LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Relationship between peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma and retinoic acid receptor alpha gene expression in obese human adipose tissue

Objective: To investigate in human adipose tissue a possible relationship between per oxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) and retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARα) gene expression, two genes involved in the control of adipocyte differentiation.Subjects: Ten lean control women (age 31–60 y, body mass index (BMI) 18–24.7 kg/m2) and an obese group of 15 women (age 27–62 y, BMI 30–57.5 kg/m2), of whom 10 subjects were in weight-gain phase and five were in weight-loss phase.Measurements: We assessed the relative PPARγ and RARα mRNA levels in subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue using a real-time PCR method.Results: PPARγ mRNA level were significantly increased (+91%; P<0.01) in obese women compared to lean control women. In the obese group, we observed a PPARγ mRNA level 42% lower in weight-loss obese than in weight-gain obese subjects. We obtained a positive correlation (r=0.56; P<0.01) between PPARγ mRNA level and the BMI of all subjects. Relative mRNA abundance level of RARα in subcutaneous adipose tissue of obese subjects is significantly lower than in control subjects (−56%, P<0.01), and a negative correlation was found between PPARγ and RARα mRNA levels in subcutaneous adipose tissue of subjects study (r=−0.75; P<0.01).Conclusion: Our findings suggest that obesity is associated with an inverse relationship between PPARγ and RARα expressions in human subcutaneous adipose tissue. Modulations of nuclear receptor profile could be an important event in the body's early adaptive mechanisms promoting adipose tissue plasticity and leading to the onset of obesity.
Injection therapy of lumbar facet syndrome: a prospective study

Background. Chronic low back pain remains a major health problem. Facet joint injection therapy is an easy to perform therapeutic option. However, few prospective studies use a standardized protocol to investigate injection therapy. The aim of our study was to evaluate quantity and duration of clinical improvement after this protocol, and to identify the best time for additional repetitive injection therapy. Materials and Methods. Thirty-nine patients (21 men, 18 women; mean age 55.2 years [range, 29–87 years]) with lumbar facet syndrome were treated with injection using a standardized protocol (prednisolone acetate, lidocaine 1%, phenol 5%) under fluoroscopic control. Follow-up was based on a specially designed questionnaire. Analysis included MacNab criteria, visual analogue scale, and pain disability index. Results. Reduction of pain was found up to 6 months after treatment. The outcome was assessed excellent or good by 62% (24 patients) of the patients after 1 month, by 41% (16 patients) after 3 months, and by 36% (14 patients) after 6 months. There was no influence of age, body mass index, or previous lumbar spinal surgery on improvement after treatment. There were no severe side effects. Short-lasting self limiting mild side effects were found in 26% (increased back pain, numbness, heartburn, headache, allergy). Conclusion. Facet joint injection therapy using a standardized protocol is safe, effective, and easy to perform. The clinical effect is limited, and we recommend repetitive injection according to this protocol after 3 months.
Accuracy of the Interpretation of Chest Radiographs for the Diagnosis of Paediatric Pneumonia

INTRODUCTION
World Health Organization (WHO) radiological classification remains an important entry criterion in epidemiological studies of pneumonia in children. We report inter-observer variability in the interpretation of 169 chest radiographs in children suspected of having pneumonia.


METHODS
An 18-month prospective aetiological study of pneumonia was undertaken in Northern England. Chest radiographs were performed on eligible children aged ≤16 years with clinical features of pneumonia. The initial radiology report was compared with a subsequent assessment by a consultant cardiothoracic radiologist. Chest radiographic changes were categorised according to the WHO classification.


RESULTS
There was significant disagreement (22%) between the first and second reports (kappa = 0.70, P<0.001), notably in those aged <5 years (26%, kappa = 0.66, P<0.001). The most frequent sources of disagreement were the reporting of patchy and perihilar changes.


