LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Medical Therapy of Malignant Bowel Obstruction With Octreotide, Dexamethasone, and Metoclopramide.

BACKGROUND
Malignant bowel obstruction is a highly symptomatic, often recurrent, and sometimes refractory condition in patients with intra-abdominal tumor burden. Gastro-intestinal symptoms and function may improve with anti-inflammatory, anti-secretory, and prokinetic/anti-nausea combination medical therapy.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the effect of octreotide, metoclopramide, and dexamethasone in combination on symptom burden and bowel function in patients with malignant bowel obstruction and dysfunction.


DESIGN
A retrospective case series of patients with malignant bowel obstruction (MBO) and malignant bowel dysfunction (MBD) treated by a palliative care consultation service with octreotide, metoclopramide, and dexamethasone. Outcomes measures were nausea, pain, and time to resumption of oral intake.


RESULTS
12 cases with MBO, 11 had moderate/severe nausea on presentation. 100% of these had improvement in nausea by treatment day #1. 100% of patients with moderate/severe pain improved to tolerable level by treatment day #1. The median time to resumption of oral intake was 2 days (range 1-6 days) in the 8 cases with evaluable data. Of 7 cases with MBD, 6 had For patients with malignant bowel dysfunction, of those with moderate/severe nausea. 5 of 6 had subjective improvement by day#1. Moderate/severe pain improved to tolerable levels in 5/6 by day #1. Of the 4 cases with evaluable data on resumption of PO intake, time to resume PO ranged from 1-4 days.


CONCLUSION
Combination medical therapy may provide rapid improvement in symptoms associated with malignant bowel obstruction and dysfunction.
Opinions about the new law on end-of-life issues in a sample of french patients receiving palliative care

BACKGROUND
In February 2nd 2016, the French government enacted the Claeys-Leonetti law that forbade euthanasia and established the right to deep and continuous sedation for end-of-life patients. Moreover, the law also obliges clinicians to abide by any advance directives regarding treatment and investigation, except in cases where they are "obviously inappropriate" in a given medical situation, or in cases of emergency, in order to allow medical staff to take time to assess the patient's situation. Artificial feeding and hydration are considered as treatment. The aim of this report is to investigate individuals receiving palliative care about their opinion about euthanasia, about advance directives, about the right to deep and continuous sedation, and the right to stopping artificial feeding and hydration.


METHODS
The study was an opinion survey conducted among patients treated in two different palliative care institutions: a palliative care unit at the University Hospital (Timone, Marseille, France) and a non-profit association palliative care home ("La Maison", Gardanne, France). Face-to-face interviews were performed by two investigators. The survey included sociodemographics, clinical data, and opinions about euthanasia, deep and continuous sedation, stopping artificial feeding and hydration, and advance directives.


RESULTS
Forty patients were interviewed. The mean age was 59.8 years (standard deviation 12). Fifty three percent reported opposition to legalized euthanasia. Eighty three percent were in favour of the right to deep and continuous sedation in patients with refractory pain, 75% when it concerns a patient unable to express their wishes, and 68% when the patient decides to stop vital treatment. Fifty eight percent reported that artificial nutrition and hydration should be considered as care. Fifty eight percent of the patients interviewed would like to see doctors follow the express wishes contained in advance care directives and 53% that advance directives should be subject to a validity period.


CONCLUSIONS
This work demonstrates the feasibility of discussing sensitive issues such as euthanasia, continuous and deep sedation and cessation of care with patients receiving palliative care. These preliminary results point to the need to perform a larger study in order to find determinant factors in this specific situation and to incorporate them into thinking about end-of-life laws.
A Review on Object Manipulation Techniques in Virtual Environments and their Performance Metrics

