LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Antiarrhythmic actions of intravenous ibutilide compared with procainamide during human atrial flutter and fibrillation: electrophysiological determinants of enhanced conversion efficacy.

BACKGROUND
The selective class III antiarrhythmic agent ibutilide prolongs action potential duration and terminates atrial flutter (AFL) and fibrillation (AF), but the mechanism of its antiarrhythmic efficacy in humans has not been fully characterized. This study compared the antiarrhythmic effects of ibutilide with the class IA agent procainamide in humans during AFL and AF. Antiarrhythmic drug actions and electrophysiological characteristics of AFL and AF that enhanced pharmacological termination were investigated.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Right atrial monophasic action potentials were recorded during 148 episodes of AFL (n=89) or AF (n=59) in 136 patients treated with intravenous ibutilide (n=73) or placebo (n=22) as participants in randomized, double-blinded comparative studies or intravenous procainamide (n=53) in a concurrent open-label study. The conversion rates in AFL with ibutilide, procainamide, and placebo were 64% (29 of 45 patients), 0% (0 of 33), and 0% (0 of 11), respectively, whereas in AF the rates were 32% (9 of 28), 5% (1 of 20), and 0% (0 of 11), respectively. In AFL, ibutilide increased atrial monophasic action potential duration (MAPD) more (30% versus 18%, P<.001) and prolonged atrial cycle length (CL) less (16% versus 26%, P<.001) than procainamide. Ibutilide shortened and procainamide prolonged action potential diastolic interval during AFL (-12% versus 51%, P<.001). Ibutilide increased MAPD/CL ratio, whereas procainamide tended to decrease this ratio (13% versus -6%, P<.01). In AF, ibutilide and procainamide induced similar increases in atrial CL (48% versus 45%), but ibutilide induced a greater increase in MAPD (52% versus 37%, P<.05). Independent electrophysiological predictors of pharmacological arrhythmia termination were increase in MAPD/CL ratio (P=.005) in AFL and longer baseline mean MAPD (P=.011) in AF. Termination of AFL with ibutilide was characterized by significant increases in beat-to-beat atrial CL, MAPD, and diastolic interval variability. Ibutilide was significantly more effective in converting AF when the mean atrial CL was > or = 160 ms (64% versus 0%, P<.001) or MAPD was > or = 125 ms (57% versus 0%, P=.002) at baseline.


CONCLUSIONS
Enhanced conversion efficacy of ibutilide compared with procainamide in AFL is correlated with a relatively greater prolongation of atrial MAPD than atrial CL, and termination of AFL by ibutilide is characterized by oscillations in atrial CL and MAPD. Conversion of AF by ibutilide is enhanced by a longer baseline mean atrial CL or MAPD.
Outcomes after scarf osteotomy for treatment of adult hallux valgus deformity.

BACKGROUND
Many procedures have been developed to correct hallux valgus deformity using distal soft tissue realignment, metatarsal osteotomy, and periodically, a proximal phalanx osteotomy (Akin). The ideal metatarsal osteotomy allows for varying degrees of correction with reliable improvement in deformity and patient satisfaction.


QUESTIONS/PURPOSES
We evaluated the results after scarf osteotomy with respect to American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) scores, patient satisfaction, radiographic results, and complications.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
We evaluated 29 patients (34 feet) during an 18-month period who underwent a unilateral scarf osteotomy combined with distal soft tissue realignment. Preoperative and postoperative AOFAS scores, patient satisfaction, and radiographic data were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the procedure. Complications were recorded. Minimal followup was 12 months (average, 26.4 months; range, 12-48 months).


RESULTS
The mean AOFAS scores improved from 61.5 to 90.3. At final followup, 94% of patients were satisfied with the surgery. The hallux valgus angle improved from 34.6° to 14.9° and the intermetatarsal angle improved from 15.8° to 7.2° postoperatively. A combined Akin osteotomy was performed in only four cases. Complications included superficial wound infection (one), recurrence (two), and troughing (three).


CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest the scarf osteotomy produces improved AOFAS scores, high percentage of patient satisfaction, and effective correction of hallux valgus deformities. Using our scarf technique of rotation combined with translation minimizes the need for an Akin osteotomy while still obtaining good correction and avoids associated complications described in the literature.


LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
Level IV, therapeutic study. See Guidelines for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
The RADAR Study: Week 48 Safety and Efficacy of RAltegravir Combined with Boosted DARunavir Compared to Tenofovir/Emtricitabine Combined with Boosted Darunavir in Antiretroviral-Naive Patients. Impact on Bone Health

BACKGROUND
NRTI-sparing regimens may avoid long-term mitochondrial, bone and renal toxicities and maintain viral suppression.


METHODS
In the RADAR study, 85 antiretroviral-naïve HIV-infected patients were randomized to receive either raltegravir (RAL) (n = 42) or tenofovir/emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) (n = 43), each with ritonavir-boosted darunavir (DRV/r). Virologic efficacy was assessed at weeks 24 and 48. Bone mineral density (BMD) was assessed by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan at baseline and week 48, and bone turnover markers (BTM) assessed at weeks 0, 16 and 48.


RESULTS
Using an intention-to-treat analysis, 62.5% of RAL subjects and 83.7% of TDF/FTC subjects were responders (VL<48 copies/mL) at week 48 (p = 0.045; chi-square test). The proportions of patients achieving VL<200 copies/mL were similar: 72.5% and 86.0% (p = 0.175). Premature treatment discontinuation was the main cause for failure. No treatment-emergent resistance was observed. Changes from baseline in RAL vs. TDF/FTC for CD4+ (+199 vs. +216 cells/µL, p = 0.63), total cholesterol/HDL (-0.25 vs. -0.71 mg/dL (p = 0.270), and eGFR (-4.4 vs. -7.9 ml/min, p = 0.44) were comparable between groups. Changes in subtotal BMD to week 48 were: +9.2 with RAL vs. -7 g/cm2 with TDF/FTC (p = 0.002). Mean CTX changes were +0.04 vs. +0.24 ng/mL (p = 0.001), and mean P1NP changes were +3.59 vs. +30.09 ng/mL (p = 0.023). BTM changes at week 16 predicted change in BMD by week 48 (R = -0.394, p = 0.003 for CTX; and R = -0.477, p<0.001 for P1NP).


CONCLUSION
The NRTI-sparing regimen RAL+DRV/r did not achieve similar week 48 virologic efficacy compared with TDF/FTC+DRV/r, but was better with regard to markers of bone health.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT 00677300.
Evidence management for compliance of critical systems with safety standards: A survey on the state of practice

Context: Demonstrating compliance of critical systems with safety standards involves providing convincing evidence that the requirements of a standard are adequately met. For large systems, practitioners need to be able to effectively collect, structure, and assess substantial quantities of evidence. Objective: This paper aims to provide insights into how practitioners deal with safety evidence management for critical computer-based systems. The information currently available about how this activity is performed in the industry is very limited. Method: We conducted a survey to determine practitioners’ perspectives and practices on safety evidence management. A total of 52 practitioners from 15 countries and 11 application domains responded to the survey. The respondents indicated the types of information used as safety evidence, how evidence is structured and assessed, how evidence evolution is addressed, and what challenges are faced in relation to provision of safety evidence. Results: Our results indicate that (1) V&V artefacts, requirements specifications, and design specifications are the most frequently used safety evidence types, (2) evidence completeness checking and impact analysis are mostly performed manually at the moment, (3) text-based techniques are used more frequently than graphical notations for evidence structuring, (4) checklists and expert judgement are frequently used for evidence assessment, and (5) significant research effort has been spent on techniques that have seen little adoption in the industry. The main contributions of the survey are to provide an overall and up-to-date understanding of how the industry addresses safety evidence management, and to identify gaps in the state of the art. Conclusion: We conclude that (1) V&V plays a major role in safety assurance, (2) the industry will clearly benefit from more tool support for collecting and manipulating safety evidence, and (3) future research on safety evidence management needs to place more emphasis on industrial applications.
OPTIMIZATION OF MATERIAL REMOVAL RATE, SURFACE ROUGHNESS AND TOOL LIFE ON CONVENTIONAL DRY TURNING OF FCD700

