LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease not on dialysis receiving extended dosing regimens of darbepoetin alfa: long-term results of the EXTEND observational cohort study

BACKGROUND
Extended dosing of the erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA) darbepoetin alfa (DA) once biweekly or monthly reduces anaemia treatment burden. This observational study assessed outcomes and dosing patterns in patients with chronic kidney disease not on dialysis (CKD-NoD) commencing extended dosing of DA.


METHODS
Adult CKD-NoD patients starting extended dosing of DA in Europe or Australia in June 2006 or later were followed up until December 2012. Outcomes included haemoglobin (Hb) concentration, ESA dosing, mortality rates and receipt of dialysis and renal transplantation. Subgroup analyses were conducted for selected outcomes.


RESULTS
Of 6035 enrolled subjects, 5723 (94.8%) met analysis criteria; 1795 (29.7%) received dialysis and 238 (3.9%) underwent renal transplantation. Mean (standard deviation) Hb concentration at commencement of extended dosing was 11.0 (1.5) g/dL. Mean [95% confidence interval (CI)] Hb 12 months after commencement of extended dosing (primary outcome) was 11.6 g/dL (11.5, 11.6) overall and was similar across countries, with no differences between subjects previously treated with an ESA versus ESA-naïve subjects, subjects with versus without prior renal transplant or diabetics versus non-diabetics. Weekly ESA dose gradually decreased following commencement of extended DA dosing and was similar across subgroups. The decrease in weekly DA dose was accompanied by an increase in the proportion of patients receiving iron therapy. Hb concentrations declined following changes in ESA labels and treatment guidelines. The mortality rate (95% CI) was 7.06 (6.68, 7.46) deaths per 100 years of follow-up. Subjects alive at study end had stable Hb concentrations in the preceding year, while those who died had lower and declining Hb concentrations in their last year.


CONCLUSIONS
Long-term, extended dosing of DA maintained Hb concentrations in patients already treated with an ESA and corrected and maintained Hb in ESA-naïve patients.
Is there a difference in clinical efficacy of bright light therapy for different types of depression? A pilot study.

BACKGROUND
There is growing interest in the possible applications of Bright Light Therapy (BLT). BLT might be a valid alternative or add-on treatment for many other psychiatric disorders beyond seasonal affective disorder. This pilot study aims to examine whether the efficacy of Bright Light Therapy (BLT) is similar for different subtypes of mood disorders.


METHODS
Participants were 48 newly admitted outpatients with major depressive disorder with either melancholic features (n=20) or atypical features (n=28). Morning BLT was administered daily for 30 min at 5.000-10.000 lx on working days for up to 3 consecutive weeks.


RESULTS
Participants' depressive symptoms improved significantly after BLT (p<.05, d=-.53). The effects of BLT remained stable across a 4 week follow-up. There were no significant differences in efficacy of BLT between groups (p>.05). No effect of seasonality on the improvement in depressive symptoms after BLT was found, (p=.781).


LIMITATIONS
The study had a small sample size and lacked a control condition.


CONCLUSIONS
This pilot study provides preliminary evidence that BLT could be a promising treatment for depression, regardless of the melancholic or atypical character of the depressive symptoms.
Effective surgical safety checklist implementation.

BACKGROUND
Research suggests that surgical safety checklists can reduce mortality and other postoperative complications. The real world impact of surgical safety checklists on patient outcomes, however, depends on the effectiveness of hospitals' implementation processes.


STUDY DESIGN
We studied implementation processes in 5 Washington State hospitals by conducting semistructured interviews with implementation leaders and surgeons from September to December 2009. Interviews were transcribed, analyzed, and compared with findings from previous implementation research to identify factors that distinguish effective implementation.


RESULTS
Qualitative analysis suggested that effectiveness hinges on the ability of implementation leaders to persuasively explain why and adaptively show how to use the checklist. Coordinated efforts to explain why the checklist is being implemented and extensive education regarding its use resulted in buy-in among surgical staff and thorough checklist use. When implementation leaders did not explain why or show how the checklist should be used, staff neither understood the rationale behind implementation nor were they adequately prepared to use the checklist, leading to frustration, disinterest, and eventual abandonment despite a hospital-wide mandate.


