LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Statin use and breast cancer survival: a nationwide cohort study in Scotland

Preclinical evidence suggests that statins could delay cancer progression. Previous epidemiological findings have been inconsistent and some have been limited by small sample sizes, as well as certain time-related biases. This study aimed to investigate whether breast cancer patients who were exposed to statins had reduced breast cancer-specific mortality. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 15,140 newly diagnosed invasive breast cancer patients diagnosed from 2009 to 2012 within the Scottish Cancer Registry. Dispensed medication usage was obtained from linkages to the Scottish Prescribing Information System and breast cancer-specific deaths were identified from National Records of Scotland Death Records. Using time-dependent Cox regression models, hazard ratios (HR) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI) were calculated for the association between post-diagnostic exposure to statins (including simvastatin) and breast cancer-specific mortality. Adjustments were made for a range of potential confounders including age at diagnosis, year of diagnosis, cancer stage, grade, cancer treatments received, comorbidities, socioeconomic status and use of aspirin. A total of 1,190 breast cancer-specific deaths occurred up to January 2015. Overall, after adjustment for potential confounders, there was no evidence of an association between statin use and breast cancer-specific death (adjusted HR 0.93, 95 % CI 0.77, 1.12). No significant associations were observed in dose–response analyses or in analysis of all-cause mortality. For simvastatin use specifically, a weak non-significant reduction in breast cancer-specific mortality was observed compared to non-users (adjusted HR 0.89, 95 % CI 0.73, 1.08). Statin use before diagnosis was weakly associated with a reduction in breast cancer-specific mortality (adjusted HR 0.85, 95 % CI 0.74, 0.98). Overall, we found little evidence of a protective association between post-diagnostic statin use and cancer-specific mortality in a large nation-wide cohort of breast cancer patients. These findings will help inform the decision whether to conduct randomised controlled trials of statins as an adjuvant treatment in breast cancer.
Enhancing the decomposition of refractory contaminants on SO42--functionalized iron oxide to accommodate surface SO4- generated via radical transfer from OH

Abstract OH or SO 4 − are powerful oxidants that efficiently degrade recalcitrant contaminants. The productions of OH and SO 4 − via activation of their precursors (H 2 O 2 and Na 2 S 2 O 8 ), however, can be sustainable only after continuously feeding such precursors into the activators. Motivated by the advantages of SO 4 − over OH as an environmental cracker, this study highlighted a simple and proficient way to persist solid-supported SO 4 − species used to accelerate the decomposition of recalcitrants in the presence of an electric potential. While using ubiquiotous iron oxide as a platform to accomodate SO 4 − , we functionalized iron oxide surface with SO 4 2- species, which could be transformed into surface SO 4 − species via radical transfer from aqueous OH species. Specifically, a series of SO 4 2- -modified iron oxide catalysts were synthesized using SO 2 and O 2 at 300–600 °C in order to vary their surface properties such as the contents of surface Fe δ + species acting as H 2 O 2 activators to form OH, the contents of surface SO 4 2- species functioning as surface SO 4 − precursor, and the character of S O bonds innate to SO 4 2- functionalities linked to their long-term stability. In addition to the comparison of energetics between SO 4 2- functionalities and their SO 4 - analogues via computation, a kinetic assessment of reaction runs were conducted under controlled environments to gather convincing evidence that the formation of surface SO 4 − via its radical interconversion with aqueous OH was highly plausible and that surface SO 4 − would be the major decomposer of phenol (model compound of recalcitrants). In addition, 500 °C was found to be the optimized temperature to greatly populate Fe δ + and SO 4 2- species rigidly immobilized on iron oxide surface among all temperatures studied, thereby providing the greatest activity and recyclability to degrade phenol.
Assessment of Worldwide Acute Kidney Injury, Renal Angina and Epidemiology in Critically Ill Children (AWARE): study protocol for a prospective observational study

BACKGROUND
Acute kidney injury (AKI) is associated with poor outcome in critically ill children. While data extracted from retrospective study of pediatric populations demonstrate a high incidence of AKI, the literature lacks focused and comprehensive multicenter studies describing AKI risk factors, epidemiology, and outcome. Additionally, very few pediatric studies have examined novel urinary biomarkers outside of the cardiopulmonary bypass population.


