LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
DO IT Trial: vitamin D Outcomes and Interventions in Toddlers – a TARGet Kids! randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND
Vitamin D levels are alarmingly low (<75 nmol/L) in 65-70% of North American children older than 1 year. An increased risk of viral upper respiratory tract infections (URTI), asthma-related hospitalizations and use of anti-inflammatory medication have all been linked with low vitamin D. No study has determined whether wintertime vitamin D supplementation can reduce the risk of URTI and asthma exacerbations, two of the most common and costly illnesses of early childhood. The objectives of this study are: 1) to compare the effect of 'high dose' (2000 IU/day) vs. 'standard dose' (400 IU/day) vitamin D supplementation in achieving reductions in laboratory confirmed URTI and asthma exacerbations during the winter in preschool-aged Canadian children; and 2) to assess the effect of 'high dose' vitamin D supplementation on vitamin D serum levels and specific viruses that cause URTI.


METHODS/DESIGN
This study is a pragmatic randomized controlled trial. Over 4 successive winters we will recruit 750 healthy children 1-5 years of age. Participating physicians are part of a primary healthcare research network called TARGet Kids!. Children will be randomized to the 'standard dose' or 'high dose' oral supplemental vitamin D for a minimum of 4 months (200 children per group). Parents will obtain a nasal swab from their child with each URTI, report the number of asthma exacerbations and complete symptom checklists. Unscheduled physician visits for URTIs and asthma exacerbations will be recorded. By May, a blood sample will be drawn to determine vitamin D serum levels. The primary analysis will be a comparison of URTI rate between study groups using a Poisson regression model. Secondary analyses will compare vitamin D serum levels, asthma exacerbations and the frequency of specific viral agents between groups.


DISCUSSION
Identifying whether vitamin D supplementation of preschoolers can reduce wintertime viral URTIs and asthma exacerbations and what dose is optimal may reduce population wide morbidity and associated health care and societal costs. This information will assist in determining practice and health policy recommendations related to vitamin D supplementation in healthy Canadian preschoolers.
The role of radiation therapy in pediatric mucoepidermoid carcinomas of the salivary glands.

OBJECTIVE
To investigate the role of radiation therapy in rare salivary gland pediatric mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC).


STUDY DESIGN
A French multicenter retrospective study (level of evidence 4) of children/adolescents treated for MEC between 1980 and 2010 was conducted.


RESULTS
Median age of the 38 patients was 14 years. Parotid subsite, low-grade, and early primary stage tumors were encountered in 81%, 82%, and 68% of cases, respectively. All except 1 patient were treated by tumoral surgical excision, and 53% by neck dissection (80% of high grades). Postoperative radiation therapy and chemotherapy were performed in 29% and 11% of cases. With a median 62-month follow-up, overall survival and local control rates were 95% and 84%, respectively. There was 1 nodal relapse. Lower grade and early stage tumors had better survival. Postoperative radiation therapy and chemotherapy were associated with similar local rates. Patients with or without prior cancer had similar outcomes.


CONCLUSIONS
Pediatric salivary gland MEC carries a good prognosis. Low-intermediate grade, early-stage tumors should be treated with surgery alone. Neck dissection should be performed in high-grade tumors. Radiation therapy should be proposed for high grade and/or advanced primary stage MEC. For high-grade tumors without massive neck involvement, irradiation volumes may be limited to the primary area, given the risk of long-term side effects of radiation therapy in children. Pediatric MEC as second cancers retain a similar prognosis. Long-term follow-up is needed to assess late side effects and second cancers.
Parent-Child Relationships and Effective Academic Motivation.

Summary Among 233 boys and 300 girls, all teenagers, it was found that traits related to achievement from the Test of Effective Academic Motivation were related to parent-child relationship factors from the Children's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory. For both sexes, parents who were perceived as being more Acceptant and as using less Hostile Psychological Control tended to have children with higher achievement traits. This was especially true for the traits of Obedient and Law Abiding, Works Hard and Effectively, and Ambitious. For boys, but not for girls, parental Firm Discipline was also associated with these achievement traits. There were no statistically significant differences in the correlations observed between same-sex and opposite-sex parent-child relationships and the achievement related traits.
Cybersecurity in an Era with Quantum Computers: Will We Be Ready?

