LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Patterns of use of systemic chemotherapy for Medicare beneficiaries with urothelial bladder cancer.

OBJECTIVES
Examine the association between clinical, demographic, and socioeconomic factors and the receipt of systemic chemotherapy for bladder cancer. Examine factors influencing the use of combination chemotherapy plus cystectomy and use of specific chemotherapy drugs over time for bladder cancer.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Data from the SEER-Medicare database were analyzed for patients diagnosed with urothelial carcinoma of the bladder between 1992 and 2002. Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were used to assess differences in use of systemic chemotherapy based on demographic and clinical factors, site of care, and year of diagnosis. We assessed the proportion of patients who received chemotherapy in the adjuvant and neoadjuvant settings as well as use of chemotherapy in the monotherapy setting. We estimated the proportion of claims made for several commonly used chemotherapy agents in the outpatient setting by year.


RESULTS
During follow-up, 13%, 28%, 37%, and 57% of patients with stages 1 through 4, respectively, received systemic chemotherapy for bladder cancer. Chemotherapy use in the neoadjuvant or adjuvant settings within 6 months of diagnosis was not commonly found. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy was delivered to 1.4% of stage 2 patients and 11% of stage 4 patients. In 2003, the most frequent claims for intravenous chemotherapy were for gemcitabine, carboplatin, and placlitaxel.


CONCLUSIONS
Chemotherapy was not generally used as recommended for persons with invasive bladder cancer in this patient population. Studies to clarify potential underutilization and variation in patterns of administration are warranted.
Control and topologies for three-phase three-level active power filters

Most previously reported three-phase active power filters are based on two-level converters, which are suitable for low voltage systems. In this paper, three-phase three-level active power filters are presented based on several new vector strategies and one-cycle control to serve the high voltage systems. Studies at UCI Power Electronics Laboratory have shown that each vector strategy has its eminent characteristics that can be tailored to a variety of needs. By combining these strategies with one-cycle control, all resulted active power filters can automatically balance their output capacitor voltages. The theoretical findings are verified by a 1 kVA experimental prototype.
Pressure and speculative attacks on the foreign exchange market of the Dominican Republic

This paper examines the determinants of speculative attacks that occurred recently in the Dominican Republic, and proposes a series of indicators to serve as an early warning system for identifying vulnerable periods. The estimates were made using monthly data covering the period between January 1996 and June 2008. The results show that the proposed indicators have the ability to reasonably explain and predict the existence of a speculative attack.
"I was able to still be her mom"--parenting at end of life in the pediatric intensive care unit.

OBJECTIVES
The death of a child in the pediatric intensive care unit is perhaps one of the most devastating and challenging experiences a parent can ever endure. This article examines how parents of children dying in the pediatric intensive care unit understood their role and discusses implications for clinical care and policy.


DESIGN
Retrospective, qualitative study.


SETTING
Two pediatric intensive care units located in children's hospitals within academic medical centers in the northeastern United States.


SUBJECTS
Parents of 18 children who died in the pediatric intensive care unit.


INTERVENTIONS
Semistructured telephone interviews, digitally recorded and transcribed.


MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Many of the factors deemed important by the parents related to their capacity to be a "good parent" to their child throughout his or her stay in the pediatric intensive care unit. Specifically, parents sought meaningful ways to express and assert their parenthood across three domains: 1) providing love, comfort, and care; 2) creating security and privacy for the family; and 3) exercising responsibility for what happens to one's child.


CONCLUSIONS
Parents' ability to fulfill the essential features of their role as parents of children dying in the pediatric intensive care unit shapes how they perceive the quality of the experience. Pediatric intensive care unit clinical care and policies can and should uphold and protect these features enabling parents to feel that, despite the outcome, they had done their best on behalf of their children.
The Design of SREE - A Prototype Potential Ambiguity Finder for Requirements Specifications and Lessons Learned

