LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Crisaborole Topical Ointment, 2% in Patients Ages 2 to 17 Years with Atopic Dermatitis: A Phase 1b, Open‐Label, Maximal‐Use Systemic Exposure Study

BACKGROUND
Phosphodiesterase-4 (PDE4) is a promising target in atopic dermatitis (AD) treatment. The pharmacokinetics (PK), safety, and efficacy of crisaborole topical ointment, 2% (formerly AN2728) (Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Palo Alto, CA), a boron-based benzoxaborole PDE4 inhibitor, were evaluated in children with mild to moderate AD.


METHODS
This phase 1b, open-label, maximal-use study of crisaborole topical ointment, 2% applied twice daily (dose 3 mg/cm(2) ) for 28 days enrolled patients ages 2 to 17 years with extensive AD involving 25% or more or 35% or more treatable body surface area, depending on age. Primary PK and safety assessments included systemic exposure to crisaborole and its metabolites after 7 days of treatment and the incidence of treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs). Secondary efficacy assessments included change from baseline in Investigator Static Global Assessment (ISGA), treatment success (ISGA score ≤1 with a two-grade or greater improvement from baseline), and improvement in five AD signs and symptoms.


RESULTS
Of 34 patients enrolled, 31 completed the study. Crisaborole was rapidly absorbed, with limited systemic exposure between days 1 and 8. Twenty-three of 34 patients reported one or more TEAEs; 95% were mild or moderate and one patient discontinued because of a TEAE. Mean ISGA scores declined from 2.65 at baseline to 1.15 at day 29, 47.1% of patients achieved treatment success, and 64.7% of patients achieved ISGA scores of clear (0) or almost clear . Mean severity scores for AD signs and symptoms declined throughout the study.


CONCLUSIONS
This open-label study provides evidence that crisaborole topical ointment, 2% was well tolerated, with limited systemic exposure under maximal-use conditions in patients ages 2 years and older.
Educational outcomes of a collaborative school-home behavioral intervention for ADHD.

This study evaluated educationally relevant outcomes from a newly developed collaborative school-home intervention (Collaborative Life Skills Program [CLS]) for youth with attention and/or behavior problems. Participants included 17 girls and 40 boys in second through fifth grades (mean age = 8.1 years) from diverse ethnic backgrounds. CLS was implemented by 10 school-based mental health professionals at their schools and included 3 integrated components over 12 weeks: group behavioral parent training, classroom behavioral intervention, and a child social and independence skills group. Parent and teacher ratings of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, organizational skills, and homework problems, and teacher-rated academic skills, report card grades, academic achievement, and classroom observations of student engagement were measured before and after treatment. Significant pre-post improvement was found for all measures, with large effect sizes for ADHD symptoms, organizational skills, and homework problems, and medium to large effects for teacher-rated academic skills, report card grades, academic achievement, and student engagement. Improvements in organizational skills mediated the relationship between improvement in ADHD symptoms and academic skills. Significant improvement in both ratings and objective measures (achievement testing, report cards, classroom observations) suggests that improvement exceeded what might be accounted for by expectancy or passage of time. Findings support the focus of CLS on both ADHD symptom reduction and organizational skill improvement and support the feasibility of a model which utilizes school-based mental health professionals as providers.
Machine learning and games

The history of the interaction of machine learning and computer game-playing goes back to the earliest days of Artificial Intelligence, when Arthur Samuel worked on his famous checker-playing program, pioneering many machine-learning and game-playing techniques (Samuel, 1959, 1967). Since then, both fields have advanced considerably, and research in the intersection of the two can be found regularly in conferences in their respective fields and in general AI conferences. For surveys of the field we refer to Ginsberg (1998), Schaeffer (2000), Fürnkranz (2001); edited volumes have been compiled by Schaeffer and van den Herik (2002) and by Fürnkranz and Kubat (2001). In recent years, the computer games industry has discovered AI as a necessary ingredient to make games more entertaining and challenging and, vice versa, AI has discovered computer games as an interesting and rewarding application area. The industry’s perspective is witnessed by a plethora of recent books on gentle introductions to AI techniques for game programmers (Collins, 2002; Champanard, 2003; Bourg & Seemann, 2004; Schwab, 2004) or a series of edited collections of articles (Rabin, 2002, 2003, 2006). AI research on computer games began to follow developments in the games industry early on, but since John Laird’s keynote address at the AAAI 2000 conference, in which he advocated Interactive Computer Games as a challenging and rewarding application area for AI (Laird & van Lent, 2001), numerous workshops (Fu & Orkin, 2004; Aha et al., 2005), conferences, and special issues of journals (Forbus & Laird, 2002) demonstrate the growing importance of game-playing applications for Artificial Intelligence.
Norm Gibbs and his contribution to software engineering education through the SEI curriculum modules

