LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of Lipohypertrophy and Associated Risk Factors in Insulin-Treated Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

BACKGROUND
Secondary failure of oral hypoglycemic agents is common in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM); thus, patients often need insulin therapy. The most common complication of insulin treatment is lipohypertrophy (LH).


OBJECTIVES
This study was conducted to estimate the prevalence of LH among insulin-treated patients with Patients with T2DM, to identify the risk factors for the development of LH, and to examine the association between LH and glycemic control.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
A total of 1090 patients with T2DM aged 20 to 89 years, who attended the diabetes clinics at the National Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Genetics (NCDEG, Amman, Jordan) between October 2011 and January 2012, were enrolled. The presence of LH was examined by inspection and palpation of insulin injection sites at the time of the visit as relevant clinical and laboratory data were obtained. The LH was defined as a local tumor-like swelling of subcutaneous fatty tissue at the site of repeated insulin injections.


RESULTS
The overall prevalence of LH was 37.3% (27.4% grade 1, 9.7% grade 2, and 0.2% grade 3). The LH was significantly associated with the duration of diabetes, needle length, duration of insulin therapy, lack of systematic rotation of insulin injection sites, and poor glycemic control.


CONCLUSIONS
The LH is a common problem in insulin-treated Jordanian patients with T2DM. More efforts are needed to educate patients and health workers on simple interventions such as using shorter needles and frequent rotation of the insulin injection sites to avoid LH and improve glycemic control.
Adaptive Role Switching in Socially Interactive Agents for Children ’ s Language Learning

Learning language and literacy at a young age is important, as children’s early language ability can impact their later educational success [1][2]. However, one of the major barriers to early language and literacy learning for many children around the globe is a lack of resources in homes and schools. A variety of technological interventions, such as TV series and educational apps, were designed to help overcome such barriers and support children’s learning. However, not all of them necessarily provide children with conversational experiences, which have been found to significantly impact the children’s language-related neural development [3]. Among a variety of educational media, embodied interactive agents (e.g., social robots) seem to be an effective yet resource-efficient tool that can enable children to learn through conversational turn taking. Specifically, embodied interactive agents can serve as learning companions for young children and provide more interactive and immersive learning experience. I explored how social robots could help promote children’s language and literacy learning. More specifically, I designed and computationally created a collaborative, engaging learning interaction between a robot and a child who play as peers. First, I designed a tablet-based literacy learning game called WordQuest using the design principles for educational games. Second, I developed a reinforcement learning model that enabled the robot to adaptively switch its collaborative roles (e.g., expert and novice roles) in a way that promoted children’s best learning. Third, I conducted an experiment with three conditions, which were fixed expert robot, fixed novice robot, and adaptive role switching robot, and tested on 60 children recruited from a local primary school in Boston. Last, I evaluated how the robot’s collaborative roles differentially affected children’s learning performance, engagement, and perception of the learning experiences. I found out that children across the three conditions all learned new words and had a very positive experience of playing WordQuest with the robot. In addition, children interacting with the adaptive robot consistently outperformed children from the other two conditions in terms of vocabulary acquisition and retention. Thesis Supervisor: Cynthia Breazeal Title: Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Annual review of materials science. Volume 17

A review is presented of recent materials science research. Topics covered include: point defects and their interaction; defect chemistry in crystalline solids; deep level impurities in semiconductors; structural aspects of one-dimensional conductors; structural transformations during aging of metal alloys; high rate thick film growth; metal forming, the application of limit analysis; kinetics and mechanisms of gas-metal interactions; erosion; reversible temper embrittlement; acoustic emission in brittle materials; capacitance transient spectroscopy; hot corrosion of high-temperature alloys; fundamental optical phenomena in infrared window materials; dental amalgam; and transparent conducting coatings. (GHT)
Test of the recommended dialysis dose on one-year mortality of nondiabetic maintenance hemodialysis patients; observations from a single dialysis unit.

BACKGROUND
The optimal delivered dialysis dose has been of a great interest for the last three decades, though a clear cut point has not been reached yet. We aimed to evaluate the relationship between one-year mortality and the delivered dialysis dose, which was recommended by Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (KDOQI), in our maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients.