Organizations must understand their specific risks and plan for their systems to be resilient to quantum attacks. Assessment is based on three quantities: the security shelf life of the information assets, the migration time to systems designed to resist quantum attacks, and the time remaining before quantum computers break the security.
Modeling hidden topics on document manifold

Topic modeling has been a key problem for document analysis. One of the canonical approaches for topic modeling is Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing, which maximizes the joint probability of documents and terms in the corpus. The major disadvantage of PLSI is that it estimates the probability distribution of each document on the hidden topics independently and the number of parameters in the model grows linearly with the size of the corpus, which leads to serious problems with overfitting. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) is proposed to overcome this problem by treating the probability distribution of each document over topics as a hidden random variable. Both of these two methods discover the hidden topics in the Euclidean space. However, there is no convincing evidence that the document space is Euclidean, or flat. Therefore, it is more natural and reasonable to assume that the document space is a manifold, either linear or nonlinear. In this paper, we consider the problem of topic modeling on intrinsic document manifold. Specifically, we propose a novel algorithm called Laplacian Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing (LapPLSI) for topic modeling. LapPLSI models the document space as a submanifold embedded in the ambient space and directly performs the topic modeling on this document manifold in question. We compare the proposed LapPLSI approach with PLSI and LDA on three text data sets. Experimental results show that LapPLSI provides better representation in the sense of semantic structure.
Asymmetric Self-Renewal and Commitment of Satellite Stem Cells in Muscle

Satellite cells play a central role in mediating the growth and regeneration of skeletal muscle. However, whether satellite cells are stem cells, committed progenitors, or dedifferentiated myoblasts has remained unclear. Using Myf5-Cre and ROSA26-YFP Cre-reporter alleles, we observed that in vivo 10% of sublaminar Pax7-expressing satellite cells have never expressed Myf5. Moreover, we found that Pax7(+)/Myf5(-) satellite cells gave rise to Pax7(+)/Myf5(+) satellite cells through apical-basal oriented divisions that asymmetrically generated a basal Pax7(+)/Myf5(-) and an apical Pax7(+)/Myf5(+) cells. Prospective isolation and transplantation into muscle revealed that whereas Pax7(+)/Myf5(+) cells exhibited precocious differentiation, Pax7(+)/Myf5(-) cells extensively contributed to the satellite cell reservoir throughout the injected muscle. Therefore, we conclude that satellite cells are a heterogeneous population composed of stem cells and committed progenitors. These results provide critical insights into satellite cell biology and open new avenues for therapeutic treatment of neuromuscular diseases.
Beclomethasone dipropionate in Crohn's ileitis: a randomised, double-blind trial.

BACKGROUND
Steroids, the mainstay of Crohn's disease treatment, have been associated with systemic side effects.


AIM
To evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of beclomethasone dipropionate for maintaining remission induced by a short course of systemic steroids in patients with Crohn's ileitis with or without right colonic involvement.


METHODS
Patients (n=84) with active Crohn's disease who achieved remission during a 2-week prednisone run-in period were randomised to receive beclomethasone dipropionate for 24 weeks or continue prednisone for a further 2 weeks followed by placebo for 22 weeks. The primary outcome was relapse rate (Crohn's Disease Activity Index score>150 and an increase of ≥60 points from baseline) or withdrawal due to disease deterioration.


RESULTS
The relapse rate was 23.3% and 53.8% in beclomethasone dipropionate and placebo groups, respectively (p=0.027). According to Kaplan-Meier analysis, the cumulative relapse rate was 38.0% in the beclomethasone dipropionate group and 56.0% in the placebo group (p=0.025). Six percent and 1.7% of all adverse events in the beclomethasone dipropionate and placebo groups, respectively, were endocrine-related.


