LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial: the feasibility and impact of cardiovascular absolute risk assessment in Australian general practice.

BACKGROUND
Although cardiovascular absolute risk (CVAR) assessment has been recommended for use in Australian general practice for a number of years, there is continuing uncertainty about its implementation and impact. Our previous work has developed a multifaceted implementation model. This study aims to investigate both the feasibility of using this model and the impact of CVAR assessment and management on general practice clinical processes and patient care.


STUDY DESIGN
This cluster randomized controlled trial will be conducted in general practices in Sydney, involving general practitioners (GPs), other practice staff, and patients aged 45 to 69 years without existing cardiovascular disease.


METHODS
A total of 32 practices (40 GPs) and 1,320 patients will be recruited. Randomization will be conducted at the practice level. The intervention group of GPs will be trained to use a CVAR implementation model, whereas the control group of GPs will continue usual care. Study outcomes include clinical processes, patient risk, use of lifestyle intervention, and prescription of antihypertensive and lipid-lowering medications. Data will be collected and analyzed using mixed methods. Study outcomes before and after the intervention will be compared, and the 2 groups will also be compared after adjusting for baseline difference and clustering factors.


DISCUSSION
This trial will be the first study in Australian general practice and one of few international studies to evaluate the impact of implementing CVAR assessment and management. Results of this study will help improve the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and inform guidelines for clinical practice and the implementation of other health initiatives.
Freeway speed limits and traffic fatalities in Washington State.

BACKGROUND
In 1987 individual states in the USA were allowed to raise speed limits on rural freeways from 55 to 65 mph. Analyses of the impact of the increased speed limits on highway safety have produced conflicting results.


OBJECTIVE
To determine if the 1987 speed limit increase on Washington State's rural freeways affected the incidence of fatal crashes or all crashes on rural freeways, or affected average vehicle speeds or speed variance.


DESIGN
An ecological study of crashes and vehicle speeds on Washington State freeways from 1974 through 1994.


RESULTS
The incidence of fatal crashes more than doubled after 1987, compared with what would have been expected if there had been no speed limit increase, rate ratio 2.1 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.6-2.7). This resulted in an excess of 26.4 deaths per year on rural freeways in Washington State. The total crash rate did not change substantially, rate ratio 1.1 (95% CI, 1.0-1.3). Average vehicle speed increased by 5.5 mph. Speed variance was not affected by the speed limit increase.


CONCLUSIONS
The speed limit increase was associated with a higher fatal crash rate and more deaths on freeways in Washington State.
Pulling levers focused deterrence strategies and the prevention of gun homicide

A number of jurisdictions have been experimenting with new problem-oriented policing frameworks to understand and respond to gun violence among gang-involved offenders. These interventions are based on the “pulling levers” deterrence strategy that focuses criminal justice and social service attention on a small number of chronically offending gang members responsible for the bulk of urban gun violence problems. Unfortunately, there is relatively little rigorous evaluation evidence on the effectiveness of these approaches to violence prevention. In Stockton, California, an interagency task force implemented a pulling levers strategy to prevent gun homicide among gang-involved offenders. A U.S. Department of Justice-sponsored impact evaluation suggests that the pulling levers strategy was associated with a statistically significant decrease in the monthly number of gun homicide incidents in Stockton. A comparative analysis of gun homicide trends in Stockton relative to other midsize California cities also supports a unique program effect associated with the pulling levers intervention. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A Survey of Quality Prediction of Product Reviews

With the help of Web-2.0, the Internet offers a vast amount of reviews on many topics and in different domains. This has led to an explosive growth of product reviews and customer feedback, which presents the problem of how to handle the abundant volume of data. It is an expensive and time-consuming task to analyze this huge content of opinions. Therefore, the need for automated sentiment analysis systems is vital. However, these systems encounter many challenges; assessing the content quality of the posted opinions is an important area of study that is related to sentiment analysis. Currently, review helpfulness is assessed manually; however the task of automatically assessing it has gained more attention in recent years. This paper provides a survey of approaches to the challenge of identifying the content quality of product reviews. Keywords—sentiment analysis; product reviews; content analysis; helpfulness detection
Supervised models for an OpenAI driving game General Machine Learning

Using the Open AI framework, we will use supervised learning with support of linear models and deep neural nets, in order to try to achieve honorable score at playing a driving game without human intervention.
An administrative claims model suitable for profiling hospital performance based on 30-day mortality rates among patients with an acute myocardial infarction.

BACKGROUND
A model using administrative claims data that is suitable for profiling hospital performance for acute myocardial infarction would be useful in quality assessment and improvement efforts. We sought to develop a hierarchical regression model using Medicare claims data that produces hospital risk-standardized 30-day mortality rates and to validate the hospital estimates against those derived from a medical record model.