CONCLUSIONS
The impact of surgical safety checklists on patient outcomes is likely to vary with the effectiveness of each hospital's implementation process. Further research is needed to confirm these findings and reveal additional factors supportive of checklist implementation.
Additive Runge-Kutta schemes for convection-diffusion-reaction equations

Additive Runge Kutta (ARK) methods are investigated for application to the spatially discretized one dimensional convection diffusion reaction (CDR) equations. First, accuracy, stability, conservation, and dense output are considered for the general case when N different Runge Kutta methods are grouped into a single composite method. Then, implicit explicit, N = 2, additive Runge Kutta (ARK2) methods from third to fifth order are presented that allow" for integration of stiff terms by an L stable, stiffly accurate explicit, singly diagonally implicit Runge Kutta (ESDIRK) method while the nonstiff terms are integrated with a traditional explicit Runge Kutta method (ERK). Coupling error terms are of equal order to those of the elemental methods. Derived ARK2 methods have vanishing stability functions for very large values of the stiff scaled eigenvalue, z [z] --+ -oc, and retain high stability efficiency in the absence of stiffness, z[ I] --+ 0. Extrapolation type stage value predictors are provided based on dense output formulae. Optimized methods minimize both leading order ARK2 error terms and Butcher coefficient magnitudes as well as maximize conservation properties. Numerical tests of the new" schemes on a CDR problem show negligible stiffness leakage and near classical order convergence rates. However, tests on three simple singular perturbation problems reveal generally predictable order reduction. Error control is best managed with a PID controller. While results for the fifth order method are disappointing, both the new" third and fourth order methods are at least as efficient as existing ARK2 methods while offering error control and stage value predictors.
Similar Outcomes of Standard Radiotherapy and Hypofractionated Radiotherapy Following Breast-Conserving Surgery

BACKGROUND
Adjuvant radiation therapy is commonly administered to breast cancer patients who received breast-conserving surgery. However, lengthy treatment times of standard radiotherapy pose certain challenges. Here, we performed a prospective controlled study comparing standard radiation to hypofractionated radiotherapy in terms of efficacy and outcome.


MATERIAL AND METHODS
Eighty breast cancer patients (tumor stage pT1-2N0-1M0) who had undergone breast-conservation surgery were randomly divided into 2 groups (40 patients/group). The experimental group received 43.2 Gy to the whole breast in 18 fractions for 24 days with a concomitant boost (50.4 Gy) to the tumor bed. The control group received 45 Gy to the whole breast in 25 fractions for 44 days with a boost to the tumor bed of 59 Gy. Survival, locoregional recurrence, adverse effects, and aesthetic results were all considered for analysis.


RESULTS
The following criteria were included as part of study follow-up: local control, survival, adverse skin reactions, cosmetic outcome, and hematological toxicity. At a median follow-up of 27 months (follow-up rate 100%), there were no statistical differences in any of the categories between the 2 groups. The 2-year survival rate of both groups was 100% without any locoregional recurrence. Although there was some skin toxicity, these instances were not severe and they cleared on their own within 6 weeks. The most common problems encountered by patients were breast fibrosis and altered pigmentation.


CONCLUSIONS
A shortened whole-breast hypofractionated irradiation schedule with a concomitant boost is as effective as standard radiation and may be a reasonable alternative following breast conservation surgery.
Multi-decadal elevation changes on Bagley Ice Valley and Malaspina Glacier, Alaska: MULTI-DECADAL ELEVATION CHANGES

