LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Empirical evidence of bias. Dimensions of methodological quality associated with estimates of treatment effects in controlled trials.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if inadequate approaches to randomized controlled trial design and execution are associated with evidence of bias in estimating treatment effects.


DESIGN
An observational study in which we assessed the methodological quality of 250 controlled trials from 33 meta-analyses and then analyzed, using multiple logistic regression models, the associations between those assessments and estimated treatment effects.


DATA SOURCES
Meta-analyses from the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Database.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The associations between estimates of treatment effects and inadequate allocation concealment, exclusions after randomization, and lack of double-blinding.


RESULTS
Compared with trials in which authors reported adequately concealed treatment allocation, trials in which concealment was either inadequate or unclear (did not report or incompletely reported a concealment approach) yielded larger estimates of treatment effects (P < .001). Odds ratios were exaggerated by 41% for inadequately concealed trials and by 30% for unclearly concealed trials (adjusted for other aspects of quality). Trials in which participants had been excluded after randomization did not yield larger estimates of effects, but that lack of association may be due to incomplete reporting. Trials that were not double-blind also yielded larger estimates of effects (P = .01), with odds ratios being exaggerated by 17%.


CONCLUSIONS
This study provides empirical evidence that inadequate methodological approaches in controlled trials, particularly those representing poor allocation concealment, are associated with bias. Readers of trial reports should be wary of these pitfalls, and investigators must improve their design, execution, and reporting of trials.
Delivering an Optimised Behavioural Intervention (OBI) to people with low back pain with high psychological risk; results and lessons learnt from a feasibility randomised controlled trial of Contextual Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CCBT) vs. Physiotherapy

BACKGROUND
Low Back Pain (LBP) remains a common and costly problem. Psychological obstacles to recovery have been identified, but psychological and behavioural interventions have produced only moderate improvements. Reviews of trials have suggested that the interventions lack clear theoretical basis, are often compromised by low dose, lack of fidelity, and delivery by non-experts. In addition, interventions do not directly target known risk mechanisms. We identified a theory driven intervention (Contexual Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, CCBT) that directly targets an evidence-based risk mechanism (avoidance and ensured dose and delivery were optimised. This feasibility study was designed to test the credibility and acceptability of optimised CCBT against physiotherapy for avoidant LBP patients, and to test recruitment, delivery of the intervention and response rates prior to moving to a full definitive trial.


METHODS
A randomised controlled feasibility trial with patients randomised to receive CCBT or physiotherapy. CCBT was delivered by trained supervised psychologists on a one to one basis and comprised up to 8 one-hour sessions. Physiotherapy comprised back to fitness group exercises with at least 60 % of content exercise-based. Patients were eligible to take part if they had back pain for more than 3 months, and scored above a threshold indicating fear avoidance, catastrophic beliefs and distress.


RESULTS
89 patients were recruited. Uptake rates were above those predicted. Scores for credibility and acceptability of the interventions met the set criteria. Response rates at three and six months fell short of the 75 % target. Problems associated with poor response rates were identified and successfully resolved, rates increased to 77 % at 3 months, and 68 % at 6 months. Independent ratings of treatment sessions indicated that CCBT was delivered to fidelity. Numbers were too small for formal analysis. Although average scores for acceptance were higher in the CCBT group than in the group attending physiotherapy (increase of 7.9 versus 5.1) and change in disability and pain from baseline to 6 months were greater in the CCBT group than in the physiotherapy group, these findings should be interpreted with caution.


CONCLUSIONS
CCBT is a credible and acceptable intervention for LBP patients who exhibit psychological obstacles to recovery.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ISRCTN43733490 , registered 15/12/2010.
Modeling Joint Entity and Relation Extraction with Table Representation

This paper proposes a history-based structured learning approach that jointly extracts entities and relations in a sentence. We introduce a novel simple and flexible table representation of entities and relations. We investigate several feature settings, search orders, and learning methods with inexact search on the table. The experimental results demonstrate that a joint learning approach significantly outperforms a pipeline approach by incorporating global features and by selecting appropriate learning methods and search orders.
CENOZOIC PALEOSTRESS AND KINEMATIC EVOLUTION OF THE RUKWA - NORTH MALAWI RIFT VALLEY (EAST AFRICAN RIFT SYSTEM)

Afin d'eclaircir ces problernes, 976 failles mineures provenant de 29 sites difterents ont ete mesurees dans I'ouest de la Tanzanie, Ie long de la partie nord de la depression du lac Malawi et de sa jonction triple avec Ie rift de Rukwa et la depression transversale d'Usanqu. Ces mesures ont ete ettectuees Ie long des failles majeures ainsi que dans les sediments et volcanites du rift. Les donnees de faille avec stries de glissement ont ete analysees en termes de palsctenseurs de contraintes.
Attention please!: learning analytics for visualization and recommendation

