LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Voriconazole compared with liposomal amphotericin B for empirical antifungal therapy in patients with neutropenia and persistent fever.

BACKGROUND
Patients with neutropenia and persistent fever are often treated empirically with amphotericin B or liposomal amphotericin B to prevent invasive fungal infections. Antifungal triazoles offer a potentially safer and effective alternative.


METHODS
In a randomized, international, multicenter trial, we compared voriconazole, a new second-generation triazole, with liposomal amphotericin B for empirical antifungal therapy.


RESULTS
A total of 837 patients (415 assigned to voriconazole and 422 to liposomal amphotericin B) were evaluated for success of treatment. The overall success rates were 26.0 percent with voriconazole and 30.6 percent with liposomal amphotericin B (95 percent confidence interval for the difference, -10.6 to 1.6 percentage points); these rates were independent of the administration of antifungal prophylaxis or the use of colony-stimulating factors. There were fewer documented breakthrough fungal infections in patients treated with voriconazole than in those treated with liposomal amphotericin B (8 [1.9 percent] vs. 21 [5.0 percent], P=0.02). The voriconazole group had fewer cases of severe infusion-related reactions (P<0.01) and of nephrotoxicity (P<0.001). The incidence of hepatotoxicity was similar in the two groups. Patients receiving voriconazole had more episodes of transient visual changes than those receiving liposomal amphotericin B (22 percent vs. 1 percent, P<0.001) and more hallucinations (4.3 percent vs. 0.5 percent, P<0.001). Parenteral voriconazole was changed to the oral formulation in 22 percent of the voriconazole group, with a reduction in the mean duration of hospitalization by one day in all patients (P=0.17) but by two days in patients at high risk (P=0.03).


CONCLUSIONS
Voriconazole is a suitable alternative to amphotericin B preparations for empirical antifungal therapy in patients with neutropenia and persistent fever.
Measuring the Impact of Light Rail Systems on Single Family Home Values: A Hedonic Approach with GIS Application

In theory, proximity to a light rail (LRT) may have two different effects on residential property values. On the one hand, accessibility (proximity to the LRT stations) may increase property values. On the other hand, nuisance effects (proximity to the LRT line and stations) may decrease property values. Existing empirical studies are inconclusive, and failure to separate the effects of accessibility from the nuisance effects may explain some of the ambiguity. This paper examines the impact of the light-rail system (MAX) in Portland, Oregon, on single-family home values using distance to rail stations as a proxy for accessibility and distance to the line itself as a proxy for nuisance effects. Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques are employed to create spatial-related variables and merge data from various sources. The study results confirm our hypothesis that the light rail has both a positive effect (accessibility effect) and a negative effect (nuisance effect) on single-family home values. The positive effect dominates the negative effect, which implies a declining price gradient as one moves away from LRT stations for several hundred meters. Without controlling for the nuisance effect of the distance to the rail line, the estimated coefficients on distance from stations appear to be biased and would underestimate the accessibility effect. The finding of an independent nuisance effect suggests that previous hedonic models may have reached contradictory results because the nuisance effect differs with different types of rail or other local characteristics. Acknowledgment: Thanks go to the valuable comments by Professor James Strathman during the construction of this paper. Thanks also go to Tom Kimpel for providing assistance in data manipulation.
Global Retail Lending in the Aftermath of the US Financial Crisis: Distinguishing between Supply and Demand Effects

This paper examines the broader effects of the US financial crisis on global lending to retail customers. In particular we examine retail bank lending in Germany using a unique data set of German savings banks during the period 2006 through 2008 for which we have the universe of loan applications and loans granted. Our experimental setting allows us to distinguish between savings banks affected by the US financial crisis through their holdings in Landesbanken with substantial subprime exposure and unaffected savings banks. The data enable us to distinguish between demand and supply side effects of bank lending and find that the US financial crisis induced a contraction in the supply of retail lending in Germany. While demand for loans goes down, it is not substantially different for the affected and nonaffected banks. More important, we find evidence of a significant supply side effect in that the affected banks reject substantially more loan applications than nonaffected banks. This result is particularly strong for smaller and more liquidityconstrained banks as well as for mortgage as compared with consumer loans. We also find that bank-depositor relationships help mitigate these supply side effects. & 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The Logical Foundations of Goal-Regression Planning in Autonomous Agents