METHODS AND RESULTS
For hospital estimates derived from claims data, we developed a derivation model using 140,120 cases discharged from 4664 hospitals in 1998. For the comparison of models from claims data and medical record data, we used the Cooperative Cardiovascular Project database. To determine the stability of the model over time, we used annual Medicare cohorts discharged in 1995, 1997, and 1999-2001. The final model included 27 variables and had an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.71. In a comparison of the risk-standardized hospital mortality rates from the claims model with those of the medical record model, the correlation coefficient was 0.90 (SE=0.003). The slope of the weighted regression line was 0.95 (SE=0.007), and the intercept was 0.008 (SE=0.001), both indicating strong agreement of the hospital estimates between the 2 data sources. The median difference between the claims-based hospital risk-standardized mortality rates and the chart-based rates was <0.001 (25th and 75th percentiles, -0.003 and 0.003). The performance of the model was stable over time.


CONCLUSIONS
This administrative claims-based model for profiling hospitals performs consistently over several years and produces estimates of risk-standardized mortality that are good surrogates for estimates from a medical record model.
Perceptions and Attitudes of Egyptian Health Professionals and Policy-Makers towards Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives and Other Promotional Activities

BACKGROUND
Pharmaceutical promotion activities in low and middle-income countries are often neither regulated nor monitored. While Egypt has the highest population and per capita use of medicines in the Arab world, we know very little about pharmaceutical companies promotional activities in the country.


AIM
To explore and analyze the perceptions of physicians towards promotional and marketing activities of pharmaceutical companies among physicians and pharmacists in Egypt.


METHODOLOGY
Perspectives of different healthcare system stakeholders were explored through semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in 2014 in Cairo, Egypt. Interviewees were chosen via purposive sampling and snowball technique. Each interview was recorded and transcribed. Then qualitative, thematic analysis was conducted with the help of NVIVO software.


FINDINGS
The majority of physicians and pharmacists acknowledged exposure to pharmaceutical promotion. It was commonly believed that interaction with the pharmaceutical industry is necessary and both associated risks and benefits were acknowledged. The interviewed physicians considered themselves competent enough to minimize risks and maximize benefits to their prescribing habits. Views diverged on the extent and magnitude of the risks and benefits of pharmaceutical promotion, especially in regard to the influence on patients' health.


CONCLUSIONS
Pharmaceutical promotion in Egypt is intensely directed at prescribers and dispensers. Physicians, pharmacists and policymakers expressed little skepticism to the influence of promotion towards their individual prescribing. Raising awareness of the pitfalls of pharmaceutical promotion is necessary, especially among the less experienced physicians.
Sustainable Development Decision-Making Model for Small and Medium Enterprises

Growing importance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their influence on economic development of the countries demand special attenti on g ven to processes, tendencies, perspectives in them and encourage the search for the effective SME perf ormance improvement measures. To pursue high environmental performance, economic and social effectiveness of SMEs is a key goal of t he sustainable development concept. Taking into consideration the importance of SMEs, t heir dynamics, ability to innovate rapidly, also problematic issues and the need to improve competit iveness, it can be noted that to improve their environmental performance, economic and social effe ctiveness, the integrated, based on financial analy sis, decisionmaking model is needed which would be oriented to s trategic sustainability goals, not requiring signi ficant time, financial and human resources, The integration of s ustainability management accounting (SMA) and compo site sustainable development index (I CSD) methodologies makes the basis of sustainable deve lopm nt decisionmaking model for SMEs.
Anti-pattern Detection as a Knowledge Utilization

The occurrence of anti-patterns in software complicate development process and reduce the software quality. The contribution proposes selected methods as an OCL Query, extension to Similarity Scoring Algorithm, Bit-vector Algorithm and rule based approach originally used for design patterns detection. This paper summarizes approaches, important differences between design patterns and anti-patterns structures, modifications and extensions of algorithms and their application to detect selected anti-pattterns.
The threat simulation theory of the evolutionary function of dreaming: Evidence from dreams of traumatized children

The threat simulation theory of dreaming (TST) () states that dream consciousness is essentially an ancient biological defence mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening events. Threat simulation during dreaming rehearses the cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and threat avoidance, leading to increased probability of reproductive success during human evolution. One hypothesis drawn from TST is that real threatening events encountered by the individual during wakefulness should lead to an increased activation of the system, a threat simulation response, and therefore, to an increased frequency and severity of threatening events in dreams. Consequently, children who live in an environment in which their physical and psychological well-being is constantly threatened should have a highly activated dream production and threat simulation system, whereas children living in a safe environment that is relatively free of such threat cues should have a weakly activated system. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the content of dream reports from severely traumatized and less traumatized Kurdish children and ordinary, non-traumatized Finnish children. Our results give support for most of the predictions drawn from TST. The severely traumatized children reported a significantly greater number of dreams and their dreams included a higher number of threatening dream events. The dream threats of traumatized children were also more severe in nature than the threats of less traumatized or non-traumatized children.
A modified Coomassie Brilliant Blue staining method at nanogram sensitivity compatible with proteomic analysis