METHODS/DESIGN
This is a prospective observational study. We anticipate collecting data on over 5000 critically ill children admitted to 31 pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) across the world during the calendar year of 2014. Data will be collected for seven days on all children older than 90 days and younger than 25 years without baseline stage 5 chronic kidney disease, chronic renal replacement therapy, and outside of 90 days of a kidney transplant or from surgical correction of congenital heart disease. Data to be collected includes demographic information, admission diagnoses and co-morbidities, and details on fluid and vasoactive resuscitation used. The renal angina index will be calculated integrating risk factors and early changes in serum creatinine and fluid overload. On days 2-7, all hemodynamic and pertinent laboratory values will be captured focusing on AKI pertinent values. Daily calculated values will include % fluid overload, fluid corrected creatinine, and KDIGO AKI stage. Urine will be captured twice daily for biomarker analysis on Days 0-3 of admission. Biomarkers to be measured include neutrophil gelatinase lipocalin (NGAL), kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1), liver-type fatty acid binding protein (l-FABP), and interleukin-18 (IL-18). The primary outcome to be quantified is incidence rate of severe AKI on Day 3 (Day 3-AKI). Prediction of Day 3-AKI by the RAI and after incorporation of biomarkers with RAI will be analyzed.


DISCUSSION
The Assessment of Worldwide Acute Kidney Injury, Renal Angina and Epidemiology (AWARE) study, creates the first prospective international pediatric all cause AKI data warehouse and biologic sample repository, providing a broad and invaluable resource for critical care nephrologists seeking to study risk factors, prediction, identification, and treatment options for a disease syndrome with high associated morbidity affecting a significant proportion of hospitalized children.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01987921.
An interdisciplinary review of resistance to consumption, some marketing interpretations, and future research suggestions

This article provides an interdisciplinary review of consumer resistance, an overarching term that includes various forms of anti-consumerist behaviour. The review draws from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, political economy, and cultural studies to explore the historical and discursive constructions of resistance and other key marketing concepts. In so doing, it identifies two distinct paradigms in the social sciences and humanities, namely, the “manipulation and enslavement” and the “agency and empowerment” discourses, and examines how these paradigms reflect onto theories of resistance in marketing. Lastly, the article suggests several new directions for resistance research that pertain to globalization, emerging markets, and ideological consumption.
Management Issues in Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection which is systemic from the outset and has increased in incidence worldwide over the last decade. There has been concern as to whether or not co-infection with HIV can modify the clinical presentation of syphilis and, as a genital ulcer disease, it can facilitate the transmission of HIV infection. Diagnosis is based on the microscopic identification of the causative treponeme and serological testing. Recommendations for the treatment of syphilis have been based on expert opinion, case series, some clinical trials and 50 years of clinical experience. Penicillin, given intramuscularly, is the mainstay of treatment and the favoured preparations for early infectious syphilis are benzathine penicillin as a single injection or a course of daily procaine penicillin injections for 10 to 14 days. The duration of treatment is longer for late syphilis. There has been concern that benzathine penicillin may not prevent the development of neurosyphilis but that is a rare outcome with this therapy. The main alternative to penicillin is doxycycline, but the place of azithromycin and ceftriaxone is yet to be established. It is not necessary to carry out examination of the cerebrospinal fluid in patients with early infectious syphilis but it should be performed in those with neurological or ocular signs, psychiatric signs or symptoms, when there is evidence of treatment failure and in those who are co-infected with HIV. Follow-up is an essential part of management and should be particularly assiduous, for at least 24 months, in those co-infected with HIV. Partner notification should be mandatory to try to contain the spread of infection.
Digital Discrimination : The Case of Airbnb