This paper addresses the logical foundations of goal-regression planning in autonomous rational agents. It focuses mainly on three problems. The first is that goals and subgoals will often be conjunctions, and to apply goal-regression planning to a conjunction we usually have to plan separately for the conjuncts and then combine the resulting subplans. A logical problem arises from the fact that the subplans may destructively interfere with each other. This problem has been partially solved in the AI literature (e.g., in SNLP and UCPOP), but the solutions proposed there work only when a restrictive assumption is satisfied. This assumption pertains to the computability of threats. It is argued that this assumption may fail for an autonomous rational agent operating in a complex environment. Relaxing this assumption leads to a theory of defeasible planning. The theory is formulated precisely and an implementation in the OSCAR architecture is discussed. The second problem is that goal-regression planning proceeds in terms of reasoning that runs afoul of the Frame Problem. It is argued that a previously proposed solution to the Frame Problem legitimizes goal-regression planning, but also has the consequence that some restrictions must be imposed on the logical form of goals and subgoals amenable to such planning. These restrictions have to do with temporal-projectibility. The third problem is that the theory of goal-regression planning found in the AI literature imposes restrictive syntactical constraints on goals and subgoals and on the relation of logical consequence. Relaxing these restrictions leads to a generalization of the notion of a threat, related to collective defeat in defeasible reasoning. Relaxing the restrictions also has the consequence that the previously adequate definition of Òexpectable-resultÓ no longer guarantees closure under logical consequence, and must be revised accordingly. That in turn leads to the need for an additional rule for goal-regression planning. Roughly, the rule allows us to plan for the achievement of a goal by searching for plans that will achieve states that ÒcauseÓ the goal. Such a rule was not previously necessary, but becomes necessary when the syntactical constraints are relaxed. The final result is a general semantics for goal-regression planning and a set of procedures that is provably sound and complete. It is shown that this semantics can easily handle concurrent actions, quantified preconditions and effects, creation and destruction of objects, and causal connections embodying complex temporal relationships.
Linguistic Meaning , Communicated Meaning and Cognitive Pragmatics

Within the philosophy of language, pragmatics has tended to be seen as an adjunct to, and a means of solving problems in, semantics. A cognitive-scientific conception of pragmatics as a mental processing system responsible for interpreting ostensive communicative stimuli (specifically, verbal utterances) has effected a transformation in the pragmatic issues pursued and the kinds of explanation offered. Taking this latter perspective, I compare two distinct proposals on the kinds of processes, and the architecture of the system(s), responsible for the recovery of speaker meaning (both explicitly and implicitly communicated meaning). 1. Pragmatics as a Cognitive System 1.1 From Philosophy of Language to Cognitive Science Broadly speaking, there are two perspectives on pragmatics: the ‘philosophical’ and the ‘cognitive’. From the philosophical perspective, an interest in pragmatics has been largely motivated by problems and issues in semantics. A familiar instance of this was Grice’s concern to maintain a close semantic parallel between logical operators and their natural language counterparts, such as ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘if’, ‘every’, ‘a/some’, and ‘the’, in the face of what look like quite major divergences in the meaning of the linguistic elements (see Grice 1975, 1981). The explanation he provided was pragmatic, i.e. in terms of what occurs when the logical semantics of these terms is put to rational communicative use. Consider the case of ‘and’: (1) a. Mary went to a movie and Sam read a novel. b. She gave him her key and he opened the door. c. She insulted him and he left the room. While (a) seems to reflect the straightforward truth-functional symmetrical connection, (b) and (c) communicate a stronger asymmetric relation: temporal Many thanks to Richard Breheny, Sam Guttenplan, Corinne Iten, Deirdre Wilson and Vladimir Zegarac for helpful comments and support during the writing of this paper. Address for correspondence: Department of Phonetics & Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. Email: robyn linguistics.ucl.ac.uk Mind & Language, Vol. 17 Nos 1 and 2 February/April 2002, pp. 127–148.  Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
CFTR mutation distribution among U.S. Hispanic and African American individuals: Evaluation in cystic fibrosis patient and carrier screening populations

Purpose: We reviewed CFTR mutation distribution among Hispanic and African American individuals referred for CF carrier screening and compared mutation frequencies to those derived from CF patient samples.Methods: Results from CFTR mutation analyses received from January 2001 through September 2003, were analyzed for four populations: Hispanic individuals with a CF diagnosis (n = 159) or carrier screening indication (n = 15,333) and African American individuals with a CF diagnosis (n = 108) or carrier screening indication (n = 8,973). All samples were tested for the same 87 mutation panel.Results: In the Hispanic population, 42 mutations were identified: 30 in the patient population (77.5% detection rate) and 33 among carrier screening referrals. Five mutations not included in the ACMG/ACOG carrier screening panel (3876delA, W1089X, R1066C, S549N, 1949del84) accounted for 7.55% detection in patients and 5.58% among carriers. Among African American referrals, 33 different mutations were identified: 21 in the patient population (74.4% detection) and 23 in the carrier screening population. Together, A559T and 711+5G>A were observed at a detection rate of 3.71% in CF patients and 6.38% in carriers. The mutation distribution seen in both the carrier screening populations reflected an increased frequency of mutations with variable expression such as D1152H, R117H, and L206W.Conclusions: A detailed analysis of CFTR mutation distribution in the Hispanic and African American patient and carrier screening populations demonstrates that a diverse group of mutations is most appropriate for diagnostic and carrier screening in these populations. To best serve the increasingly diverse U.S. population, ethnic-specific mutations should be included in mutation panels.
Summer Students in Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study on Educational Applications of Virtual Reality Technology11© 1992 Washington Technology Center. Sponsored by the US West Foundation, the Washington Technology Center, and the Pacific Science Center.