The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University started its first contract with a carte blanche opportunity and generous funding to improve the state of software engineering education. Norm Gibbs, the first Director of Education at the SEI guided efforts is thus area. One of his innovations, discussed here, were the "curriculum modules" encapsulating software engineering knowledge.
The NumPy Array: A Structure for Efficient Numerical Computation

In the Python world, NumPy arrays are the standard representation for numerical data and enable efficient implementation of numerical computations in a high-level language. As this effort shows, NumPy performance can be improved through three techniques: vectorizing calculations, avoiding copying data in memory, and minimizing operation counts.
Group visits improve metabolic control in type 2 diabetes: a 2-year follow-up.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate whether group visits, delivered as routine diabetes care and structured according to a systemic education approach, are more effective than individual consultations in improving metabolic control in non-insulin-treated type 2 diabetes.


RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
In a randomized controlled clinical trial of 112 patients, 56 patients were allocated to groups of 9 or 10 individuals who participated in group consultations, and 56 patients (considered control subjects) underwent individual visits plus support education. All visits were scheduled every 3 months.


RESULTS
After 2 years, HbA(1c) levels were lower in patients seen in groups than in control subjects (P < 0.002). Levels of HDL cholesterol had increased in patients seen in groups but had not increased in control subjects (P = 0.045). BMI (P = 0.06) and fasting triglyceride level (P = 0.053) were lower. Patients participating in group visits had improved knowledge of diabetes (P < 0.001) and quality of life (P < 0.001) and experienced more appropriate health behaviors (P < 0.001). Physicians spent less time seeing 9-10 patients as a group rather than individually, but patients had longer interaction with health care providers.


CONCLUSIONS
Group consultations may improve metabolic control in the medium term by inducing more appropriate health behaviors. They are feasible in everyday clinical practice without increasing working hours.
After a decade of annual dose mass ivermectin treatment in Cameroon and Uganda, onchocerciasis transmission continues.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effectiveness of 10 years' annual single dose ivermectin treatment on onchocerciasis transmission in hyperendemic areas of Cameroon and Uganda.


METHODS
Baseline nodule and microfilaria ('skin snip') prevalence data were available from 10 hyperendemic sentinel communities in Cameroon (from 1996) and hyperendemic 20 sentinel communities in Uganda (from 1993). We returned to these villages in 2005, 10 months after the last annual ivermectin distribution, to repeat the cross-sectional surveys. Each sentinel community reported a mean interval treatment coverage of eligible persons of >88% (range 37-100%). Data were analyzed for more than 6200 person examinations. In Cameroon, 719 people >or=10 years were examined at the baseline survey in 1996 and 838 at the follow-up survey in 2005. In Uganda, 1590 people >or=10 years were examined at the baseline survey in 1993 and 2122 people at the follow-up survey in 2005. We also examined children under 10 in Cameroon (1996, n = 185; 2005, n = 448) and Uganda (1993, n = 177; 2005, n = 130). In Uganda, the vitality of worms was judged using standard histological criteria in 80 nodules excised in 2005.


RESULTS
The prevalence of microfilaria carriers among older children and adults (>or=10 years) in Cameroon sentinel communities dropped from 70.1% to 7.04% (P < 0.0001) over the 10-year treatment period; that of nodule carriers from 58% to 9.55% (P < 0.0001). Similarly, in Uganda, the prevalence of microfilaria carriers fell from 71.9% to 7.49% (P < 0.0001) over the 13-year treatment period, and that of nodule carriers from 53.21% to 9.66% (P < 0.0001). The number of microfilaria carriers among children <10 years in Cameroon decreased from 29.73% to 3.8% (P < 0.0001), and in Uganda from 33.89% to 3.1% (P < 0.0001). In 2005, worms excised from nodules in Uganda, 81.4% of males remained alive, and 64% of females, with 24% of them inseminated.