Online marketplaces often contain information not only about products, but also about the people selling the products. In an effort to facilitate trust, many platforms encourage sellers to provide personal profiles and even to post pictures of themselves. However, these features may also facilitate discrimination based on sellers’ race, gender, age, or other aspects of appearance. In this paper, we test for racial discrimination against landlords in the online rental marketplace Airbnb.com. Using a new data set combining pictures of all New York City landlords on Airbnb with their rental prices and information about quality of the rentals, we show that non-black hosts charge approximately 12% more than black hosts for the equivalent rental. These effects are robust when controlling for all information visible in the Airbnb marketplace. These findings highlight the prevalence of discrimination in online marketplaces, suggesting an important unintended consequence of a seemingly-routine mechanism for building trust. 1 Harvard Business School, bedelman@hbs.edu 2 Harvard Business School, mluca@hbs.edu
Psychosocial predictors of fruit and vegetable consumption in adults a review of the literature.

BACKGROUND
Adequate fruit and vegetable intake has been found to promote health and reduce the risk of several cancers and chronic diseases. Understanding the psychological determinants of fruit and vegetable intake is needed to design effective intervention programs.


METHODS
Papers published in English from 1994 to 2006 that described the relationship between psychosocial predictors and fruit and vegetable intake in adults were reviewed. Studies and their constructs were independently rated based on the direction of significant effects, quality of execution, design suitability, and frequency. Methodology from the Guide to Community Preventive Services was used to systematically review and synthesize findings.


RESULTS
Twenty-five psychosocial constructs spanning 35 studies were reviewed (14 prospective and 21 cross-sectional/descriptive studies). Strong evidence was found for self-efficacy, social support, and knowledge as predictors of adult fruit and vegetable intake. Weaker evidence was found for variables including barriers, intentions, attitudes/beliefs, stages of change, and autonomous motivation.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings underscore the need to design future behavioral interventions that use strong experimental designs with efficacious constructs and to conduct formal mediation analyses to determine the strength of these potential predictors of fruit and vegetable intake.
Assessing predictors of contraceptive use and demand for family planning services in underserved areas of Punjab province in Pakistan: results of a cross-sectional baseline survey

BACKGROUND
Although Pakistan was one of the first countries in Asia to launch national family planning programs, current modern contraceptive use stands at only 26% with a method mix skewed toward short-acting and permanent methods. As part of a multiyear operational research study, a baseline survey was conducted to understand the predictors of contraceptive use and demand for family planning services in underserved areas of Punjab province in Pakistan. This paper presents the baseline survey results; the outcomes of the intervention will be presented in a separate paper after the study has been completed.


METHOD
A cross-sectional baseline household survey was conducted with randomly selected 3,998 married women of reproductive age (MWRA) in the Chakwal, Mianwali, and Bhakkar districts of Punjab. The data were analyzed on SPSS 17.0 using simple descriptive and logistic regression.


RESULTS
Most of the women had low socio-economic status and were younger than 30 years of age. Four-fifths of the women consulted private sector health facilities for reproductive health services; proximity, availability of services, and good reputation of the provider were the main predicators for choosing the facilities. Husbands were reported as the key decision maker regarding health-seeking and family planning uptake. Overall, the current contraceptive use ranged from 17% to 21% across the districts: condoms and female sterilization were widely used methods. Woman's age, husband's education, wealth quintiles, spousal communication, location of last delivery, and favorable attitude toward contraception have an association with current contraceptive use. Unmet need for contraception was 40.6%, 36.6%, and 31.9% in Chakwal, Mianwali, and Bhakkar, respectively. Notably, more than one fifth of the women across the districts expressed willingness to use quality, affordable long-term family planning services in the future.


