LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Antidepressants strongly influence the relationship between depression and heart rate variability: findings from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA)

BACKGROUND
Heart rate variability (HRV) is known to be reduced in depression; however, is unclear whether this is a consequence of the disorder or due to antidepressant medication.


METHODS
We analysed data on 4750 participants from the first wave of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Time [standard deviation of normal to normal intervals (SDNN ms2)] and frequency domain [low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF)] measures of HRV were derived from 3-lead surface electrocardiogram records obtained during 10 min of supine rest. Depression was assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies - Depression scale.


RESULTS
Participants on antidepressants [with (n = 80) or without depression (n = 185)] differed significantly from controls (not depressed and not taking antidepressants n = 4107) on all measures of HRV. Depressed participants not taking antidepressants (n = 317) did not differ from controls on any measures of HRV. In linear regression analysis adjusted for relevant factors all antidepressants were associated with lower measures HRV. Participants on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) had higher measures of HRV relative to participants on tricyclic antidepressants or serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that reductions in HRV observed among depressed older adults are driven by the effects of antidepressant medications. SSRIs have less impact on HRV than other antidepressants but they are still associated with lower measures of HRV. Study limitations include the use of a self-report measure of depression and floor effects of age on HRV could have limited our ability to detect an association between HRV and depression.
School Choice and Student Performance : Are Private Schools Really Better ?

Are private schools really better than public schools, or is it simply that better students attend private schools? Although a number of recent studies find that students perform better in private schools (more specifically, Catholic schools), others do not. Typically, however, the instruments used to adjust for nonrandom selection are weak. This study employs uniquely detailed local instruments and jointly models selection into religious and nonreligious private high schools, relative to public high schools—improving instrument power in predicting private sector attendance to roughly three times that of prior studies. Failing to correct adequately for selection leads to a systematic upward bias in the estimated treatment effect for religious schools, but a downward bias for nonreligious private schools. With adequate correction, religious schools are modestly inferior in mathematics and science, while nonreligious schools are substantially superior. However, minority students, particularly in urban areas, benefit from religious schools. Other factors that may make both religious and nonreligious private schools attractive include possibly better retention rates, increased security and discipline, and greater opportunities for a variety of specialized school-day and extracurricular activities. School Choice and Student Performance: Are Private Schools Really Better?
Corpus Statistics Meet the Noun Compound: Some Empirical Results

A variety of statistical methods for noun compound analysis are implemented and compared. The results support two main conclusions. First, the use of conceptual association not only enables a broad coverage, but also improves the accuracy. Second, an analysis model based on dependency grammar is substantially more accurate than one based on deepest constituents, even though the latter is more prevalent in the literature.
Malformations in a cohort of 284 women with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH)

BACKGROUND
The aim of this retrospective study was to describe the spectrum of genital and associated malformations in women with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome using evaluated diagnostic procedures and the Vagina Cervix Uterus Adnex - associated Malformation classification system (VCUAM).


METHODS
290 women with MRKH syndrome were clinically evaluated with using clinical examinations, abdominal and perineal/rectal ultrasound, MRI, and laparoscopy.


RESULTS
Classification of female genital malformation according to the Vagina Cervix Uterus Adnex - associated Malformation classification system was possible in 284 women (97.9%). Complete atresia of Vagina (V5b) and bilateral atresia of Cervix (C2b) were found in 284 patients (100%). Uterus: bilateral rudimentary or a plastic uterine horns were found in 239 women (84.2%). Adnexa: normal Adnexa were found in 248 women (87.3%). Malformations: associated malformations were found in 126 of 282 evaluable women (44.7%), 84 women (29.6%) had malformations of the renal system. Of 284 women with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome 212 women (74.7%) could be classified as V5bC2bU4bA0. The most frequent classification was V5bC2bU4bA0M0 (46.8%) diagnosed in 133 of 284 women.


CONCLUSIONS
Complete atresia of vagina and cervix were found in all patients, variable malformations were found with uterus and adnexa. A variety of associated malformations were present, predominantly of the renal system. It is therefore recommended that all patients with genital malformations should be evaluated for renal abnormalities.
[Catheter ablation of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation].

UNLABELLED
Catheter ablation techniques for atrial fibrillation have undergone an extensive evolution, starting with linear lesions in the right, then the left atria before being superseded by ablation of triggers, mainly from the pulmonary veins. We investigate the feasibility and results of combined pulmonary vein and linear ablation utilizing a specific linear lesion connecting the lateral mitral annulus to the left inferior pulmonary vein (left isthmus).


