LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of inflammatory cell counts in asthma: induced sputum vs bronchoalveolar lavage and bronchial biopsies.

BACKGROUND
Induced sputum potentially allows monitoring of airway inflammation in patients with asthma in a non-invasive way. However, the relationship between the cellular content in sputum and airway tissue has not been fully clarified.


OBJECTIVE
We compared the cellular compositions of hypertonic saline-induced sputum, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) and bronchial biopsies in 18 clinically stable patients with mild to moderate atopic asthma (baseline FEV1: range 61-114%pred, PC20 methacholine: 0.04-4.7 mg/mL). They were treated with inhaled short-acting bronchodilators on demand, with (n = 8) or without (n = 10) regular inhaled steroids.


METHODS
Each patient underwent sputum induction and fiberoptic bronchoscopy on separate days in random order. Differential cell counts of induced sputum, bronchoalveolar lavage and bronchial wash were determined on May-Grünwald-Giemsa stained cytospins. Flow cytometry was performed on sputum and BAL samples. Immunohistochemical techniques were used to stain inflammatory cells in 6 microm cryostat sections of bronchial biopsies.


RESULTS
Sputum cell differentials were not different between the patients with and without inhaled steroids, and showed a median value of 19.4% squamous cells, with 1.0% eosinophils, 3.3% lymphocytes, 28.7% neutrophils, 49.4% macrophages and 6.9% cylindric epithelial cells (in percentage non-squamous cells). The percentage eosinophils in sputum was significantly correlated with their percentage in bronchial wash (Rs = 0.52, P = 0.03) and in BAL (Rs = 0.55, P= 0.02), whilst there was a trend towards such a correlation between the number of eosinophils/mL sputum and the number of EG2+ eosinophils/mm2 lamina propria in bronchial biopsies (Rs = 0.44, P = 0.07). In addition, the percentage of CD4+ lymphocytes correlated between sputum and BAL (Rs = 0.55, P = 0.03).


CONCLUSION
We conclude that the eosinophil counts in hypertonic saline-induced sputum from patients with asthma are related to those in bronchial wash and BAL and, to a lesser extent, with the counts in bronchial biopsies. This suggests that induced sputum can be used to monitor the presence and severity of airway inflammation in asthma.
Distinct effects of platelet-rich plasma and BMP13 on rotator cuff tendon injury healing in a rat model.

BACKGROUND
Although platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is used clinically to augment tendon healing, bone morphogenetic protein-13 (BMP13) may provide a better therapeutic avenue to improve early tendon healing and repair.


HYPOTHESIS
Exogenous expression of BMP13 in tenocytes will up-regulate genes involved in tendon healing. Direct delivery of adenovirus-mediated BMP13 (AdBMP13) into the injured rat supraspinatus tendon will increase biomechanical properties.


STUDY DESIGN
Controlled laboratory study.


METHODS
Exogenous expression of BMP13 and the major growth factors in PRP (transforming growth factor-β1 [TGF-β1], vascular endothelial growth factor-A [VEGF-A], and platelet-derived growth factor-BB [PDGF-BB]) was accomplished by using recombinant adenoviral vectors. The expression of tendon- and matrix-associated genes in growth factor-treated tenocytes was analyzed by use of semiquantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction. A total of 32 rats with supraspinatus defect were divided into 4 groups and injected with adenovirus-containing green fluorescent protein (AdGFP; negative control), PRP, AdBMP13, or PRP+AdBMP13. All rats were sacrificed at 2 weeks after surgery, and tendons were harvested for biomechanical testing and histologic analysis.


RESULTS
BMP13 up-regulated type III collagen expression compared with AdGFP control and PRP growth factors (P < .01). BMP13 and PRP growth factors each up-regulated fibronectin expression (P < .01). There was an increase in stress to failure in each of the 3 treatment groups (P < .05 for PRP; P < .01 for AdBMP13 or PRP+AdBMP13) compared with AdGFP control. AdBMP13 demonstrated higher stress to failure than did the PRPs (P < .01). The addition of PRP did not increase the BMP13-enhanced stress to failure or stiffness. The biomechanical results were further supported by histologic analysis of the retrieved samples.


CONCLUSION
Exogenous expression of BMP13 enhances tendon healing more effectively than PRP as assessed by tendon- and matrix-associated gene expression, biomechanical testing, and histologic analysis.