CONCLUSION
The baseline results highlight the need for quality, affordable long-term family planning services close to women's homes. Furthermore, targeted community mobilization and behavior change efforts can lead to increased awareness, acceptability, and use of family planning and birth spacing services.
Learning Edge Representations via Low-Rank Asymmetric Projections

We propose a new method for embedding graphs while preserving directed edge information. Learning such continuous-space vector representations (or embeddings) of nodes in a graph is an important first step for using network information (from social networks, user-item graphs, knowledge bases, etc.) in many machine learning tasks. Unlike previous work, we (1) explicitly model an edge as a function of node embeddings, and we (2) propose a novel objective, the graph likelihood, which contrasts information from sampled random walks with non-existent edges. Individually, both of these contributions improve the learned representations, especially when there are memory constraints on the total size of the embeddings. When combined, our contributions enable us to significantly improve the state-of-the-art by learning more concise representations that better preserve the graph structure. We evaluate our method on a variety of link-prediction task including social networks, collaboration networks, and protein interactions, showing that our proposed method learn representations with error reductions of up to 76% and 55%, on directed and undirected graphs. In addition, we show that the representations learned by our method are quite space efficient, producing embeddings which have higher structure-preserving accuracy but are 10 times smaller.
Which came first: the readiness or the change? Longitudinal relationships between readiness to change and drinking among college drinkers.

AIMS
Although readiness to change (RTC) is cited as a key mechanism underlying drinking behavior change, empirical evidence supporting RTC as a predictor of college drinking has been mixed. Considering methodological limitations of previous studies, the current aim was to conduct a more comprehensive test of longitudinal relationships between readiness to change and college drinking.


DESIGN
In this correlational, longitudinal study, we used a series of cross-lagged path analyses to test associations between RTC and college drinking outcomes over a 2-year period.


SETTING
Data collection was conducted via online surveys on a university campus in the US Pacific Northwest.


PARTICIPANTS
Participants (n = 818; 58% women) were college students who reported at least one heavy-drinking episode in the past month and participated in a randomized controlled trial of personalized normative feedback interventions.


MEASUREMENTS
Drinking quantity-frequency items and the Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index assessed drinking outcomes. The Readiness to Change Questionnaire assessed RTC.


FINDINGS
For drinking-related problems, the best-fitting model included cross-lagged paths between RTC and subsequent drinking-related problems. For drinking quantity-frequency, best-fitting models also included the cross-lagged paths between drinking quantity-frequency and subsequent RTC. Higher RTC almost uniformly predicted higher subsequent levels of drinking and greater experience of drinking-related problems, and drinking quantity-frequency variables were primarily positive predictors of subsequent RTC.


CONCLUSIONS
Contrary to previous assumptions, 'the Readiness to Change Questionnaire' does not appear to be predictive of lower levels of subsequent drinking.
A randomized study of the efficacy of sensory-motor-oral stimulation and non-nutritive sucking in very low birthweight infant.

UNLABELLED
To assess if sensory-motor-oral stimulation and non-nutritive sucking gavage feeding enhances the oral feeding performance of preterm infants born between 26 and 32 weeks of gestational age.


STUDY DESIGN
Very low birthweight infants (n=98) were randomized into a experimental and control group. Preterm infants in the experimental group received sensory-motor-oral stimulation and non-nutritive sucking and infants in the control group received a sham stimulation program. Both were administered from when they reached enteral diet (100 kcal/kg/day) until the beginning of oral diet. Primary outcome was length of hospital stay.


RESULTS
Independent oral feeding was attained significantly earlier in the experimental group than the control group, 38+/-16 days of life (mean+/-S.D.) versus 47+/-17 days of life, respectively (P<0.001) There was significant difference in length of hospital stay between the two groups (41.9+/-17 (mean+/-S.D.) versus 52.3+/-19 days (P<0.01)).