METHODS
This was a single center, prospective observational study with one year of follow-up. Patients with extremes of age, BMI, residual renal function, diabetes mellitus, severe infection malignancy, and recent hospitalization within the last three months were excluded. Demographic, anthropometric, laboratory, and outcome data (mortality as the primary) were prospectively collected. Patients were classified into two groups according to baseline spKt/V levels; group 1 (n = 20): spKt/V ≤ 1.4, group 2 (n = 60): spKt/V > 1.4.


RESULTS
Median (IQR) age and hemodialysis vintage of all patients (M/F: 41/39) were 49.5 (29) years and 60 (94) months, respectively. Both groups had similar characteristics, with the exception of significantly higher BMI (24 vs. 21.7, p = 0.012), serum creatinine and uric acids, and lower spKt/V (1.30 vs. 1.71, p < 0.001) in group 1. Overall death occurred in seven (8.75%) patients (5 from group 1 and 2 from group 2). Patients in group 1 had significantly higher one-year mortality rate and shorter survival time (25% vs. 3.3%, p = 0.003 and 43.9 vs. 47.3 weeks, p = 0.003, respectively).


CONCLUSIONS
Higher spKt/V (>1.4) was associated with a lower one-year mortality in this small cohort of patients.
SVM based hysteresis current controller for a three phase active power filter

A space vector modulation (SVM) based hysteresis current controller (HCC) technique for a three phase shunt active power filter is proposed. The switching control algorithms of the proposed SVM based HCC manage to generate compensated current according to the reference current harmonics extraction is based on the instantaneous active and reactive power theorem in time domain by calculating the power compensation. A closed loop control system is implemented and the error current is the difference between the reference current obtained from the power compensation and the actual current that needs to be injected back into the line. By implementing this control strategy, the active power filter (APF) manages to generate better compensated harmonics currents to the line.
Diagnostic performance of spectroscopic and perfusion MRI for distinction of brain tumors

OBJECTIVE
To assess the value of spectroscopic and perfusion MRI for glioma grading and for distinguishing glioblastomas from metastases and from CNS lymphomas.


METHODS
The authors examined 79 consecutive patients with first detection of a brain neoplasm on nonenhanced CT scans and no therapy prior to evaluation. Spectroscopic MRI; arterial spin-labeling MRI for measuring cerebral blood flow (CBF); first-pass dynamic, susceptibility-weighted, contrast-enhanced MRI for measuring cerebral blood volume; and T1-weighted dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI were performed. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed, and optimum thresholds for tumor classification and glioma grading were determined.


RESULTS
Perfusion MRI had a higher diagnostic performance than spectroscopic MRI. Because of a significantly higher tumor blood flow in glioblastomas compared with CNS lymphomas, a threshold value of 1.2 for CBF provided sensitivity of 97%, specificity of 80%, positive predictive value (PPV) of 94%, and negative predictive value (NPV) of 89%. Because CBF was significantly higher in peritumoral nonenhancing T2-hyperintense regions of glioblastomas compared with metastases, a threshold value of 0.5 for CBF provided sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV of 100%, 71%, 94%, and 100%. Glioblastomas had the highest tumor blood flow values among all other glioma grades. For discrimination of glioblastomas from grade 3 gliomas, sensitivity was 97%, specificity was 50%, PPV was 84%, and NPV was 86% (CBF threshold value of 1.4), and for discrimination of glioblastomas from grade 2 gliomas, sensitivity was 94%, specificity was 78%, PPV was 94%, and NPV was 78% (CBF threshold value of 1.6).


