LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Static magnetic field therapy for symptomatic diabetic neuropathy: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if constant wearing of multipolar, static magnetic (450G) shoe insoles can reduce neuropathic pain and quality of life (QOL) scores in symptomatic diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN).


DESIGN
Randomized, placebo-control, parallel study.


SETTING
Forty-eight centers in 27 states.


PARTICIPANTS
Three hundred seventy-five subjects with DPN stage II or III were randomly assigned to wear constantly magnetized insoles for 4 months; the placebo group wore similar, unmagnetized device.


INTERVENTION
Nerve conduction and/or quantified sensory testing were performed serially.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Daily visual analog scale scores for numbness or tingling and burning and QOL issues were tabulated over 4 months. Secondary measures included nerve conduction changes, role of placebo, and safety issues. Analysis of variance (ANOVA), analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and chi-square analysis were performed.


RESULTS
There were statistically significant reductions during the third and fourth months in burning (mean change for magnet treatment, -12%; for sham, -3%; P<.05, ANCOVA), numbness and tingling (magnet, -10%; sham, +1%; P<.05, ANCOVA), and exercise-induced foot pain (magnet, -12%; sham, -4%; P<.05, ANCOVA). For a subset of patients with baseline severe pain, statistically significant reductions occurred from baseline through the fourth month in numbness and tingling (magnet, -32%; sham, -14%; P<.01, ANOVA) and foot pain (magnet, -41%; sham, -21%; P<.01, ANOVA).


CONCLUSIONS
Static magnetic fields can penetrate up to 20mm and appear to target the ectopic firing nociceptors in the epidermis and dermis. Analgesic benefits were achieved over time.
Tangible authoring of 3D virtual scenes in dynamic augmented reality environment

This paper proposes tangible interfaces and interactions for authoring 3D virtual and immersive scenes easily and intuitively in tangible augmented reality (AR) environment. It provides tangible interfaces for manipulating virtual objects in a natural and intuitive manner and supports adaptive and accurate vision-based tracking in AR environments. In particular, RFID is used to directly integrate physical objects with virtual objects and to systematically support the tangible query of the relation between physical objects and virtual ones, which can provide more intuitive tangibility and a new way of virtual object manipulation. Moreover, the proposed approach offers an easy and intuitive switching mechanism between tangible environment and virtual environment. This paper also proposes a context-adaptive marker tracking method which can remove an inconsistent problem while embedding virtual objects into physical ones in tangible AR environments. The context-adaptive tracking method not only adjusts the locations of invisible markers by interpolating the locations of existing reference markers and those of previous ones, but also removes a jumping effect of movable virtual objects when their references are changed from one marker to another. Several case studies for generating tangible virtual scenes and comparison with previous work are given to show the effectiveness and novelty of the proposed approach. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Are There Neurophenotypes for Asthma? Functional Brain Imaging of the Interaction between Emotion and Inflammation in Asthma

BACKGROUND
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease noteworthy for its vulnerability to stress and emotion-induced symptom intensification. The fact that psychological stress and mood and anxiety disorders appear to increase expression of asthma symptoms suggests that neural signaling between the brain and lung at least partially modulates the inflammatory response and lung function. However, the precise nature of the neural pathways implicated in modulating asthma symptoms is unknown. Moreover, the extent to which variations in neural signaling predict different phenotypes of disease expression has not been studied.


METHODS AND RESULTS
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neural signals in response to asthma-specific emotional cues, following allergen exposure, in asthmatics with a dual response to allergen challenge (significant inflammation), asthmatics with only an immediate response (minimal inflammation), and healthy controls. The anterior insular cortex was differentially activated by asthma-relevant cues, compared to general negative cues, during the development of the late phase of the dual response in asthmatics. Moreover, the degree of this differential activation predicted changes in airway inflammation.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings indicate that neurophenotypes for asthma may be identifiable by neural reactivity of brain circuits known to be involved in processing emotional information. Those with greater activation in the anterior insula, in response to asthma-relevant psychological stimuli, exhibit greater inflammatory signals in the lung and increased severity of disease and may reflect a subset of asthmatics most vulnerable to the development of psychopathology. This approach offers an entirely new target for potential therapeutic intervention in asthma.
Non-biological determinants of paediatric bladder bowel dysfunction: A pilot study.