CLINICAL RELEVANCE
While PRP is used in the clinical setting, BMP13 may be explored as a superior biofactor to improve rotator cuff tendon healing and reduce the incidence of retears.
Prostate cancer epidemiology

Because more and more men are being diagnosed with prostate cancer worldwide, knowledge about and prevention of this disease is important. Epidemiological studies have provided some insight about the cause of prostate cancer in terms of diet and genetic factors. However, compared with other common cancers such as breast and lung cancer, the causes remain poorly understood. Several important issues could help in our understanding of this disease-the variation in incidence of prostate cancer between ethnic populations and the factors leading to familial clustering of the diseases.
An Effective Verification Strategy for Testing Distributed Automotive Embedded Software Functions: A Case Study

Context. The share and importance of software within automotive vehicles is growing steadily. Most functionalities in modern vehicles, especially safety related functions like advanced emergency braking, are controlled by software. A complex and common phenomenon in today’s automotive vehicles is the distribution of such software functions across several Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and consequently across several ECU system software modules. As a result, integration testing of these distributed software functions has been found to be a challenge. The automotive industry neither has infinite resources, nor has the time to carry out exhaustive testing of these functions. On the other hand, the traditional approach of implementing an ad-hoc selection of test scenarios based on the tester’s experience, can lead to test gaps and test redundancies. Hence, there is a pressing need within the automotive industry for a feasible and effective verification strategy for testing distributed software functions. Objectives. Firstly, to identify the current approach used to test the distributed automotive embedded software functions in literature and in a case company. Secondly, propose and validate a feasible and effective verification strategy for testing the distributed software functions that would help improve test coverage while reducing test redundancies and test gaps. Methods. To accomplish the objectives, a case study was conducted at Scania CV AB, Södertälje, Sweden. One of the data collection methods was through conducting interviews of different employees involved in the software testing activities. Based on the research objectives, an interview questionnaire with open-ended and close-ended questions has been used. Apart from interviews, data from relevant artifacts in databases and archived documents has been used to achieve data triangulation. Moreover, to further strengthen the validity of the results obtained, adequate literature support has been presented throughout. Towards the end, a verification strategy has been proposed and validated using existing historical data at Scania. Conclusions. The proposed verification strategy to test distributed automotive embedded software functions has given promising results by providing means to identify test gaps and test redundancies. It helps establish an effective and feasible approach to capture function test coverage information that helps enhance the effectiveness of integration testing of the distributed software functions.
A unified foundation for business analytics

a r t i c l e i n f o Synthesizing prior research, this paper designs a relatively comprehensive and holistic characterization of business analytics – one that serves as a foundation on which researchers, practitioners, and educators can base their studies of business analytics. As such, it serves as an initial ontology for business analytics as a field of study. The foundation has three main parts dealing with the whence and whither of business analytics: identification of dimensions along which business analytics possibilities can be examined, derivation of a six-class taxonomy that covers business analytics perspectives in the literature, and design of an inclusive framework for the field of business analytics. In addition to unifying the literature, a major contribution of the designed framework is that it can stimulate thinking about the nature, roles, and future of business analytics initiatives. We show how this is done by deducing a host of unresolved issues for consideration by researchers, practitioners, and educators. We find that business analytics involves issues quite aside from data management, number crunching, technology use, systematic reasoning, and so forth. According to a study by Gartner, the technology category of " analyt-ics and business intelligence " is the top priority of chief information officers, and comprises a $12.2B market [1]. It is seen as a higher priority than such categories as mobile technology, cloud computing, and collaboration technology. Further, Gartner finds that the top technology priority of chief financial officers is analytics [2]. Similarly, in studies involving interviews with thousands of chief information officers, worldwide, IBM asked, " which visionary plan do you have to increase competitiveness over the next 3 to 5 years? " In both 2011 and 2009, 83% of respondents identify " Business Intelligence and Analytics " as their number-one approach for achieving greater competitiveness. Among all types of plans, this is the top percentage for both years. To put this in perspective, consider 2011 results, in which business intelligence and analytics exceeds such other competitiveness plans as mobility solutions (ranked 2nd at74%), cloud computing (ranked 4th at 60%), and social networking (ranked 8th at 55%) [3]. IDC reports that the business analytics software market grew by 13.8% during 2011 to $32B, and predicts it to be at $50.7B in revenue by 2016 [4,5]. It appears that a driver for this growth is the perception or realization that such investments yield value. Across a …
PATCH: a novel local recovery mechanism for mobile ad-hoc networks

-On-demand routing protocol is an important category of the current ad-hoc routing protocols, in which a route between a communicating node pair is discovered only on demand. However, due to the dynamic and mobile nature of the nodes, intermediate nodes in the route tend to lose connection with each other during the communication process. When this occurs, an end-to-end route discovery is typically performed to establish a new connection for the communication. Such route repair mechanism causes high control overhead and long packet delay. In this paper, we propose a Proximity Approach To Connection Healing (PATCH) local recovery mechanism, which aims to reduce the control overhead and achieve fast recovery when route breakage happens. It is shown that PATCH is simple, robust and effective. We present simulation results to illustrate the performance benefits of using PATCH mechanism. Keywords--Routing Protocols, Local recovery, Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET)
Patient repositioning and pressure ulcer risk--monitoring interface pressures of at-risk patients.