Most of automotive components are manufactured using a conventional machining process, such as turning, drilling, milling, shaping and planning, etc. Ductile cast iron (FCD) is widely used for producing automotive components by turning process. This study aims to investigate the effect of the cutting speed, feed rate and depth of cut on material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness, and tool life in conventional turning of ductile cast iron FCD700 grade using TiN coated cutting tool in dry condition. The machining condition parameters were the cutting speed of 220, 300 and 360 m/min, feed rate of 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5 mm/rev, while the depth of cut (DOC) was kept constant at 2 mm. The effect of cutting condition (cutting speed and feed rate) on MRR, surface roughness, and tool life were studied and analyzed. Experiments were conducted based on the Taguchi design of experiments (DOE) with orthogonal L9 array, and then followed by optimization of the results using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to find the maximum MRR, minimum surface roughness, and maximum tool life. The optimum MRR was obtained when setting the cutting speed and feed rate at high values, but the optimum tool life was reached when the cutting speed and feed rate were set as low as possible. Low surface finish was obtained at high cutting speed and low feed rate. Therefore time and cost saving are significant especially is real industry application, and yet reliable prediction is obtained by conducting machining simulation using FEM software Deform 3D. The results obtained for MRR using the proposed simulation model were in a good agreement with the experiments.
Triangulation strategies in user requirements investigations: A case study on the development of an IT-mediated service

EŒective investigations of user requirements for products and services are most often discussed in terms of which method to use. Nevertheless, when user investigations are planned and carried out in a system design context, several related aspects must be considered. For example: Which users should be included? Where should the study be carried out? How should data be collected? and What kind of information is relevant to what stage of the design process? In this paper, the concept of triangulation is introduced as a `conceptual tool’ for managing the multidimensionality of user requirements investigations. To illustrate how triangulation works, a case study of the user requirements investigation process for a home-shopping service system is presented. Three types of triangulations: location, knowledge, and methodological triangulation are identi® ed and de® ned, and are proven appropriate in the characterization of strategies of user requirements investigations. Moreover, the concept of triangulation as a means for increasing the reliability of a user requirement investigation, as well as some underlying factors in determining a triangulation strategy are discussed.
A Bi-model based RNN Semantic Frame Parsing Model for Intent Detection and Slot Filling

Intent detection and slot filling are two main tasks for building a spoken language understanding(SLU) system. Multiple deep learning based models have demonstrated good results on these tasks . The most effective algorithms are based on the structures of sequence to sequence models (or ”encoder-decoder” models), and generate the intents and semantic tags either using separate models((Yao et al., 2014; Mesnil et al., 2015; Peng and Yao, 2015; Kurata et al., 2016; Hahn et al., 2011)) or a joint model ((Liu and Lane, 2016a; HakkaniTür et al., 2016; Guo et al., 2014)). Most of the previous studies, however, either treat the intent detection and slot filling as two separate parallel tasks, or use a sequence to sequence model to generate both semantic tags and intent. Most of these approaches use one (joint) NN based model (including encoderdecoder structure) to model two tasks, hence may not fully take advantage of the crossimpact between them. In this paper, new Bi-model based RNN semantic frame parsing network structures are designed to perform the intent detection and slot filling tasks jointly, by considering their cross-impact to each other using two correlated bidirectional LSTMs (BLSTM). Our Bi-model structure with a decoder achieves state-of-the-art result on the benchmark ATIS data (Hemphill et al., 1990; Tur et al., 2010), with about 0.5% intent accuracy improvement and 0.9 % slot filling improvement.
Pedophilia is Linked to Reduced Activation in Hypothalamus and Lateral Prefrontal Cortex During Visual Erotic Stimulation

BACKGROUND
Although pedophilia is of high public concern, little is known about underlying neural mechanisms. Although pedophilic patients are sexually attracted to prepubescent children, they show no sexual interest toward adults. This study aimed to investigate the neural correlates of deficits of sexual and emotional arousal in pedophiles.