OBJECTIVES
Children with bladder and bowel dysfunction (BBD) constitute a significant proportion of referrals at paediatric urology clinics worldwide, presenting with a wide range of symptom severity that may significantly affect quality of life. Non-biological factors may play a key role in triggering BBD severity, but these underpinning causes of BBD during childhood are still unknown. The aim of this study was to identify the effects of personal, family related and environmental variables on the severity of BBD symptoms in school-aged children.


STUDY DESIGN
A pilot, prospective, observational study was conducted on 53 children diagnosed with BBD, and their legal guardian(s), on their first referred visit to a paediatric BBD clinic led by nurse practitioners. Upon receiving consent, patients and their legal guardian(s) completed three study questionnaires, with the guidance of research coordinators. The first questionnaire was the Dysfunctional Voiding Scoring System (DVSS); the second, a three-part questionnaire used to collect demographic information and data on the patient, their family and environmental characteristics; and the third gathered a detailed history of the child's lifestyle regimen, focusing on their bowel and bladder function.


RESULTS
Most of the children were female (66%), with an average age of 8.35 years. Most children attended public schools (74%) and none reported failing a grade. The mean parental age was 41.4 years (SD = 4.9 years), 62% of the families had two children and 53% were Caucasian. The mean DVSS score for this sample was 9.9 (SD = 4.2, range 2-21). Daycare attendance, school problems and unplanned pregnancy showed statistically significant influences on the severity of BBD and were associated with higher DVSS scores according to the Table below.


CONCLUSIONS
Children with BBD attending urology outpatient clinics as new referrals had more severe symptoms when they were born from an unplanned pregnancy, attended daycare and/or had school problems. These findings suggest that interventions aimed at decreasing BBD severity, or preventing its onset in school-aged children, should focus on the environment surrounding them, specifically on the interaction between personal, familial and environmental factors. These factors seem to have an important effect on paediatric continence, as children grow and develop under numerous societal influences and social interactions.
A CMOS 2.0–11.2 GHz UWB LNA using active inductor circuit

A fully-active low-noise amplifier (LNA) for ultra-wideband application is presented. Passive on-chip inductor of conventional LNA design is replaced by low-noise active inductor, significantly reducing the total chip area of the proposed CMOS LNA. The core LNA circuit is a cascoded common-source amplifier loaded with an active inductor. Two buffer stages are used to provide the required input and output impedance matching. The amplifier is designed and simulated in 0.13-mum RF CMOS process. It exhibits a forward gain (S21) of 11.2 dB, a noise figure (NF) of 2.2-4.0 dB, and return losses (S11 and S22) of less than -10 dB over the frequency range of 2.0 to 11.2 GHz while consuming only 13.5 mW from a power supply of 1.5 V. The proposed amplifier occupies 0.09 mm of chip area.
Software Reliability Modeling

