LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Structured discharge procedure for children admitted to hospital with acute asthma: a randomised controlled trial of nursing practice.

BACKGROUND
Discharge planning is becoming an important part of the management of childhood asthma in hospital. Readmission to hospital, although often inevitable, might represent a failure of the opportunity for intervention presented by a brief period of supervised care in hospital.


AIM
To examine the impact of a structured, nurse-led discharge package for children admitted to hospital with acute asthma on readmission to hospital, reattendance at the accident and emergency (A&E) department, and general practitioner consultations for asthma.


METHODS
A structured nurse-led discharge package, consisting of a 20 minute patient education programme and self management plan for children with asthma was developed on the wards of a busy children's hospital. A randomised controlled trial was conducted involving 160 children aged 2-16 years admitted for asthma over a 12 month period. Readmission and A&E reattendance's over the six months after discharge from hospital were obtained from the hospital computerised information system and general practitioner consultations from practice records.


RESULTS
Children in the intervention group were significantly less likely to be readmitted to hospital in the next six months than those in the control group (12 of 80 v 30 of 80 patients), and significantly less likely to attend the A&E department (6 of 80 v 31 of 80). Significantly fewer children in the intervention group had visits to their general practitioner for problematic asthma (31 of 78 v 72 of 77 for whom data were available).


CONCLUSION
By delivering the simplest form of education and support during a child's stay in hospital, readmissions over a six month period were reduced. The programme was designed to be suitable for administration by nursing staff on the children's wards after a brief period of training.
Ten Pairs to Tag - Multilingual POS Tagging via Coarse Mapping between Embeddings

In the absence of annotations in the target language, multilingual models typically draw on extensive parallel resources. In this paper, we demonstrate that accurate multilingual partof-speech (POS) tagging can be done with just a few (e.g., ten) word translation pairs. We use the translation pairs to establish a coarse linear isometric (orthonormal) mapping between monolingual embeddings. This enables the supervised source model expressed in terms of embeddings to be used directly on the target language. We further refine the model in an unsupervised manner by initializing and regularizing it to be close to the direct transfer model. Averaged across six languages, our model yields a 37.5% absolute improvement over the monolingual prototypedriven method (Haghighi and Klein, 2006) when using a comparable amount of supervision. Moreover, to highlight key linguistic characteristics of the generated tags, we use them to predict typological properties of languages, obtaining a 50% error reduction relative to the prototype model.1
Bottlenecks and Their Performance Implications in E-commerce Systems

Abstract. We present a detailed workload characterization of a multi-tiered system that hosts an e-commerce site. Using the TPC-W workload and via experimental measurements, we illustrate how workload characteristics affect system behavior and operation, focusing on the statistical properties of dynamic page generation. This analysis allows to identify bottlenecks and the system conditions under which there is degradation in performance. Consistent with the literature, we find that the distribution of the dynamic page generation is heavy-tailed, which is caused by the interaction of the database server with the storage system. Furthermore, by examining the queuing behavior at the database server, we present experimental evidence of the existence of statistical correlation in the distribution of dynamic page generation times, especially under high load conditions. We couple this observation with the existence (and switching) of bottlenecks in the system.
Lossy source encoding via message-passing and decimation over generalized codewords of LDGM codes

We describe message-passing and decimation approaches for lossy source coding using low-density generator matrix (LDGM) codes. In particular, this paper addresses the problem of encoding a Bernoulli(1/2) source: for randomly generated LDGM codes with suitably irregular degree distributions, our methods yield performance very close to the rate distortion limit over a range of rates. Our approach is inspired by the survey propagation (SP) algorithm, originally developed by Mezard et al. (2002) for solving random satisfiability problems. Previous work by Maneva et al. (2005) shows how SP can be understood as belief propagation (BP) for an alternative representation of satisfiability problems. In analogy to this connection, our approach is to define a family of Markov random fields over generalized codewords, from which local message-passing rules can be derived in the standard way. The overall source encoding method is based on message-passing, setting a subset of bits to their preferred values (decimation), and reducing the code
(IS)3: Is Information Systems an intellectual subject?

Is Information Systems an Intellectual Subject, or an Academic Subject, or an Academic Discipline? And does it matter? Taking the particular perspective of the author, this paper discusses these questions with a view to raising debate in the Information Systems (IS) community about some of the current pitfalls in IS, such as inappropriate claiming of expertise in other disciplines, and the widespread malpractice concerning research methods and methodologies. The issue of change is addressed from the perspective of misuses (Exaggerations, Explanations and Enigmas) of the issue and how this adds to the pitfalls. A particular definition of research is examined, whose inclusiveness provides some potential relief. The conclusions offer hope and a way forward. European Journal of Information Systems (2002) 11, 174–177. DOI: 10.1057/palgrave/ejis/3000428
A randomwalk based model incorporating social information for recommendations

Collaborative filtering (CF) is one of the most popular approaches to build a recommendation system. In this paper, we propose a hybrid collaborative filtering model based on a Makovian random walk to address the data sparsity and cold start problems in recommendation systems. More precisely, we construct a directed graph whose nodes consist of items and users, together with item content, user profile and social network information. We incorporate user's ratings into edge settings in the graph model. The model provides personalized recommendations and predictions to individuals and groups. The proposed algorithms are evaluated on MovieLens and Epinions datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed methods perform well compared with other graph-based methods, especially in the cold start case.
Autoantigen-specific regulatory T cells induced in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus by insulin B-chain immunotherapy.

