LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Dialectal influence on chronic pulmonary disease assessment test: the reliability and validity study

BACKGROUND
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients living in many countries are familiar with local dialects rather than the official language. We, therefore, compare the reliability and validity of the COPD Assessment Test (CAT) in Thai and northern Thai dialect versions, in stable COPD patients living in the northern part of Thailand.


METHODS
A total of 160 COPD patients were randomly selected for the evaluation of each dialect version of CAT (n=80). The internal consistency of all eight items and test-retest reliability were investigated by using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICCC), respectively. The validity was evaluated by the degree of correlation with St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) using Pearson's correlation. The correlations of CAT with clinical parameters such as forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1), modified Medical Research Council scale (mMRC) dyspnea score, and 6-minute walk distance (6-MWD) were also evaluated.


RESULTS
The two versions of CAT showed high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.82 and 0.76) as well as a high test-retest reliability (ICCC of 0.82 and 0.84) for Thai and northern Thai dialect versions, respectively. The test results revealed that the northern Thai dialect version had good correlation with SGRQ whereas the Thai version correlated only moderately.


CONCLUSION
The two Thai versions of CAT were proven to be good clinical tools with high reliability and acceptable validity for assessing the quality of life of Thai COPD patients. However, the northern Thai dialect version is more suitable for evaluating COPD patients living in the northern part of Thailand.
Evaluation of CSF neurotransmitters and folate in 25 patients with Rett disorder and effects of treatment

BACKGROUND
Rett disorder (RD) is a progressive neurodevelopmental entity caused by mutations in the MECP2 gene. It has been postulated that there are alterations in the levels of certain neurotransmitters and folate in the pathogenesis of this disease. Here we re-evaluated this hypothesis.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
We evaluated CSF folate, biogenic amines and pterines in 25 RD patients. Treatment with oral folinic acid was started in those cases with low folate. Patients were clinically evaluated and videotaped up to 6 months after therapy.


RESULTS
CSF folate was below the reference values in 32% of the patients. Six months after treatment no clinical improvement was observed. Three of the four patients with the R294X mutation had increased levels of a dopamine metabolite associated to a particular phenotype. Three patients had low levels of a serotonin metabolite. Two of them were treated with fluoxetine and one showed clinical improvement. No association was observed between CSF folate and these metabolites, after adjusting for the patients age and neopterin levels.


CONCLUSION
Our results support that folinic acid supplementation has no significant effects on the course of the disease. We report discrete and novel neurotransmitter abnormalities that may contribute to the pathogenesis of RD highlighting the need for further studies on CSF neurotransmitters in clinically and genetically well characterized patients.
Anesthetic-induced improvement of the inflammatory response to one-lung ventilation.

BACKGROUND
Although one-lung ventilation (OLV) has become an established procedure during thoracic surgery, sparse data exist about inflammatory alterations in the deflated, reventilated lung. The aim of this study was to prospectively investigate the effect of OLV on the pulmonary inflammatory response and to assess possible immunomodulatory effects of the anesthetics propofol and sevoflurane.


METHODS
Fifty-four adults undergoing thoracic surgery with OLV were randomly assigned to receive either anesthesia with intravenously applied propofol or the volatile anesthetic sevoflurane. A bronchoalveolar lavage was performed before and after OLV on the lung side undergoing surgery. Inflammatory mediators (tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin 1beta, interleukin 6, interleukin 8, monocyte chemoattractant protein 1) and cells were analyzed in lavage fluid as the primary endpoint. The clinical outcome determined by postoperative adverse events was assessed as the secondary endpoint.


RESULTS
The increase of inflammatory mediators on OLV was significantly less pronounced in the sevoflurane group. No difference in neutrophil recruitment was found between the groups. A positive correlation between neutrophils and mediators was demonstrated in the propofol group, whereas this correlation was missing in the sevoflurane group. The number of composite adverse events was significantly lower in the sevoflurane group.


CONCLUSIONS
This prospective, randomized clinical study suggests an immunomodulatory role for the volatile anesthetic sevoflurane in patients undergoing OLV for thoracic surgery with significant reduction of inflammatory mediators and a significantly better clinical outcome (defined by postoperative adverse events) during sevoflurane anesthesia.
Perceptions and preferences of medical students regarding teaching methods in a Medical College, Mangalore India.

INTRODUCTION
In the complex setting of a medical school it becomes essential to utilize an approach to teaching and learning that is best suited to the needs of the students. In developing countries like India, where there is an exponential increase of institutions catering to medical students, it becomes a challenge to teach to large number of students per class. Hence, research is needed to identify the needs of students in relation to their day to day learning activities.


OBJECTIVES
To understand the preferences and perception of medical students about the current methods of teaching, aids used for teaching and also identify barriers in learning as perceived by the students.