1 Introduction This chapter proposes an overview of some aspects of Software Reliability (SR) engineering. Most systems are now driven by software. So that, it is well-recognized that assessing reliability of software applications is a major issue in reliability engineering, particularly in terms of cost. But predicting software reliability is not easy. Perhaps the major difficulty is that we are concerned primarily with design faults which is a very different situation from that tackled by the conventional hardware theory. A fault (or bug) refers to the manifestation in the code of a mistake made by the programmer or designer with respect to the specification of the software. Activation of a fault by an input value leads to an incorrect output. Detection of such an event corresponds to an occurrence of a software failure. Input values may be considered as arriving to the software randomly. So although software failure may be not generated stochastically, it may be detected in such a manner. Therefore, this justifies the use of stochastic models of the underlying random process that governs the software failures. We briefly recall in Section 2, basic concepts of stochastic modeling for reliability. Two approaches are used in SR modeling. The prevalent is the so-called black-box one, in which only the interactions of the software with the environment are considered. Following [1] and [2], we use in Section 3 the self-exciting point processes as basic tool to model the failure process. That enables an overview of most of published SR models. A second approach, called the white-box one, incorporates in models, information on the structure of the software. This is presented in Section 4. Section 5 proposes basic techniques for calibrating black-box models. The last section tries to give an account for the current practices in SR modeling and to point out some challenging issues for future research. Note that this chapter does not aspire to cover the whole topic of SR engineering. In particular , we do not discuss: fault prevention, fault removal, fault tolerance which are three methods to achieve reliable software. We focus here on methods to forecast failure times. For a more complete view, we refer to [3], the handbooks [4] and [5]. We have used the two recent books [2] and [6] to prepare this chapter. We also recommend to read the short paper [7], that describes, in particular, the available software reliability toolkits (with additional …
Essential oil of Thymus vulgaris L. and Rosmarinus officinalis L.: Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis, cytotoxicity and antioxidant properties and antibacterial activities against foodborne pathogens

The essential oil composition of Thymus vulgaris L. and Rosmarinus officinalis L. endemic to France were determined by GC and GC-MS. Oils were assessed for their cytotoxic, antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. 31 and 37 different compounds were identified representing 99.64% and 99.38% of the thyme and rosemary oils respectively, where oxygenated monoterpenes constituted the main chemical class. Thymol (41.33%) and 1.8-cineole (24.10%) were identified as the main constituents of T. vulgaris L. and R. officinalis L., respectively. Essential oils (EOs) of selected plant species were evaluated for their in vitro cytotoxicity against the human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line (A549). Cytotoxicity was measured using MTT [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphynyltetrazolium bromide] colorimetric assay. Dose-dependent studies revealed IC50 of 8.50 ± 0.01 μg/mL and 10.50 ± 0.01 μg/mL after 72 h on the A549 cells for R. officinalis L. and T. vulgaris L., respectively. Antioxidant activity was determined using a quantitative DPPH (1,1-diphenyl2-picryl hydrazyl) assay. Thymus and rosemary EOs exhibited effective radical scavenging capacity with 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) of 437 ± 5.46 μg/mL and 189 ± 2.38 μg/mL respectively and therefore acts as a natural antioxidant agent. The antimicrobial activity of these species has also been studied against several foodborne pathogens and food isolated Salmonella spp. including S. enteritidis of significant importance. According to the results, T. vulgaris L. showed higher bactericidal effect than those from R. officinalis L. These results suggest that the essential oil from T. vulgaris L. and R. officinalis L. have potential to be used as a natural cytotoxic, antioxidant and antimicrobial agent in food processing.
Extrinsic dexterity: In-hand manipulation with external forces

“In-hand manipulation” is the ability to reposition an object in the hand, for example when adjusting the grasp of a hammer before hammering a nail. The common approach to in-hand manipulation with robotic hands, known as dexterous manipulation [1], is to hold an object within the fingertips of the hand and wiggle the fingers, or walk them along the object's surface. Dexterous manipulation, however, is just one of the many techniques available to the robot. The robot can also roll the object in the hand by using gravity, or adjust the object's pose by pressing it against a surface, or if fast enough, it can even toss the object in the air and catch it in a different pose. All these techniques have one thing in common: they rely on resources extrinsic to the hand, either gravity, external contacts or dynamic arm motions. We refer to them as “extrinsic dexterity”. In this paper we study extrinsic dexterity in the context of regrasp operations, for example when switching from a power to a precision grasp, and we demonstrate that even simple grippers are capable of ample in-hand manipulation. We develop twelve regrasp actions, all open-loop and hand-scripted, and evaluate their effectiveness with over 1200 trials of regrasps and sequences of regrasps, for three different objects (see video [2]). The long-term goal of this work is to develop a general repertoire of these behaviors, and to understand how such a repertoire might eventually constitute a general-purpose in-hand manipulation capability.
Natural Language Interfaces to Databases - An Introduction

