LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Perceptions of New Zealand nutrition labels by Māori, Pacific and low-income shoppers.

BACKGROUND
In New Zealand the burden of nutrition-related disease is greatest among Māori, Pacific and low-income peoples. Nutrition labels have the potential to promote healthy food choices and eating behaviours. To date, there has been a noticeable lack of research among indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities and low-income populations regarding their perceptions, use and understanding of nutrition labels. Our aim was to evaluate perceptions of New Zealand nutrition labels by Māori, Pacific and low-income peoples and to explore improvements or alternatives to current labelling systems.


METHODS
Māori, Samoan and Tongan researchers recruited participants who were regular food shoppers. Six focus groups were conducted which involved 158 people in total: one Māori group, one Samoan, one Tongan, and three low-income groups.


RESULTS
Māori, Pacific and low-income New Zealanders rarely use nutrition labels to assist them with their food purchases for a number of reasons, including lack of time to read labels, lack of understanding, shopping habits and relative absence of simple nutrition labels on the low-cost foods they purchase.


CONCLUSIONS
Current New Zealand nutrition labels are not meeting the needs of those who need them most. Possible improvements include targeted social marketing and education campaigns, increasing the number of low-cost foods with voluntary nutrition labels, a reduction in the price of 'healthy' food, and consideration of an alternative mandatory nutrition labelling system that uses simple imagery like traffic lights.
Internally coated endotracheal tubes with silver sulfadiazine in polyurethane to prevent bacterial colonization: a clinical trial

Coated medical devices have been shown to reduce catheter-related infections. We coated endotracheal tubes (ETT) with silver sulfadiazine (SSD), and tested them in a clinical study to assess the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of preventing bacterial colonization. A prospective, randomized clinical trial, phase I–II. Academic intensive care unit (ICU). Forty-six adult patients expected to need 12–24 h of intubation were randomized into two groups. Patients were randomized to be intubated with a standard non-coated ETT (St-ETT, n = 23; control group), or with a SSD-coated ETT (SSD-ETT, n = 23). Coating with SSD prevented bacterial colonization of the ETT (frequency of colonization: SSD-ETT 0/23, St-ETT 8/23; p < 0.01). No organized bacterial biofilm could be identified on the lumen of any ETT; however, SSD was associated with a thinner mucus layer (in the SSD-ETT secretion deposits ranged from 0 to 200 μm; in the St-ETT deposits ranged between 50 and 700 μm). No difference was observed between the two groups in the tracheobronchial brush samples (frequency of colonization: SSD-ETT 0/23, St-ETT 2/23; p = 0.48). No adverse reactions were observed with the implementation of the novel device. SSD-ETT can be safely used in preventing bacterial colonization and narrowing of the ETT in patients intubated for up to 24 h (mean intubation time 16 h).
Online Adaptation for Joint Scene and Object Classification

The proposed active learning framework learns scene and object classification models simultaneously. Both scene and object classification models take advantage of the interdependence between them to select the most informative samples with the least manual labeling cost. To the best of our knowledge, any previous work using active learning to classify scene and objects together is unknown. Leveraging upon the inter-relationships between scene and objects, we propose a new information-theoretic sample selection strategy. [Figure] This figure presents a pictorial representation of the proposed framework. Overview of Our Joint Active Learning Framework
The impact of numeracy on reactions to different graphic risk presentation formats: An experimental analogue study.

OBJECTIVES
Numeracy, the ability to process basic mathematical concepts, may affect responses to graphical displays of health risk information. Displays of probabilistic risk information using grouped dots are easier to understand than displays using dispersed dots. However, dispersed dots may better convey the randomness with which health threats occur, so increasing perceived susceptibility. We hypothesized that low numeracy participants would better understand risks presented using grouped dot displays, while high numeracy participants would have good understanding, regardless of display type. Moreover, we predicted that dispersed dot displays, in contrast to grouped dot displays, would increase risk perceptions and worry only for highly numerate individuals.


DESIGN AND METHOD
One hundred and forty smokers read vignettes asking them to imagine being at risk of Crohn's disease, in a 2(display type: dispersed/grouped dots) x 3(risk magnitude: 3%/6%/50%) x 2(numeracy: high/low) design. They completed measures of risk comprehension, perceived susceptibility and worry.


RESULTS
More numerate participants had better objective risk comprehension, but this effect was not moderated by display type. There was marginally significant support for the predicted numeracy x display type interaction for worry about Crohn's disease, but not for perceived susceptibility to the condition.