[1] Digital elevation models (DEMs) of Bagley Ice Valley and Malaspina Glacier produced by (i) Intermap Technologies, Inc. (ITI) from airborne interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data acquired 4–13 September 2000, (ii) the German Aerospace Center (DRL) from spaceborne InSAR data acquired by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 11–22 February 2000, and (iii) the US Geological Survey (USGS) from aerial photographs acquired in 1972/73, were differenced to estimate glacier surface elevation changes from 1972 to 2000. Spatially non-uniform thickening, 10 ± 7 m on average, is observed on Bagley Ice Valley (accumulation area) while non-uniform thinning, 47 ± 5 m on average, is observed on the glaciers of the Malaspina complex (mostly ablation area). Even larger thinning is observed on the retreating tidewater Tyndall Glacier. These changes have resulted from increased temperature and precipitation associated with climate warming, and rapid tidewater retreat.
Bimodal sensor integration on the example of 'speechreading'

In this paper we show how recognition performance in automated speech perception can be significantly improved by additional Lipreading, so called “speech-reading”. We show thls on an extension of an existing state-of-theart speech recognition system, a modular MS-TDNN. The acoustic and visual speech data is preclassifled in two separate fmnt-end phoneme TDNNs and combined to acousticvisual hypotheses for the Dynamic Time Warping algorithm. This is shown on a connected word recognition problem, the notoriously dlfllcult letter spelling task. With speech-reading we could reduce the error rate up to half of the error rate of the pure acoustic recognition.
Chemical and quality evaluation of some alternative lipid sources for aqua feed production

A study was carried out on fish oil, two terrestrial animal fats (lard and chicken fat) and eight vegetable oils (palm kernel, sheabutter, soybean, palm, coconut, sunflower, groundnut and melon seed oils) to investigate their chemical and quality characteristics and the possibility of using them as alternative lipids in aquafeed. The results showed that the peroxide value of lard was significantly (P < 0.05) higher than values obtained in the other vegetable oils and animal fat sources; acid values of the oils ranged from 1.38 in coconut oil to 14.04 NaOH/g in palm kernel oil and were significantly different; the iodine value of sunflower oil, fish oil and soybean oil were comparable and higher, while a lower value that was not significantly different were observed in groundnut oil, coconut oil and melon seed oil. Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances of the oils were significantly different and showed low concentrations. The main fatty acids predominating in terms of relative abundance in the vegetable oils and animal fats examined are Lauric, palmitic, oleic and linoleic acids. Substantial levels of n-3 PUFA was observed in soybean oil and groundnut oil. The soybean oil and groundnut oil are exceptional high in the n-3 fatty acid content of the 18:3n-3 among the vegetable oils and would be a good lipid sources for tropical freshwater fishes.
Manipulating measurement scales in medical statistical analysis and data mining: A review of methodologies

BACKGROUND
selecting the correct statistical test and data mining method depends highly on the measurement scale of data, type of variables, and purpose of the analysis. Different measurement scales are studied in details and statistical comparison, modeling, and data mining methods are studied based upon using several medical examples. We have presented two ordinal-variables clustering examples, as more challenging variable in analysis, using Wisconsin Breast Cancer Data (WBCD).


ORDINAL-TO-INTERVAL SCALE CONVERSION EXAMPLE
a breast cancer database of nine 10-level ordinal variables for 683 patients was analyzed by two ordinal-scale clustering methods. The performance of the clustering methods was assessed by comparison with the gold standard groups of malignant and benign cases that had been identified by clinical tests.


RESULTS
the sensitivity and accuracy of the two clustering methods were 98% and 96%, respectively. Their specificity was comparable.


CONCLUSION
by using appropriate clustering algorithm based on the measurement scale of the variables in the study, high performance is granted. Moreover, descriptive and inferential statistics in addition to modeling approach must be selected based on the scale of the variables.
Towards Trustworthy Multi-Cloud Services Communities: A Trust-Based Hedonic Coalitional Game