The goal of this study was to take a first step in evaluating the potential of virtual reality (VR) as a learning environment. The context of the study was The Technology Academy, a technology-oriented summer day camp for students ages 5-18, where student activities center around hands-on exploration of new technology (e.g., robotics, MIDI digital sound interfaces, multi-media, and virtual reality) during 1 week session:.. Information was ganered during a 7-week period in order to evaluate VR in terms of usefulness and appeal to students ages 10-15 and to document the students' behavior and opinions as they used VR to construct and explore their own virtual worLds. Concurrently, usability data were collected on system design issues in tailoring VR to learning applications. This report outlines the theoretical framework of the study, describes the research context, and outlines the students' VR activities. Both the pedagogical methodology in designing the students' learning experience and the observation methodology used to record and evaluate student responses are described. A summary of the results of the forced choice and open-ended questions given to the students on an opinion survey are included in the report, as well as a discussion of the observations of the students and descriptions of the virtual worlds constructed by the students. The report concludes with a preliminary evaluation of the usefulness of VR for education. (Contains 23 references.) (ALF) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Technical Publication: R-92-1 Summer Students in Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study on Educational Applications of Virtual Reality Technology Meredith Bricken Research Scientist U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Onice of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) C Ms document nes been reproduced as received from the oerson or organization originating it C ',Amor changes have been made to improve reproduction duality Points 01 view or opinions stated in this doCu ment do not ..ecessanty represent othc,ai OE RI DOSition or policy
A rule based control algorithm of connected vehicles in uncontrolled intersection

Aiming to address the safety issue for the uncontrolled intersection, the existing schemes including design optimization of the intersection structure and additional traffic signal layout will waste lots of resources. With the rapid development of intelligent transportation, the technology of vehicle-vehicle communication provides a new way for this problem. The paper proposed a set of rules to clarify the sequence of vehicles to pass through uncontrolled intersection. The rules are planned based on the law of road traffic safety. According to the rules, each approaching car makes decision for preempting or yielding other cars based on the information from vehicle-vehicle communication. If the approaching car needs to yield other cars, we propose an algorithm to find a proper deceleration value to do yielding. The car brakes automatically using this deceleration value to avoid collision with other cars. After all, the tests were done to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm and demonstrate the function among the connected vehicles in intersection. The rule based collision avoidance algorithm can provide real-time collision detection and make safe deceleration for the cars crossing the uncontrolled intersection.
Telmisartan on top of antihypertensive treatment does not prevent progression of cerebral white matter lesions in the prevention regimen for effectively avoiding second strokes (PRoFESS) MRI substudy.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
High blood pressure is one of the main risk factors for cerebral white matter lesions (WMLs). There is limited evidence from one randomized trial that blood pressure-lowering is able to slow WML progression. We investigated whether telmisartan prevents WML progression in the imaging substudy of the Prevention Regimen for Effectively Avoiding Second Strokes (PRoFESS) trial.


METHODS
This predefined substudy comprised 771 patients (mean age, 65 years) with recent ischemic stroke of noncardioembolic origin who received telmisartan or placebo during a mean follow-up of 27.9 (SD, 7.6) months and had 2 evaluable MRI examinations after index stroke and at study closeout. All MRI scans were centrally adjudicated for progression of periventricular and subcortical WML by 2 neuroradiologists blinded to treatment allocation.


RESULTS
Mean blood pressure was 3.0/1.3 mm Hg lower with telmisartan compared with placebo at follow-up MRI. There was no statistically significant difference in progression of the mean periventricular WML score (least squares mean difference, 0.14; 95% CI, -0.12 to 0.39; P=0.29) and mean subcortical WML diameter (least squares mean difference, -0.35 mm; 95% CI, -1.00 to 0.31 mm; P=0.30) during follow-up between patients on telmisartan and placebo.