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the autoimmunity observed in type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is the result of an imbalance between autoaggressive and regulatory cell subsets. Therapeutics that supplement or enhance the existing regulatory subset are therefore a much sought after goal in this indication. Here, we report the results of a double blind, placebo controlled, phase I clinical trial of a novel antigen-specific therapeutic in 12 subjects with recently diagnosed T1DM. Our primary objective was to test its safety. The study drug, human insulin B-chain in incomplete Freund's adjuvant (IFA) was administered as a single intramuscular injection, with subjects followed for 2 years. All subjects completed therapy and all follow-up visits. The therapy was generally safe and well-tolerated. Mixed meal stimulated C-peptide responses, measured every 6 months, showed no statistical differences between arms. All patients vaccinated with the autoantigen, but none who received placebo, developed robust insulin-specific humoral and T cell responses. Up to two years following the single injection, in peripheral blood from subjects in the experimental arm, but not the control arm, insulin B-chain-specific CD4+ T cells could be isolated and cloned that showed phenotypic and functional characteristics of regulatory T cells. The induction of a lasting, robust immune response generating autoantigen-specific regulatory T cells provides strong justification for further testing of this therapy in type 1 diabetes. (clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT00057499).
Accounting for Soil Aging When Assessing Liquefaction Potential

It has been recognized that liquefaction resistance of sand increases with age due to processes such as cementation at particle contacts and increasing frictional resistance resulting from particle rearrangement and interlocking. As such, the currently available empirical correlations derived from liquefaction of young Holocene sand deposits, and used to determine liquefaction resistance of sand deposits from in situ soil indices standard penetration test SPT , cone penetration test CPT , shear wave velocity test Vs , are not applicable for old sand deposits. To overcome this limitation, a methodology was developed to account for the effect of aging on the liquefaction resistance of old sand deposits. The methodology is based upon the currently existing empirical boundary curves for Holocene age soils and utilizes correction factors presented in the literature that comprise the effect of aging on the in situ soil indices as well as on the field cyclic strength CRR . This paper describes how to combine currently recorded SPT, CPT, and Vs values with corresponding CRR values derived for aged soil deposits to generate new empirical boundary curves for aged soils. The method is illustrated using existing geotechnical data from four sites in the South Carolina Coastal Plain SCCP where sand boils associated with prehistoric earthquakes have been found. These sites involve sand deposits that are 200,000 to 450,000 years in age. This work shows that accounting for aging of soils in the SCCP yields less conservative results regarding the current liquefaction potential than when age is not considered. The modified boundary curves indicate that old sand deposits are more resistant to liquefaction than indicated by the existing empirical curves and can be used to evaluate the liquefaction potential at a specific site directly from the current in situ properties of the soil. DOI: 10.1061/ ASCE 1090-0241 2006 132:3 363 CE Database subject headings: Aging; Soils; Liquefaction; Sand; Cementation.
Capecitabine plus oxaliplatin (CapOx) versus capecitabine plus gemcitabine (CapGem) versus gemcitabine plus oxaliplatin (mGemOx): final results of a multicenter randomized phase II trial in advanced pancreatic cancer.

BACKGROUND
To compare the efficacy and safety of three different chemotherapy doublets in the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer (PC).


PATIENTS AND METHODS
At total of 190 patients were randomly assigned to receive capecitabine 1000 mg/m(2) twice daily on days 1-14 plus oxaliplatin 130 mg/m(2) on day 1 (CapOx), capecitabine 825 mg/m(2) twice daily on days 1-14 plus gemcitabine 1000 mg/m(2) on days 1 and 8 (CapGem) or gemcitabine 1000 mg/m(2) on days 1 and 8 plus oxaliplatin 130 mg/m(2) on day 8 (mGemOx). Treatment cycles were repeated every three weeks. The primary end point was progression-free survival (PFS) rate at 3 months; secondary end points included objective response rate, carbohydrate antigen 19-9 response, clinical benefit response, overall survival and toxicity.


