LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Occult cystobiliary communication presenting as postoperative biliary leakage after hydatid liver surgery: are there significant preoperative clinical predictors?

BACKGROUND
Occult cystobiliary communication (CBC) presents with biliary leakage, if the cystobiliary opening cannot be detected and repaired at operation. We investigated the clinical signs associated with the risk of occult CBC in the preoperative period by studying patients who developed biliary leakage after hydatid liver surgery.


METHODS
We analyzed the records of 191 patients treated for hydatid liver cyst. Postoperative biliary leakage developed in 41 patients (21.5%). Independent predictive factors were established by logistic regression analysis using clinical parameters, whose cutoff values were determined by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.


RESULTS
Postoperative biliary leakage presented as external biliary fistula in 31 (75.6%) of 41 patients, as biliary peritonitis in 6 (14.6%) and as cyst cavity biliary abscess in 4 (9.8%). Independent clinical predictors of occult CBC, represented by biliary leakage, were alkaline phosphatase > 250 U/L, total bilirubin > 17.1 micromol/L, direct bilirubin > 6.8 micromol/L, gamma-glutamyl transferase > 34.5 U/L, eosinophils > 0.09 and cyst diameter > 8.5 cm. Multilocular or degenerate cysts increased the risk of biliary leakage (p = 0.012). Postoperative complication rates were 53.7% in the patients with biliary leakage, and 10.0% (p < 0.001) in those without. The mean postoperative hospital stay was longer in patients with biliary leakage (14.3 [and standard deviation {SD} 1.9] d) than in those without (7.3 [SD 2.3] d) (p < 0.001). Nineteen (61.3%) of 31 biliary fistulae closed spontaneously within 10 days. The remaining 12 (38.7%) fistulae closed within 7 days after endoscopic sphincterotomy.


CONCLUSION
Factors that predict occult CBC due to hydatid liver cyst were identified. These factors should allow the likelihood of CBC to be determined and, thus, indicate the need for additional procedures during operation to prevent the complications of biliary leakage.
An overlooked cause of acute urinary retention in an adolescent girl: a case report

Massive hematocolpos resulting from an imperforate hymen is quite a rare cause of acute urinary retention, in an adolescent girl admitted to the emergency department. A 12-year-old girl suffering from severe inguinal pain and dysuria together with difficulty in urination for about 1 month was admitted to the emergency department for acute urinary retention. On gynecological examination, imperforate hymen was observed to be the cause of the urinary difficulty. Pelvic magnetic resonance imaging revealed a dilated vagina exerting pressure on the bladder outlet suggestive of hematocolpos. Cruciate hymenotomy was performed. The postoperative period and three follow-up visits of the patient up to the 6th month were uneventful. The diagnosis of imperforate hymen can be missed if a genital examination is not performed in adolescent girls presenting to emergency departments with urinary difficulty. The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness among emergency physicians about the probability of imperforate hymen while examining adolescent girls with urinary retention and intermittent lower abdominal pain.
N-gram Opcode Analysis for Android Malware Detection

Android malware has been on the rise in recent years due to the increasing popularity of Android and the proliferation of third party application markets. Emerging Android malware families are increasingly adopting sophisticated detection avoidance techniques and this calls for more effective approaches for Android malware detection. Hence, in this paper we present and evaluate an n-gram opcode features based approach that utilizes machine learning to identify and categorize Android malware. This approach enables automated feature discovery without relying on prior expert or domain knowledge for pre-determined features. Furthermore, by using a data segmentation technique for feature selection, our analysis is able to scale up to 10-gram opcodes. Our experiments on a dataset of 2520 samples showed achieved an f-measure of 98% using the n-gram opcode based approach. We also provide empirical findings that illustrate factors that have probable impact on the overall n-gram opcodes performance trends. Keyword: Android Malware, Malware Detection, Malware Categorization, Dalvik Bytecode, N-gram, Opcode, Feature Selection, Machine Learning.
Does the nature of schools matter? An exploration of selected school ecology factors on adolescent perceptions of school connectedness.