CONCLUSION
A decade or more of annual single dose ivermectin treatment in hyperendemic areas has reduced onchocerciasis to 'hypoendemicity', but onchocerciasis transmission persists. For now, annual treatment with ivermectin should be continued in formerly mesoendemic and hyperendemic zones.
On the fine structure of some Chrysophycean cysts

Fine detail of the ornamentation and pore openings are given of a wide range of Chrysophycean cysts. The function of this intricate sculpturing is unknown. Four new types of cyst are described.
Strategies to identify changes in SEMG due to muscle fatigue during cycling

Detection, quantification and analysis of muscle fatigue is crucial in occupational/rehabilitation and sporting settings. Sports organizations such as Australian Institute of Sports (AIS) currently monitor fatigue by a battery of tests including invasive techniques that require taking blood samples and/or muscle biopsies, the latter of which is highly invasive, painful, time consuming and expensive. SEMG is non-invasive monitoring of the muscle activation and is an indication of localized muscle fatigue based on the observed shift of the power spectral density of the SEMG. But the success of SEMG based techniques is currently limited to isometric contraction and is not acceptable to the human movement community. This paper proposes and tests a simple signal processing technique to identify the onset of muscle fatigue during cyclic activities of muscles such as VL and VM during cycling. Based on experiments conducted with 7 participants, using power output as a measure of fatigue, the technique is able to identify the muscle fatigue with 98% significance
Employment Effects of Short and Medium Term Further Training Programs in Germany in the Early 2000 s 1

We use a new and exceptionally rich administrative data set for Germany to evaluate the employment effects of several short and medium term further training programs in the early 2000s. Building on the work of Sianesi (2003, 2004), we apply propensity score matching methods in a dynamic, multiple treatment framework in order to address program heterogeneity and dynamic selection into programs. Our results suggest that in West Germany both short-term and medium-term programs may have considerable employment effects for certain population subgroups, and that short-term programs are surprisingly effective when compared to the traditional and more expensive longer-term programs. With a few exceptions, we find little evidence for significant treatment effects in East Germany.
Mining and visualising ordinal data with non-parametric continuous BBNs

Data mining is the process of extracting and analysing information from large databases. Graphical models are a suitable framework for probabilistic modelling. A Bayesian Belief Net(BBN) is a probabilistic graphical model, which represents joint distributions in an intuitive and efficient way. It encodes the probability density (or mass) function of a set of variables by specifying a number of conditional independence statements in the form of a directed acyclic graph. Specifying the structure of the model is one of the most important design choices in graphical modelling. Notwithstanding their potential, there is only a limited number of applications of graphical models on very complex and large databases. A method for mining ordinal multivariate data using non-parametric BBNs is presented. The main advantage of this method is that it can handle a large number of continuous variables, without making any assumptions about their marginal distributions, in a very fast manner. Once the BBN is learned from data, it can be further used for prediction. This approach allows for rapid conditionalisation, which is a very important feature of a BBN from a user’s standpoint.
The effect of modafinil on cognitive function in breast cancer survivors.

BACKGROUND
The authors conducted a randomized clinical trial examining the effects of modafinil in reducing persistent fatigue in patients after treatment for cancer and performed secondary analyses to assess the effect of modafinil on cognitive function.


METHODS
Breast cancer patients who reported a score of >or=2 on the Brief Fatigue Inventory were enrolled in the study. In phase 1 (P1), patients received 200 mg modafinil open-label once daily for 4 weeks. In phase 2 (P2), patients with a positive response after P1 were randomized either to an additional 4 weeks of modafinil or to placebo. Tests of memory and attention selected from the Cognitive Drug Research (CDR) computerized cognitive assessment were performed at baseline (before modafinil) and after completing phases 1 and 2. The paired differences for each test score were subjected to a Wilcoxon signed rank test.


RESULTS
Of the 82 women who were enrolled, 76 completed P1, and 68 completed all assessments in the study. Modafinil had a significant effect on the Speed of Memory (P = .0073) and Quality of Episodic Memory (P < .0001) during P1 of the study. After randomization at Week 8, those patients who continued modafinil demonstrated significantly greater improvement in Speed of Memory (P = .029), Quality of Episodic Memory (P = .0151), and mean Continuity of Attention (P = .0101) relative to the group that was switched to placebo.


CONCLUSIONS
The authors found that modafinil improved cognitive performance in breast cancer survivors by enhancing some memory and attention skills. Although confirmation is needed, these findings suggest that modafinil may enhance quality of life in this patient population.
Community health workers can improve child growth of antenatally-depressed, South African mothers: a cluster randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND
Maternal antenatal depression has long-term consequences for children's health. We examined if home visits by community health workers (CHW) can improve growth outcomes for children of mothers who are antenatally depressed.


METHODS
A cluster randomized controlled trial of all pregnant, neighbourhood women in Cape Town, South Africa. Almost all pregnant women (98 %, N = 1238) were recruited and assessed during pregnancy, two weeks post-birth (92 %) and 6 months post-birth (88 %). Pregnant women were randomized to either: 1) Standard Care (SC), which provided routine antenatal care; or 2) an intervention, The Philani Intervention Program (PIP), which included SC and home visits by CHW trained as generalists (M = 11 visits). Child standardized weight, length, and weight by length over 6 months based on maternal antenatal depression and intervention condition.