CONCLUSION
This substantial inter-observer variability highlights the need for experts from different countries to create a consensus to review the radiological definition of pneumonia in children.
Extended Release Nicotinic Acid – A Novel Oral Agent for Phosphate Control

Background: Hyperphosphatemia is common in hemodialysis patients. Recent animal studies show that nicotinamide inhibits the sodium dependent phosphate co-transport in the small intestine and thereby reduces serum phosphorus levels. Nicotinic acid which is the prodrug of nicotinamide is widely used as antihyperlipidemic agent. We examined in a prospective study whether it reduces serum phosphorus levels in hemodialysis patients. Methods: Patients who were on maintenance hemodialysis were enrolled in to the study if their predialysis serum phosphorus was more than 6 mg/dl. During the pre-trial run in period of 1 week all phosphate binders were stopped. A single dose of extended release nicotinic acid (375 mg) tablet was given with meal. Repeat measurements of serum calcium, phosphorus and alkaline phosphatase were carried out after 8 weeks. Then the drug was stopped in a subgroup of patients and serum phosphorus remeasured after 2 weeks. Results : There were 34 patients with varied etiological spectrum of end stage renal disease. They were on hemodialysis for a mean period of 8.7 months. Serum phosphorus levels changed significantly from a pre treatment level of 7.7±1.5 mg/dl to post treatment level of 5.6 ±1 mg/dl (p<0.001). There was no significant variance across age groups, sex, disease categories and dialysis duration. The calcium level increased from 8.1±1.0 to 8.5±1.0 mg/dl (p<0.015). The serum alkaline phosphatase level decreased significantly from 107±66 IU/l to 82±46 IU/l (p<0.001 ). There was a significant reduction of calcium phosphate product from 63.1+15.1 mg2 to 48.7±10.9 mg2/dl2 (p<0.001). Oral nicotinic acid was well tolerated. Mild pruritus was encountered in 2 patients. Conclusion: Oral nicotinic acid may emerge as a safe, low cost yet powerful agent for phosphorus control in dialysis patients.
The ionic hydrogen bond.

1.1. Historical Background Hydrogen bonds1,2 are one of the principal intermolecular forces. A special class are ionic hydrogen bonds (IHBs) that form between ions and molecules with bonds strengths of 5-35 kcal/mol, up to a third of the strength of covalent bonds. These strong interactions are critical, for example, in ionic clusters and nucleation, in electrolytes, ion solvation, and acid-base chemistry, in the structures of ionic crystals, surfaces, silicates, and clays, in surface adsorption, and in self-assembly in supramolecular chemistry and molecular crystals.3 IHBs are also important in bioenergetics including protein folding, enzyme active centers, formation of membranes and proton transport, and biomolecular recognition. With such wide-ranging roles, the fundamental properties of IHB interactions need to be understood. The energetics of IHB interactions cannot be isolated and quantified in the condensed phase. However, these interactions can be isolated and studied quantitatively in gas phase. These studies lead to a fundamental understanding of relations between IHB bond strengths and molecular structure, the solvation of ions, especially in the critical inner shells, and acid-based phenomena and bioenergetics. This review will present the basic insights that have been obtained in the past four decades. It will present a comprehensive review of the thermochemistry and its structural implications obtained from ab initio calculations. Relevant recent results from spectroscopy will be also illustrated. The advent of variable temperature high-pressure mass spectrometry (HPMS) introduced by Field and co-workers in the 1960s4 and pulsed high-pressure mass spectrometry (PHPMS) introduced by Kebarle in the late 1960s5 have been particularly significant. These workers realized that at pressures of several torrs and gas densities of 1016-1017 cm-3 in ion sources, ions can undergo 103-106 collisions with neutral molecules during typical residence times of 0.1-10 ms and establish thermal ion populations and * E-mail: m.mautner@solis1.com. 213 Chem. Rev. 2005, 105, 213−284
A unified view of performance metrics: translating threshold choice into expected classification loss