CONCLUSION
These results demonstrate that beclomethasone dipropionate significantly reduces the relapse rate in post-active Crohn's ileitis patients compared with placebo after induction of remission with a short course of systemic steroids, and is well tolerated.
Vitamin D supplementation and strontium ranelate absorption in postmenopausal women with low bone mass.

BACKGROUND
Strontium ranelate is used to treat osteoporosis. Calcium (Ca) and strontium (Sr) have common chemical features and are absorbed by the same pathways. Vitamin D has a main role in calcium intestinal absorption. The aim of this study was to investigate whether vitamin D status is a determinant of strontium ranelate absorption.


METHODS
Twenty-five patients with vitamin D deficiency (25(OH)D<50 nmol/l) and 25 with vitamin D sufficiency (25(OH)D>75 nmol/l) underwent a 4-h oral Sr overload test. Sr absorption was evaluated as the fraction of absorbed dose and the area under the curve. After the baseline overload test, the deficient patients were treated until reaching sufficient vitamin D levels (25(OH)D>75 nmol/l) and the test was repeated.


RESULTS
Changing vitamin D status from deficient to sufficient resulted in a significant increase in 1,25(OH)2D (24.97±4.64×34.62±9.14 pg/ml, P<0.001) and a reduction in parathyroid hormone (73.87±37.50×58.24±20.13 pg/ml, P=0.006). Nevertheless, no differences were found in the parameters used to evaluate Sr absorption between the vitamin D deficient and sufficient groups. In addition, vitamin D3 replacement in the deficient group did not result in enhanced Sr absorption.


CONCLUSION
Vitamin D status did not interfere with strontium ranelate absorption. Taking into account the benefits of adequate vitamin D status in osteoporotic patients, we strongly recommend the treatment of vitamin D deficiency. However, the data demonstrate that such treatment does not enhance strontium ranelate absorption in patients with mild deficiency.
Ascorbic acid PEG-2L is superior for early morning colonoscopies in colorectal cancer screening programs: a prospective non-randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND
The quality of colon cleansing and the tolerability of anterograde preparation are essential to the success of colorectal cancer screening.


AIM
To compare the tolerability and efficacy of low-volume preparations vs the standard regimen in individuals scheduled for an early morning colonoscopy.


STUDY
Participants in a population-based colorectal cancer screening program using the fecal immunochemical test who were scheduled for a colonoscopy from 09:00 a.m. to 10:20 a.m. were prospectively included and assigned to: (1) control group (PEG-ELS 4L): PEG 4L and electrolytes; (2) group AscPEG-2L: a combination of PEG and ascorbic acid 2L; and (3) group PiMg: sodium picosulfate and magnesium citrate 500 mL plus 2L of clear fluids. Tolerability was evaluated with a questionnaire and the quality of bowel preparation with the Boston Bowel Preparation Scale.


RESULTS
A total of 292 participants were included: 98 in the PEG-ELS 4L control group, 96 in the AscPEG-2L study group and 98 in the PiMg study group. Low-volume treatments were better tolerated than the standard solution (AscPEG-2L 94.8% and PiMg 93.9% vs PEG-ELS 4L 75.5%; p < 0.0001). The effectiveness of AscPEG-2L was superior to that of PEG-ELS 4L and PiMg (p = 0.011 and p = 0.032, respectively). Patient acceptance was higher for single-dose than for split-dose administration but efficacy was higher with the split dose than with other doses.


CONCLUSIONS
In early morning colonoscopies, ascPEG-2L appears to be the best option, especially when administered in a split-dose.
SO-Net: Self-Organizing Network for Point Cloud Analysis

This paper presents SO-Net, a permutation invariant architecture for deep learning with orderless point clouds. The SO-Net models the spatial distribution of point cloud by building a Self-Organizing Map (SOM). Based on the SOM, SO-Net performs hierarchical feature extraction on individual points and SOM nodes, and ultimately represents the input point cloud by a single feature vector. The receptive field of the network can be systematically adjusted by conducting point-to-node k nearest neighbor search. In recognition tasks such as point cloud reconstruction, classification, object part segmentation and shape retrieval, our proposed network demonstrates performance that is similar with or better than state-of-the-art approaches. In addition, the training speed is significantly faster than existing point cloud recognition networks because of the parallelizability and simplicity of the proposed architecture. Our code is available at the project website.1
21st Century Realism: The Past Is in Our Present

Fear of Enemies and Collective Action. By Ioannis D. Evrigenis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 232 pp., $85.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0521886208).