BACKGROUND
Connectedness to school is a significant predictor of adolescent health and academic outcomes. While individual predictors of connectedness have been well-described, little is known about school-level factors which may influence connectedness. A school's ecology, or its structural, functional, and built aspects, coupled with interpersonal interactions, may also help to enhance adolescent connectedness.


AIM
This study aims to identify school ecological characteristics which predict enhanced connectedness in secondary school.


SAMPLE
Data from 5,159 Grade 8 students (12-13 years) from 39 randomly selected schools were tracked until the end of Grade 9 (13-14 years).


METHOD
Students' self-reported school, teacher, and family connectedness, mental health and peer relationships were measured at two time points. Accounting for school-level clustering, student- and school-level ecological characteristics were modelled on self-reported school connectedness in Grades 8 and 9.


RESULTS
Students' higher school connectedness in Grades 8 and 9 was influenced by greater levels of family connectedness, fewer classroom and peer problems, less difficult secondary school transition, fewer emotional problems, and greater prosocial skills. Seven school-level ecological variables were significantly associated with school connectedness after controlling for student-level predictors. At the school-level, priority for pastoral care and students' aggregated writing skills scores significantly predicted concurrent and future enhanced connectedness.


CONCLUSIONS
Interventions to improve students' school connectedness should address individual student characteristics and school functional features such as pastoral care strategies and helping students to achieve greater academic outcomes. Future studies should focus on the cumulative longitudinal influence of school ecological and student-level predictors of school connectedness.
The effects of benzodiazepines in pregnancy.

OBJECTIVES
The objectives of the study were to assess the prevalence of anxiolytic use in pregnancy, the rate of congenital malformations in neonates at in utero exposure to these agents, and the possible association of congenital malformations with the use of these drugs in pregnancy.


METHOD
The study was conducted as cross-sectional study. The study was performed at university departments of gynecology and obstetrics in four Zagreb hospitals and included 893 pregnant women. Main outcome measures were pathological defects and congenital malformations.


RESULTS
The main anatomic group N drugs (nervous system) was predominated by the use of the benzodiazepine anxiolytic diazepam (FDA group D), which increased with gestational age. Diazepam was used by 74 (8.3%), 127 (14.2%) and 212 (23.7%) women in the first, second and third trimester respectively. Diazepam ranked second among twenty most frequently prescribed drugs in pregnancy. It was taken by 303 (33.9%) pregnant women, while congenital cardiovascular malformations were recorded in three children and genitourinary malformations in three children too.


CONCLUSIONS
The high utilization of diazepam in pregnancy that is not supported by professional guidelines is an issue of serious concern. In spite of some study limitations, its results pointed to inappropriate and even potentially harmful use of drugs in pregnant women from Zagreb, thus calling for upgrading the quality of therapy in this vulnerable period of life. In our opinion, other measures appear to be a more appropriate therapeutic modality than medicamentous therapy in many cases.
Technical museum as a contribute to Civil Engineering education

A Museum, when inserted in a Technical University, is a privileged place for the preservation of the historical memory concerning the construction techniques evolution along ages. The construction industry has been evolved in teaching methods, in the use of specific equipment and applied technologies, and in the way of presenting and making drawing. The Museum presents a reminder of how the technology advanced to the current methodologies of work. The Museum of Civil Engineering of the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) contains a significant collection of elements offered by teachers and entities which is in exhibition, in a proper room, inserted within the University space. Elements such as: a model of the Pombaline cage, illustrating the constructive technique anti-seismic applied after the earthquake of 1755 or the wooden models of roof frames are examples that are preserved and kept in adequate conditions, contributing to the dissemination of the technical heritage and to the memory and history of the Construction. In the context of the congress some elements used to support teaching and related with traditional building technologies are described in detail.
DATA COMPRESSION FOR EMITTER LOCATION