Many performance metrics have been introduced in the literature for the evaluation of classification performance, each of them with different origins and areas of application. These metrics include accuracy, unweighted accuracy, the area under the ROC curve or the ROC convex hull, the mean absolute error and the Brier score or mean squared error (with its decomposition into refinement and calibration). One way of understanding the relations among these metrics is by means of variable operating conditions (in the form of misclassification costs and/or class distributions). Thus, a metric may correspond to some expected loss over different operating conditions. One dimension for the analysis has been the distribution for this range of operating conditions, leading to some important connections in the area of proper scoring rules. We demonstrate in this paper that there is an equally important dimension which has so far received much less attention in the analysis of performance metrics. This dimension is given by the decision rule, which is typically implemented as a threshold choice method when using scoring models. In this paper, we explore many old and new threshold choice methods: fixed, score-uniform, score-driven, rate-driven and optimal, among others. By calculating the expected loss obtained with these threshold choice methods for a uniform range of operating conditions we give clear interpretations of the 0-1 loss, the absolute error, the Brier score, the AUC and the refinement loss respectively. Our analysis provides a comprehensive view of performance metrics as well as a systematic approach to loss minimisation which can be summarised as follows: given a model, apply the threshold choice methods that correspond with the available information about the operating condition, and compare their expected losses. In order to assist in this procedure we also derive several connections between the aforementioned performance metrics, and we highlight the role of calibration in choosing the threshold choice method.
Arthroscopically assisted repair of peripheral triangular fibrocartilage complex tears: factors affecting outcome.

PURPOSE
The purpose of our study was to identify factors affecting the outcome after arthroscopically assisted repair of peripheral triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC) tears.


TYPE OF STUDY
Retrospective case series.


METHODS
Thirty-five patients who underwent arthroscopic repair of traumatic TFCC tears were enrolled in this study (mean age, 34 +/- 12 years; 22 female and 13 male patients; mean follow-up, 29 months; range, 6 to 82 months). Patients with TFCC tears associated with distal radius fractures, or significant wrist bone or neurovascular pathology were excluded from the study. The Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder, and Hand (DASH) questionnaire score was used as the primary variable during statistical analysis to identify factors determining outcome.


RESULTS
The DASH score in this study was 12 +/- 12 points. A significant correlation was found between the age of the patient and the DASH score, indicating that older age has a significant negative effect on functional outcome. Significant correlations were also found between the DASH score and (1) decreased percentage of grip strength compared with the healthy side, (2) decreased supination, and (3) positive postoperative ulnar variance.


CONCLUSIONS
Age-related degenerative changes in the wrist might contribute to poor outcome and a TFCC tear resulting from minor or repetitive trauma. Loss of wrist rotation, grip strength, and ulnar positive variance are factors that are correlated with poor outcome.


LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
Level IV.
Ip = Pspace

In this paper, it is proven that when both randomization and interaction are allowed, the proofs that can be verified in polynomial time are exactly those proofs that can be generated with polynomial space.
Randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based therapy for dyspnea in chronic obstructive lung disease.

OBJECTIVES
Patients with chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD) suffer from significant dyspnea and may benefit from complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies aimed at mitigating symptoms. The objective of this study was to test the efficacy of a mindfulness-based breathing therapy (MBBT) on improving symptoms and health-related quality of life in those with COPD.


DESIGN
We conducted a randomized controlled trial of 8-week mindfulness-based breathing therapy (MBBT) compared to support groups to test efficacy on improving symptoms and health-related quality of life in those with COPD.


SETTING
The setting for this study was an academic-affiliated veterans healthcare system.


SUBJECTS
The subjects consisted of 86 patients with COPD.


INTERVENTIONS
MBBT included weekly meetings practicing mindfulness mediation and relaxation response.


OUTCOME MEASURES
The main outcome measure was a post 6-minute-walk test (6MWT) Borg dyspnea assessment. Other outcome measures included health-related quality of life measures, 6MWT distance, symptom scores, exacerbation rates, and measures of stress and mindfulness. Analysis of covariance compared differences in outcomes between groups; paired t test evaluated changes within groups.