The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order. Edited by Louiza Odysseos, Fabio Petito. New York: Routledge, 2007. 258 pp., $41.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0415474771).

Realist Strategies of Republican Peace: Neibuhr, Morgenthau, and the Politics of Patriotic Dissent. By Vibeke Schou Tjalve. New York: Palgrave, 2008. 174 pp., $74.95 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0230602175).

“The past is never dead. It's not even the past”– Requiem for a Nun , by William Faulkner, 1951, act I, scene iii.

A couple of years ago I wrote about what I termed “reflexive realism,” which I defined as “the attempt to restore classical realist principles of agency, prudence and the recognition of limitations as part of an attempt to provide a practical-ethical view of international politics” (Steele 2007: 273). At the time, however, I was not sure whether this recent trend in IR scholarship was more intellectual history or theory on its own accord. After reading these three impressive books, I would argue that whatever we term them, the recent vibrant re-engagements with realist theory are both, and exist in the space between intellectual history and theory. When one reads these accounts, we are re-reading the historical contexts in which various realist thinkers produced their work, but we recognize how their conditions speak to an unsettled present context, and thus also realize the leverage their wise lessons have upon our contemporary circumstances.

All three of these books can be considered contributions to the development of realist thought in International Relations theory. All return to some of the seminal authors of the realist tradition of political thought, but with an eye toward resurrecting some critical elements found in the works of authors who were once considered to be the foundation for otherwise conventional concepts in realist IR theory (survival, fear, anarchy, etc.). And all three helpfully provide an ontology of the present by going into our past: the rereading of seminal texts to “decode” a past which speaks to our present in ways in which the traditional readings of those texts cannot (see also Lebow 2003).

The books together provide IR scholars a dilemma, however. How are we …
Development and evaluation of targeted psychological skills training for oncology nurses in managing stressful patient and family encounters.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To reduce workplace stress by developing a brief psychological skills training for nurses and to evaluate program feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy in decreasing burnout and stress.


DESIGN
Intervention development and evaluation.


SETTING
Outpatient chemotherapy unit at a comprehensive cancer center.


SAMPLE
26 infusion nurses and oncology social workers.


METHODS
Focus groups were conducted with nurses. Results informed the development and evaluation of training for nurses. Participants completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory and Perceived Stress Scale post-training.


MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Burnout and stress.


FINDINGS
Focus groups indicated strong commitment among nurses to psychosocial care and supported the idea that relationships with patients and families were sources of reward and stress. Stressors included factors that interfered with psychosocial care such as difficult family dynamics, patient behaviors and end-of-life care issues. Psychological skills training was developed to address these stressors. Evaluations suggested that the program was feasible and acceptable to nurses. At two months, participants showed reductions in emotional exhaustion (p = 0.02) and stress (p = 0.04).


CONCLUSIONS
Psychological skills training for managing difficult encounters showed feasibility, acceptability, and potential benefit in reducing emotional exhaustion and stress.


IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Brief training that targets sources of clinical stress may be useful for nurses in outpatient chemotherapy units.


KNOWLEDGE TRANSLATION
Specific stressors in relationships with patients and families present challenges to nurses' therapeutic use of self. Targeted psychological skills training may help nurses problem-solve difficult encounters while taking care of themselves. System-level strategies are needed to support and promote training participation.
Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Gravity Load Designed R/C Frames