[Context and Motivation] Many a tool for finding ambiguities in natural language (NL) requirements specifications (RSs) is based on a parser and a parts-of-speech identifier, which are inherently imperfect on real NL text. Therefore, any such tool inherently has less than 100% recall. Consequently, running such a tool on a NL RS for a highly critical system does not eliminate the need for a complete manual search for ambiguity in the RS. [Question/Problem] Can an ambiguity-finding tool (AFT) be built that has 100% recall on the types of ambiguities that are in the AFT’s scope such that a manual search in an RS for ambiguities outside the AFT’s scope is significantly easier than a manual search of the RS for all ambiguities? [Principal Ideas/Results] This paper presents the design of a prototype AFT, SREE (Systemized Requirements Engineering Environment), whose goal is achieving a 100% recall rate for the ambiguities in its scope, even at the cost of a precision rate of less than 100%. The ambiguities that SREE searches for by lexical analysis are the ones whose keyword indicators are found in SREE’s ambiguity-indicator corpus that was constructed based on studies of several industrial strength RSs. SREE was run on two of these industrial strength RSs, and the time to do a completely manual search of these RSs is compared to the time to reject the false positives in SREE’s output plus the time to do a manual search of these RSs for only ambiguities not in SREE’s scope. [Contribution] SREE does not achieve its goals. However, the time comparison shows that the approach to divide ambiguity finding between an AFT with 100% recall for some types of ambiguity and a manual search for only the other types of ambiguity is promising enough to justify more work to improve the implementation of the approach. Some specific improvement suggestions are offered.
A novel differential evolution scheme combined with particle swarm intelligence

Differential evolution (DE) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are the evolutionary computation paradigms, and both have shown superior performance on complex nonlinear function optimization problems. This paper detects the underlying relationship between them and then qualitatively proves that the two heuristic approaches from different theoretical background are consistent in form. Within the general perspective, the PSO can be regarded as a kind of DE. Inspired by this, a novel variant of DE mixed with particle swarm intelligence (DE-SI) is presented. Comparison experiments involving ten test functions well studied in the evolutionary optimization literature are used to highlight some performance differences between the DE-SI, two versions of DE and two PSO variants. The results from our study show that DE-SI keeps the most rapid convergence rate of all techniques and obtains the global optima for most benchmark problems.
Alcohol intake, carotid plaque, and cognition: the Northern Manhattan Study.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Moderate alcohol intake has been associated with better cognitive performance, implicating vascular and neurodegenerative processes. Few studies to clarify the importance of vascular disease have included direct measures of atherosclerosis or minority populations at higher risk of vascular disease and dementia.


METHODS
The Northern Manhattan Study includes stroke-free community based Hispanic (54%), black (25%), and white (22%) participants. We performed a cross-sectional study of alcohol intake and performance on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) in subjects with sonographic measurement of maximal carotid plaque thickness and adjusted for sociodemographic and vascular risk factors.


RESULTS
The median MMSE score was 27 (interquartile range 24 to 29; n=2215). Reported alcohol intake was divided into 5 groups: never (n=509), past (n=494), <1 drink/week (n=300), 1/week to < or =2 drinks/day (n=796), and >2 drinks/day (n=116). Drinking 1 drink weekly up to 2 daily was associated with better performance on the MMSE (odds ratio=1.19; 95% CI, 1.10 to 1.26) compared with nondrinkers in women (P< or =0.0001) but not in men, adjusting for sociodemographic and vascular risk factors. Maximal carotid plaque thickness (mean 1.1 mm; SD 1.2 mm) was not associated with alcohol intake and did not mediate the relationship between alcohol and cognition.


CONCLUSIONS
Moderate alcohol consumption was independently associated with better cognitive performance in women from this multiethnic sample. Carotid plaque was not a mediator of this association suggesting alcohol may impact cognition through a separate vascular or degenerative pathway.
Lightweight versus heavyweight in inguinal hernia repair: a meta-analysis