The prominence of cloud computing led to unprecedented proliferation in the number of web services deployed in cloud data centers. In parallel, service communities have gained recently increasing interest due to their ability to facilitate discovery, composition, and resource scaling in large-scale services’ markets. The problem is that traditional community formation models may work well when all services reside in a single cloud but cannot support a multi-cloud environment. Particularly, these models overlook having malicious services that misbehave to illegally maximize their benefits and that arises from grouping together services owned by different providers. Besides, they rely on a centralized architecture whereby a central entity regulates the community formation; which contradicts with the distributed nature of cloud-based services. In this paper, we propose a three-fold solution that includes: trust establishment framework that is resilient to collusion attacks that occur to mislead trust results; bootstrapping mechanism that capitalizes on the endorsement concept in online social networks to assign initial trust values; and trust-based hedonic coalitional game that enables services to distributively form trustworthy multi-cloud communities. Experiments conducted on a real-life dataset demonstrate that our model minimizes the number of malicious services compared to three state-of-the-art cloud federations and service communities models.
QNoC: QoS architecture and design process for network on chip

We define Quality of Service (QoS) and cost model for communications in Systems on Chip (SoC), and derive related Network on Chip (NoC) architecture and design process. SoC inter-module communication traffic is classified into four classes of service: signaling (for inter-module control signals); real-time (representing delay-constrained bit streams); RD/WR (modeling short data access) and block-transfer (handling large data bursts). Communication traffic of the target SoC is analyzed (by means of analytic calculations and simulations), and QoS requirements (delay and throughput) for each service class are derived. A customized Quality-of-Service NoC (QNoC) architecture is derived by modifying a generic network architecture. The customization process minimizes the network cost (in area and power) while maintaining the required QoS. The generic network is based on a two-dimensional planar mesh and fixed shortest path (X–Y based) multi-class wormhole routing. Once communication requirements of the target SoC are identified, the network is customized as follows: The SoC modules are placed so as to minimize spatial traffic density, unnecessary mesh links and switching nodes are removed, and bandwidth is allocated to the remaining links and switches according to their relative load so that link utilization is balanced. The result is a low cost customized QNoC for the target SoC which guarantees that QoS requirements are met. 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. IDT: Network on chip; QoS architecture; Wormhole switching; QNoC design process; QNoC
Interpersonal problems and impacts: further evidence for the role of interpersonal functioning in treatment outcome in major depressive disorder.

INTRODUCTION
Empirical research has converged to support the concurrent association between social difficulties and psychiatric symptoms; yet, longitudinal associations between interpersonal problems and treatment outcome require clarification. The current investigation evaluated the influence of interpersonal problems assessed prior to treatment on interpersonal impacts assessed during treatment as well as on treatment outcome in outpatients with major depressive disorder (MDD).


METHOD
125 participants with a primary diagnosis of MDD were randomized to receive cognitive behavioural therapy or interpersonal therapy. Participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II, Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, and Inventory of Interpersonal Problems Circumplex before and after treatment. Therapists completed the Impact Message Inventory during and after treatment.


RESULTS
Interpersonal distress improved over the course of treatment; all other interpersonal changes were non-significant when distress was taken into account. Pre-treatment rigidity and agentic problems predicted less reduction in depressive symptoms, whereas agentic and communal impacts upon therapists during treatment predicted greater symptom change. Overall interpersonal distress was only indirectly associated with treatment response later in treatment, through its association with agentic style. Results did not differ across therapy type, and were replicated across self-report and interviewer-rated measures of depression severity.


LIMITATIONS
Limitations include the brief duration of treatment, lack of medication arm, and potentially restricted generalizability of patients in a randomized control trial to those in routine practice.


CONCLUSIONS
Interpersonal style demonstrated a trait-like stability over treatment, and appears to fluctuate due to co-occurring distress. Yet, specific interpersonal styles were negative prognostic indicators, even within therapy specifically targeting interpersonal functioning.
Furrows and dermal ridges of the hand in patients with alcohol embryopathy

