LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
A randomised controlled trial of three or one breathing technique training sessions for breathlessness in people with malignant lung disease

BACKGROUND
About 90 % of patients with intra-thoracic malignancy experience breathlessness. Breathing training is helpful, but it is unknown whether repeated sessions are needed. The present study aims to test whether three sessions are better than one for breathlessness in this population.


METHODS
This is a multi-centre randomised controlled non-blinded parallel arm trial. Participants were allocated to three sessions or single (1:2 ratio) using central computer-generated block randomisation by an independent Trials Unit and stratified for centre. The setting was respiratory, oncology or palliative care clinics at eight UK centres. Inclusion criteria were people with intrathoracic cancer and refractory breathlessness, expected prognosis ≥3 months, and no prior experience of breathing training. The trial intervention was a complex breathlessness intervention (breathing training, anxiety management, relaxation, pacing, and prioritisation) delivered over three hour-long sessions at weekly intervals, or during a single hour-long session. The main primary outcome was worst breathlessness over the previous 24 hours ('worst'), by numerical rating scale (0 = none; 10 = worst imaginable). Our primary analysis was area under the curve (AUC) 'worst' from baseline to 4 weeks. All analyses were by intention to treat.


RESULTS
Between April 2011 and October 2013, 156 consenting participants were randomised (52 three; 104 single). Overall, the 'worst' score reduced from 6.81 (SD, 1.89) to 5.84 (2.39). Primary analysis [n = 124 (79 %)], showed no between-arm difference in the AUC: three sessions 22.86 (7.12) vs single session 22.58 (7.10); P value = 0.83); mean difference 0.2, 95 % CIs (-2.31 to 2.97). Complete case analysis showed a non-significant reduction in QALYs with three sessions (mean difference -0.006, 95 % CIs -0.018 to 0.006). Sensitivity analyses found similar results. The probability of the single session being cost-effective (threshold value of £20,000 per QALY) was over 80 %.


CONCLUSIONS
There was no evidence that three sessions conferred additional benefits, including cost-effectiveness, over one. A single session of breathing training seems appropriate and minimises patient burden.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
Registry: ISRCTN;


TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER
ISRCTN49387307; http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN49387307 ; registration date: 25/01/2011.
Feasibility of MicroRNAs as Biomarkers for Barrett's Esophagus Progression: A Pilot Cross-Sectional, Phase 2 Biomarker Study

OBJECTIVES:Risk stratification of Barrett's esophagus (BE) using biomarkers remains an important goal. We evaluated feasibility and clinical accuracy of novel microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers for prediction of BE dysplasia.METHODS:Paired fresh-frozen and hematoxylin/eosin specimens from a prospective tissue repository where only biopsies with the lesion of interest (i.e., intestinal metaplasia (IM) or high-grade dysplasia (HGD)/esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC)) occupying >50% of biopsy area were included. Tissue miRNA expression was determined by microarrays and validated by quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR). Three groups were compared—group A, IM tissues from BE patients without dysplasia; group B, IM tissues from group C patients; and group C, dysplastic tissues from BE patients with HGD/EAC.RESULTS:Overall, 22 BE patients, 11 with and without dysplasia (mean age 64±8.2 and 63±11.6 years, respectively, all Caucasian males) were evaluated. Nine miRNAs were identified by high-throughout analysis (miR-15b, -21, -192, -205, 486-5p, -584, -1246, let-7a, and -7d) and qRT-PCR confirmed expression of miR-15b, -21, 486-5p, and let-7a. Two of 4 miRNAs (miR-145 and -203, but not -196a and -375) previously described in BE patients also exhibited differential expression. Sensitivity and specificity of miRNAs for HGD/EAC were miR-15b: 87 and 80%, miR-21: 93 and 70%, miR-203: 87 and 90%, miR-486-5p: 82 and 55%, and miR-let-7a: 88 and 70%. MiRNA-15b, -21, and -203 exhibited field effects (i.e., groups A and B tissues while histologically similar yet exhibited different miRNA expression).CONCLUSIONS:This pilot study demonstrates feasibility of miRNAs to discriminate BE patients with and without dysplasia with reasonable clinical accuracy. However, the specific miRNAs need to be evaluated further in future prospective trials.
East of Wallaces Line: An Introduction