METHODS
115 patients (101 M: 54 +/- 9 years) with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (7 +/- 5 years) resistant to 4 +/- 1.6 anti-arrhythmic drugs were studied. After electrophysiologically guided disconnection of all four pulmonary veins, the left isthmus line was performed with an irrigated tip catheter. Complete linear block was demonstrated during coronary sinus pacing by local mapping looking for widely separated double potentials and confirmed by differential pacing. Mapping and ablation from within the coronary sinus was performed if an epicardial gap was detected after unsuccessful endocardial radiofrequency delivery.


RESULTS
100% of pulmonary veins were successfully disconnected and the left isthmus line was complete with bi-directional block in 88% after a mean of 22 +/- 12 min of endocardial radiofrequency delivery in 44 patients. In 58 patients, additional radiofrequency delivery was required from within the coronary sinus for 5 +/- 5 min. After a follow-up of 6.5 +/- 2.6 months and a mean of 1.4 +/- 0.6 procedures/patient, 79% were in stable sinus rhythm without antiarrhythmic drugs.


CONCLUSION
the left isthmus line is feasible and safe and when performed in addition to pulmonary veins isolation can contribute to an increased success rate.
Action patterns in business process model repositories

Business process models are extensively used in companies to document and improve business operations. In essence, there are two major challenges. The increasing number of staff with little modeling expertise involved in model design requires new concepts for quality assurance. Moreover, the huge number of process models typically maintained in a model repository impedes extraction of general process knowledge, which can be used for assistance. This article investigates action patterns as a means to address these challenges. Action patterns capture chunks of actions often appearing together in business processes. We formalize the action pattern concept, including several types of behavioral connection, different abstraction levels, and varying action sensitivity to business objects. Our concepts are evaluated based on a prototypical implementation, which we use to extract various types of action patterns from two industrial process model collections. The results demonstrate that action patterns occurring in different application domains can be discovered.
An overview of pricing models for revenue management

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.
Effect of darbepoetin alfa on exercise tolerance in anemic patients with symptomatic chronic heart failure: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES
This study sought to investigate whether darbepoetin alfa, an erythropoiesis-stimulating protein (ESP), improves exercise capacity in patients with symptomatic chronic heart failure (CHF) and anemia.


BACKGROUND
Anemia is common in patients with CHF.


METHODS
In a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, CHF patients with anemia (hemoglobin > or =9.0 to < or =12.0 g/dl) received subcutaneous placebo (n = 22) or darbepoetin alfa (n = 19) at a starting dose of 0.75 microg/kg every 2 weeks for 26 weeks. The primary end point was change in exercise tolerance from baseline to week 27 as measured by peak oxygen uptake (ml/min/kg body weight). Other end points included changes in absolute peak VO2 (ml/min), exercise duration, and health-related quality of life.


RESULTS
Differences (95% confidence interval) in mean changes from baseline to week 27 between treatment groups were 1.5 g/dl (0.5 to 2.4) for hemoglobin concentration (p = 0.005), 0.5 ml/kg/min (-0.7 to 1.7) for peak VO2 (p = 0.40), 45 ml/min (-35 to 127) for absolute peak VO2 (p = 0.27), and 108 s (-11 to 228) for exercise duration (p = 0.075). Patients receiving darbepoetin alfa compared with placebo had an improvement in self-reported Patient's Global Assessment of Change (79% vs. 41%, p = 0.01) but no significant differences in the Kansas City Cardiomyopathy and Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire scores. Darbepoetin alfa was well tolerated.


CONCLUSIONS
In patients with symptomatic CHF and anemia, darbepoetin alfa increased and maintained hemoglobin concentrations and improved health-related quality of life. A trend toward increased exercise time but not peak VO2 was observed. (Impact of Darbepoetin Alfa on Exercise Tolerance and Left Ventricular Structure in Subjects With Symptomatic Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) and Anemia; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00117234?order = 1; NCT00117234).
Binarising Camera Images for OCR

In this paper we describe a new binarisation method designed specifically for OCR of low quality camera images: Background Surface Thresholding or BST. This method is robust to lighting variations and produces images with very little noise and consistent stroke width. BST computes a ”surface” of background intensities at every point in the image and performs adaptive thresholding based on this result. The surface is estimated by identifying regions of lowresolution text and interpolating neighbouring background intensities into these regions. The final threshold is a combination of this surface and a global offset. According to our evaluation BST produces considerably fewer OCR errors than Niblack’s local average method while also being more runtime efficient.
A survey of TB knowledge among medical students in Southwest China: is the information reaching the target?