Objective: The aim of this paper is to classify and characterize the existing interaction methods regarding object manipulation in virtual reality environment. Background: Over the past few decades, the field of virtual reality has gone through rapid advances and various virtual object manipulation techniques have been developed. However, an established classification of the existing object manipulation techniques does not seem available at this point. A systematic review of the advances during the past three decades and a classification of the existing object manipulation techniques based on it would help researchers prospect the future of human-machine interaction in virtual environments and further formulate future research directions for virtual object manipulation. Method: We collected and examined studies that are related to virtual reality and virtual object manipulation. The collected studies were reviewed in chronological order, and virtual object manipulation techniques were identified. Then, the existing virtual object manipulation techniques were sorted into categories according to similarities and each category was characterized. Additionally, this study reviewed the existing performance metrics for evaluating virtual object manipulation techniques. Application: This paper will aid in ameliorating the understanding of the existing virtual object manipulation techniques, and furthermore, offer directions to the future researchers in this field.
Requirement Engineering Challenges in Development of Software Applications and Selection of Customer-off-the-Shelf ( COTS ) Components

Requirement Engineering acts as foundation for any software and is one of the most important tasks. Entire software is supported by four pillars of requirement engineering processes. Functional and non-functional requirements work as bricks to support software edifice. Finally, design, implementation and testing add stories to construct entire software tower on top of this foundation. Thus, the base needs to be well-built to support rest of software tower. For this purpose, requirement engineers come across with numerous challenges to develop successful software. The paper has highlighted requirement engineering challenges encountered in development of software applications and selection of right customer-off-the-shelf components (COTS). Comprehending stakeholder’s needs; incomplete and inconsistent process description; verification and validation of requirements; classification and modeling of extensive data; selection of COTS product with minimum requirement modifications are foremost challenges faced during requirement engineering. Moreover, the paper has discussed and critically evaluated challenges highlighted by various researchers. Besides, the paper presents a model that encapsulates seven major challenges that recur during requirement engineering phase. These challenges have been further categorized into problems. Furthermore, the model has been linked with previous research work to elaborate challenges that have not been specified earlier. Anticipating requirement engineering challenges could assist requirement engineers to prevent software tower from any destruction.
A Research Trilogy into E-Commerce Adoption in Small Businesses in New Zealand

This research trilogy about e-commerce (EC) adoption in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in New Zealand (NZ) started with a survey research, followed by an initial focus group (FG) research and concluded with a second FG in order to fill some of the gaps in the first FG and to add more insights into the EC phenomenon in NZ SMEs. In this research, nine factors were identified from the technological innovation literature as potential determinants of EC adoption in SMEs. The research findings highlighted three main issues pertaining to EC adoption in NZ SMEs. First, at the ‘low level’ of adoption such as adopting simple email and Web pages, none of the research factors seemed to strongly influence the adoption decision of EC as such. This finding highlighted the importance of the communication aspect of EC and of having a presence in cyberspace even if it was a simple one. Second, the majority of the NZ SMEs perceived to progress these simple EC initiatives in the long-term projections only. They called such initiatives as ‘advanced levels of EC’ where they envisaged adopting fully functional and interactive websites. At this level of adoption, the participants started to raise the importance of the different factors to their adoption decision of EC. However, this was contrasted by the fact that the participants stressed that they would not risk investing their scant resources on perceived risky advanced EC initiatives. The last point pertains to the SMEs that adopted different EC technologies ‘high adopters’ such as websites, Intranet and Extranet technologies. This category retained a positive view about EC and indicated that non-adopters of EC and ‘low level’ adopters should not be deterred from adopting EC and that all their fears were mere misperceptions. The overall results indicated that EC adoption and use among NZ SMEs was limited. The research highlights professional and theoretical significance and implications.
Left ventricular diastolic dysfunction in congenital chronic anaemias during childhood as determined by comprehensive echocardiographic imaging including acoustic quantification.