CONCLUSION
Perfusion MRI is predictive in distinguishing glioblastomas from metastases, CNS lymphomas and other gliomas vs MRI and magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
Optical investigations of multi-dimensional ZnO hybrid structures

Abstract The authors report on the optical properties of multi-dimensional ZnO hybrid structures, consisting of film (2D)/nanorods (1D)/sapphire substrate (2D), grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Photoluminescence investigations reveal that the sample with top layer grown at a decreased growth temperature of 240 °C and increased reactor pressure of 5 Torr exhibits superior emission properties. The presence of strong E 2 high optical phonon mode at 438.5 cm − 1 in the visible micro-Raman spectra demonstrates the wurtzite nature of ZnO. Although the ultraviolet Raman scattering measurements of the hybrid structures reveal the presence of in-plane tensile stress in the top ZnO layer, the sample with the improved emission performance shows the release of tensile stress.
Incremental Dynamic Analysis for Estimating Seismic Performance Sensitivity and Uncertainty ‡

Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) is presented as a powerful tool to evaluate the variability in the seismic demand and capacity of non-deterministic structural models, building upon existing methodologies of Monte Carlo simulation and approximate moment-estimation. A nine-story steel moment-resisting frame is used as a testbed, employing parameterized moment-rotation relationships with non-deterministic quadrilinear backbones for the beam plastic-hinges. The uncertain properties of the backbones include the yield moment, the post-yield hardening ratio, the end-of-hardening rotation, the slope of the descending branch, the residual moment capacity and the ultimate rotation reached. IDA is employed to accurately assess the seismic performance of the model for any combination of the parameters by performing multiple nonlinear timehistory analyses for a suite of ground motion records. Sensitivity analyses on both the IDA and the static pushover level reveal the yield moment and the two rotational-ductility parameters to be the most influential for the frame behavior. To propagate the parametric uncertainty to the actual seismic performance we employ a) Monte Carlo simulation with latin hypercube sampling, b) point-estimate and c) first-order second-moment techniques, thus offering competing methods that represent different compromises between speed and accuracy. The final results provide firm ground for challenging current assumptions in seismic guidelines on using a median-parameter model to estimate the median seismic performance and employing the well-known square-root-sum-of-squares rule to combine aleatory randomness and epistemic uncertainty. Copyright c © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Value Creation in Markets A Critical Area of Focus for Business-to-Business Markets

The business market has been undergoing a paradigmatic change. The rise of the Internet, market fragmentation, and increasing global competition is changing the “value” that business marketers provide. This paradigmatic transformation requires changes in the way companies are organized to create and deliver value to their customers. Business marketers have to continuously increase their contribution to the value chain. If not, value migrates from a given business paradigm (e.g., minicomputers and DEC) to alternate business paradigms (e.g., flexibly manufactured PCs and Dell). This article focuses on ways in which business marketers are creating value in the Internet and digital age. Examples from business marketers are discussed and managerial implications are highlighted. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
A Study of the Impacts and Control of Wet Weather Sources of Pollution on Large Rivers

The Ohio River Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) has undertaken a study of the sources of wet weather pollution in large rivers. The study is to be completed wit…
Incorporation of essential oils and nanoparticles in pullulan films to control foodborne pathogens on meat and poultry products.

The incorporation of essential oils and nanotechnology into edible films has the potential to improve the microbiological safety of foods. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of pullulan films containing essential oils and nanoparticles against 4 foodborne pathogens. Initial experiments using plate overlay assays demonstrated that 2% oregano essential oil was active against Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella Typhimurium, whereas Listeria monocytogenes and Escherichia coli O157:H7 were not inhibited. Two percent rosemary essential oil was active against S. aureus, L. monocytogenes, E. coli O157:H7, and S. Typhimurium, when compared with 1%. Zinc oxide nanoparticles at 110 nm were active against S. aureus, L. monocytogenes, E. coli O157:H7, and S. Typhimurium, when compared with 100 or 130 nm. Conversely, 100 nm silver (Ag) nanoparticles were more active against S. aureus than L. monocytogenes. Using the results from these experiments, the compounds exhibiting the greatest activity were incorporated into pullulan films and found to inhibit all or some of the 4 pathogens in plate overlay assays. In challenge studies, pullulan films containing the compounds effectively inhibited the pathogens associated with vacuum packaged meat and poultry products stored at 4 °C for up to 3 wk, as compared to control films. Additionally, the structure and cross-section of the films were evaluated using electron microscopy. The results from this study demonstrate that edible films made from pullulan and incorporated with essential oils or nanoparticles may improve the safety of refrigerated, fresh or further processed meat and poultry products.
Clinical characteristics and outcome of 467 patients with a clinically recognized eating disorder identified among 52,215 patients with type 1 diabetes: a multicenter german/austrian study.