RESULTS
The PFS rate after 3 months was 51% in the CapOx arm, 64% in the CapGem arm and 60% in the mGemOx arm. Median PFS was estimated with 4.2 months, 5.7 months and 3.9 months, respectively (P = 0.67). Corresponding median survival times were: 8.1 months (CapOx), 9.0 months (CapGem) and 6.9 months (mGemOx) (P = 0.56). Grade 3/4 hematological toxicities were more frequent in the two Gem-containing arms; grade 3/4 non-hematological toxicity rates did not exceed 15% in any arm.


CONCLUSION
CapOx, CapGem and mGemOx have similar clinical efficacy in advanced PC. Each regimen has a distinct but manageable tolerability profile.
Effectiveness of educational and social worker interventions to activate patients' discussion and pursuit of preemptive living donor kidney transplantation: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND
Many patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have difficulty becoming actively engaged in the pursuit of preemptive living donor kidney transplantation.


STUDY DESIGN
The Talking About Live Kidney Donation (TALK) Study was a randomized controlled trial of the effectiveness of educational and social worker interventions designed to encourage early discussions and active pursuit of preemptive living donor kidney transplantation in patients with progressive CKD.


SETTING & PARTICIPANTS
We recruited participants with progressive CKD from academically affiliated nephrology practices in Baltimore, MD.


INTERVENTION
Participants randomly received: (1) usual care (routine care with their nephrologists), the (2) TALK education intervention (video and booklet), or the (3) TALK social worker intervention (video and booklet plus patient and family social worker visits).


OUTCOMES
We followed participants for 6 months to assess their self-reported achievement of behaviors reflecting their discussions about and/or pursuit of living donor kidney transplantation (discussions with family, discussions with physicians, initiating recipient evaluation, completing recipient evaluation, and identifying a potential living donor).


MEASUREMENTS
We assessed outcomes through a questionnaire at 1-, 3-, and 6-months follow-up.


RESULTS
Participants receiving usual care with their nephrologists (n = 44), TALK education (n = 43), and the TALK social worker (n = 43) were similar at baseline. TALK Study interventions improved participants' living donor kidney transplantation discussion and pursuit behaviors, with the social worker leading to greater patient activation (participants' predicted probability of achieving living donor kidney transplantation discussions, evaluations, or donor identification over 6 months): probabilities were 30% (95% CI, 20%-46%), 42% (95% CI, 33%-54%), and 58% (95% CI, 41%-83%), respectively, in the usual care, TALK education, and TALK social worker groups (P = 0.03).


LIMITATIONS
Our population was well educated and mostly insured, potentially limiting generalizability of our findings.


CONCLUSIONS
TALK interventions improved discussion and active pursuit of living donor kidney transplantation in patients with progressive CKD and may improve their use of preemptive living donor kidney transplantation.
Estimation of residual glomerular filtration rate in dialysis patients from the plasma cystatin C level.

BACKGROUND
Residual renal function influences morbidity, mortality and quality of life of chronic dialysis patients. Residual glomerular filtration rate (rGFR) is therefore an important parameter in the follow-up of these patients. Because rGFR is measured as the mean of creatinine and urea clearance, a complete 24 h urine collection is essential, but often very difficult to manage for these patients.


METHODS
We investigated if plasma cystatin C (cysC) could give a good estimate of rGFR in dialysis patients and compared it to the measured rGFR, as well as to the rGFR estimate obtained with the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) formula. A total of 465 patients were included in this study. CysC levels of 215 haemodialysis (HD) and 95 chronic ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients were used to derive a formula for rGFR. This formula was tested in the validation group of 107 HD and 48 PD patients.


RESULTS
The cysC formula derived in the modelling group was rGFR = -0.70 + 22 x (1/cysC). The mean estimated rGFR obtained with this formula in the validation group was not significantly different from the mean measured rGFR: difference 0.19 ml/min/1.73 m(2), 95% confidence interval (CI) -2.37 to 2.75 ml/min/1.73 m(2). The MDRD formula gave a larger difference from the mean measured rGFR (3.13 ml/min/1.73 m(2)) and a much wider 95% CI (-1.29 to 7.55 ml/min/1.73 m(2)). A separate model for HD and PD patients did not improve the estimation of rGFR.


CONCLUSIONS
The cysC formula showed better accuracy and precision than the MDRD formula. Therefore the cysC formula and not the MDRD formula should be used to calculate rGFR in dialysis patients when no 24 h urine sample is available.
Towards webcam-based tracking for interventional navigation