METHOD
A Cross-sectional study was carried out at Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore during May 2012. Study participants included 2(nd) and 3(rd) year medical students. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the information in relation to preferences and perceptions regarding teaching methods utilized for theory and clinical teaching. SPSS version 11.5 was used for analysis of data. The association between variables of interest was tested using Chi-square test.


RESULTS
A total of 286 students (56.6 % females and 43.4% males) participated with a dropout rate of 10.6%. The study revealed that 71.3% of the students had an attendance above 75%. The most preferred teaching method was Problem Based Learning (PBL) (71.4%) as students felt that it enhanced lateral thinking while Didactic Lectures was the least preferred (32.8%). The most preferred modality of teaching aid was found to be Black board preferred by 46.9% students. In learning rare signs and cases, students preferred video lectures (41%) and mannequins (75.9%) in learning clinical skills. The main barrier in theory learning identified was inappropriate teaching methods (15%) and being new to clinical posting (38.5%) in case of learning clinical skills.


CONCLUSION
The findings of the study suggest that a combination of traditional methods with other methods such as PBL, video lectures and mannequins could be an effective way of teaching theory and clinical skills.
Differences in COPD care among doctors who control the disease: general practitioner vs. pneumologist.

AIM
To assess the role of doctors who patients report as responsible of their disease, in moderate-severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), describing characteristics of patients and treatments use according to each type of doctor, and relating it to the way of access to hospital at the time of an exacerbation.


MATERIALS/PATIENTS AND METHODS
A systematic sample of 1:2 patients admitted for a COPD exacerbation during 1 year in four tertiary hospitals in the Barcelona area, Spain, was recruited. Information about health services was obtained by an administered questionnaire.


RESULTS
A total of 346 patients were recruited: mean age 69 (+/-9) years, percent of predicted FEV(1) of 35 (+/-16)%, PO(2) of 64 (+/-13)mmHg. At the time of admission, 17% of patients reported being controlled by a general practitioner (GP) and 56% by a pneumologist whereas 21% reported its COPD not being under the regular control of any doctor. Patients not controlled by a pneumologist did not suffer from milder COPD than the remaining, but were less likely to receive pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments and less likely to perform correctly the inhalation manoeuvres. During the course of the exacerbation 70% of patients reported a visit to a hospital emergency room department without a previous medical visit, this proportion being higher among those controlled by a pneumologist.


CONCLUSIONS
Lack of control and variability in the patterns of care among patients controlled by different types of physicians are common in moderate-to-severe COPD patients admitted for a COPD exacerbation, despite the lack of differences in COPD severity. Medical control of COPD patients needs more investigation and a wider inclusion in international guidelines.
Universal mobility-field curves for electrons and holes in MOS inversion layers

The mobility of carriers in a silicon surface inversion layer is one of the most important parameters required to accurately model and predict MOSFET device and circuit performance. It has been found that electron mobility follows a universal curve when plotted as a function of an effective normal field regardless of substrate bias, substrate doping (≤ 1017 cm-3) and nominal process variations [1]. Although accurate modeling of p-channel MOS devices has become important due to the prevalence of CMOS technology, the existence of a universal hole mobility-field relationship has not been demonstrated. Furthermore, the effect on mobility of low-temperature and rapid high-temperature processing, which are commonly used in modern VLSI technology to control impurity diffusion, is unknown.
Can segmented flow enhance heat transfer in microchannel heat sinks

Liquid cooling is an efficient way to remove heat fluxes with magnitudes up to 10,000 W/cm. One limitation of current single-phase microchannel heat sinks is the relatively low Nusselt number, due to laminar flow. In this work, we experimentally investigate how to enhance the Nusselt number with the introduction of segmented flow. The segmented flow pattern was created by the periodic injection of air bubbles through a T-junction into water-filled channels. We designed a polycarbonate heat sink consisting of an array of seven parallel microchannels each with a square cross-section 500 μm wide. We show that segmented flow increases the Nusselt number of laminar flow by more than a hundred percent, provided the mass velocity of the liquid is within the range 330 2000 kg/ms .
The top five reasons for lurking: improving community experiences for everyone