[Extract] This volume owes its inception to a symposium we convened on Magnetic Island in northern Queensland, Australia in 1997. It takes its title from Alfred Russell Wallace whose voyage through the Malay Archipelago (see Fig. 1) resulted in the recognition of the zoogeographic divide, running between Lombok and Bali; Borneo and Sulawesi, now known as Wallace's Line. 
 
'I have arrived at the conclusion that we can draw a line among the islands, which shall so divide them that one-half shall truly belong to Asia, while the other shall no less certainly be allied to Australia. I term these respectively the Indo-Malayan, and the Austro-Malayan divisions of the Archipelago.'(Wallace 1869: 21; see Fig. 1) 
 
While this line defined for Wallace two natural provinces that had evolved during a long history of separation and isolation, he recognized that it did not apply to the human occupants of the region. 'The reason why exactly the same line does not limit both is sufficiently intelligible. Man has means of transversing the sea which animals do not possess'(Wallace 1869: 30). Wallace inferred that 'maritime enterprise' had allowed people to travel between islands carrying with them their genes, language, cultural traits, domestic animals and crops. 
 
The papers in East of Wallace's Line deal with all facets of what Wallace (1869: 30) called 'maritime enterprise' - exploration, colonization, economy and subsistence. All papers focus on the regions of Island Southeast Asia known as Wallacea, Australia and New Guinea (Sahu!), Island Melanesia, and ultimately the colonization of the Pacific and Remote Oceania. In this part of the world maritime adaptations were, and are, essential to the process of colonization, human impacts on ecosystems, population viability on small islands, communication and trade. While the specific faunal distributions that prompted Wallace to draw his original line are not relevant to the papers here, the general issues of island biogeography and zoogeographic distributions play a significant part in the long term sustainability of occupation in many of these small islands following colonization.
Image segmentation based on maximum-likelihood estimation and optimum entropy-distribution (MLE-OED)

A novel method based on MLE–OED is proposed for unsupervised image segmentation of multiple objects with fuzzy edges. It adjusts the parameters of a mixture of Gaussian distributions via minimizing a new loss function. The loss function consists of two terms: a local content fitting term, which optimizes the entropy distribution, and a global statistical fitting term, which maximizes the likelihood of the parameters for the given data. The proposed segmentation method is validated by experiments on both synthetic and real images. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperformed two popular methods. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Geo-Location Estimation of Flickr Images: Social Web Based Enrichment

Estimating the geographic location of images is a task which has received a lot of attention in recent years. Large numbers of items uploaded to Flickr do not contain GPS-based latitude/longitude coordinates, although it would be beneficial to obtain such geographic information for a wide variety of potential applications such as travelogues and visual place descriptions. While most works in this area consider an image’s textual meta-data to estimate its geo-location, we consider an additional textual dimension: the image owner’s traces on the social Web, in particular on the micro-blogging platform Twitter. We investigate the following question: does enriching an image’s available textual meta-data with a user’s tweets improve the accuracy of the geographic location estimation process? The results show that this is indeed the case; in an oracle setting, the median error in kilometres decreases by 87%, in the best automatic approach the median error decreases by 56%.
Comparison of dietary phospholipids and neutral lipids on skeletal development and fatty acid composition in Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua)