AIMS
To evaluate prospectively the left ventricular performance in thalassaemia major and sickle cell disease using comprehensive echocardiographic imaging including acoustic quantification during early childhood.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Twenty-three patients with thalassaemia and 26 patients with sickle cell disease underwent echocardiographic examination including M-mode, 2-D, Doppler and acoustic quantification. All patients were matched for age, sex, weight and height with 20 normal controls. All patients were below 13 years of age. Thalassaemia and sickle cell disease patients were significantly anaemic when compared with normals (P<0.0001). All patients had normal left ventricular systolic parameters. Acoustic quantification-derived left ventricular volumes, filling rates, and emptying rates were not different in thalassaemia patients from controls. Left ventricular volumes, however, were larger in sickle cell disease patients than in controls. In contrast, by Doppler technique, left ventricular filling occurs mainly in early diastole (E wave) in thalassaemia patients and mainly in late diastole (A wave) in sickle cell disease patients, (P=0.03 and 0.01 respectively). E/A ratio was lower and diastolic filling period was shorter than normal in sickle cell disease but not in thalassaemia patients. Patients in both groups had left ventricular mass (determined by M-mode) significantly higher than normal (P<0.0001).


CONCLUSION
The left ventricular systolic performance is well preserved in patients with chronic anaemia due to thalassaemia major and sickle cell disease during early childhood. In both diseases, however, there is left ventricular hypertrophy and measurable abnormalities in the diastolic filling detected by Doppler. Such changes do not fit a specific cardiomyopathic pattern due to diastolic dysfunction i.e. restrictive physiology vs delayed relaxation. Acoustic quantification of left ventricular diastolic parameters (filling rates) was less sensitive than Doppler in detecting these early diastolic abnormalities in both diseases.
Addition of propranolol and isosorbide mononitrate to endoscopic variceal ligation does not reduce variceal rebleeding incidence.

BACKGROUND & AIMS
Endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) and propranolol are standard secondary prophylaxis therapies for variceal bleeding. Addition of isosorbide mononitrate (ISMN) to propranolol improves its hemodynamic efficacy; we investigated whether a combination of EVL and propranolol/ISMN was more effective than EVL alone for secondary prophylaxis.


METHODS
Patients with a prior variceal bleed were randomly assigned to groups given a combination (n = 88) of EVL, propranolol (dose titrated to reduce heart rate to 55 beats per minute), and ISMN (40 mg/day) or EVL alone (n = 89). Primary end points were rebleeding or death; secondary end points were new complications of portal hypertension or serious adverse effects.


RESULTS
The actuarial probabilities of rebleeding 2 years after therapy were 27% in the combination group and 31% in the EVL alone group (P = .822). Two patients in the combination group and 3 patients in the EVL alone group died during the study period (P = .682); no deaths were caused by variceal hemorrhage. In cirrhotic patients, the actuarial probabilities of rebleeding were 24% and 30%, respectively (P = .720). Secondary end points were comparable between groups. In multivariate analyses, presence of ascites (P = .003), serum albumin < 3.3 g/dL (P = .008), and hepatic venous pressure gradients > or = 18 mm Hg (P = .009) were independent risk factors for variceal rebleeding.


CONCLUSIONS
EVL alone is sufficient to prevent variceal rebleeding in cirrhotic and noncirrhotic patients with history of variceal bleeding. Addition of propranolol and ISMN to EVL does not reduce the incidence of variceal rebleeding but increases severe adverse effects. Risk factors for rebleeding include ascites, low serum albumin, and high hepatic venous pressure gradients.
Modern techniques for condition monitoring of railway vehicle dynamics

A modern railway system relies on sophisticated monitoring systems for maintenance and renewal activities. Some of the existing conditions monitoring techniques perform fault detection using advanced filtering, system identification and signal analysis methods. These theoretical approaches do not require complex mathematical models of the system and can overcome potential difficulties associated with nonlinearities and parameter variations in the system. Practical applications of condition monitoring tools use sensors which are mounted either on the track or rolling stock. For instance, monitoring wheelset dynamics could be done through the use of track-mounted sensors, while vehicle-based sensors are preferred for monitoring the train infrastructure. This paper attempts to collate and critically appraise the modern techniques used for condition monitoring of railway vehicle dynamics by analysing the advantages and shortcomings of these methods.
Exercise and the Development of the Artificial Pancreas: One of the More Difficult Series of Hurdles.