CONCLUSIONS
Dispersed dot displays somewhat increase worry in highly numerate individuals, but only numeracy influenced objective risk comprehension. The most effective display type for communicating risk information will depend on the numeracy of the population and the goal(s) of the communication.
Indirect robust estimation of the short-term interest rate process

We propose Indirect Robust Generalized Method of Moments (IRGMM), a simulationbased estimation methodology, to model short-term interest rate processes. The primary advantage of IRGMM relative to classical estimators of the continuous-time short-rate diffusion processes is that it corrects both the errors due to discretization and the errors due to model misspecification. We apply this approach to monthly US risk free rates and to various monthly Eurocurrency rates and provide extensive evidence of its predictive performances in a variety of settings.
Light augments tooth whitening with peroxide.

BACKGROUND
The authors tested the adjunctive use of light with a 15 percent peroxide gel as a single-visit, in-office tooth whitening system.


METHODS
Subject (N = 87) with stained (> shade D4, Vita Zahnfabrik, Bad Säckingen, Germany) anterior teeth were randomly assigned to test (peroxide and light), peroxide control (peroxide gel) or light control (placebo gel and light) groups and were treated for one hour. The researchers evaluated tooth shade, color and subject response at baseline and posttreatment and at three and six months posttreatment.


RESULTS
The initial shade unit reduction of combined light and peroxide treatment (8.4) was greatest compared with that of peroxide alone (5.9) and of light alone (4.9). Approximately 88 percent of these effects persisted for six months. Lightness was increased and yellowness decreased to a significantly greater extent in the test group than in either control. These findings were corroborated by subject evaluation. One week after treatment, moderate to greatly increased tooth sensitivity occurred in 20 percent of test subjects, 21.7 percent of peroxide control subjects and none of the light control subjects. Neither tooth sensitivity nor gingival redness was present at the three- and six-month visits.


CONCLUSIONS
Peroxide and light treatment significantly lightened the color of teeth to a greater extent than did peroxide or light alone, with a low and transient incidence of tooth sensitivity.


CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
Light can increase the tooth-whitening effect of peroxide, thereby increasing the effectiveness of tooth-whitening procedures.
Safety and pharmacology of a single intravenous dose of ponezumab in subjects with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer disease: a phase I, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, dose-escalation study.

OBJECTIVES
Ponezumab is a humanized antiamyloid beta (Aβ) monoclonal antibody designed to treat Alzheimer disease (AD).


METHODS
This randomized, double-blind, single-dose-escalation study evaluated the safety, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics of 0.1, 0.3, 1, 3, and 10 mg/kg ponezumab (n = 4, 4, 4, 6, and 8, respectively) versus placebo (n = 11) after a 2-hour intravenous infusion in subjects with mild-to-moderate AD. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples were obtained from the 1- and 10-mg/kg groups at baseline and at day 29. The subjects were followed for 1 year.


RESULTS
All subjects completed the trial. Ponezumab was well tolerated with no drug-attributed serious adverse events. The most common adverse events were upper respiratory tract infection, headache, and back pain, all mild to moderate. One subject (10 mg/kg) experienced a mild hypersensitivity reaction. Another subject (0.1 mg/kg) demonstrated slight enlargement of a preexisting midbrain lesion. Electrocardiography and laboratory values (including CSF) were unremarkable. No evidence of new microhemorrhage, vasogenic edema, or meningoencephalitis was noted. Plasma maximum observed concentration increased approximately dose proportionally, and the area under the plasma concentration-time profile from time zero extrapolated to infinite time (AUC(inf)) increased slightly more than dose proportionally. Mean terminal half-life was approximately 6 weeks. Two subjects (10 mg/kg) had measurable CSF ponezumab concentrations (~0.5% of plasma values) at day 29. Plasma Aβ(1-x) and Aβ(1-40) increased dose dependently, and mean CSF Aβ(1-x) increased 38% from baseline with 10 mg/kg (P = 0.002 vs placebo).


CONCLUSIONS
A 2-hour infusion of 0.1 to 10 mg/kg ponezumab was well tolerated in subjects with mild-to-moderate AD. Plasma pharmacokinetic profile was approximately linear. Plasma Aβ increased with dose, and CSF Aβ increased at the highest dose, suggesting that intravenous ponezumab alters central Aβ levels.
A Game Theoretical Method for Cost-Benefit Analysis of Malware Dissemination Prevention

A Game Theoretical Method for Cost-Benefit Analysis of Malware Dissemination Prevention Theodoros Spyridopoulos, Konstantinos Maraslis, Alexios Mylonas, Theo Tryfonas & George Oikonomou To cite this article: Theodoros Spyridopoulos, Konstantinos Maraslis, Alexios Mylonas, Theo Tryfonas & George Oikonomou (2015): A Game Theoretical Method for Cost-Benefit Analysis of Malware Dissemination Prevention, Information Security Journal: A Global Perspective, DOI: 10.1080/19393555.2015.1092186 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19393555.2015.1092186
Community-driven development of standard software modules for search and rescue robots

The main goal of the paper is to continuously enlarge the set of software building blocks that can be reused in the search and rescue domain.
Health Care and Pharmacy Practice in South Africa.