METHODS
Thirteen pedophilic patients and 14 healthy control subjects were tested for differential neural activity during visual stimulation with emotional and erotic pictures with functional magnetic resonance imaging.


RESULTS
Regions showing differential activations during the erotic condition comprised the hypothalamus, the periaqueductal gray, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the latter correlating with a clinical measure. Alterations of emotional processing concerned the amygdala-hippocampus and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.


CONCLUSIONS
Hypothesized regions relevant for processing of erotic stimuli in healthy individuals showed reduced activations during visual erotic stimulation in pedophilic patients. This suggests an impaired recruitment of key structures that might contribute to an altered sexual interest of these patients toward adults.
Use Sustainability Metrics to Guide Decision-Making

n recent years, many companies have adopted the concept of sustainable development as a core business value. Although sustainability can be defined in many ways, its underlying premise is that economic well-being is inextricably linked to the health of the environment and the success of the world's communities and citizens. For those businesses that have recognized the need to embrace sustainable development, the next step is to understand how to implement it. Putting this concept into operation requires identifying practical indicators of sustainability and understanding how they can be measured over time to determine if progress is being made. Sustainability metrics are designed to consolidate key measures of environmental, economic and social performance. The development of metrics that relate environmental and economic performance for production processes is an excellent way for many companies to begin to incorporate the goal of sustainability into management decision-making. Linking the business concept of creating value with environmental performance is termed " eco-efficiency. " A management strategy that incorporates eco-efficiency strives to create more value with less impact. It enables more-efficient production processes and the creation of better products and services, while reducing resource use, waste and pollution along the entire value chain (1). The metrics presented here are designed to meet the following criteria: • simple — not requiring large amounts of time or manpower to develop • useful to management decision-making and relevant to business • understandable to a variety of audiences, from people in operations to finance to strategic planning • cost-effective in terms of data collection • reproducible — incorporating decision rules that produce consistent and comparable results • robust and non-perverse — indicating progress toward sustainability when improvement has in fact been made • stackable along the supply chain so they are use-able beyond the particular fenceline for which the calculation was performed • protective of proprietary information — preventing the back-calculation of confidential information. Five basic indicators of sustainability are: • material intensity • energy intensity • water consumption • toxic emissions • pollutant emissions. Complementary metrics within each of these categories can be developed as the need for further areas of decision support arises. A common temptation in designing metrics is to take into consideration too many factors. Measurements that combine too many components are actually less versatile and less useful for mak-Sustainability provides a framework for integrating environmental, social and economic interests into effective business strategies.
Computer Models of Creativity

goal for AI workers. Indeed, the proposal that led to the famous 1956 Dartmouth Summer School often remembered as the time of AI’s birth mentioned “creativity,” “invention,” and “discovery” as key aims for the newly named discipline (McCarthy et al. 1955, 45, 49ff.). And, 50 years later, Herb Simon—in an email discussion between AAAI Fellows (quoted in Boden 2006, 1101)—cited a paper on creativity (Simon 1995) in answer to the challenge of whether AI is a science, as opposed to “mere” engineering. But if its status as an AI goal is obvious, its credibility as a potential AI achievement is not. Many people, including many otherwise hard-headed scientists, doubt—or even deny outright—the possibility of a computer’s ever being creative. Sometimes, such people are saying that, irrespective of its performance (which might even match superlative human examples), no computer could “really” be creative: the creativity lies entirely in the programmer. That’s a philosophical question that needn’t detain us here (but see the final section, below). More to the point, these people typically claim that a computer simply could not generate apparently creative performance. That’s a factual claim—which, in effect, dismisses AI research on creativity as a waste of time. However, it is mistaken: AI scientists working in this area aren’t doomed to disappointment. It doesn’t follow that they will ever, in practice, be able to engineer a new Shakespeare or a neo-Mozart (although the latter goal has been approached more nearly than most people imagine). But lesser examples of AI creativity already abound. And, crucially, they help us to understand how human creativity is possible. Articles
The association between weight change and symptom reduction in the CATIE schizophrenia trial

BACKGROUND
Weight gain and changes in metabolic indicators associated with some antipsychotics may be related to symptom improvement and thus an unavoidable correlate of clinical benefit.