The aim of this article is to compare the outcomes of lightweight mesh and heavyweight mesh in inguinal hernia repair. A comprehensive literature search was undertaken to identify studies comparing the influence of lightweight and heavyweight meshes on inguinal hernia. The present meta-analysis pooled the effects of outcomes of a total 5,389 patients enrolled into 16 randomized controlled trials and 5 comparative studies. Lightweight mesh repair was associated with a significant less incidence of chronic postoperative pain [OR = 0.72, 95 % CI (0.57, 0.91)] and less feeling of foreign body than heavyweight mesh repair [OR = 0.50, 95 % CI (0.37, 0.67)]. Recurrence at 12 months was marginally increased in lightweight group (p = 0.05) [RD = 0.01, 95 % CI (0.00, 0.02)]. However, statistically there was no difference in the incidence of seroma [OR = 0.80, 95 % CI (0.52, 1.23)], infection [RD = −0.00, 95 % CI (−0.01, 0.00)], and testicular atrophy [RD = 0.01, 95 % CI (−0.01, 0.02)]. There was no difference regarding the incidence of seroma, infection, and testicular atrophy between lightweight mesh versus heavyweight mesh for inguinal hernia. There is a concern on the recurrence when lightweight mesh is used in large inguinal hernias. However, lightweight mesh repair do have advantages in terms of chronic postoperative pain and feeling of foreign body, and further well-structured trials with improved standardization of hernia types, operative techniques are necessary.
1 The Cryptographic Hash Function RIPEMD-160

RIPEMD-160 is a fast cryptographic hash function that is tuned towards software implementations on 32-bit architectures. It has evolved from the 256-bit extension of MD4, which was introduced in 1990 by Ron Rivest [20, 21]. Its main design feature are two different and independent parallel chains, the result of which are combined at the end of every application of the compression function. As suggested by its name, RIPEMD-160 offers a 160-bit result. It is intended to provide a high security level for the next 10 years or more. RIPEMD-128 is a faster variant of RIPEMD-160, which provides a 128-bit result. Together with SHA-1, RIPEMD-160 and RIPEMD-128 have been included in the International Standard ISO/IEC 10118-3, the publication of which is expected for late 1997 [17]. The goal of this article is to motivate the existence of RIPEMD160, to explain the main design features and to provide a concise description of the algorithm.
The use of polymer (Hem-o-lok) clips for management of the renal hilum during laparoscopic nephrectomy.

OBJECTIVE
Control of the renal pedicle is the most challenging step during laparoscopic nephrectomy. The standard method is to clip the artery and control the vein with an endovascular gastrointestinal anastomosis stapler. However, this device is expensive and has been reported to malfunction, leading to major complications even death. We describe an easy, quick, and cost-effective alternative technique.


METHODS
From June 2002 to July 2005, two surgeons used this simplified technique to control the renal vein during laparoscopic nephrectomy. After pedicle dissection and control of the artery with a clip, the vein was grasped and gently pulled with a laparoscopic Babcock to reduce its diameter. Two Hem-o-lok clips (Weck Closure Systems, Research Triangle Park, NC) were easily placed on the renal vein, which was then transacted safely.


RESULTS
We used this technique successfully for 130 consecutive laparoscopic nephrectomies (10 simple, 47 radical, 7 nephroureterectomies, and 66 live donor nephrectomies). No perioperative complications occurred with this technique in this series. There was no increase in the warm ischemia time when used during laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy.


CONCLUSIONS
The Hem-o-lok technique is easy, safe, and rapid and offers cost savings when compared to the endovascular gastrointestinal anastomosis stapler. We recommend its use during laparoscopic nephrectomy and live donor nephrectomy.
Initial therapy with the fixed-dose combination of sitagliptin and metformin results in greater improvement in glycaemic control compared with pioglitazone monotherapy in patients with type 2 diabetes.

AIMS
To evaluate the efficacy and safety of initial therapy with a fixed-dose combination (FDC) of sitagliptin and metformin compared with pioglitazone in drug-naÏve patients with type 2 diabetes.


METHODS
After a 2-week single-blind placebo run-in period, patients with type 2 diabetes, HbA1c of 7.5-12% and not on antihyperglycaemic agent therapy were randomized in a double-blind manner to initial treatment with a FDC of sitagliptin/metformin 50/500 mg twice daily (N = 261) or pioglitazone 30 mg per day (N = 256). Sitagliptin/metformin and pioglitazone were up-titrated over 4 weeks to doses of 50/1000 mg twice daily and 45 mg per day, respectively. Both treatments were then continued for an additional 28 weeks.