OBJECTIVE
To compare clinical characteristics and outcome of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) between patients with and without a clinically recognized eating disorder (ED).


RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
A total of 52,215 T1DM patients aged 8 to <30 years from the prospective diabetes data acquisition system DPV were analyzed. A total of 467 patients had an additional diagnosis of ED according to DSM-IV criteria (anorexia nervosa [AN], n = 141 [female: 94.3%]; bulimia nervosa [BN], n = 62 [90.3%]; and EDs not otherwise specified, including binge-eating disorder [EDNOS], n = 264 [74.2%]). Groups were compared using multivariable regression. Cox proportional hazard ratios were calculated for the association between ED and retinopathy.


RESULTS
After adjustment for age, sex, and duration of diabetes, patients with ED revealed higher HbA1c (no ED vs. AN, BN, or EDNOS, respectively: 8.29 ± 0.01% [67.1 ± 0.1 mmol/mol] vs. 8.61 ± 0.15% [70.6 ± 1.6 mmol/mol], 9.11 ± 0.23% [76.1 ± 2.5 mmol/mol], or 9.00 ± 0.11% [74.9 ± 1.2 mmol/mol]) and a higher rate of pathological insulin injection sites (48.4 vs. 64.3, 64.1, or 62.1%). Furthermore, ketoacidosis (5.7 ± 0.1 vs. 12.1 ± 2.1, 18.0 ± 4.1, or 12.9 ± 1.6 events per 100 person-years) and hospitalization (54.9 ± 0.3 vs. 89.3 ± 6.0, 132.0 ± 12.7, or 91.0 ± 4.4 per 100 person-years) were more common, and duration of hospital stay was longer (4.81 ± 0.01 vs. 11.31 ± 0.21, 18.05 ± 0.48, or 8.44 ± 0.13 days per year). All P values were <0.05. Patients with BN and EDNOS had a 2.5-fold (95% CI 1.3-4.8) and a 1.4-fold (0.8-2.3) higher risk for retinopathy, whereas AN patients had no increased risk (0.9 [95% CI 0.4-2.3]).


CONCLUSIONS
Diabetes health care professionals should be aware of comorbid EDs in pediatric/young-adult T1DM patients. An ED diagnosis is associated with worse metabolic control and higher rates of diabetes complications.
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) versus Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)

Wireless technology has been gaining rapid popularity for some years. Adaptation of a standard depends on the ease of use and level of security it provides. In this case, contrast between wireless usage and security standards show that the security is not keeping up with the growth paste of end user’s usage. Current wireless technologies in use allow hackers to monitor and even change the integrity of transmitted data. Lack of rigid security standards has caused companies to invest millions on securing their wireless networks. There are three major types of security standards in wireless. In our previous paper which was presented in ICFCC2009 Conference in Kuala Lumpur and published by IEEE Computer Society [1], we explained the structure of WEP as a first wireless security standard and discussed all its versions, problems and improvements. Now, we try to explain all of WPA versions and problems with the best solutions and finally make a comparison between WEP and WPA. Then we are in the next phase which is to explain the structure of last standard (WPA2) and we hope that we will publish a complete comparison among wireless security techniques in the near future and recommend a new proposal as a new protocol.
A preliminary study of the naturalistic course of non-manualized psychotherapy for outpatients with borderline personality disorder: Patient characteristics, attrition and outcome.

BACKGROUND
Psychotherapy is an effective treatment for borderline personality disorder (BPD), but little is known about the long-term effect of non-manualized psychotherapy for these patients.


AIMS
The aim of the preliminary study was to investigate the long-term effect of non-manualized psychotherapy on an outpatient sample (n = 32) with a primary diagnosis of BPD.


METHODS
The current study was based on an open-ended naturalistic design with a 2-year follow-up. Assessment at intake, discharge and follow-up comprised the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I, II and V, and the general level of self-reported symptomatic (SCL-90R) and interpersonal distress (IIP-64C).