Regular physical activity (PA) promotes numerous health benefits for people living with type 1 diabetes (T1D). However, PA also complicates blood glucose control. Factors affecting blood glucose fluctuations during PA include activity type, intensity and duration as well as the amount of insulin and food in the body at the time of the activity. To maintain equilibrium with blood glucose concentrations during PA, the rate of glucose appearance (Ra) to disappearance (Rd) in the bloodstream must be balanced. In nondiabetics, there is a rise in glucagon and a reduction in insulin release at the onset of mild to moderate aerobic PA. During intense aerobic -anaerobic work, insulin release first decreases and then rises rapidly in early recovery to offset a more dramatic increase in counterregulatory hormones and metabolites. An "exercise smart" artificial pancreas (AP) must be capable of sensing glucose and perhaps other physiological responses to various types and intensities of PA. The emergence of this new technology may benefit active persons with T1D who are prone to hypo and hyperglycemia.
Research on Convergence of Robot Path Planning Based on LCS

( 南京理工大学 计算机学院 江苏 南京 210094 ) E_mail:sj012328@163.com 摘要:基于学习分类器集成算法,设计了在动态环境下的适应度函数,在理论上推导并证明了集成算法的收敛性,为本文提出的路 径规划算法的收敛提供了理论保证。仿真实验结果也表明遗传算法和学习分类器结合用于机器人的路径规划是收敛的,遗传算法的 早熟收敛和收敛速度慢两大难题也得到很大改善。 关键词:路径规划 机器人 学习分类器 收敛性 Research on convergence of robot path planning based on LCS Jie Shao Jing yu Yang (School of computer Science Nanjing University of Science and Technology Nanjing 210094 ) Abstract: A path planning algorithm of robot is proposed based on ensemble algorithm of the learning classifier system, which design fitness function in dynamic environment. The paper derived and proved that ensemble algorithm is convergence and provided a theoretical guarantee for the path planning algorithm. Simulation results also showed that genetic algorithms and learning classifier system combination for robot path planning is effective. Two major problems of the GA premature convergence and slow convergence have been significantly improved. Keyword: Path Planning Robot Learning classifier system convergence
Effect of psychosocial stressors on patients with Crohn's disease: threatening life experiences and family relations.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS
Threatening life experiences and adverse family relations are major psychosocial stressors affecting mental and physical health in chronic illnesses, but their influence in Crohn's disease (CD) is unclear. We assessed whether these stressors would predict the psychological and medical condition of CD patients.


METHODS
Consecutive adult CD patients completed a series of instruments including demography, Patient Harvey-Bradshaw Index (P-HBI), Short Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (SIBDQ), short-form survey instrument (SF-36), brief symptom inventory (BSI), family assessment device (FAD), and list of threatening life experiences (LTE). Associations of FAD and LTE with P-HBI, SIBDQ, SF-36, and BSI were examined by multiple linear and quantile regression analyses.


RESULTS
The cohort included 391 patients, mean age 38.38±13.95 years, 59.6% women, with intermediate economic status. The median scores were as follows: P-HBI 4 (2-8), FAD 1.67 (1.3-2.1), LTE 1 (0-3), SF-36 physical health 43.75 (33.7-51.0), SF-36 mental health 42.99 (34.1-51.9), and BSI-Global Severity Index 0.81 (0.4-1.4). The SIBDQ was 47.27±13.9. LTE was associated with increased P-HBI in all quantiles and FAD in the 50% quantile. FAD and LTE were associated with reduced SIBDQ (P<0.001). Higher LTE was associated with lower SF-36 physical and mental health (P<0.001); FAD was associated with reduced mental health (P<0.001). FAD and LTE were associated positively with GSI in all quantiles; age was associated negatively.