INTRODUCTION South Africa is a large (about 1.2 million km2), upper middle income country located at the southern tip of the African continent. The 2014 midyear estimate of the total population was just over 54 million, of whom 80.2% self-identified as Black Africans.1 South Africa underwent a fundamental political transition to democracy in 1994, with the demise of the racially segregated apartheid system. In the years since then, there has been an ongoing process of reform in all areas, including in relation to the organization and delivery of health care. The organization, financing, and delivery of pharmaceutical services have also been subject to significant changes in this period. This paper describes the background and current position of pharmacy in South Africa, with particular reference to reforms that are still underway and those that are anticipated. In many ways, and in particular with regard to the delivery of hospital pharmacy services, pharmacy reform can still be regarded as a work in progress. The paper is arranged according to the “building blocks” outlined in the World Health Organization’s Health Systems Framework.2
Cultures of ambivalence and contempt : studies in Jewish-non-Jewish relations : essays in honour of the centenary of the birth of James Parkes

This collection of essays focuses on the concepts of tolerance and intolerance as it commemorates the life of James Parkes - the man who pioneered the study of antisemitism and Jewish-non-Jewish relations. The essays analyse many different examples of antisemitism, ambivalence and philosemitism.
Restricted BPA: applying ball-pivoting on the plane

In this article we propose a new 2D triangulation method based on the ball-pivoting algorithm (BPA). The BPA is an interesting advancing front approach for surface reconstruction that uses a ball of fixed radius traversing the 3D sample points by pivoting front edges and attaching triangles to the mesh. Given a set of 2D points, our method applies the BPA on them assuming that they have a constant third coordinate. We show that such geometrical restriction implies in several simplifications on the original BPA implementation. We demonstrate that the resulting triangulation is a solid alpha complex, a special subset of Delaunay triangulations that is closely related to alpha shapes. The BPA efficiency is extremely dependent on the uniformity of the sampling and on the ball radius. We also present an efficient generalization of our method to obtain, in an adaptive way, 2D solid alpha complexes of generic samplings (uniform or nonuniform) free from the influence of ball size.
Robust vehicle localization in urban environments using probabilistic maps

Autonomous vehicle navigation in dynamic urban environments requires localization accuracy exceeding that available from GPS-based inertial guidance systems. We have shown previously that GPS, IMU, and LIDAR data can be used to generate a high-resolution infrared remittance ground map that can be subsequently used for localization [4]. We now propose an extension to this approach that yields substantial improvements over previous work in vehicle localization, including higher precision, the ability to learn and improve maps over time, and increased robustness to environment changes and dynamic obstacles. Specifically, we model the environment, instead of as a spatial grid of fixed infrared remittance values, as a probabilistic grid whereby every cell is represented as its own gaussian distribution over remittance values. Subsequently, Bayesian inference is able to preferentially weight parts of the map most likely to be stationary and of consistent angular reflectivity, thereby reducing uncertainty and catastrophic errors. Furthermore, by using offline SLAM to align multiple passes of the same environment, possibly separated in time by days or even months, it is possible to build an increasingly robust understanding of the world that can be then exploited for localization. We validate the effectiveness of our approach by using these algorithms to localize our vehicle against probabilistic maps in various dynamic environments, achieving RMS accuracy in the 10cm-range and thus outperforming previous work. Importantly, this approach has enabled us to autonomously drive our vehicle for hundreds of miles in dense traffic on narrow urban roads which were formerly unnavigable with previous localization methods.
Efficacy of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy in healing of pressure ulcers: A randomized control trial.

BACKGROUND
Pressure ulcers are one of the most common complications in health care settings. Still there are no optimal protocols to manage the pressure ulcers.


AIM
To assess the effectiveness of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF) in healing of pressure ulcers in patients with neurological disorders.


DESIGN
Randomized double blind control trial.


SETTING
Neurological rehabilitation department in a university research hospital.


PARTICIPANTS
Twelve patients (M:F, 9:3) having neurological disorders, with age between 12-50 years (mean 30.166 +/- 11.32 yrs) and 24 pressure ulcers.


INTERVENTION
Six patients with 13 ulcers received PEMF therapy and the remaining 6 patients with 11 ulcers received sham treatment, for 30 sessions (45 minutes each) using the equipment 'Pulsatron'. The frequency of PEMF was set at 1 Hz with sine waves and current intensity of 30 mili ampere. Whole body exposure was given in both the groups.


OUTCOME MEASURES
Bates-Jensen wound assessment tool (BJWAT) score was used as main outcome measure and scores at the end of session were compared with initial scores and analyzed. Similarly National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (NPUAP) scores were compared and analyzed as secondary outcome measure.


