.
Adaptive splitting protocols for RFID tag collision arbitration

Tag identification is an important tool in RFID systems with applications for monitoring and tracking. A RFID reader recognizes tags through communication over a shared wireless channel. When multiple tags simultaneously transmit their IDs to a reader, the tag signals collide and this collision disturbs the reader's identification process. Therefore, tag collision arbitration for passive RFID tags is a significant issue for fast identification. This paper presents two adaptive tag anti-collision protocols, an Adaptive Query Splitting protocol (AQS), which is an improvement on the query tree protocol and an Adaptive Binary Splitting protocol (ABS), which is based on the binary tree protocol, which is a de facto standard for RFID anti-collision protocols. To reduce collisions and identify tags efficiently, adaptive splitting protocols use information obtained from the last process of tag identification. Our performance evaluation shows that AQS and ABS outperform other tree based tag anti-collision protocols.
Mid-infrared active graphene nanoribbon plasmonic waveguide devices

Kelvin J. A. Ooi, Hong Son Chu,* Lay Kee Ang, and Ping Bai Electronics & Photonics Department, A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing, 1 Fusionopolis Way, #16-16 Connexis, Singapore 138632 School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Block S1, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798 Engineering Product Development, Singapore University of Technology and Design, 20 Dover Drive, Singapore 138682 e-mail: baiping@ihpc.a‐star.edu.sg *Corresponding author: chuhs@ihpc.a‐star.edu.sg
Insomnia, Health-Related Quality of Life and Healthcare Resource Consumption

Objective: Insomnia is a prevalent sleep complaint which has been reported to be greatly associated with reduced health-related quality of life (HR-QOL) and increased healthcare resource use. This study documents the prevalence of insomnia, and its impact on patients’ HR-QOL and healthcare resource use in managed- care settings in the US. Design and Setting: A multi-site survey of 5 American Medical Group Association ® (AMGA) clinics was conducted. Each clinic mailed questionnaires to 1100 randomly selected individuals enrolled in its healthcare system and distributed questionnaires to 400 individuals during a clinic visit and prior to seeing a physician. The questionnaire was a form of the Health Status Questionnaire with the well-validated Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form (SF-36) Health Survey, a 3-question depression screen, a sleep questionnaire, demographic variables, and questions about medical encounters and prescription and over-thecounter (OTC) drug use. Main outcome measures and results: Approximately one-third of managedcare enrollees in this study reported insomnia with daytime dysfunction. Individuals with insomnia reported lower HR-QOL scores and increased healthcare resource use compared with individuals with no insomnia. After controlling for demographic variables and comorbid conditions, the negative association of insomnia remained significant on all HR-QOL scores, emergency room visits, calls to the physician and OTC drug use. Conclusions: Insomnia is significantly associated with reduced HR-QOL and increased healthcare resource use in enrollees of managed-care organisations.
Anomaly detection in online social networks

Anomalies in online social networks can signify irregular, and often illegal behaviour. Detection of such anomalies has been used to identify malicious individuals, including spammers, sexual predators, and online fraudsters. In this paper we survey existing computational techniques for detecting anomalies in online social networks. We characterise anomalies as being either static or dynamic, and as being nline social networks labelled or unlabelled, and survey methods for detecting these different types of anomalies. We suggest that the detection of anomalies in online social networks is composed of two sub-processes; the selection and calculation of network features, and the classification of observations from this feature space. In addition, this paper provides an overview of the types of problems that anomaly detection can address and identifies key areas for future research. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Urinary dysfunction after rectal cancer treatment is mainly caused by surgery.

BACKGROUND
Urinary dysfunction (UD) is common after rectal cancer treatment, but the contribution of each treatment component (surgery and radiotherapy) to its development remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate UD during 5 years after total mesorectal excision (TME) and to investigate the influence of preoperative radiotherapy (PRT) and surgical factors.


METHODS
Patients with operable rectal cancer were randomized to TME with or without PRT. Questionnaires concerning UD were completed by 785 patients before and at several time points after surgery. Possible risk factors, including PRT, demographics, tumour location, and type and extent of resection, were investigated by multivariable regression analysis.


RESULTS
Long-term incontinence was reported by 38.1 per cent of patients, of whom 72.0 per cent had normal preoperative function. Preoperative incontinence (relative risk (RR) 2.75, P = 0.001) and female sex (RR 2.77, P < 0.001) were independent risk factors. Long-term difficulty in bladder emptying was reported by 30.6 per cent of patients, of whom 65.0 per cent had normal preoperative function. Preoperative difficulty in bladder emptying (RR 2.94, P < 0.001), peroperative blood loss (RR 1.73, P = 0.028) and autonomic nerve damage (RR 2.82, P = 0.024) were independent risk factors. PRT was not associated with UD.


CONCLUSION
UD is a significant clinical problem after rectal cancer treatment and is not related to PRT, but rather to surgical nerve damage.
Virtual reality for fire evacuation research

Virtual reality (VR) has become a popular approach to study human behavior in fire. The present position paper analyses Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of VR as a research tool for human behavior in fire. Virtual environments provide a maximum of experimental control, are easy to replicate, have relatively high ecological validity, and allow safe study of occupant behavior in scenarios that otherwise would be too dangerous. Lower ecological validity compared to field studies, ergonomic aspects, and technical limitations are the main weaknesses of the method. Increasingly realistic simulations and other technological advances provide new opportunities for this relatively young method. In this position paper, we argue that VR is a promising complementary laboratory tool in the quest to understand human behavior in fire and to improve fire safety.