Locating emitters by cross-correlating received signals to compute their time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) and the frequency-difference-of-arrival (FDOA) requires that signal data received at one platform be transferred to the other platform. Often the data link used has insufficient bandwidth to accomplish the transfer within the time requirement, and therefore use of data compression is needed. This paper outlines a useful progression in compression techniques from those that consider only mean square error to those that consider the true impact on the estimated TDOA/FDOA accuracy. Within this context, specific results are presented for two compression approaches for TDOA/FDOA systems. The first is the application of block-adaptive quantizers (BAQ) to the real and imaginary parts of the complex baseband signal to be transferred. The second uses a wavelet transform together with an adaptively allocated set of quantizers; also, certain wavelet coefficients can be eliminated with lower impact on the TDOA/FDOA accuracy than expected from a mean-square quantization point of view.
Control and Modulation of Bidirectional Single-Phase AC–DC Three-Phase-Leg SPWM Converters With Active Power Decoupling and Minimal Storage Capacitance

In a single-phase grid-connected nanogrid system, a bidirectional ac-dc converter is usually required to transfer energy between the ac grid and a dc bus. Active ac power balancing is often implemented to prevent the ac grid ripple power from injecting into the dc bus. A four-phase-leg sinusoidal pulsewidth-modulation (SPWM) converter can readily provide power factor correction and active ac power balancing. In this paper, the use of three-phase-leg SPWM converters for achieving these functions is analyzed. A family of bidirectional single-phase ac-dc three-phase-leg SPWM converters with an ac storage capacitor for use in a nanogrid system is designed with a general control structure and a modulation scheme for minimizing the ac storage capacitance. The general control structure is designed to achieve a decoupled system of a power-factor-correction converter cascaded with an active ac power load at the dc bus. The decoupled system is developed based on decomposition to differential-mode and common-mode voltages. The modulation method involves an extra zero-sequence voltage injection derived from the three-phase-leg SPWM voltages without introducing higher order harmonic distortions. A significant reduction of the ac storage capacitance and an improvement of converter efficiency are achieved. The design and analysis are verified by simulations and experimental measurements.
Multi-site and multi-depth near-infrared spectroscopy in a model of simulated (central) hypovolemia: lower body negative pressure

To test the hypothesis that the sensitivity of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in reflecting the degree of (compensated) hypovolemia would be affected by the application site and probing depth. We simultaneously applied multi-site (thenar and forearm) and multi-depth (15–2.5 and 25–2.5 mm probe distance) NIRS in a model of simulated hypovolemia: lower body negative pressure (LBNP). The study group comprised 24 healthy male volunteers who were subjected to an LBNP protocol in which a baseline period of 30 min was followed by a step-wise manipulation of negative pressure in the following steps: 0, −20, −40, −60, −80 and −100 mmHg. Stroke volume and heart rate were measured using volume-clamp finger plethysmography. Two multi-depth NIRS devices were used to measure tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) and tissue hemoglobin index (THI) continuously in the thenar and the forearm. To monitor the shift of blood volume towards the lower extremities, calf THI was measured by single-depth NIRS. The main findings were that the application of LBNP resulted in a significant reduction in stroke volume which was accompanied by a reduction in forearm StO2 and THI. NIRS can be used to detect changes in StO2 and THI consequent upon central hypovolemia. Forearm NIRS measurements reflect hypovolemia more sensitively than thenar NIRS measurements. The sensitivity of these NIRS measurements does not depend on NIRS probing depth. The LBNP-induced shift in blood volume is reflected by a decreased THI in the forearm and an increased THI in the calf.
Efficient one-flask synthesis of water-soluble [60]fullerenols

Abstract C 60 molecule exhibited high reactivity towards the addition reaction of nitrogen dioxide radicals (·NO 2 ), which were generated by reaction of sodium nitrite with conc. HNO 3 . This chemical functionalization of C 60 resulted in polynitro fullerenes, C 60 (NO 2 ) n . Hydrolysis of polynitro fullerenes in aqueous NaOH gave the corresponding polyhydroxylated fullerene derivatives (fullerenols) in moderate overall yields. Results from mass spectra (FAB, negative ion) of fullerenols indicated their structure as C 60 derivatives with at least 16 hydroxy groups.
Worst-Case Diagnosis Completeness in Regular Graphs under the PMC Model