METHODS
Data from the CATIE schizophrenia trial comparing the effectiveness of perphenazine, olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine and ziprasidone in a randomized, double-blind, trial over 18 months were used to evaluate the relationship between percent change in body mass index (BMI) and change in total serum cholesterol and triglycerides with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) score. Analysis of covariance for observations at 3 months and a mixed effects model for all observations up to 18 months adjusted for potentially confounding variables were used to examine these associations.


RESULTS
In both models, there was a significant association (p = 0.001) between change in PANSS total score and percent change in BMI, equating to a 0.28 and 0.21 point decrease in PANSS total score (range 30-210) per 1% increase in BMI respectively. Change in BMI accounted for 3% or less of variance for change in PANSS scores. There was no evidence that the association of symptoms and weight gain differed across medications in spite of substantial differences in weight gain and other metabolic measures. Neither total serum cholesterol nor triglyceride levels displayed a significant association with change in PANSS.


CONCLUSION
The magnitude of the relationship between change in BMI and PANSS was too small to be clinically important, indicating that switching medications to one with less metabolic risk is unlikely to result in meaningful loss of clinical benefit.
A Knowledge Management Framework in Software Requirements Engineering Based on the SECI Model

Software requirements engineering deals with: elicitation, specification, and validation of software requirements. Furthermore there is a need to facilitate collaboration amongst stakeholders and analysts. Fewer efforts were deployed to support them in performing their job on a day to day basis. To solve this problem we use knowledge management for software requirements engineering. This paper proposes a knowledge management framework, based on the SECI model of knowledge creation, aimed at exploiting tacit and explicit knowledge related to software requirements within a given software project. The core part of the proposed framework is a set of four sub systems “Socializer”; “Externalizer”; “Combiner”; and “Internalizer”, attached to a couple of domain ontologies and a set of knowledge assets. Indeed we aim to facilitate a semantic based interpretation of knowledge assets related to software requirements by restricting their interpretation through the application domain and software requirements ontologies. We anticipate that this framework would be very helpful for stakeholders as well as analysts to exchange and manage their knowledge within a given software project. We show in the case study, through a virtual payroll project using the two-step approach: domain level requirements plus design level requirements, how the key elicitation SRE techniques are used during the first phase of domain requirements elicitation through the four subsystems of our framework.
Analysis of SMS Spam in Mobility Networks

 The Short Messaging Service (SMS), one of the most successful cellular services, generating millions of dollars in revenue for mobile operators yearly. Current estimations indicate that billions of SMSs are sent every day. Nevertheless, text messaging is becoming a source of customer dissatisfaction due to the rapid surge of messaging abuse activities. Although spam is a well tackled problem in the email world, SMS spam experiences a yearly growth larger than 500%. In this paper we expand our previous analysis on SMS spam traffic from a tier-1 cellular operator presented in [1], aiming to highlight the main characteristics of such messaging fraud activity. Communication patterns of spammers are compared to those of legitimate cell-phone users and Machine to Machine (M2M) connected appliances. The results indicate that M2M systems exhibit communication profiles similar to spammers, which could mislead spam filters. We find the main geographical sources of messaging abuse in the US. We also find evidence of spammer mobility, voice and data traffic resembling the behavior of legitimate customers. Finally, we include new findings on the invariance of the main characteristics of spam messages and spammers over time. Also, we present results that indicate a clear device reuse strategy in SMS spam activities.