RESULTS
From a mean baseline HbA1c of 8.9% in both groups, least squares (LS) mean changes in HbA1c at week 32 were -1.9 and -1.4% for sitagliptin/metformin and pioglitazone, respectively (between-group difference = -0.5%; p < 0.001). A greater proportion of patients had an HbA1c of <7% at week 32 with sitagliptin/metformin vs. pioglitazone (57% vs. 43%, p < 0.001). Compared with pioglitazone, sitagliptin/metformin treatment resulted in greater LS mean reductions in fasting plasma glucose (FPG) [-56.0 mg/dl (-3.11 mmol/l) vs. -44.0 mg/dl (-2.45 mmol/l), p < 0.001] and in 2-h post-meal glucose [-102.2 mg/dl (-5.68 mmol/l) vs. -82.0 mg/dl (-4.56 mmol/l), p < 0.001] at week 32. A substantially greater reduction in FPG [-40.5 mg/dl (-2.25 mmol/l) vs. -13.0 mg/dl (-0.72 mmol/l), p < 0.001] was observed at week 1 with sitagliptin/metformin vs. pioglitazone. A greater reduction in the fasting proinsulin/insulin ratio and a greater increase in homeostasis model assessment of β-cell function (HOMA-β) were observed with sitagliptin/metformin than with pioglitazone, while greater decreases in fasting insulin and HOMA of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), and a greater increase in quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (QUICKI) were observed with pioglitazone than with sitagliptin/metformin. Both sitagliptin/metformin and pioglitazone were generally well tolerated. Sitagliptin/metformin led to weight loss (-1.4 kg), while pioglitazone led to weight gain (3.0 kg) (p < 0.001 for the between-group difference). Higher incidences of diarrhoea (15.3% vs. 4.3%, p < 0.001), nausea (4.6% vs. 1.2%, p = 0.02) and vomiting (1.9% vs. 0.0%, p = 0.026), and a lower incidence of oedema (1.1% vs. 7.0%, p < 0.001), were observed with sitagliptin/metformin vs. pioglitazone. The between-group difference in the incidence of hypoglycaemia did not reach statistical significance (8.4 and 4.3% with sitagliptin/metformin and pioglitazone, respectively; p = 0.055).


CONCLUSION
Compared with pioglitazone, initial therapy with a FDC of sitagliptin and metformin led to significantly greater improvement in glycaemic control as well as a higher incidence of prespecified gastrointestinal adverse events, a lower incidence of oedema and weight loss vs. weight gain.
The Impact of the Allied Cryptographers on World War II : Cryptanalysis of the Japanese and German Cipher Machines

Throughout history, cryptography has played an important role during times of war. The ability to read enemy messages can lead to invaluable knowledge that can be used to lessen casualties and secure victories. The Allied cryptographers during World War II had a major impact on the outcome of the war. The Allies’ ability to intercept and decrypt messages encrypted on the Japanese cipher machine, Purple, and the German cipher machine, Enigma, empowered the Allies with a major advantage during World War II. Without this advantage, the war may have had a different end result. 1 A Brief Introduction on Cryptography Cryptography is the art and science of secret communication [4]. It involves sending a message in such a way so that only the intended audience should be able to read the message with ease. Cryptography has affected many parts of history, including the outcome of World War II. Steganography is the earliest known form of secret communication, which involves hiding the existence of a message, not the meaning of it [4]. An example of concealing a message can be found in ancient China. A sender would use a messenger whose hair would be shaved off, then the message would be tattooed to the messenger’s head. Once the hair grew back thick enough, the existence of the message was concealed. The messenger was then free to travel to the destination to deliver the message. Once there, the messenger would shave his head again so that the message could be read by the intended recipients. This type of secret communication provides little security to a message, since if a message is found, the meaning is known immediately [4]. Consequently, a more secure system was needed to ensure the meaning of a message was not revealed to a potential eavesdropper. Cryptography, hiding the meaning of a message instead of its existence, is a more secure way of sending a message. In order to send a secret message using cryptographic techniques, one would start with the message that is to be sent, called the plaintext [5]. Before encoding, the sender and receiver agree on the algorithm, the rules by which the message is encoded, to use in order to ensure that both parties can read the message. These rules include the type of cipher that is used and
Genetic engineering of peppermint for improved essential oil composition and yield