Repositioning patients regularly to prevent pressure ulcers and reduce interface pressures is the standard of care, yet prior work has found that standard repositioning does not relieve all areas of at-risk tissue in nondisabled subjects. To determine whether this holds true for high-risk patients, we assessed the effectiveness of routine repositioning in relieving at-risk tissue of the perisacral area using interface pressure mapping. Bedridden patients at risk for pressure ulcer formation (n = 23, Braden score <18) had their perisacral skin-bed interface pressures recorded every 30 s while they received routine repositioning care for 4-6 h. All participants had specific skin areas (206 +/- 182 cm(2)) that exceeded elevated pressure thresholds for >95% of the observation period. Thirteen participants were observed in three distinct positions (supine, turned left, turned right), and all had specific skin areas (166 +/- 184 cm(2)) that exceeded pressure thresholds for >95% of the observation period. At-risk patients have skin areas that are likely always at risk throughout their hospital stay despite repositioning. Healthcare providers are unaware of the actual tissue-relieving effectiveness (or lack thereof) of their repositioning interventions, which may partially explain why pressure ulcer mitigation strategies are not always successful. Relieving at-risk tissue is a necessary part of pressure ulcer prevention, but the repositioning practice itself needs improvement.
Using time topic modeling for semantics-based dynamic research interest finding

Researchers interests finding has been an active area of investigation for different recommendation tasks. Previous approaches for finding researchers interests exploit writing styles and links connectivity by considering time of documents, while semantics-based intrinsic structure of words is ignored. Consequently, a topic model named Author-Topic model is proposed, which exploits semantics-based intrinsic structure of words present between the authors of research papers. It ignores simultaneous modeling of time factor which results in exchangeability of topics problem, which is important factor to deal with when finding dynamic research interests. For example, in many real world applications, like finding reviewers for papers and finding taggers in the social tagging systems one need to consider different time periods. In this paper, we present time topic modeling approach named Temporal-Author-Topic (TAT) which can simultaneously model text, researchers and time of research papers to overcome the exchangeability of topics problem. The mixture distribution over topics is influenced by both co-occurrences of words and timestamps of the research papers. Consequently, topics occurrence and their related researchers change over time, while the meaning of particular topic almost remains unchanged. Proposed approach is used to discover topically related researchers for different time periods. We also show how their interests and relationships change over a time period. Empirical results on large research papers corpus show the effectiveness of our proposed approach and dominance over Author-Topic (AT) model, by handling the exchangeability of topics problem, which enables it to obtain similar meaning of particular topic overtime. 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Efficacy of Leflunomide 100 mg Weekly Compared to Low Dose Methotrexate in Patients With Active Rheumatoid Arthritis . Double Blind , Randomized Clinical Trial

Objective: To determine the clinical efficacy and safety of Leflunomide (LFN) 100 mg/week compared to low dose Methotrexate (MTX) 10 mg/week in a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial with 52 weeks of follow up in Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients. Patients and methods: Patients who met ARC1987 criteria for RA were included. All patients had medical records, including laboratory tests and hand X-rays. Clinical evaluations for improvement and ACR and EULAR response criteria were performed. Statistical analysis for independent’s samples between both groups defined a P value of ≤.05. Safety was evaluated by comparing the proportion of adverse events (AE) registered. Results: Of the 90 patients screened, five were withdrawn and the remaining 85 patients were randomized: 43 LFN and 42 MTX. Sixty-three patients completed the study, 72% in the LFN group and 74.4% in the MTX group. ACR20 improvement criteria were achieved by LFN group in 90.3%, and in MTX 78.1% (P=.14) at week 52. EULAR improvement criteria applied at the end point showed a DAS28 score for the LFN group of 3.45, and for the MTX group was 3.67 (P=.43). Total withdrawals including loss during follow up, AE and lack of efficacy for each group was 12 patients in the LFN group, and 10 patients in the MTX group. Regarding safety, no serious AE of a life threatening nature were reported. Conclusions: These outcomes confirm that LFN 100 mg/week offers an adequate and sustained improvement effect on the clinical manifestations of RA, similar to low dose treatment with MTX 10 mg/every week after 52 weeks of follow up; it may be a good therapeutic option alone or in combination with other anti-rheumatic drugs. © 2011 Elsevier España, S.L. All rights reserved. Eficacia de leflunomida 100 mg semanales comparado con dosis bajas de metotrexate en pacientes con artritis reumatoide activa. Estudio clínico doble ciego aleatorizado
A novel social media competitive analytics framework with sentiment benchmarks