RESULTS
Patients with BPD respond well to non-manualized psychotherapy as intent-to-treat analyses estimate that 62% no longer met the DSM-IV criteria for a BPD diagnosis at discharge, 66% at 2-year follow-up. In addition, significant improvement with large effect sizes was found for all outcome variables at both discharge and at follow-up. Attrition was associated with patient-therapist gender mismatch, low occupational status and the presence of post-traumatic stress disorder.


CONCLUSION
The results imply that the natural course of non-manualized psychotherapy is overall beneficial for outpatients with BPD.
Semantic smoothing for text clustering

In this paper we present a new semantic smoothing vector space kernel (S-VSM) for text documents clustering. In the suggested approach semantic relatedness between words is used to smooth the similarity and the representation of text documents. The basic hypothesis examined is that considering semantic relatedness between two text documents may improve the performance of the text document clustering task. For our experimental evaluation we analyze the performance of several semantic relatedness measures when embedded in the proposed (S-VSM) and present results with respect to different experimental conditions, such as: (i) the datasets used, (ii) the underlying knowledge sources of the utilized measures, and (iii) the clustering algorithms employed. To the best of our knowledge, the current study is the first to systematically compare, analyze and evaluate the impact of semantic smoothing in text clustering based on ‘wisdom of linguists’, e.g., WordNets, ‘wisdom of crowds’, e.g., Wikipedia, and ‘wisdom of corpora’, e.g., large text corpora represented with the traditional Bag of Words (BoW) model. Three semantic relatedness measures for text are considered; two knowledge-based (Omiotis [1] that uses WordNet, and WLM [2] that uses Wikipedia), and one corpus-based (PMI [3] trained on a semantically tagged SemCor version). For the comparison of different experimental conditions we use the BCubed F-Measure evaluation metric which satisfies all formal constraints of good quality cluster. The experimental results show that the clustering performance based on the S-VSM is better compared to the traditional VSM model and compares favorably against the standard GVSM kernel which uses word co-occurrences to compute the latent similarities between document terms. 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Interleukin-6 regulates androgen synthesis in prostate cancer cells.

PURPOSE
The standard systemic treatment for prostate cancer patients is androgen deprivation therapy. Although serum testosterone concentrations were significantly reduced after androgen deprivation therapy, levels of intraprostatic androgens are reproducibly measured at concentrations sufficient to activate androgen receptor and stimulate tumor growth, suggesting that prostate cancer cells may survive androgen deprivation therapies by increasing intracrine androgen synthesis within the prostate. However, factors that regulate de novo intracrine androgen synthesis have not been identified. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) has been implicated in the modulation of androgen receptor activation and growth and differentiation in prostate cancer. In this study, we investigate whether IL-6 regulates intraprostatic androgen synthesis in prostate cancer cells.


EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
Quantitative reverse transcription-PCR and Western blotting were done to detect expression levels of steroidogenic enzymes. AKR1C3 promoter reporter was constructed and analyzed for IL-6-mediated AKR1C3 transcriptional activity. IL-6-mediated signaling was knocked down using small interfering RNA specific to IL-6 receptor and gp130, and the effect on AKR1C3 expression was examined. Intraprostatic androgen levels in prostate cancer cells in culture and in tumors were measured by an enzyme immunoassay (Testosterone EIA kit).


RESULTS
We found that IL-6 increases the expression of genes encoding many steroidogenic enzymes, including HSD3B2 and AKR1C3, involved in androgen biosynthesis. Down-regulation of IL-6 receptor and gp130 expression using specific small interfering RNA abolished IL-6-mediated AKR1C3 expression, suggesting that IL-6 signaling is responsible for AKR1C3 expression. IL-6 increases AKR1C3 promoter activity, indicating that the increase in IL-6-mediated AKR1C3 expression is in part at the transcriptional level. Treatment of IL-6 increased testosterone level in LNCaP cells. The tumor testosterone levels were detected at 378 pg/g in tumors generated from IL-6-overexpressing LNCaP-IL6(+) cells inoculated orthotopically into the prostates of castrated male nude mice.


CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that IL-6 increases levels of intracrine androgens through enhanced expression of genes mediating androgen metabolism in prostate cancer cells.