The seismic vulnerability of some frame structures, typical of existing Reinforced Concrete buildings designed only to vertical loads, has been evaluated. They are representative of building types widely present in the Italian building stock of the last 30 years. A simulated design of the structures has been made with reference to the codes in force, the available handbooks and the current practice at the time of construction. The seismic response is calculated through non linear dynamic analyses with artificial and natural accelerograms. Three main types have been examined: bare frames, regularly infilled frames and pilotis frames. The results show a high vulnerability for the pilotis buildings: they can be assigned to the class B of the European Macroseismic Scale of 1998 (EMS98). On the contrary, a low vulnerability (class D of EMS98) can be attributed to the regularly infilled buildings: in this case collapse can be considered unlikely also with strong earthquakes. An intermediate seismic behavior is shown by buildings without infills, whose vulnerability can be placed between the classes B and C of EMS98.
Arterial distensibility in adolescents: the influence of adiposity, the metabolic syndrome, and classic risk factors.

BACKGROUND
Atherosclerosis develops from childhood, but the determinants of this preclinical stage remain uncertain. We examined the relations of classic coronary risk factors, adiposity and its associated metabolic disturbances, to arterial distensibility (a marker of early arterial disease) in 13- to 15-year-olds, some of whom had previously been studied at ages 9 to 11 years.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Brachial artery distensibility was measured by a noninvasive ultrasound technique in 471 British children in whom measures of adiposity, blood pressure, fasting blood lipids, and insulin had been made. All adiposity measures showed strong graded inverse relationships with distensibility. Inverse associations with distensibility were also observed for insulin resistance (homeostasis model assessment), diastolic pressure, C-reactive protein, and the number of metabolic syndrome components present, which had a graded relation to distensibility. Total and LDL cholesterol levels were also inversely related to distensibility, but less strongly than adiposity; homocysteine had no relation to distensibility. Although the relations of total and LDL cholesterol and diastolic pressure to distensibility had been present at 9 to 11 years of age, those of adiposity and insulin resistance were only apparent at 13 to 15 years.


CONCLUSIONS
Adiposity and its metabolic consequences are associated with adverse changes in the arterial wall by the teenage years. The graded relation with increasing adiposity was stronger than that for cholesterol and was seen at body mass index levels well below those considered to represent "obesity." This emphasizes the importance of population-based strategies to control adiposity and its metabolic consequences in the young.
Pyoderma gangrenosum – a review

Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is a rare noninfectious neutrophilic dermatosis. Clinically it starts with sterile pustules that rapidly progress and turn into painful ulcers of variable depth and size with undermined violaceous borders. The legs are most commonly affected but other parts of the skin and mucous membranes may also be involved. Course can be mild or malignant, chronic or relapsing with remarkable morbidity. In many cases PG is associated with an underlying disease, most commonly inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatic or haematological disease and malignancy. Diagnosis of PG is based on history of an underlying disease, typical clinical presentation, histopathology, and exclusion of other diseases that would lead to a similar appearance. The peak of incidence occurs between the ages of 20 to 50 years with women being more often affected than men. Aetiology has not been clearly determined yet. The treatment of PG is a challenge. Randomized, double-blinded prospective multicenter trials for PG are not available. The best documented treatments are systemic corticosteroids and cyclosporin A. Combinations of steroids with cytotoxic drugs are used in resistant cases. The combination of steroids with sulfa drugs or immunosuppressants has been used as steroid-sparing modalities. Anti-tumor necrosis alpha therapy in Crohn's disease showed a rapid response of PG. Skin transplants and the application of bioengineered skin is useful in selected cases as a complement to the immunosuppressive treatment. Topical therapy with modern wound dressings is useful to minimize pain and the risk of secondary infections. Despite recent advances in therapy, the prognosis of PG remains unpredictable.
Variétés et fonctions rationnelles

We say that a rational (resp. a subsequential) function tl from a free monoid into another one is in the variety of monoids V if it may realized by some unambiguous (resp. subsequential) transducer whose monoid of transitions is in V. We characterize these functions when V is the variety of aperiodic monoids, and the variety of groups. In the first case, the period of am ’ (15) divides that of L, for each rational language L on the outputs. In the second case, a-‘(L) is a group-language for each group language L; equivalently, a is continuous for the pro-finite topology. Examples of such functions are: the multiplication by a given number in a given basis, which is aperiodic; the division, which is a group-function.