RESULTS
Depressed mood was similar across the PIP and SC conditions both antenatally (16.5 % rate) and at 6 months (16.7 %). The infants of depressed pregnant women in the PIP group were similar in height (height-for-age Z scores) to the children of non-depressed mothers in both the PIP and the SC conditions, but significantly taller at 6 months of age than the infants of pregnant depressed mothers in the SC condition. The intervention did not moderate children's growth. Depressed SC mothers tended to have infants less than two standard deviations in height on the World Health Organization's norms at two weeks post-birth compared to infants of depressed PIP mothers and non-depressed mothers in both conditions.


CONCLUSIONS
A generalist, CHW-delivered home visiting program improved infant growth, even when mothers' depression was not reduced. Focusing on maternal caretaking of infants, even when mothers are depressed, is critical in future interventions.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov registration # NCT00996528 . October 15, 2009.
Women's part-time wage penalties across countries

This paper investigates wage gaps between partand full-time women workers in six OECD countries in the mid-1990s. Using comparable micro-data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), for Canada, Germany, Italy, Sweden, the UK, and the US, the paper first assesses cross-national variation in the direction, magnitude, and composition of the part-time/full-time wage differential. Then it analyzes variations across these countries in occupational segregation between partand full-time workers. The paper finds a part-time wage penalty among women workers in all countries, except Sweden. Other than in Sweden, occupational differences between partand full-time workers dominate the portion of the wage gap that is explained by observed differences between the two groups of workers. Across countries, the degree of occupational segregation between female partand full-time workers is negatively correlated with the position of part-time workers’ wages in the full-time wage distribution.
Aspects of the ALGOL 68 mode structure

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Purposeful Sampling for Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis in Mixed Method Implementation Research

Purposeful sampling is widely used in qualitative research for the identification and selection of information-rich cases related to the phenomenon of interest. Although there are several different purposeful sampling strategies, criterion sampling appears to be used most commonly in implementation research. However, combining sampling strategies may be more appropriate to the aims of implementation research and more consistent with recent developments in quantitative methods. This paper reviews the principles and practice of purposeful sampling in implementation research, summarizes types and categories of purposeful sampling strategies and provides a set of recommendations for use of single strategy or multistage strategy designs, particularly for state implementation research.
Understanding Lorrie Moore

This is the first book-length critical approach to the fiction of the award-winning author of "Birds of America". "Understanding Lorrie Moore" is a comprehensive companion to the works of this wickedly humorous writer, whose fiction shows a deep sensitivity to the dynamics of contemporary gender relations and an abiding interest in portraying and critiquing the American national character. The recipient of the 1998 O. Henry Award and the 2004 Rea Award for the Short Story, Lorrie Moore is best known for her short fiction. Alison Kelly shows that Moore's virtuosic prose, wry humor, and sense of irony are tools for registering how Americans face the discomfort of their daily lives as individuals and as a nation. Kelly traces Moore's emergence as a writer in the 1980s and her artistic development up to the present day, illuminating the distinctive narrative methods, aesthetics, and thematic preoccupations of Moore's major works. Kelly follows Moore's recurrent characters, situations, metaphors, and motifs in order to promote understanding of the texts and appreciation for their wordplay, wit, and imagery. Viewing her subject as a subtly political writer, Kelly discusses Moore's major themes, techniques, and stylistics as evidence that her characters' private pains are symptomatic of a wider national malaise.
Quality of Life and Psychiatric Morbidity in Caregiver of Alcohol Dependence Patients

Alcohol dependence affects not only patient but its deleterious effects are extended to family members. They are most vulnerable to have significant psychiatric disorders. Aims: to investigate the quality of life and the frequency and nature of psychiatric morbidity in caregiver of patients with alcohol dependence. Material and method: The study was carried out at Psychiatry OPD, P.D.U. Medical College & Hospital, Rajkot. In this cross-sectional study, 110 patients between ages 18-65, having alcohol dependence as per diagnostic criteria of DSM V was studied. One caregiver of each patient was also studied. Leeds dependence questionnaire was administered in patients. GHQ and Q-LES-Q-SF Scales were administered in caregivers. The results were tabulated and analyzed using chi (χ2) square test and Mann Whitney U test. Correlation coefficient was measured between scores of all scales using Pearson’s formula. Results: Quality of life of was found to be significantly poor among caregivers of alcohol dependent patients. Out of 110 caregivers, 40(36%) caregivers had dysthymia, 24(22%) had major depression, 9(8%) had unspecified anxiety disorder and 5(4.5%) had generalized anxiety disorder. Conclusion: The Study suggests need for sensitization of psychiatrists to evaluate and treat caregivers of alcohol dependent patients.