In today’s competitive business environment, there is a strong need for businesses to collect, monitor, and analyze user-generated data on their own and on their competitors’ social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. To achieve a competitive advantage, it is often necessary to listen to and understand what customers are saying about competitors’ products and services. Current social media analytics frameworks do not provide benchmarks that allow businesses to compare customer sentiment on social media to easily understand where businesses are doing well and where they need to improve. In this paper, we present a social media competitive analytics framework with sentiment benchmarks that can be used to glean industry-specific marketing intelligence. Based on the idea of the proposed framework, new social media competitive analytics with sentiment benchmarks can be developed to enhance marketing intelligence and to identify specific actionable areas in which businesses are leading and lagging to further improve their customers’ experience using customer opinions gleaned from social media. Guided by the proposed framework, an innovative business-driven social media competitive analytics tool named VOZIQ is developed. We use VOZIQ to analyze tweets associated with five large retail sector companies and to generate meaningful business insight reports. 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
[Effects of laughter therapy on postpartum fatigue and stress responses of postpartum women].

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of laughter therapy on postpartum fatigue and stress responses of postpartum women.


METHODS
The research design was a nonequivalent control group non-synchronized design. The participants were 67 postpartum women who agreed to participate in this study, selected by convenience sampling: (experiment group-33 and control group-34). The data were collected from August 5 to September 30, 2010. The experimental group received laughter therapy from a laughter therapy expert for 60 min, twice a week for 2 weeks, a total of 4 sessions. To evaluate the effects of laughter therapy, postpartum fatigue by self-report questionnaire and cortisol concentration in breast milk were measured. The data were analyzed using the SPSS WIN 13.0 Program.


RESULTS
The first hypothesis that "the degree of postpartum fatigue in the experimental group participating in laughter therapy would be lower than that of the control group" was accepted. These findings indicate that laughter therapy has a positive effect on decreasing postpartum fatigue.


CONCLUSION
The finding provides evidence for use of complementary and alternative nursing in Sanhujori facilities and obstetric units to reduce postpartum women's fatigue.
Isotropic Remeshing of Surfaces: A Local Parameterization Approach

We present a method for isotropic remeshing of arbitrary genus surfaces. The method is based on a mesh adaptation process, namely, a sequence of local modifications performed on a copy of the original mesh, while referring to the original mesh geometry. The algorithm has three stages. In the first stage the required number or vertices are generated by iterative simplification or refinement. The second stage performs an initial vertex partition using an area-based relaxation method. The third stage achieves precise isotropic vertex sampling prescribed by a given density function on the mesh. We use a modification of Lloyd’s relaxation method to construct a weighted centroidal Voronoi tessellation of the mesh. We apply these iterations locally on small patches of the mesh that are parameterized into the 2D plane. This allows us to handle arbitrary complex meshes with any genus and any number of boundaries. The efficiency and the accuracy of the remeshing process is achieved using a patch-wise parameterization technique. Key-words: Surface mesh generation, isotropic triangle meshing, centroidal Voronoi tessellation, local parameterization. ∗ Technion, Haifa, Israel † INRIA Sophia-Antipolis ‡ Technion, Haifa, Israel Remaillage isotrope de surfaces utilisant une paramétrisation locale Résumé : Cet article décrit une méthode de remaillage isotrope de surfaces triangulées. L’approche repose sur une technique d’adaptation locale du maillage. L’idée consiste à opérer une séquence d’opérations élémentaires sur une copie du maillage original, tout en faisant référence au maillage original pour la géométrie. L’algorithme comporte trois étapes. La première étape ramène la complexité du maillage au nombre de sommets désiré par raffinement ou décimation itérative. La seconde étape opère une première répartition des sommets via une technique de relaxation optimisant un équilibrage local des aires sur les triangles. La troisième étape opère un placement isotrope des sommets via une relaxation de Lloyd pour construire une tessellation de Voronoi centrée. Les itérations de relaxation de Lloyd sont appliquées localement dans un espace paramétrique 2D calculé à la volée sur un sous-ensemble de la triangulation originale de telle que sorte que les triangulations de complexité et de genre arbitraire puissent être efficacement remaillées. Mots-clés : Maillage de surfaces, maillage triangulaire isotrope, diagrammes de Voronoi centrés, paramétrisation locale. Isotropic Remeshing of Surfaces