A more sensitive and convenient Coomassie Brilliant Blue (CBB) staining method for visualizing proteins was developed. Compared with the modifications include the supplement of 10% (v/v) methanol into the fixing solution, an increase of an additional sensitization step and CBB raised from 0.1 to 0.125%. The improved method can detect proteins at nanogram level. The improved method is more sensitive than Blue Silver and more convenient than the Silver protocol. Mass spectrometry results confirmed that it is suitable for subsequent proteomic research.
Thoracic paravertebral regional anesthesia improves analgesia after breast cancer surgery: a randomized controlled multicentre clinical trial.

BACKGROUND
The contribution of regional anesthesia with thoracic paravertebral blockade to postoperative analgesia remains unclear. We compared the effect of a combination of paravertebral blockade and propofol general anesthesia (GA) with sevoflurane GA and opioid analgesia on postoperative pain and opioid use for patients undergoing breast cancer surgery.


METHODS
Patients having breast cancer surgery were randomly assigned to paravertebral analgesia with propofol GA (PPA, n = 187) or sevoflurane GA with perioperative opioid analgesia (SOA, n = 199). The PPA and SOA groups were compared for opioid consumption and pain outcomes (on a 0-10 visual analogue scale [VAS]) at two hours postoperatively using superiority and inferiority statistics. We compared our results with previous publications in a meta-analysis.


RESULTS
Compared with the SOA group, the PPA group experienced reduced median [interquartile range] pain VAS scores (1 [1,3] vs 2.5 [1,4], respectively; median difference -1.0; 99% confidence intervals [CI]: -1.5 to -0.5) and required less intraoperative fentanyl (50 [0, 125] µg vs 200 [100, 300] µg, respectively; median difference -100; 99% CI: -150 to -100) and less long-acting opioid (0 [0, 0] mg vs 3.0 [0, 12] mg, respectively, morphine equivalents; median difference -3; 99% CI: -4 to -2). Thus, non-inferiority was detected for all the above outcomes, and superiority tests for each outcome were highly significant in the expected directions (P < 0.001). Meta-analysis, including the current study, estimated a reduction in worst pain of 2.3 points (95% CI: 1.8 to 2.8) on a 0-10 scale and a 72% reduction (95% CI: 42 to 87) in mean opioid consumption in the immediate two postoperative hours for PPA vs SOA.


CONCLUSION
Our results were largely consistent with previous much smaller studies. Compared with sevoflurane GA with opioid analgesia, the combination of paravertebral analgesia with propofol GA provides an early clinical analgesic benefit in females having breast cancer surgery. This analysis is a substudy of an ongoing multicentre double-blinded randomized trial ( www.clinicaltrials.gov , NCT00418457) of cancer recurrence.
Obstacle Avoidance in Real Time With Nonlinear Model Predictive Control of Autonomous Vehicles

A Nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC) for trajectory tracking with the obstacle avoidance of autonomous road vehicles traveling at realistic speeds is presented in this paper, with a focus on the performance of those controllers with respect to the look-ahead horizon of the NMPC. Two different methods of obstacle avoidance are compared and then the NMPC is tested in several simulated but realistic tracking scenarios involving static obstacles on constrained roadways. In order to simplify the vehicle dynamics, a bicycle model is used for the prediction of future vehicle states in the NMPC framework. However, a high-fidelity, nonlinear CarSim vehicle model is used to evaluate the vehicle performance and test the controllers in the simulation results. The CPU time is also analyzed to evaluate these schemes for real-time applications. The results show that the NMPC controller provides satisfactory online tracking performance in a realistic scenario at normal road speeds while still satisfying the real-time constraints. In addition, it is shown that the longer prediction horizons allow for better responses of the controllers, which reduce the deviations while avoiding the obstacles, as compared with shorter horizons.
Prevalence of Depression Among Students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences (Iran)

OBJECTIVE
A depressive disorder is an illness that involves the body, mood, thoughts and behaviors. This study was performed to identify the presence of depression among medical students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences.


METHODS
A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 700 undergraduate medical and basic sciences students. Beck depression inventory (BDI) used for data gathering.


RESULTS
Mean score of BDI was 10.4 ± 0.8 and 52.6% of students scored under the depression threshold. Four of them had severe depression. RESULTS showed no significant relationship between depression and age, education, sex, rank of birth or duration of education.