CONCLUSIONS
Treatment with telmisartan on top of existing antihypertensive medication did not result in significant blood pressure-lowering and did not prevent the progression of WML in patients with a recent ischemic stroke in this patient cohort. Our analysis is limited by the relatively short follow-up period. Clinical Trial Registration- URL: http://clinicaltrials.gov. Unique Identifier: NCT00153062.
Use of Hurdle Technology in Food Preservation

In industrialized countries there is a rapidly increasing demand from the consumer for fresh-like, minimally processed food products and in developing countries, food storable without refrigeration are of special interest, because refrigeration is costly and not continuously available. Hurdle technology is an intelligent mix of hurdles which works synergistically and provides safe, healthy products of high quality. The present review focuses on hurdle technology: different types of hurdles used, how these hurdles work together (mechanism), its effect on the microorganism and ultimately it explains how it gives a quality food product. A literature search was carried out and a total of 11 food products and their effect after the application of hurdle technology were studied. It was found that the application of this technology will result in a safe product with optimal shelf life, improved microbial stability, sensory quality, nutritional & economic properties, convenient to use, incur in less transportation and storage costs. Thus, hurdle technology is a technology which aims to improve the total quality of foods by the application of an intelligent mix of hurdles. Keywords-Hurdle technology, hurdles, inactivation, quality, stability
Sleep quality and disease severity in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis.

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS
To evaluate sleep quality in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) using a validated outcome measure and to compare measures of CRS disease severity with sleep dysfunction.


STUDY DESIGN
Cross-sectional evaluation of a multi-center cohort.


METHODS
According to the 2007 Adult Sinusitis Guidelines, patients with CRS were prospectively enrolled from four academic, tertiary care centers across North America. Each subject completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) instrument, in addition to CRS-specific measures of quality-of-life (QOL), endoscopy, computed tomography (CT), and olfaction. Patient demographics, comorbid conditions, and clinical measures of disease severity were compared between patients with "good" (PSQI; ≤5) and "poor" (PSQI; > 5) sleep quality.


RESULTS
Patients (n = 268) reported a mean PSQI score of 9.4 (range: 0-21). Seventy-five percent of patients reported PSQI scores above the traditional cutoff, indicating poor sleep quality. Patients with poor sleep quality were found to have significantly worse QOL scores on both the Rhinosinusitis Disability Index (P < 0.001) and 22-item Sinonasal Outcome Test (P < 0.001). No significant differences in average endoscopy, CT, or olfactory function scores were found between patients with good or poor sleep quality. Tobacco smokers reported worse average PSQI total scores compared to nonsmokers (P = 0.030). Patients reporting poor sleep were more likely to have a history of depression, even after controlling for gender (P = 0.020).


CONCLUSION
The majority of patients with CRS have a poor quality of sleep, as measured by the PSQI survey. Poor sleep quality is significantly associated with CRS-specific QOL, gender, comorbid depression, and tobacco use, but not CT score or endoscopy grade.


LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
2b.
Catalan numbers, the Hankel transform, and Fibonacci numbers.

We prove that the Hankel transformation of a sequence whose elements are the sums of two adjacent Catalan numbers is a subsequence of the Fibonacci numbers. This is done by finding the explicit form for the coefficients in the three-term recurrence relation that the corresponding orthogonal polynomials satisfy.
Tooth size patterns in patients with hypodontia and supernumerary teeth.

AIMS
Anomalies of tooth number may not be isolated conditions but may have wider associations in the development of the dentition including tooth size. This study aimed to examine links between hypodontia, supernumerary teeth and crown size, considering the effect on the development of the whole dentition and so increase understanding of the aetiology of these conditions.


METHODS AND RESULTS
The patients, who were all of European ancestry, were 60 young adults (30 males and 30 females) with hypodontia and 60 age and sex matched controls together with 60 young adults (39 males and 21 females) with supernumerary teeth and 60 age and sex matched controls. Hand measurements of mesiodistal and buccolingual dimensions were made of the teeth on dental study models using Mitutoyo electric callipers. The mean value of two measurements was used and intra-operator and inter-operator reliability determined. Patients with hypodontia had smaller teeth than the control group and this difference was statistically significant (p<0.05) for all teeth except the MD dimensions of 13, 23, 24 and 44. The difference in size was greatest for the BL dimensions in hypodontia patients. Further, the greater the number of missing teeth the smaller the tooth size. The hypodontia patients also showed higher variability in tooth dimensions than the control group. Patients with supernumerary teeth had larger teeth than the controls, with the greatest differences in the MD dimensions. In both hypodontia and supernumerary patients the differences in tooth size were generalised throughout the dentition.


CONCLUSIONS
In anomalies of tooth number the size of teeth is also involved. In patients with hypodontia and supernumerary teeth the crown size of the whole dentition is affected. These findings are compatible with a multifactorial aetiology of these conditions.