System-level diagnosis aims at the identification of faulty units in a system by the analysis of the system syndrome, that is, the outcomes of a set of interunit tests. For any given syndrome, it is possible to produce a correct (although possibly incomplete) diagnosis of the system if the number of faults is below a syndrome-dependent bound and the degree of diagnosis completeness, that is, the number of correctly diagnosed units, is also dependent on the actual syndrome sigma. The worst-case diagnosis completeness is a syndrome-independent bound that represents the minimum number of units that the diagnosis algorithm correctly diagnoses for any syndrome. This paper provides a lower bound to the worst-case diagnosis completeness for regular graphs for which vertex- isoperimetric inequalities are known and it shows how this bound can be applied to toroidal grids. These results prove a previous hypothesis about the influence of two topological parameters of the diagnostic graph, that is, the bisection width and the diameter, on the degree of diagnosis completeness.
Red Light Combined with Blue Light Irradiation Regulates Proliferation and Apoptosis in Skin Keratinocytes in Combination with Low Concentrations of Curcumin

Curcumin is a widely known natural phytochemical from plant Curcuma longa. In recent years, curcumin has received increasing attention because of its capability to induce apoptosis and inhibit cell proliferation as well as its anti-inflammatory properties in different cancer cells. However, the therapeutic benefits of curcumin are severely hampered due to its particularly low absorption via trans-dermal or oral bioavailability. Phototherapy with visible light is gaining more and more support in dermatological therapy. Red light is part of the visible light spectrum, which is able to deeply penetrate the skin to about 6 mm, and directly affect the fibroblast of the skin dermis. Blue light is UV-free irradiation which is fit for treating chronic inflammation diseases. In this study, we show that curcumin at low concentrations (1.25-3.12 μM) has a strong anti-proliferative effect on TNF-α-induced psoriasis-like inflammation when applied in combination with light-emitting-diode devices. The treatment was especially effective when LED blue light at 405 nm was combined with red light at 630 or 660 nm, which markedly amplified the anti-proliferative and apoptosis-inducing effects of curcumin. The experimental results demonstrated that this treatment reduced the viability of human skin keratinocytes, decreased cell proliferation, induced apoptosis, inhibited NF-κB activity and activated caspase-8 and caspase-9 while preserving the cell membrane integrity. Moreover, the combined treatment also down-regulated the phosphorylation level of Akt and ERK. Taken together, our results indicated that the combination of curcumin with LED blue light united red light irradiation can attain a higher efficiency of regulating proliferation and apoptosis in skin keratinocytes.
Cloning and characterization of an AtNHX2-like Na+/H+ antiporter gene from Ammopiptanthus mongolicus (Leguminosae) and its ectopic expression enhanced drought and salt tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana

An orthologue of the vacuolar Na+/H+ antiporter gene, AmNHX2, was isolated from a desert plant, Ammopiptanthus mongolicus, by RACE-PCR. It has a total length of 1,986 bp, with an open reading frame of 1,632 bp, encoding a predicted polypeptide of 543 amino acids. Sequence similarity and exon constituent analysis clearly suggested that AmNHX2 encoded an AtNHX2 (an antiporter from Arabidopsis) like vacuolar Na+/H+ antiporter. AmNHX2 could be strongly induced by both drought and salt stress. Heterologous expression in the yeast mutant nhx1 indicated that AmNHX2 was the orthologue of ScNHX1, and the complementation effect was almost the same as AtNHX1. Over-expressing AmNHX2 resulted in enhanced tolerances to both drought and salt stresses in transgenic Arabidopsis plants. The transgenic plants accumulated lower Na+ content in their leaves, showing healthier root system after salt stress, and retained more water during the drought stress. Our work suggested that AmNHX2 was a salt tolerance determinant in A. mongolicus, but might not be a contributor to the difference in salt sensitivity between A. thaliana and A. mongolicus.
A Comparison of Clinical Features and Mortality among Methicillin-Resistant and Methicillin-Sensitive Strains of Staphylococcus aureus Endocarditis