CONCLUSION
Prevalence of depression that can affect the students' quality of education and social behavior was high in Urmia University of Medical Sciences.
Cloud radio access network (C-RAN): a primer

In the era of mobile Internet, mobile operators are facing pressure on ever-increasing capital expenditures and operating expenses with much less growth of income. Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is expected to be a candidate of next generation access network techniques that can solve operators' puzzle. In this article, on the basis of a general survey of C-RAN, we present a novel logical structure of C-RAN that consists of a physical plane, a control plane, and a service plane. Compared to traditional architecture, the proposed C-RAN architecture emphasizes the notion of service cloud, service-oriented resource scheduling and management, thus it facilitates the utilization of new communication and computer techniques. With the extensive computation resource offered by the cloud platform, a coordinated user scheduling algorithm and parallel optimum precoding scheme are proposed, which can achieve better performance. The proposed scheme opens another door to design new algorithms matching well with C-RAN architecture, instead of only migrating existing algorithms from traditional architecture to C-RAN.
The Hybrid BCI

Nowadays, everybody knows what a hybrid car is. A hybrid car normally has two engines to enhance energy efficiency and reduce CO2 output. Similarly, a hybrid brain-computer interface (BCI) is composed of two BCIs, or at least one BCI and another system. A hybrid BCI, like any BCI, must fulfill the following four criteria: (i) the device must rely on signals recorded directly from the brain; (ii) there must be at least one recordable brain signal that the user can intentionally modulate to effect goal-directed behaviour; (iii) real time processing; and (iv) the user must obtain feedback. This paper introduces hybrid BCIs that have already been published or are in development. We also introduce concepts for future work. We describe BCIs that classify two EEG patterns: one is the event-related (de)synchronisation (ERD, ERS) of sensorimotor rhythms, and the other is the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP). Hybrid BCIs can either process their inputs simultaneously, or operate two systems sequentially, where the first system can act as a "brain switch". For example, we describe a hybrid BCI that simultaneously combines ERD and SSVEP BCIs. We also describe a sequential hybrid BCI, in which subjects could use a brain switch to control an SSVEP-based hand orthosis. Subjects who used this hybrid BCI exhibited about half the false positives encountered while using the SSVEP BCI alone. A brain switch can also rely on hemodynamic changes measured through near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Hybrid BCIs can also use one brain signal and a different type of input. This additional input can be an electrophysiological signal such as the heart rate, or a signal from an external device such as an eye tracking system.
Different types of nutritional deficiencies affect different domains of spatial memory function checked in a radial arm maze

Several studies using animal models have suggested that the effects of nutritional insult on the developing brain are long-lasting and lead to permanent deficits in learning and behavior. Malnutrition can refer to the availability of all the nutrients but in insufficient quantities or it may imply that one or more of essential nutrients is either missing or is present, but in the wrong proportions in the diet. The hypothesis addressed in this study is that different domains of cognitive functioning can be affected by malnutrition and this can be related to the type of nutritional deficiency that the brain has been exposed to during development. To study the effect of nutritional deprivation during brain development, a paradigm of maternal malnutrition during the period of gestation and lactation was used and its effects were studied on the F1 offspring using Swiss albino mice. Three different types of malnutrition were used, that involve, caloric restriction, inadequate amount of protein in the diet and condition of low iron content. Our results show that the domain of spatial memory affected in the F1 generation depended on the kind of malnutrition that the mother was subjected to. Further our study shows that although hippocampal volume was reduced in all F1 pups, hippocampal subregions of the F1 animals were differentially vulnerable depending on type of malnutrition that the mother was subjected to. These results highlight the importance of qualifying the kind of malnutrition that is suffered by the mother during the period of gestation and lactation as it has consequences for the cognitive domain affected in the offspring. Awareness of this should inform prevention strategies in trying to reverse the effects of adverse maternal nutrition during critical periods in brain development.
Characterization and diagenesis of strong-acid carboxyl groups in humic substances

Abstract A small fraction of carboxylic acid functional groups in humic substances are exceptionally acidic with p K a values as low as 0.5. A review of acid-group theory eliminated most models and explanations for these exceptionally acidic carboxyl groups. These acidic carboxyl groups in Suwannee River fulvic acid were enriched by a 2-stage fractionation process and the fractions were characterized by elemental, molecular-weight, and titrimetric analyses, and by infrared and 13 C- and 1 H-nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry. An average structural model of the most acidic fraction derived from the characterization data indicated a high density of carboxyl groups clustered on oxygen-heterocycle alicyclic rings. Intramolecular H-bonding between adjacent carboxyl groups in these ring structures enhanced stabilization of the carboxylate anion which results in low p K a1 values. The standard, tetrahydrofuran tetracarboxylic acid, was shown to have similar acidity characteristics to the highly acidic fulvic acid fraction. The end products of 3 known diagenetic pathways for the formation of humic substances were shown to result in carboxyl groups clustered on oxygen-heterocycle alicyclic rings.