CONCLUSION
Sensory-motor-oral stimulation, together with early non-nutritive sucking (as soon as the newborn reaches full diet and is clinically stable) in very low birthweight preterm infants, as long as they are clinically stable, in this study, earlier initiation of oral feeding and earlier hospital discharge.
Teacher Factors Influencing Students' Academic Achievement in Secondary Schools

This study investigated the relationship between selected teachers’ demographic characteristics and classroom instructional practices and students’ academic achievement in selected secondary schools in Nyandarua County. One hundred and fifty three teachers selected randomly from eighteen schools in three districts in the County participated in the study. The schools were categorized as above average, average, and below average based on their aggregate performance in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) in the last three years. In each category, two schools per district were selected. Data were collected using a questionnaire developed by the researchers. Linear regression and One-way ANOVA were used to test the relationship between the selected variables and performance in KCSE at p<.05. The study found that teachers’ age, gender, professional qualifications and teaching experience were not significantly related to academic achievement. Teachers’ job group had significant and positive relationship with students’ academic achievement in secondary schools. Teachers’ weekly teaching workload, administration of students’ classroom assignments, evaluation of students’ Continuous Assessment Test (CATs) results, provision of individualized attention to weak students, time of completion of Form Four syllabus and setting performance targets for KCSE significantly affected students’ academic achievement.
Prostate-specific antigen and hormone receptor expression in male and female breast carcinoma

BACKGROUND
Prostate carcinoma is among the most common solid tumors to secondarily involve the male breast. Prostate specific antigen (PSA) and prostate-specific acid phosphatase (PSAP) are expressed in benign and malignant prostatic tissue, and immunohistochemical staining for these markers is often used to confirm the prostatic origin of metastatic carcinoma. PSA expression has been reported in male and female breast carcinoma and in gynecomastia, raising concerns about the utility of PSA for differentiating prostate carcinoma metastasis to the male breast from primary breast carcinoma. This study examined the frequency of PSA, PSAP, and hormone receptor expression in male breast carcinoma (MBC), female breast carcinoma (FBC), and gynecomastia.


METHODS
Immunohistochemical staining for PSA, PSAP, AR, ER, and PR was performed on tissue microarrays representing six cases of gynecomastia, thirty MBC, and fifty-six FBC.


RESULTS
PSA was positive in two of fifty-six FBC (3.7%), focally positive in one of thirty MBC (3.3%), and negative in the five examined cases of gynecomastia. PSAP expression was absent in MBC, FBC, and gynecomastia. Hormone receptor expression was similar in males and females (AR 74.1% in MBC vs. 67.9% in FBC, p = 0.62; ER 85.2% vs. 68.5%, p = 0.18; and PR 51.9% vs. 48.2%, p = 0.82).


CONCLUSIONS
PSA and PSAP are useful markers to distinguish primary breast carcinoma from prostate carcinoma metastatic to the male breast. Although PSA expression appeared to correlate with hormone receptor expression, the incidence of PSA expression in our population was too low to draw significant conclusions about an association between PSA expression and hormone receptor status in breast lesions.
Leaving EMU: a real options perspective

The real option implicit in a country's decision of whether to leave an existing monetary union when there is uncertainty over the future benefits of this move is examined. The theoretical model used is calibrated for the current Euro-12 area by proxying policymakers' inflation preferences with unemployment rates and debt-to-GDP ratios. A robust group of countries is observed that would choose to remain within EMU consisting of Belgium, Finland, Greece and Italy; France and Spain loosely also belong to this core. Only Luxembourg would robustly want to leave EMU; Ireland and The Netherlands, however, complement that core closely. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Rational Choice Theory Rational Choice Theory

It has long appeared to many people that economics is the most successful of the social sciences. It has assumed that people are motivated by money and by the possibility of making a profit, and this has allowed it to construct formal, and often predictive, models of human behaviour. This apparent success has led many other social scientists to cast envious eyes in its direction. They have thought that if they could only follow the methods of economics they could achieve similar successes in their own studies. These sociologists and political scientists have tried to build theories around the idea that all action is fundamentally 'rational' in character and that people calculate the likely costs and benefits of any action before deciding what to do. This approach to theory is known as rational choice theory, and its application to social interaction takes the form of exchange theory.