This paper will present the general goal of and inspiration for our work on learning analytics, that relies on attention metadata for visualization and recommendation. Through information visualization techniques, we can provide a dashboard for learners and teachers, so that they no longer need to "drive blind". Moreover, recommendation can help to deal with the "paradox of choice" and turn abundance from a problem into an asset for learning.
Self-supervised learning of a facial attribute embedding from video

The architecture of the encoders and decoders is based on pix2pix [12] but without skipconnections (see Fig. 1). It consists of encoders (with shared weights) and corresponding symmetrical decoders (also with shared weights). The face embedding vectors which are the outputs of the encoder have channel size 256. At the centre of the network, the source embedding vectors are concatenated pairwise with the target embedding vector. This 512channel vector serves as input to the decoders. The sampler decoders predict a 2⇥ 256⇥ 256 output which determines how to sample from the source frame. When using multiple source frames, the network is augmented with confidence map decoders whose architecture is identical to the sampler decoders, except that the last layer outputs a 1-channel image. The confidence decoders also have shared weights for the different source frames.
Factors associated with variation in utility scores among patients with prostate cancer.

OBJECTIVE
We aimed to assess the effects of age, comorbidity, and disease-specific functions on utility scores derived from three methods on prostate cancer.


METHODS
A total of 330 Japanese prostate cancer patients were asked to answer self-administered questionnaires. Community-weighted utility scores were derived from the EuroQoL-5D (EQ-5D) and the Short Form-36 (SF-36), while the patient's directly elicited utility score was derived from time trade-off technique. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to examine the relation between covariates and utility scores. We assigned age, the Index of Co-existent Disease, and disease-specific functions including sexual, urinary, bowel, and hormonal function as covariates.


RESULTS
Bowel and hormonal function were related to utility scores, while age and sexual function were not. Comorbidities were more closely related to utility scores derived from EQ-5D and SF-36.


CONCLUSIONS
These results contribute to an understanding of which factor has an impact on utility scores in patients with prostate cancer.
Fast global kernel fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm for consonant/vowel segmentation of speech signal

We propose a novel clustering algorithm using fast global kernel fuzzy c-means-F (FGKFCM-F), where F refers to kernelized feature space. This algorithm proceeds in an incremental way to derive the near-optimal solution by solving all intermediate problems using kernel-based fuzzy c-means-F (KFCM-F) as a local search procedure. Due to the incremental nature and the nonlinear properties inherited from KFCM-F, this algorithm overcomes the two shortcomings of fuzzy c-means (FCM): sensitivity to initialization and inability to use nonlinear separable data. An accelerating scheme is developed to reduce the computational complexity without significantly affecting the solution quality. Experiments are carried out to test the proposed algorithm on a nonlinear artificial dataset and a real-world dataset of speech signals for consonant/vowel segmentation. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in improving clustering performance on both types of datasets.
Graphene-based materials: synthesis, characterization, properties, and applications.

Graphene, a two-dimensional, single-layer sheet of sp(2) hybridized carbon atoms, has attracted tremendous attention and research interest, owing to its exceptional physical properties, such as high electronic conductivity, good thermal stability, and excellent mechanical strength. Other forms of graphene-related materials, including graphene oxide, reduced graphene oxide, and exfoliated graphite, have been reliably produced in large scale. The promising properties together with the ease of processibility and functionalization make graphene-based materials ideal candidates for incorporation into a variety of functional materials. Importantly, graphene and its derivatives have been explored in a wide range of applications, such as electronic and photonic devices, clean energy, and sensors. In this review, after a general introduction to graphene and its derivatives, the synthesis, characterization, properties, and applications of graphene-based materials are discussed.
Tectonic controls on the Pleistocene–Holocene Wudalianchi volcanic field (northeastern China)

Abstract The Wudalianchi volcanic field developed during the Pleistocene–Holocene but is dormant at present. Its latest eruption occurred in 1719–1721 AD. The volcanic rocks are high-potassium alkaline basalts derived from the upper mantle (c. 100–120 km depth) as indicated by geochemical data. The field is located in an old tectonic transition zone surrounded by four regional normal faults. The volcanic craters are aligned along NE–NNE-striking fractures and faults, although a NNW-striking sub-surface fracture zone probably controlled the eruptions beginning at 1.33±0.08 Ma. Beneath the volcanic field, the Moho interface lies at a depth of 33.5–35 km. Eruptions evolved from fissure type to central type eruptions. The field is characterized by an intraplate tectonic setting in a non-orogenic compressional regime which resulted from the subduction of the West Pacific plate beneath the eastern Asian continental margin starting 3–2 Ma ago.
Design of SPWM Unipolar ( Single Phase ) Inverter