RESULTS
Thirteen ulcers were in stage IV and 11 were in stage III at the start of the study. Significant healing of ulcers was noted, BJWAT scores, in both the treatment and sham groups (P < 0.001 and 0.003 respectively) at the completion of the study. However, when comparing between the groups, healing was not significant (P = 0.361). Similarly trend was noted with NPUAP scores with no significant difference between the treatment and sham groups (P = 0.649) at the completion of study.


CONCLUSIONS
No significant difference in pressure ulcer healing was observed between PEMF treatment and sham group in this study.
Evaluating surrogate measures of renal dysfunction after cardiac surgery.

UNLABELLED
Renal insufficiency after cardiac surgery is associated with increased mortality, morbidity, and length of intensive care unit stay. A convenient surrogate measure would facilitate the evaluation of renal-protective therapies. We evaluated two measures: the 72-h change in serum creatinine (Cr) (DeltaCr(72h)) and the percentage 72-h change in calculated (Cockcroft-Gault equation) Cr clearance (%DeltaCrCl(72h)). We randomly selected 2000 individuals who underwent aortocoronary bypass, valve surgery, or both at the Toronto General Hospital between May 1999 and August 2000. The variables were analyzed with frequency histograms and normal probability plots. Their association with dialysis, mortality, and prolonged intensive care unit stay was determined by using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. DeltaCr(72h) was skewed to the right, whereas %DeltaCrCl(72h) was normally distributed. ROC curve areas showed DeltaCr(72h) to be a good predictor of dialysis (0.98), death (0.83), and prolonged hospitalization (0.74). %DeltaCrCl(72h) had similar ROC curve areas for predicting dialysis (0.97), death (0.82), and prolonged hospitalization (0.74). ROC curve areas did not differ significantly with respect to mortality (P = 0.89), dialysis (P = 0.49), or prolonged hospitalization (P = 0.85). Both variables were correlated with patient-relevant outcomes. Mathematical transformation of DeltaCr(72h) to %DeltaCrCl(72h) results in a normal distribution that is amenable to parametric statistical tests. DeltaCr(72h) and %DeltaCrCl(72h) may be used as surrogate outcomes in future trials.


IMPLICATIONS
A convenient surrogate measure of renal function is needed for evaluating renal-protective therapies in cardiac surgery. We evaluated the performance of serum creatinine concentration and calculated creatinine clearance for predicting dialysis, mortality, and prolonged hospitalization. Both measures were correlated with clinical outcomes. Creatinine clearance had the advantage of a distribution suitable for parametric statistical tests.
Aligning learning, teaching and assessment using the web: an evaluation of pedagogic approaches

Biggs has argued that teaching is most effective when it supports those activities appropriate to understanding the curriculum objectives. This paper uses Biggs’ argument to analyse how a UK higher education initiative, the Chic project, has promoted learning and teaching innovation that supports collaborative, inclusive learning by integrating on-line and face-to-face delivery. Methods by which assessments, teaching processes and learning objectives can be aligned are discussed. The author identifies two project approaches to the utilisation of on-line materials within curriculum design. Staff and student questionnaires and interviews are evaluated in order to assess whether these processes promote a reflexive approach to learning. Such reflexivity depends upon stimulating the learner’s emotional involvement and active engagement in undertaking achievable tasks. The paper argues that an integrated approach to on-line learning and teaching can be used to promote students’ critical use, understanding and application of materials. Moreover, it is argued that this can be liberating for staff and students as long as there is a shared vision and experience upon which to act. Promoting motivation within a supportive and meaningful context is fundamental. Introduction The Courseware for History Implementation Consortium (Chic) project was a threeyear Higher Education Funding Council for England, Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP) project, funded from September 1998 until August 2001. It focused upon the effective integration of on-line student support and learning 02_Hal 14/03/2002 12:57 pm Page 149
Audio-Visual Speech Recognition Using New Lip Features Extracted from Side-Face Images

This paper proposes new visual features for audio-visual speech recognition using lip information extracted from side-face images. In order to increase the noise-robustness of speech recognition, we have proposed an audio-visual speech recognition method using speaker lip information extracted from side-face images taken by a small camera installed in a mobile device. Our previous method used only movement information of lips, measured by optical-flow analysis, as a visual feature. However, since shape information of lips is also obviously important, this paper attempts to combine lip-shape information with lip-movement information to improve the audio-visual speech recognition performance. A combination of an angle value between upper and lower lips (lip-angle) and its derivative is extracted as lip-shape features. Effectiveness of the lip-angle features has been evaluated under various SNR conditions. The proposed features improved recognition accuracies in all SNR conditions in comparison with audio-only recognition results. The best improvement of 8.0% in absolute value was obtained at 5dB SNR condition. Combining the lip-angle features with our previous features extracted by the optical-flow analysis yielded further improvement. These visual features were confirmed to be effective even when the audio HMM used in our method was adapted to noise by the MLLR method.