Palmar creases and dermal ridge patterns of 34 patients with alcohol embryopathy are compared with 470 healthy individuals. In alcohol embryopathy several typical deviations were noted. Palmar Creases. The interdigital part of the distal palmar crease is generally sharply bent, the proximal transverse crease is hypoplastic or missing, the thenar crease is commonly well marked. Simian creases and bridged palmar creases are more common in patients with alcohol embryopathy than in healthy individuals. Ridge Patterns of the Palm. The main line D coming from triradius d in patients with alcohol embryopathy mostly shows a low type of ending in the fourth interdigital area; in this area loops are twice as common as in healthy individuals. Patterns of the Fingertips. No deviations were noted in the distribution of whorls and loops, but virtually no arches were observed in patients with alcohol embryopathy. These anomalies suggest embryonic damage in the twelvth week of gestation.
Framework for Building Self-Adaptive Component Applications Based on Reinforcement Learning

Component-based applications entail a composition of heterogeneous components often running in different contexts. The complexity and dynamic nature of their contexts result in an increasing maintenance efforts. Autonomic computing came to provide systems with an autonomic behavior based on predefined policies. However, in addition to being knowledge-intensive, the constructed policies may easily become obsolete due to context changes. Decision policies should be dynamically learned to self-adapt to context dynamics. However, currently built autonomic systems are tailored to specific management needs, neither reusable for other management concerns nor endowed with learning abilities. In this paper, we introduce a generic framework that facilitates building self-adaptive component-based applications. Unlike the existing initiatives, our framework provides means to transform an existing application by equipping it with a self-adaptive behavior to dynamically learn an optimal policy at runtime. To validate our approach, we have developed a realistic application and used the framework to render it self-adaptive. The experimental results have shown a negligible overhead and a dynamic adjustment of the transformed application to its changing context. They have also shown less frequent time spent in SLA (Service Level Agreement) violations during the learning phase and a better performing application after convergence.
Antibiotic administration to patients with preterm premature rupture of membranes does not eradicate intra-amniotic infection.

OBJECTIVE
Antibiotic administration has become part of the standard of care for patients with preterm premature rupture of membranes (PROM). Yet, the natural history of intrauterine infection/inflammation during antibiotic therapy remains largely unknown. This study was conducted to determine if antibiotic administration to the mother eradicates intra-amniotic infection and/or reduces the frequency of intra-amniotic inflammation, a risk factor for impending preterm labor/delivery and adverse neonatal outcome.


METHODS
A subset of patients with preterm PROM admitted to our institution underwent amniocenteses before and after antibiotic administration in order to guide clinical management. Amniotic fluid analysis consisted of a Gram stain, culture for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria as well as genital mycoplasmas, and amniotic fluid white blood cell (WBC) count. Microbial invasion of the amniotic cavity (MIAC) was defined as a positive amniotic fluid culture. Intra-amniotic inflammation was defined as an amniotic fluid WBC count >or=100/mm(3). Patients were given antibiotics and steroids after the 24(th) week of gestation. Antibiotic treatment consisted of ampicillin and erythromycin for 7 days for patients without evidence of intra-amniotic inflammation or MIAC, and ceftriaxone, clindamycin and erythromycin for 10-14 days for those with intra-amniotic inflammation or MIAC.


RESULTS
Forty-six patients with preterm PROM whose first amniocentesis was performed between 18 and 32 weeks (median 27.4 weeks) were included in the study. The overall prevalence of intra-amniotic inflammation in the first amniocentesis was 39% (18/46). Seven had a positive amniotic fluid culture for microorganisms. At the time of the second amniocentesis, six of the seven patients with a positive amniotic fluid culture had microorganisms. Of 18 patients with intra-amniotic inflammation at admission, only three showed no evidence of inflammation after antibiotic treatment. Among patients with no evidence of intra-amniotic inflammation at admission, 32% (9/28) developed inflammation despite therapy. Five of these nine patients had positive amniotic fluid cultures.


CONCLUSIONS
(1) Antibiotic administration (ceftriaxone, clindamycin, and erythromycin) rarely eradicates intra-amniotic infection in patients with preterm PROM; (2) intra-amniotic inflammation developed in one-third of patients who did not have inflammation at admission, despite antibiotic administration; (3) a sub-group of patients with documented inflammation of the amniotic cavity demonstrated a decrease in the intensity of the inflammatory process after antibiotic administration.