In this paper, a design and development unipolar SPWM switching strategy is presented for single phase full bridge inverter. The main advantage of this strategy is that it does not required additional circuit. To obtain the unipolar SPWM switching pulses generated with carrier frequency of 2 kHz and the modulation ratio change from 0.5 to 0.7 by varying amplitude of modulating signal. In the unipolar single phase SPWM microcontroller-based 300VA inverter is designed and tested for fixed modulation index with unipolar voltage switching. The gate pulses waveforms are observed on DSO, The outputs voltage and current %THD waveforms for variable AC voltages and modulation index are observed on DSO, and also see the THD. The pulse width modulation inverter has been the main choice in power electronic for decades, because of its circuit simplicity and rugged control scheme SPWM switching technique is commonly used in industrial applications.
On estimation of NBTI-Induced delay degradation

NBTI, which is one of well-known aging phenomena, brings delay degradation in deep submicron VLSIs. In order to detect NBTI-induced delay faults, we need to estimate delay degradation and apply delay test for the circuit in the field. This paper discusses on estimation of NBTI-Induced delay degradation. We first analyze the effect of the delay degradation, and then give a procedure of path selection in which long paths after the delay degradation are selected for the delay test in the filed. Experimental results show that estimation of delay degradation significantly affects path selection, and accurate estimation is important for the test.
Semi-supervised Relation Extraction with Large-scale Word Clustering

We present a simple semi-supervised relation extraction system with large-scale word clustering. We focus on systematically exploring the effectiveness of different cluster-based features. We also propose several statistical methods for selecting clusters at an appropriate level of granularity. When training on different sizes of data, our semi-supervised approach consistently outperformed a state-of-the-art supervised baseline system.
Deep Imitation Learning for Playing Real Time Strategy Games

Competitive Computer Games, such as StarCraft II, remain a largely unexplored and active application of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Computer Vision. These games are highly complex as they typically 1) involve incomplete information, 2) include multiple strategies and elements that usually happen concurrently, and 3) run in real-time. For this project, we dive into a minigame for StarCraft II that involves many engagement skills such as focus fire, splitting, and kiting to win battles. This paper goes into the details of implementing an algorithm using behavioral cloning, a subset of imitation learning, to tackle the problem. Human expert replay data is used to train different systems that are evaluated on the minigame. Supervised learning, Convolutional Neural Networks, and Combined Loss Functions are all used in this project. While we have created an agent that shows some basic understanding of the game, the strategies performed are rather primitive. Nevertheless, this project establishes a useful framework that can be used for future expansion. (This project was completed in tandem with a related CS221 project.)
OCR of historical printings with an application to building diachronic corpora: A case study using the RIDGES herbal corpus

This article describes the results of a case study that applies Neural Networkbased Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scanned images of books printed between 1487 and 1870 by training the OCR engine OCRopus (Breuel et al. 2013) on the RIDGES herbal text corpus (Odebrecht et al. 2017, in press). Training specific OCR models was possible because the necessary ground truth is available as error-corrected diplomatic transcriptions. The OCR results have been evaluated for accuracy against the ground truth of unseen test sets. Character and word accuracies (percentage of correctly recognized items) for the resulting machine-readable texts of individual documents range from 94% to more than 99% (character level) and from 76% to 97% (word level). This includes the earliest printed books, which were thought to be inaccessible by OCR methods until recently. Furthermore, OCR models trained on one part of the corpus consisting of books with different printing dates and different typesets (mixed models) have been tested for their predictive power on the books from the other part containing yet other fonts, mostly yielding character accuracies well above 90%. It therefore seems possible to construct generalized models trained on a range of fonts that can be applied to a wide variety of historical printings still giving good results. A moderate postcorrection effort of some pages will then enable the training of individual models with even better accuracies. Using this method, diachronic corpora including early printings can be constructed much faster and cheaper than by manual transcription. The OCR methods reported here open up the possibility of transforming our printed textual cultural 1 ar X iv :1 60 8. 02 15 3v 2 [ cs .C L ] 1 F eb 2 01 7 Springmann & Lüdeling OCR of historical printings heritage into electronic text by largely automatic means, which is a prerequisite for the mass conversion of scanned books.
Memantine for late-life depression and apathy after a disabling medical event: a 12-week, double-blind placebo-controlled pilot study.