This paper is an introduction to natural language interfaces to databases (Nlidbs). A brief overview of the history of Nlidbs is rst given. Some advantages and disadvantages of Nlidbs are then discussed, comparing Nlidbs to formal query languages, form-based interfaces, and graphical interfaces. An introduction to some of the linguistic problems Nlidbs have to confront follows, for the beneet of readers less familiar with computational linguistics. The discussion then moves on to Nlidb architectures, porta-bility issues, restricted natural language input systems (including menu-based Nlidbs), and Nlidbs with reasoning capabilities. Some less explored areas of Nlidb research are then presented, namely database updates, meta-knowledge questions, temporal questions, and multi-modal Nlidbs. The paper ends with reeections on the current state of the art.
Three-dimensional evaluation of interradicular spaces and cortical bone thickness for the placement and initial stability of microimplants in adults.

INTRODUCTION
The objective of this retrospective study was to measure interradicular space, thickness of cortical bone, and alveolar process width at prospective microimplant placement sites in order to understand both safety and stability aspects of microimplant placement by using cone-beam 3-dimensional volumetric images.


METHODS
Initial 3-dimensional images of 60 adult patients (30 men, 30 women; mean age, 27.1 years) were reoriented by using a standardized protocol. Interradicular space, cortical bone thickness, and alveolar process width were obtained at the alveolar processes from canine to second molar at 3 different vertical levels from the cementoenamel junction (CEJ). Palatal bone thickness was measured along the midpalate at 5 different distances from the distal edge of the incisal foramen. Peripheral palatal bone thickness was also measured at analogous locations, and cortical bone thickness of the retromolar pad was measured.


RESULTS
Maxillary interradicular distances ranged from 1.6 to 3.46 mm and tended to increase from the CEJ to the apex. They were the greatest between the second premolar and the first molar. Mandibular interradicular distances ranged from 1.99 to 4.25 mm and tended to be greater than maxillary interradicular spaces. Maxillary and mandibular buccal cortical bone thicknesses were 1.12 to 1.33 mm and 1.25 to 2.98 mm, respectively. In both jaws, buccal cortical bone thickness tended to increase from the CEJ to the apex. Alveolar process widths were 3.74 to 5.78 mm in the maxilla and 3.11 to 7.84 mm in the mandible. Along the midpalate, palatal bone 20 to 25 mm from the incisive foramen had 7.04 mm and 6.99 mm thickness, respectively. The retromolar pad areas showed 1.96 to 2.06 mm thicknesses of cortical bone.


CONCLUSIONS
In the alveoloar process, 1 mm or more cortical bone thickness can be expected in the posterior dentition area. Safe locations for microimplant placements with adequate interradicular space are between the second premolar and the first molar in the maxillary buccal alveolar bone, between the molars in the maxillary palatal alveolar bone, and interradicular spaces from the first premolar to the second molar in the mandibular buccal alveolar bone. The midpalatal area and the retromolar pad area are also excellent locations for microimplant placement. Because of limited interradicular spaces, the recommended diameter of a microimplant is 1.2 to 1.6 mm for placement in the alveolar bone, and the recommended length is 6-7 mm.
21.6 A 12nW always-on acoustic sensing and object recognition microsystem using frequency-domain feature extraction and SVM classification