Our objective was to assess the clinical factors that would reliably distinguish methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) from methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) endocarditis. A retrospective cohort study of clinical features and mortality in patients with MRSA and MSSA endocarditis between March 1986 and March 2004 was performed in a 750-bed, tertiary care teaching hospital. A total of 32 patients (10 MRSA [31.3%] vs 22 MSSA [68.7%]) were evaluated. Their mean age and sex ratio (male/female) were as follows: 30.8 +/- 16.0 vs 24.4 +/- 19.6 years old and 6/4 vs 13/9, for MRSA and MSSA infective endocarditis (IE), respectively. Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that persistent bacteremia was significantly more prevalent in MRSA IE (OR, 10.0 [1.480- 67.552]; p, 0.018). There was a higher mortality trend for MRSA IE (50.0%) than for MSSA IE (9.1%) (p=0.019). However, persistent bacteremia was not associated with higher mortality (p > 0.05). These results indicate that if persistent bacteremia is documented, the likelihood of MRSA endocarditis should be viewed as high, and the patient's anti- staphylococcal therapy should be prolonged and/or changed to a more "potent" regimen.
A high precision reference data set for pedestrian navigation using foot-mounted inertial sensors

In this paper we present a reference data set that we are making publicly available to the indoor navigation community [8]. This reference data is intended for the analysis and verification of algorithms based on foot mounted inertial sensors. Furthermore, we describe our data collection methodology that is applicable to the analysis of a broad range of indoor navigation approaches. We employ a high precision optical reference system that is traditionally being used in the film industry for human motion capturing and in applications such as analysis of human motion in sports and medical rehabilitation. The data set provides measurements from a six degrees of freedom foot mounted inertial MEMS sensor array, as well as synchronous high resolution data from the optical tracking system providing ground truth for location and orientation. We show the use of this reference data set by comparing the performance of algorithms for an essential part of pedestrian dead reckoning systems for positioning, namely identification of the rest phase during the human gait cycle.
Using Dynamic Programming for Path Planning of a Spherical Mobile Robot

Spherical mobile robot has good static and dynamic stability, which allows the robot to face different kinds of obstacles and moving surfaces, but the lack of effective control methods has hindered its application and development. In this paper, we propose a direct approach to path planning of a 2DOFs (Degrees of Freedom) spherical robot based on Bellman’s “Dynamic Programming” (DP). While other path planning schemes rely on pre-planned optimal trajectories and/or feedback control techniques, in DP approach there is no need to design a control system because DP yields the optimal control inputs in closed loop or feedback form i.e. after completing DP table, for every state in the admissible region the optimal control inputs are known and the robot can move toward the final position. This enables the robot to function in semior even nonobservable environments. Results from many simulated experiments show that the proposed approach is capable of adopting an optimal path towards a predefined goal point from any given position/orientation in the admissible region. Keywords— spherical mobile robot; path planning; Dynamic Programming.
Situational Crime Prevention and Co-Offending

The crime prevention literature often contrasts “social prevention” and “situational prevention.” Social prevention focuses on reforming individuals through social policies. Situational prevention seeks instead to reduce crime by altering the settings or conditions in which we carry out daily routines, and avoids trying to change offender dispositions. Yet offender dispositions are not their only “social” feature. Much crime, especially at young ages, is “cooffending” carried out in small groups. In addition, offenders at diverse ages socialize in settings that lead to illegal acts in nearby times and places. Such settings are amenable to situational measures. Interestingly, situational crime prevention can alter the size, composition, timing, location, and informal supervision of small group activities and routines. This widens the range of crime reduction possibilities, while undermining the assertion that situational prevention is “non-social.”