The biochemistry, organization, and regulation of essential oil metabolism in the epidermal oil glands of peppermint have been defined, and most of the genes encoding enzymes of the eight-step pathway to the principal monoterpene component (−)-menthol have been isolated. Using these tools for pathway engineering, two genes and two expression strategies have been employed to create transgenic peppermint plants with improved oil composition and yield. These experiments, along with related studies on other pathway genes, have led to a systematic, stepwise approach for the creation of a ‘super’ peppermint.
Enterprise Computing: ODP as an instrument of hegemony

This paper is an un-refereed position paper into the ‘Advanced Informatics in Medicine’ workshop of the September 1993 International Conference on Open Distributed Processing being held in Berlin.
The Mental Health Needs of Today's College Students: Challenges and Recommendations

This paper reviews the literature on the changing mental health needs of today’s college students and the challenges posed by both the growing number of students with serious psychological problems on campus and the increase in the number of students seeking counseling. The implications of student mental health problems for students, faculty, staff, and the institution are discussed, as well as some strategies for responding to the surge in mental health needs on college campuses.
The Refractory Patient—Managing Diabetes by the Ear

Refractory, or ‘difficult to control,’ diabetes is a commonly encountered condition in specialist practice. This editorial describes the characteristics of people with diabetes who are unable to achieve optimal glycemic control, despite aggressive drug therapy. It reflects upon the importance of bidirectional communication between patient and physician, and highlights the need for systematic history taking, empathic listening, and therapeutic patient education. The editors call for practicing ‘diabetes therapy by the ear,’ in conjunction with evidence-based pharmacological therapy, to help reduce the prevalence of refractory diabetes.
Pelvic organ prolapse and incontinence 15-23 years after first delivery: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVE
To study the association between pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) and mode of delivery and to calculate the risks of PFD comparing caesarean delivery and operative vaginal delivery to normal vaginal delivery 15-23 years after childbirth. A subgroup analysis comparing forceps and vacuum delivery was planned.


DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.


SETTING
Postal questionnaire.


POPULATION
1641 (53%) of 3115 women who delivered their first child in Trondheim, Norway, between January 1990 and December 1997.


METHODS
A questionnaire including questions on symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse, urinary and fecal incontinence and surgery for these conditions.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Prevalence of PFD measured by symptomatic pelvic organ prolapse or surgery (sPOP), urinary incontinence or surgery (UI) and fecal incontinence or surgery (FI).


RESULTS
When caesarean delivery was compared to normal vaginal delivery the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for sPOP was 0.42 (95% confidence interval, CI, 0.21-0.86) and the aOR for UI was 0.65 (95% CI 0.46-0.92). Operative vaginal delivery was associated with increased risk of sPOP (aOR 1.73, 95% CI 1.21-2.48) and FI (aOR 1.96, 95% CI 1.26-3.06) when compared with normal vaginal delivery. There were no differences in sPOP, UI or FI in a subgroup analysis comparing forceps and vacuum delivery.


CONCLUSIONS
Caesarean delivery was associated with decreased risk and operative vaginal delivery with increased risk of pelvic floor dysfunction 15-23 years after first delivery, but there were no differences between forceps and vacuum delivery.
Efficient cyclic permutations for qudits

One of the main challenges in quantum technologies is the ability to control individual quantum systems. This task becomes increasingly difficult as the dimension of the system grows. Here we propose an efficient setup for cyclic permutations Xd in d dimensions, a major primitive for constructing arbitrary qudit gates. Using orbital angular momentum (OAM) states as a qudit, the simplest implementation of the Xd gate in d dimensions requires a single quantum sorter Sd and two spiral phase plates (SPPs). We then extend this construction to a generalised Xd(p) gate to perform a cyclic permutation of a set of d, equally spaced values {|`0〉, |`0 + p〉, . . . , |`0+(d−1)p〉} 7→ {|`0+p〉, |`0+2p〉, . . . , |`0〉}. We find efficient implementations for the generalised Xd(p) gate in both Michelson (one sorter Sd, two SPPs) and Mach-Zehnder configurations (two sorters Sd, two SPPs). Remarkably, the number of spiral phase plates is independent of the qudit dimension d. Our architecture for Xd and generalised Xd(p) gate will enable complex quantum algorithms for qudits, for example quantum protocols using photonic OAM states.