Even in busy online communities usually only a small fraction of members post messages. Why do so many people prefer not to contribute publicly? From an online survey that generated 1188 responses from posters and lurkers from 375 MSN bulletin board communities, 219 lurkers spoke out about their reasons for not posting. While lurkers did not participate publicly, they did seek answers to questions. However, lurkers’ satisfaction with their community experience was lower than those who post. Data from 19 checkbox items and over 490 open-ended responses were analyzed. From this analysis the main reasons why lurkers lurk were concerned with: not needing to post; needing to find out more about the group before participating; thinking that they were being helpful by not posting; not being able to make the software work (i.e., poor usability); and not liking the group dynamics or the community was a poor fit for them. Two key conclusions can be drawn from this analysis. First, there are many reasons why people lurk in online discussion communities. Second, and most important, most lurkers are not selfish free-riders. From these findings it is clear that there are many ways to 1 University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA. (410) 455 3795/1217 (fax) preece@umbc.edu 2 University of Guelph, Canada. nonnecke@cis.uguelph.edu 3 University of Baltimore, USA. dandrews@ubalt.edu Draft: Preece, J., Nonnecke, B., Andrews, D. (2004) The top 5 reasons for lurking: Improving community experiences for everyone. Computers in Human Behavior, 2, 1 (in press) 2 improve online community experiences for both posters and lurkers. Some solutions require improved software and better tools, but moderation and better interaction support will produce dramatic improvements.
Probabilistic load flow for distribution systems with wind production using Unscented Transform method

In this paper, an approximate scheme called the Unscented Transforms (UT) method is proposed for probabilistic load flow studies. The proposed method involves carefully choosing a few selected points to approximate the probability distribution function of random variables within the system so as to significantly reduce the computation time. Since a power grid with embedded wind production is considered, the wind speed random variation is represented using a 3-parameter Weibull distribution. The wind power generated by the variable speed turbine is approximated as a composite distribution made up of the truncated Weibull-degenerate distributions. The Cumulative Distribution Function of the output variables are plotted using the Cornish-Fisher expansion technique. The effectiveness of the proposed method is proven by comparing the results obtained from it with those from the Monte Carlo simulation method using a simple 3-bus test system.
Information Theory and an Extension of the Maximum Likelihood Principle by Hirotogu Akaike

1. Introduction The problem of estimating the dimensionality of a model occurs in various forms in applied statistics. There is estimating the number of factor in factor analysis, estimating the degree of a polynomial describing the data, selecting the variables to be introduced in a multiple regression equation, estimating the order of an AR or MA time series model, and so on. In factor analysis this problem was traditionally solved by eyeballing residual eigen-values, or by applying some other kind of heuristic procedure. When maximum likelihood factor analysis became computationally feasible the likelihoods for diierent dimensionalities could be compared. Most statisticians were aware of the fact that comparison of successive chi squares was not optimal in any well deened decision theoretic sense. With the advent of the electronic computer the forward and backward stepwise selection procedures in multiple regression also became quite popular, but again there were plenty of examples around showing that the procedures were not optimal and could easily lead one astray. When even more computational power became available one could solve the best subset selection problem for up to 20 or 30 variables, but choosing an appropriate criterion on the basis of which to compare the many models remains a problem. But exactly because of these advances in computation, nding a solution of the problem became more and more urgent. In the linear regression situation the C p criterion of Mallows (1973), which had already been around much longer, and the PRESS criterion of Allen (1971) were suggested. Although they seemed to work quite well, they were too limited in scope. The structural covariance models of Joreskog and others, and the log linear models of Goodman and others, made search over a much more complicated set of models necessary, and the model choice problems in those contexts could not be attacked by inherently linear methods. Three major closely related developments occurred around 1974. Akaike (1973) introduced the information criterion for model selection, generalizing his earlier work on time series analysis and factor analysis. Stone (1974) reintroduced and systematized cross
Text Dependent Speaker Recognition using Deep Neural Networks

Speaker Recognition is used for identification of a person depending on the characteristics contained in the speech signal. In this paper we propose the use of Deep Neural Network (DNN) for text dependent speaker Recognition system (SRS). Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Auto-encoder (Butterfly Structure Neural Network) are used to extract the features of speech signal at the initial stage. The previously obtained coefficients are then used to train the DNN to later classify the speakers. DNN can be directly used to extract features and classify speakers but the MFCC and Auto-encoder are used initially for data compression and maximum number of feature extraction thus aiming to get better efficiency and faster results. Keywords—Deep Auto-encoder, DNN, MFCC, Speaker
The factors associated with self-reported physical activity in older adults living in the community

Background: despite the vast literature in the area, few studies examined the large range of factors associated with physical activity (PA) in the older adult collectively, information that could help develop a supportive culture for healthy ageing. Objective: to identify the socio-demographic, social connectedness, physical environment and physical and mental healthrelated factors associated with PA. Setting and participants: adults aged 65 and over living in the community (n = 3499). Methods: this study used a cross-sectional design. Self-report, interview and physical assessment were the data collection methods used. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire (short form) measured PA in metabolic equivalents. Results: 31.8% of older people did not meet the recommended guidelines. The regression model was significant, explaining 31.3% of the variance in PA (F = 34.32, P < 0.001). In order of strength of relationship, the β coefficients, the variables time
Association of the M3151 variant in the transient receptor potential vanilloid receptor-1 (TRPV1) gene with type 1 diabetes in an Ashkenazi Jewish population.