OBJECTIVE
Preclinical data suggests that memantine, a noncompetitive glutamate N-methyl- D-aspartate-receptor blocker used for the treatment of moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease, could reduce depressive and amotivated behavior occurring in the context of psychosocial stress. Therefore, we examined whether memantine could reduce depressive symptoms and amotivation manifesting in older adults after a disabling medical event, thereby improving their functional recovery.


METHOD
We recruited subjects aged 60 years and older who had recently suffered a disabling medical event and were admitted to a skilled nursing facility for rehabilitation. Participants with significant depressive symptoms, defined as a Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression score of 10 or greater, and/or significant apathy symptoms, defined as an Apathy Evaluation Scale score of 40 or greater, were randomized to memantine (10 mg/d for 1 week, then 10 mg twice daily) or placebo, for 12 weeks. We also recruited participants without depressive or apathy symptoms for naturalistic follow-up as a non-depressed comparison group. Depressive and apathy symptoms were main outcomes; functional recovery, and self-report rating of helplessness, and onset of new depressive disorders were secondary outcomes.


RESULTS
Thirty-five older adults with significant depressive and/or apathy symptoms were randomized, of whom 27 (77.1%) completed the 12 week randomized controlled trial. Both groups showed reduction in depressive symptoms (but no significant reduction in apathy symptoms) and improved function. However, there were no group differences between the memantine-randomized and placebo randomized participants on any outcome.


CONCLUSION
Memantine was not associated with superior affective or functional outcome compared with placebo in medically rehabilitating older adults with depressive and apathy symptoms.
Effect of supervised training on FEV1 in cystic fibrosis: a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND
Long-term exercise interventions have been shown to improve vital capacity in cystic fibrosis (CF). Yet, no data are available indicating positive effects of long-term exercise training on FEV1.


METHODS
39 Swiss patients with CF were randomly divided into strength training (ST, n=12), endurance training (AT, n=17) and controls (CON(CH), n=10), and also compared with age-matched Swiss (n=35) and German (n=701) CF registry data. A partially supervised training of 3×30 min/week for 6 months took place with measurements at baseline and after 3, 6, 12 and 24 months. Primary outcome was FEV1 at 6 months.


RESULTS
FEV1 increased significantly in both training groups compared with CON(CH) (AT:+5.8±0.95, ST:+7.4±2.5, CON(CH):-11.5±2.7% predicted, p<0.001) and both registry groups at 6 months. At 24 months, changes in favour of the training groups persisted marginally compared with CONCH, but not compared with registry data.


CONCLUSIONS
A partially supervised training over 6 months improved FEV1 but effects were basically gone 18 months off training. Regular long-term training should be promoted as essential part of treatment in CF.
An ongoing struggle: a mixed-method systematic review of interventions, barriers and facilitators to achieving optimal self-care by children and young people with Type 1 Diabetes in educational settings

BACKGROUND
Type 1 diabetes occurs more frequently in younger children who are often pre-school age and enter the education system with diabetes-related support needs that evolve over time. It is important that children are supported to optimally manage their diet, exercise, blood glucose monitoring and insulin regime at school. Young people self-manage at college/university.


METHOD
Theory-informed mixed-method systematic review to determine intervention effectiveness and synthesise child/parent/professional views of barriers and facilitators to achieving optimal diabetes self-care and management for children and young people age 3-25 years in educational settings.


RESULTS
Eleven intervention and 55 views studies were included. Meta-analysis was not possible. Study foci broadly matched school diabetes guidance. Intervention studies were limited to specific contexts with mostly high risk of bias. Views studies were mostly moderate quality with common transferrable findings.Health plans, and school nurse support (various types) were effective. Telemedicine in school was effective for individual case management. Most educational interventions to increase knowledge and confidence of children or school staff had significant short-term effects but longer follow-up is required. Children, parents and staff said they struggled with many common structural, organisational, educational and attitudinal school barriers. Aspects of school guidance had not been generally implemented (e.g. individual health plans). Children recognized and appreciated school staff who were trained and confident in supporting diabetes management.Research with college/university students was lacking. Campus-based college/university student support significantly improved knowledge, attitudes and diabetes self-care. Self-management was easier for students who juggled diabetes-management with student lifestyle, such as adopting strategies to manage alcohol consumption.


CONCLUSION
This novel mixed-method systematic review is the first to integrate intervention effectiveness with views of children/parents/professionals mapped against school diabetes guidelines. Diabetes management could be generally improved by fully implementing and auditing guideline impact. Evidence is limited by quality and there are gaps in knowledge of what works. Telemedicine between healthcare providers and schools, and school nurse support for children is effective in specific contexts, but not all education systems employ onsite nurses. More innovative and sustainable solutions and robust evaluations are required. Comprehensive lifestyle approaches for college/university students warrant further development and evaluation.