IoT devices are becoming increasingly intelligent and context-aware. Sound is an attractive sensory modality because it is information-rich but not as computationally demanding as alternatives such as vision. New applications of ultra-low power (ULP), ‘always-on’ intelligent acoustic sensing includes agricultural monitoring to detect pests or precipitation, infrastructure health tracking to recognize acoustic symptoms, and security/safety monitoring to identify dangerous conditions. A major impediment for the adoption of always-on, context-aware sensing is power consumption, particularly for ultra-small IoT devices requiring long-term operation without battery replacement. To sustain operation with a 1mm2 solar cell in ambient light (100lux) or achieve a lifetime of 10 years using a button cell battery (2mAh), <20nW power consumption must be achieved, which is more than 2 orders of magnitude lower than current state-of-the-art acoustic sensing systems [1,2]. More broadly a previous ULP signal acquisition IC [3] consumes just 3nW while 64nW ECG monitoring system [4] includes back-end classification, however there are no sub-20nW complete sensing systems with both analog frontend and digital backend.
Myricetin: A Dietary Molecule with Diverse Biological Activities

Myricetin is a common plant-derived flavonoid and is well recognised for its nutraceuticals value. It is one of the key ingredients of various foods and beverages. The compound exhibits a wide range of activities that include strong anti-oxidant, anticancer, antidiabetic and anti-inflammatory activities. It displays several activities that are related to the central nervous system and numerous studies have suggested that the compound may be beneficial to protect against diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The use of myricetin as a preserving agent to extend the shelf life of foods containing oils and fats is attributed to the compound's ability to protect lipids against oxidation. A detailed search of existing literature revealed that there is currently no comprehensive review available on this important molecule. Hence, the present work includes the history, synthesis, pharmaceutical applications and toxicity studies of myricetin. This report also highlights structure-activity relationships and mechanisms of action for various biological activities.
Effects of polysaccharopeptide from Trametes versicolor and amoxicillin on the gut microbiome of healthy volunteers: a randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND
Interactions between the microbial flora of the intestine and the human host play a critical role inmaintaining intestinal health and in the pathophysiology of a wide variety of disorders such as antibiotic associated diarrhea, Clostridium difficile infection, and inflammatory bowel disease. Prebiotics can confer health benefits by beneficial effects on the intestinal microbiome, whereas antibiotics can disrupt the microbiome leading to diarrhea andother side effects.


AIM
To compare the effects of the prebiotic, polysaccharopeptide from Trametes versicolor, to those of the antibiotic,amoxicillin, on the human gut microbiome


METHODS
Twenty-four healthy volunteers were randomized to receive PSP, amoxicillin, or no treatment (control).Stool specimens were analyzed using bTEFAP microbial ecology methods on seven occasions over 8 weeks from each participant in the active treatment groups and on three occasions for the controls.


RESULTS
Twenty-two of 24 participants completed the protocol. PSP led to clear and consistent microbiome changes consistent with its activity as a prebiotic. Despite the diversity of the human microbiome we noted strong microbiome clustering among subjects. Baseline microbiomes tended to remain stable and to overshadow the treatment effects.Amoxicillin treatment caused substantial microbiome changes most notably an increase in Escherichia/Shigella. Antibiotic associated changes persisted to the end of the study, 42 days after antibiotic therapy ended.


CONCLUSIONS
The microbiomes of healthy individuals show substantial diversity but remain stable over time.The antibiotic amoxicillin alters the microbiome and recovery from this disruption can take several weeks. PSP from T. versicolor acts as a prebiotic to modulate human intestinal microbiome composition.
A Longitudinal Study of Self-regulation in Children's Musical Practice

This study investigates common trends and individual differences in children’s practice according to six dimensions of self-regulation. Seven children, aged between 7 and 9 years at the beginning of the study, regularly videotaped their practice over a 3-year period. Behavioural coding addressed the content of practice, the nature of errors and off-task behaviours, and the interaction of family members. Low levels of self-regulatory behaviour, as evidenced in the children’s ability to monitor and control their own learning, were found during practice. Learning strategies were con ned almost exclusively to playing through pieces once or twice. Most errors were either ignored or corrected by repeating one or two notes. Results show that self-regulatory processes vary widely between students, even from the very early stages of musical development, and help to explain why some learners develop their performance skills quickly while others struggle. Implications for music education and future research are discussed.