CONCLUSION
CD patients with more threatening life experiences and adverse family relations were less healthy both physically and mentally. Physicians offering patients sociopsychological therapy should relate to threatening life experiences and family relations.
Gracilis urethromyoplasty – an autologous urinary sphincter for neurologically impaired patients with stress incontinence

Purpose: To investigate the effect of a neurovascularly intact gracilis muscle urethral wrap, to be used to restore urinary continence as a transposed urinary sphincter graft, in patients with neurogenic lower urinary tract dysfunction. Methods: Five neurologically impaired men with a denervated and damaged urinary sphincter mechanisms were treated. The etiology of sphincteric insufficiency included sphincter denervation in three patients, external sphincterotomy in one, and urethral trauma due to a chronic indwelling catheter in one. All patients underwent gracilis urethromyoplasty sphincter reconstruction. Two patients also underwent concomitant ileocystoplasty and one patient ileocystostomy because of poor bladder compliance and a bladder capacity of <200 ml. Results: The gracilis urethromyoplasty functioned as a new autologous sphincter with follow-ups ranging from 6 – 35 months. The surgery was successful in four patients. Three of the four patients were managed with intermittent catheterization, and one managed by ileocystostomy. The fifth patient continued to require an indwelling urethral catheter. Conclusion: Gracilis urethromyoplasty achieves compression of the urethra using a neurovascularly intact muscle graft. The functional urethral closure, obtained from the gracilis muscle wrap, assures dryness, and permits intermittent self-catheterization. It also avoids the risks of infection, erosion, or malfunction associated with the artificical urinary sphincter. The potential exists for electrical stimulation of this muscle graft to allow volitional control of the neo-sphincter mechanism, and voluntary voiding.
Serious games - engaging training solutions: A research and development project for supporting training needs

Addresses for correspondence: Dr Sara de Freitas, London Knowledge Lab, Birkbeck College, University of London, 23–29 Emerald Street, London WC1N 3QS. UK. Tel: +44(0)20 7763 2117; fax: +44(0)20 7242 2754; email: sara@lkl.ac.uk. Steve Jarvis, Vega Group PLC, 2 Falcon Way, Shire Park, Welwyn Garden City, Herts AL7 1TW, UK. Tel: +44 (0)1707 362602; Fax: +44 (0)1707 393909; email: steve.jarvis@vega.co.uk
Generative Adversarial Networks as Variational Training of Energy Based Models

In this paper, we study deep generative models for effective unsupervised learning. We propose VGAN, which works by minimizing a variational lower bound of the negative log likelihood (NLL) of an energy based model (EBM), where the model density p(x) is approximated by a variational distribution q(x) that is easy to sample from. The training of VGAN takes a two step procedure: given p(x), q(x) is updated to maximize the lower bound; p(x) is then updated one step with samples drawn from q(x) to decrease the lower bound. VGAN is inspired by the generative adversarial networks (GANs), where p(x) corresponds to the discriminator and q(x) corresponds to the generator, but with several notable differences. We hence name our model variational GANs (VGANs). VGAN provides a practical solution to training deep EBMs in high dimensional space, by eliminating the need of MCMC sampling. From this view, we are also able to identify causes to the difficulty of training GANs and propose viable solutions. 1
Training effects of short bouts of stair climbing on cardiorespiratory fitness, blood lipids, and homocysteine in sedentary young women.

OBJECTIVES
To study the training effects of eight weeks of stair climbing on Vo2max, blood lipids, and homocysteine in sedentary, but otherwise healthy young women.


METHODS
Fifteen women (mean (SD) age 18.8 (0.7) years) were randomly assigned to control (n = 7) or stair climbing (n = 8) groups. Stair climbing was progressively increased from one ascent a day in week 1 to five ascents a day in weeks 7 and 8. Training took place five days a week on a public access staircase (199 steps), at a stepping rate of 90 steps a minute. Each ascent took about two minutes to complete. Subjects agreed not to change their diet or lifestyle over the experimental period.


RESULTS
Relative to controls, the stair climbing group displayed a 17.1% increase in Vo2max and a 7.7% reduction in low density lipoprotein cholesterol (p < 0.05) over the training period. No change occurred in total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides, or homocysteine.


CONCLUSIONS
The study confirms that accumulating short bouts of stair climbing activity throughout the day can favourably alter important cardiovascular risk factors in previously sedentary young women. Such exercise may be easily incorporated into the working day and therefore should be promoted by public health guidelines.