OBJECTIVES
Tuberculosis (TB) control in schools is a concern in low-income and middle-income countries with high TB burdens. TB knowledge is recognised as important for TB control in China, which has one of the highest TB prevalence in the world. Accordingly, National TB Control Guideline in China emphasised TB-health education in schools as one of the core strategies for improving TB knowledge among the population. It was important to assess the level of TB knowledge in schools following 5-year implementation of the guideline, to determine whether the information was reaching the targets.


DESIGN
A cross-sectional study.


METHODS AND STUDY SETTING
This survey assessed TB knowledge and access to TB-health information by questionnaire survey with 1486 undergraduates from two medical universities in Southwest China.


RESULTS
Overall, the students had inadequate TB knowledge. Only 24.1%, 27.2% and 34.1% of the students had knowledge of TB symptoms of cough/blood-tinged sputum, their local TB dispensaries and free TB treatment policy, respectively. Very few (14.5%) had heard about the Directly Observed Therapy Short Course (DOTS), and only about half (54%) had ever accessed TB-health education information. Exposure to health education messages was significantly associated with increased knowledge of the five core TB knowledge as follows: classic TB symptoms of cough/blood-tinged sputum (OR (95% CI) 0.5(0.4 to 0.7)), TB modes of transmission (OR (95% CI) 0.4(0.3 to 0.5)), curability of TB (OR (95% CI) 0.6(0.5 to 0.7)), location and services provided by TB local dispensaries (OR (95% CI) 0.6(0.5 to 0.8)) and the national free TB treatment policy (OR (95% CI) 0.7(0.5 to 0.8)).


CONCLUSIONS
The findings pose the question of whether it is time for a rethink of the current national and global approach to TB-health education/promotion which favours promotion of awareness on World TB Days rather than regular community sensitisation efforts.
Epidemiology and Diagnosis of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries.

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries are increasingly common in the United States. This may be related to the increase in high school sports participation, particularly in female athletes. A significant proportion of these injuries are caused by noncontact mechanisms. The incidence of these noncontact injuries may be significantly reduced by enrolling young athletes in jump-training programs. The diagnosis of ACL injuries involves a focused history and physical examination, which can provide a high index of suspicion. Although radiographs are important to rule out associated injuries, the gold standard for diagnosis of ACL injuries is MRI, which has shown excellent accuracy.
Towards context-sensitive collaborative media recommender system

With the rapid increase of social media resources and services, Internet users are overwhelmed by the vast quantity of social media available. Most recommender systems personalize multimedia content to the users by analyzing two main dimensions of input: content (item), and user (consumer). In this study, we address the issue of how to improve the recommendation and the quality of the user experience by analyzing the contextual aspect of the users, at the time when they wish to consume multimedia content. Mainly, we highlight the potential of including a user’s biological signal and leveraging it within an adapted collaborative filtering algorithm. First, the proposed model utilizes existing online social networks by incorporating social tags and rating information in ways that personalize the search for content in a particular detected context. Second, we propose a recommendation algorithm to improve the user experience and satisfaction with the use of a biosignal in the recommendation process. Our experimental results show the feasibility of personalizing the recommendation according to the user’s context, and demonstrate some improvement on cold start situations where relatively little information is known about a user or an item.
The Development of a Land Market? Insights from Côte d’Ivoire

This paper contributes to the debate on rural land sales in Africa. First, it shows that the emergence of sales in the forested area of Cote d'Ivoire corresponds to an "imperfect" land commoditization, due to the social embedding of land transfers in the autochthon-migrant relationship. Then, it analyzes land sales in a former no-man's land, outside this relationship, where the transactions correspond to complete sales. However, a diachronic analysis reveals an "involution" in the market, related to the transformation of the pioneer's individual private right into a family right, once the land is inherited, highlighting therefore another social dimension of land markets. © 2006 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
An Adaptive UKF Based SLAM Method for Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

This work proposes an improved unscented Kalman filter (UKF)-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm based on an adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) with a noise statistic estimator. The algorithm solves the issue that conventional UKF-SLAM algorithms have declining accuracy, with divergence occurring when the prior noise statistic is unknown and time-varying. The new SLAM algorithm performs an online estimation of the statistical parameters of unknown system noise by introducing a modified Sage-Husa noise statistic estimator. The algorithm also judges whether the filter is divergent and restrains potential filtering divergence using a covariancematchingmethod.This approach reduces state estimation error, effectively improving navigation accuracy of the SLAM system. A line feature extraction is implemented through a Hough transform based on the ranging sonar model. Test results based on unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) sea trial data indicate that the proposed AUKF-SLAM algorithm is valid and feasible and provides better accuracy than the standard UKF-SLAM system.
Computer and video game addiction-a comparison between game users and non-game users.