BACKGROUND
Type 1 diabetes in humans is an autoimmune disease in which Tcells target pancreatic islets of Langerhans, leading to the progressive destruction of the insulin-producing beta cells. Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to the development of autoimmune diabetes. The non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse model of human type 1 diabetes demonstrates two missense mutations in the transient receptor potentialvanilloid receptor-1 (TRPVi) gene.


OBJECTIVES
To investigate whether polymorphism in the TRPV1 gene may play a role in the predisposition to human type 1 diabetes.


METHODS
We genotyped 146 Ashkenazi Jewish type 1 diabetic patients and 205 Ashkenazi Jewish healthy controls for the rs222747 (M3151), rs224534 (T4691) and rs8065080 (1585V) variants of the TRPV1 gene.


RESULTS
There was a significant increase in the rs222747 (M3151) variant of the TRPV1 gene in the type 1 diabetes cohort compared to the control: rs222747 (M3151) homozygous: (61% vs. 48.3%, P = 0.02). Logistic regression analysis revealed that type 1 diabetes was significantly associated with rs222747 (M3151), such that having diabetes increased the odds of rs222747 homozygosity (M3151) by 67.2%, odds ratio 1.6, 95% confidence interval 1.08-2.57, P < 0.02. No difference was found in the rs224534 (T4691) and rs8065080 (1585V) allelic variants. There was no difference in any of the TRPV1 variants by gender, age when type 1 diabetes was diagnosed, body mass index, glycemic control, blood pressure, positive autoantibodies (ICA, GAD, IAA), and other autoimmune diseases.


CONCLUSIONS
Our study demonstrates that TRPV1 may be a susceptible gene for type 1 diabetes in an Ashkenazi Jewish population. These results should be replicated in the same ethnic group and in other ethnic groups.
Depth Estimation Using Monocular Camera

The paper presents a novel approach for distance estimation using a single camera as input. In particular we discuss a method for depth estimation using camera parameters and also image geometry. The system has been implemented for specific camera parameters. This is a novel concept which uses road geometry and point of contact on road. Using a single forward facing camera located typically near the rear view mirror, our method can estimate distance of any vehicle on the road. Keywords— Depth, dead zone, optical axis, oblique distance, vanishing point, field of view
MIXED MNL MODELS FOR DISCRETE RESPONSE

This paper considers mixed, or random coeff icients, multinomial logit (MMNL) models for discrete response, and establishes the following results: Under mild regularity conditions, any discrete choice model derived from random utilit y maximization has choice probabiliti es that can be approximated as closely as one pleases by a MMNL model. Practical estimation of a parametric mixing family can be carried out by Maximum Simulated Likelihood Estimation or Method of Simulated Moments, and easily computed instruments are provided that make the latter procedure fairl y eff icient. The adequacy of a mixing specification can be tested simply as an omitted variable test with appropriately defined artificial variables. An application to a problem of demand for alternative vehicles shows that MMNL provides a flexible and computationally practical approach to discrete response analysis. Acknowledgments: Both authors are at the Department of Economics, University of Cali fornia, Berkeley CA 94720-3880. Correspondence should be directed to mcfadden@econ.berkeley.edu. We are indebted to the E. Morris Cox fund for research support, and to Moshe Ben-Akiva, David Brownstone, Denis Bolduc, Andre de Palma, and Paul Ruud for useful comments. This paper was first presented at the University of Paris X in June 1997.
Speech recognition based wireless automation of home loads with fault identification for physically challenged

The design of this project helps in providing a fool proof solution for physically challenged to control their home appliances by giving voice commands through personal computer in a wireless environment. When automating a home load not available in the visible range, Fault identification system in this design helps the user to ensure that their home appliances had gone exactly ON or OFF or undergone FAULT by getting the status from load end, unlike the other design that gets the status at user end which may give a false indication, when power supply is not available for the particular load or when load get open circuited (due to wire discontinuity or open fuse condition). During user screen navigation and controlling home appliances voice output of the current screen information and status of the automated appliances enables visually impaired person to use the system to control their home appliances. Navigation of the screen by giving voice commands enables paralyzed person and person who lost their hands in an unfortunate accident to control their home loads along with normal person. For achieving wireless environment low cost zigbee is used. To provide security based authentication RFID is used. Each home load will be having two commands ON and OFF commands, Automation of 20 loads such as mixer, grinder, TV, refrigerator, fan, light, AC etc..., has been tested by giving 40 voice commands through personal computer. When user creates his own profile and automates the load speech recognition accuracy of more than 90% is achieved. Other people who were allowed to automate the load by the user can use user profile and achieve a speech recognition accuracy of 75% in the same personal computer.