RESULTS
Participants were predominantly elderly men with moderate to severe COPD. We found no improvements in dyspnea (post 6MWT Borg difference between the MBBT and support group was 0.3 (95% confidence interval [CI]: -1.1, 1.7). We found no differences between groups in almost all other outcome measures by either intention-to-treat analysis or within the subset that completed assigned group sessions. For the physical summary scale of the generic Short Form-36 for Veterans, the difference between outcomes favored the support group (4.3, 95% CI: 0.4, 8.1). Participant retention was low compared to mind-body trials that randomize from CAM wait lists.


CONCLUSIONS
This trial found no measurable improvements in patients with COPD receiving a mindfulness-based breathing CAM therapy compared to a support group, suggesting that this intervention is unlikely to be an important therapeutic option for those with moderate-to-severe COPD.
Statistical Acquisition of Texture Appearance

We propose a simple method to acquire and reconstruct material appearance with sparsely sampled data. Our technique renders elaborate view- and light-dependent effects and faithfully reproduces materials such as fabrics and knitwears. Our approach uses sparse measurements to reconstruct a full six-dimensional Bidirectional Texture Function (BTF). Our reconstruction only require input images from the top view to be registered, which is easy to achieve with a fixed camera setup. Bidirectional properties are acquired from a sparse set of viewing directions through image statistics and therefore precise registrations for these views are unnecessary. Our technique is based on multi-scale histograms of image pyramids. The full BTF is generated by matching the corresponding pyramid histograms to interpolated top-view images. We show that the use of multi-scale image statistics achieves a visually plausible appearance. However, our technique does not fully capture sharp specularities or the geometric aspects of parallax. Nonetheless, a large class of materials can be reproduced well with our technique, and our statistical characterization enables acquisition of such materials efficiently using a simple setup.
Heideggerian Critique of the Role of 'Relation' in John Dewey's Philosophy of Education

vi 1. MY ‘FELT DIFFICULTY’ WITH THE ROLE OF ‘RELATION’ IN JOHN DEWEY’S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 1 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 21 3. DEWEY’S MEMBERSHIP IN THE ARISTOTELIAN/KANTIAN METAPHYSICAL TRADITION 83 4. THE ‘HEIDEGGERIAN CORRECTION’ OF ARISTOTLE, KANT, AND DEWEY .....106 5. THE ‘HEIDEGGERIAN CORRECTION’ AND PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION 135
A Neural Network-based method for continuous blood pressure estimation from a PPG signal

There is a relation, not always linear, between the blood pressure and the pulse duration, obtained from photoplethysmography (PPG) signal. In order to estimate the blood pressure from the PPG signal, in this paper the Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are used. Training data were extracted from the Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care waveform database for better representation of possible pulse and pressure variation. In total there were analyzed more than 15000 heartbeats and 21 parameters were extracted from each of them that define the input vector for the ANN. The comparison between estimated and reference values shows better accuracy than the linear regression method and satisfy the American National Standards of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation.
Fighting Youth Unemployment: The Effects of Active Labor Market Policies

Fighting Youth Unemployment: The Effects of Active Labor Market Policies A substantial number of young unemployed participate in active labor market programs (ALMP) in Germany each year. While the aims of these programs are clear – a fast reintegration into employment or enrollment in further education – a comprehensive analysis of their effectiveness has yet to be conducted. We fill this gap using administrative data on youth unemployment entries in 2002 and analyze the shortand long-term impacts for a variety of different programs. With informative data at hand we apply inverse probability weighting, thereby accounting for a dynamic treatment assignment and cyclical availability of programs. Our results indicate positive long-term employment effects for nearly all measures aimed at labor market integration. Measures aimed at integrating youths in apprenticeships are effective in terms of education participation, but fail to show any impact on employment outcomes until the end of our observation period. Public sector job creation is found to be harmful for the medium-term employment prospects and ineffective in the long-run. Our analysis further indicates that the targeting of German ALMP systematically ignores loweducated youths as neediest of labor market groups. While no employment program shows a positive impact on further education participation for any subgroup, the employment impact of participation is often significantly lower for low-educated youths. JEL Classification: J64, J68, J13
Effect of tranexamic acid on early postvitrectomy diabetic haemorrhage; a randomised clinical trial.