BACKGROUND
Computer game addiction is excessive or compulsive use of computer and video games that may interfere with daily life. It is not clear whether video game playing meets diagnostic criteria for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV).


OBJECTIVES
First objective is to review the literature on computer and video game addiction over the topics of diagnosis, phenomenology, epidemiology, and treatment. Second objective is to describe a brain imaging study measuring dopamine release during computer game playing.


METHODS
Article search of 15 published articles between 2000 and 2009 in Medline and PubMed on computer and video game addiction. Nine abstinent "ecstasy" users and 8 control subjects were scanned at baseline and after performing on a motorbike riding computer game while imaging dopamine release in vivo with [123I] IBZM and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT).


RESULTS
Psycho-physiological mechanisms underlying computer game addiction are mainly stress coping mechanisms, emotional reactions, sensitization, and reward. Computer game playing may lead to long-term changes in the reward circuitry that resemble the effects of substance dependence. The brain imaging study showed that healthy control subjects had reduced dopamine D2 receptor occupancy of 10.5% in the caudate after playing a motorbike riding computer game compared with baseline levels of binding consistent with increased release and binding to its receptors. Ex-chronic "ecstasy" users showed no change in levels of dopamine D2 receptor occupancy after playing this game.


CONCLUSION
This evidence supports the notion that psycho-stimulant users have decreased sensitivity to natural reward.


SIGNIFICANCE
Computer game addicts or gamblers may show reduced dopamine response to stimuli associated with their addiction presumably due to sensitization.
Further steps towards efficient runtime verification: Handling probabilistic cost models

We consider high-level models that specify system behaviors probabilistically and support the specification of cost attributes. Specifically, we focus on Discrete Time Markov Reward Models (D-MRMs), i.e. state machines where probabilities can be associated with transitions and rewards (costs) can be associated with states and transitions. Through probabilities we model assumptions on the behavior of environment in which an application is embedded. Rewards can instead model the cost assumptions involved in the system's operations. A system is designed to satisfy the requirements, under the given assumptions. Design-time assumptions, however, can turn out to be invalid at runtime, and therefore it is necessary to verify whether changes may lead to requirements violations. If they do, it is necessary to adapt the behavior in a self-healing manner to continue to satisfy the requirements. We have previously presented an approach to support efficient runtime probabilistic model checking of DTMCs for properties expressed in PCTL. In this paper we extend the approach to D-MRMs and reward properties. The benefits of the approach are justified both theoretically and empirically on significant test cases.
Understanding the older entrepreneur

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the prevalence of entrepreneurial activity amongst older people, and whether such activity may be an option for them to extend their working lives.Design/methodology/approach – Research was conducted amongst the Policy Voice database of respondents at the Institute of Directors, members who have volunteered their time to answer research questions on a variety of public policy issues. Undertaken electronically, a series of questions were asked of respondents relating to their age and business activities. Amplification by verbatim comments was requested, which gave qualitative context to the quantitative answers received. Over 1,200 responses to the survey were received.Findings – Starting, running or continuing in individual business or entrepreneurial activity would appear to be surprisingly commonplace amongst the research sample, suggesting that there might be more older entrepreneurs amongst the population as a whole than might have previously...
Challenges to Technological Advancement in Economically Weak Countries : An Assessment of the Nigerian Educational Situation T World

Nigeria is considered as one of the many countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a weak economy and gross deficiencies in technology and engineering. Available data from international monitoring and regulatory organizations show that technology is pivotal to determining the economic strengths of nations all over the world. Education is critical to technology acquisition, development, dissemination and adaptation. Thus, this paper seeks to critically assess and discuss issues and challenges facing technological advancement in Nigeria, particularly in the education sector, and also proffers solutions to resuscitate the Nigerian education system towards achieving national technological and economic sustainability such that Nigeria can compete favourably with other technologicallydriven economies of the world in the not-too-distant future. Keywords—Economically weak countries, education, globalization and competition, technological advancement.