PURPOSE: Optical tracking is a commonly used tool in computer assisted surgery and surgical training; however, many current generation commercially available tracking systems are prohibitively large and expensive for certain applications. We developed an open source optical tracking system using the Intel RealSense SR300 webcam with integrated depth sensor. In this paper, we assess the accuracy of this tracking system. METHODS: The PLUS toolkit was extended to incorporate the ArUco marker detection and tracking library. The depth data obtained from the infrared sensor of the Intel RealSense SR300 was used to improve accuracy. We assessed the accuracy of the system by comparing this tracker to a high accuracy commercial optical tracker. RESULTS: The ArUco based optical tracking algorithm had median errors of 20.0mm and 4.1 degrees in a 200x200x200mm tracking volume. Our algorithm processing the depth data had a positional error of 17.3mm, and an orientation error of 7.1 degrees in the same tracking volume. In the direction perpendicular to the sensor, the optical only tracking had positional errors between 11% and 15%, compared to errors in depth of 1% or less. In tracking one marker relative to another, a fused transform from optical and depth data produced the best result of 1.39% error. CONCLUSION: The webcam based system does not yet have satisfactory accuracy for use in computer assisted surgery or surgical training.
Effects of high-velocity resistance training on muscle function, muscle properties, and physical performance in individuals with hip osteoarthritis: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the effects of high-velocity resistance training on muscle function, muscle properties, and physical performance in patients with hip osteoarthritis by comparison with those of low-velocity resistance training.


DESIGN
Single-blind randomized controlled trial.


SETTING
Home-based exercise programmes.


SUBJECTS
A total of 46 women with hip osteoarthritis were randomly assigned to the high-velocity (n = 23) or low-velocity (n = 23) training group.


INTERVENTIONS
Both groups underwent an eight-week daily home-based resistance training programme using an elastic band. Exercises involved hip abduction, extension, and flexion and knee extension. Participants in the high-velocity group performed the concentric phase of each repetition as rapidly as possible and returned to the initial position eccentrically in 3 s. Participants in the low-velocity group performed both the concentric and eccentric phases in 3 s.


MAIN MEASURES
The following outcome measures were evaluated: isometric muscle strength, muscle power, muscle thickness, muscle echo intensity, maximum walking speed, Timed Up and Go test, 3-minute walking test, Harris Hip Score, and hip pain.


RESULTS
Decreases in the time for performing the Timed Up and Go test (mean changes: high-velocity group -0.46 s, low-velocity group -0.23 s) and echo intensity of the gluteus maximus (mean changes: high-velocity group -6.8, low-velocity group -1.0) were significantly greater in the high-velocity group than in the low-velocity group. No significant difference was observed in changes of other outcome measures between the groups.


CONCLUSION
This study revealed that high-velocity training for patients with hip osteoarthritis has partially a greater effect on muscle properties and physical performance than low-velocity training.
Team THOR's Entry in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials 2013

Seung-Joon Yi GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 e-mail: yiseung@seas.upenn.edu Stephen G. McGill GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 e-mail: smcgill3@seas.upenn.edu Larry Vadakedathu GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 e-mail: vlarry@seas.upenn.edu Qin He GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 e-mail: heqin@seas.upenn.edu Inyong Ha Robotis, Seoul, Korea e-mail: dudung@robotis.com Jeakweon Han Robotis, Seoul, Korea e-mail: jkhan@robotis.com Hyunjong Song Robotis, Seoul, Korea e-mail: hjsong@robotis.com Michael Rouleau RoMeLa, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061 e-mail: mrouleau@vt.edu Byoung-Tak Zhang BI Lab, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea e-mail: btzhang@bi.snu.ac.kr Dennis Hong RoMeLa, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095 e-mail: dennishong@ucla.edu Mark Yim GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 e-mail: yim@seas.upenn.edu Daniel D. Lee GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 e-mail: ddlee@seas.upenn.edu
Feasibility and validity were demonstrated of an online case-control study using the prototype of recent-onset systemic lupus erythematosus.

OBJECTIVE
To test the feasibility and validity of the online case-control study design through the empirical deployment of a prototype study of recent-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).


STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING
We conducted an Internet-based case-control study of SLE during 2003-2005. The source population comprised Google users searching on medical key terms, solicited using sponsored links. Cases fulfilled a self-administered algorithm for SLE diagnosed within 5 years. A subset underwent confirmation by medical record review. Controls were matched to cases using a propensity score.


RESULTS
Four hundred and two cases and 693 control applicants finished the questionnaires, yielding 389 matched case-control pairs. Eighty-two percentage of the records documented a clinical diagnosis of SLE, and 61% documented >or=4 American College of Rheumatology criteria for SLE. Control applicants resembled Internet users, with the exceptions of comprising more women (86% vs. 52%) and fewer minority individuals (e.g., 5% vs. 9% for African-Americans). There was a broad representation of clinical manifestations. SLE was associated with miscarriage (odds ratio [OR]=3.0, 95% confidence interval [CI]=2.0-4.7), allergy to sulfonamides (OR=2.2, CI=1.5-3.2), hives (OR=1.9, CI=1.4-2.5), and shingles (OR=2.3, CI=1.4-3.7).


CONCLUSION
It is possible to perform case-control studies over the Internet using an internally valid design, obtain reliable information from participants, and confirm established associations.