AIMS
To evaluate the effect of tranexamic acid on early postvitrectomy haemorrhage in diabetic patients.


METHODS
In a clinical trial, 62 diabetic patients scheduled for vitrectomy were randomly assigned to two groups. The treatment group (32 eyes) received two doses of tranexamic acid (10 mg/kg) shortly before and after the operation intravenously, continued orally for 4 days (20 mg/kg/8 hours). The control group (30 eyes) received no medication. Both media clarity and visual acuity were compared during 4 weeks.


RESULTS
Four weeks after surgery visual acuity was low (< or =1 metre counting fingers) in 21.4%, moderate (>1 metre counting fingers but<20/200) in 14.3%, and good (> or =20/200) in 64.3% of the treated group. Corresponding figures in the control group were 26.1%, 26.1%, and 47.8%, respectively. These differences were of no statistical significance. The ratio of mild to severe vitreous haemorrhage during the first 4 days and after 4 weeks was 79% to 21% and 82% to 18% in the treatment group and 76.7% to 23.3% and 78.3% to 21.7% in the control group respectively, which showed no statistically significant difference.


CONCLUSION
Tranexamic acid, with the method of administration in this study, had no effect on reducing early postvitrectomy haemorrhage in diabetic patients.
Prevention of tolerance to the antinociceptive effects of systemic morphine by a selective cholecystokinin-B receptor antagonist in a rat model of peripheral neuropathy.

The ability of pretreatment by the selective cholecystokinin-B (CCK(B)) receptor antagonist L-365,260 (0.2 mg/kg s.c.) to prevent the development of tolerance to the antinociceptive action of morphine was evaluated by a well-established rat model of unilateral peripheral mononeuropathy. The 4-day pretreatment regimens (saline, L-365,260 or morphine alone, or with the combination of L-365,260 and morphine) were begun on postoperative day 12. The experiments were performed on day 16, when the pain-related behavior reached a stable maximum. Behavioral test based on a mechanical stimulus (vocalization threshold to paw pressure) and relatively low acute doses of systemic morphine (0.1, 0.3 and 1.0 mg/kg i.v.) were used. On day 16, the base-line vocalization threshold to paw pressure values of the groups pretreated with one of the four regimens were similar, which suggests that the pretreatments had no effect on the development of mechanical allodynia. Pretreatment with morphine alone (10 mg/kg s.c., two times a day during 4 days) induced a complete tolerance to the antinociceptive effect of acute morphine (0.1-1.0 mg/kg i.v.). However, pretreatment with the combination of L-365,260 with morphine completely prevented the development of tolerance to the antinociceptive effect of acute i.v. morphine. The effect of acute morphine in this latter pretreatment group was dose dependent, naloxone reversible and similar to the effect of acute morphine seen in the saline-pretreated group. Our results suggest that in this well-characterized model of neuropathic pain, the development of tolerance to the antinociceptive effect of systemic morphine can be prevented by systemic coadministration of the CCK(B) antagonist L-365,260. We further show, that in contrast to a tonic activity of the endogenous opioidergic system, a tonic activity of the endogenous CCK system cannot be revealed in this rat model of neuropathic pain.
Joint Detection and Identification Feature Learning for Person Search

Existing person re-identification benchmarks and methods mainly focus on matching cropped pedestrian images between queries and candidates. However, it is different from real-world scenarios where the annotations of pedestrian bounding boxes are unavailable and the target person needs to be searched from a gallery of whole scene images. To close the gap, we propose a new deep learning framework for person search. Instead of breaking it down into two separate tasks&#x2014;pedestrian detection and person re-identification, we jointly handle both aspects in a single convolutional neural network. An Online Instance Matching (OIM) loss function is proposed to train the network effectively, which is scalable to datasets with numerous identities. To validate our approach, we collect and annotate a large-scale benchmark dataset for person search. It contains 18,184 images, 8,432 identities, and 96,143 pedestrian bounding boxes. Experiments show that our framework outperforms other separate approaches, and the proposed OIM loss function converges much faster and better than the conventional Softmax loss.