Dietary essential fatty acids may affect larval skeletal formation. The aim of this study was to compare effects on growth and osteological development of dietary docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) being incorporated in the phospholipid (diets PL1 and PL3) or in the neutral lipid (diet NL1) fraction of the larval diet for Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). The diets were labelled according to the estimated percentage of total n−3 fatty acids contained in the dietary neutral lipid (NL1-1.3% of dietary dry matter) or in the phospholipid fraction (PL1-1.1% and PL3-2.3%). Larvae were weaned to the isoenergetic and isolipidic microdiets from 17 days post hatching (dph). They were co-fed enriched rotifers until 24 dph and received thereafter only the experimental diets until 45 dph (at 12 °C). Dry weight on 45 dph was significantly higher in the PL1and PL3-larvae (mean 2.74 ± 0.2 mg DW) than in the NL1-larvae (mean 2.17 ± 0.1 mg DW). Larvae fed the PL3-diet had a significantly higher DHA content than larvae from the other treatments. No differences were found in larval content of EPA and arachidonic acid (ARA). Larvae fed both PL-diets showed a significantly faster ossification of the vertebral column compared to larvae fed the NL1-diet, according to both larval size and age. On 45 dph, PL3-larvae also had a significantly higher number of fin rays than the other groups at comparable larval sizes. Deformities (mainly kyphosis and shortened vertebrae) were observed in 11% (all groups) of the larvae on 45 dph, with no significant differences among the groups. Ossification of the vertebral column in the cod larvae was first observed in the neural arches on the anterior part of the spine (21 dph, > 6.9 mm standard length, SL), followed by the vertebrae (25 dph, > 7.9 mm SL), haemal arches (31 dph, ≥ 8.4 mm SL) and parapophysis (35 dph, > 8.7 mm SL). Ossification of all vertebral elements was observed in 45-day-old larvae ≥ 11.4 mm SL. Large variations between larvae in number of ossifying structures between 31 and 35 dph demonstrated that this was the period of most rapid skeletal change (size range 8.2–11.4 mm SL), and that the ossification process was more susceptible to fatty acid lipid source rather than to quantity of dietary fatty acids. We suggest that an optimal dietary content of n−3 HUFA in feed for cod larvae is higher than in the PL1-diet.
Critical review of generic and dermatology-specific health-related quality of life instruments.

The measurement of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is increasingly important in patients with skin diseases. Despite the availability of a variety of instruments and new psychometric techniques, there is no consensus as to which HRQOL instruments are to be preferred in dermatology. The objective of this review is to evaluate the generic HRQOL measures (i.e., health profiles) that have been used in dermatology (Short-Form-36 (SF-36) and -12, NHP, SIP, World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL)-100 and -BREF) and all dermatology-specific HRQOL measures (Dermatology Life Questionnaire Index, Skindex-29, -16, and -17, Dermatology Quality of Life Scales, and Dermatology-Specific Quality of Life). Criteria for evaluation were adapted from existing guidelines and included conceptual and measurement model, reliability, validity, responsiveness, item functioning, meaning of scores, administrative burden, respondent burden, the availability of alternative forms, and of cultural and language adaptations. Furthermore, an overview of skin diseases in which the included HRQOL tools have been used is presented. Although the selection of the appropriate HRQOL instrument remains a trade-off between various psychometric properties and research objectives, for now, we recommend the combination of SF-36 and Skindex-29 as the instruments of choice in dermatology. Promising new instruments for future research are the WHOQOL and the Skindex-17.
Sequencing topotecan and etoposide plus cisplatin to overcome topoisomerase I and II resistance: a pharmacodynamically based Phase I trial.

PURPOSE
Resistance to topoisomerase (TOP) 1 and 2 inhibitors is a potentially important reason for treatment failure, and may be related, in part, to a down-regulation of the specific TOP target. Investigators in our laboratories previously noted such a down-regulation of the target, along with a reciprocal up-regulation of the alternate TOP. Therefore, sequencing TOP inhibitors may provide a means for overcoming resistance to the TOP I and II inhibitors. Furthermore, point mutations in TOP I, which confer resistance to TOP I inhibitors, were associated with collateral sensitivity to cisplatin.


EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
A dose escalating Phase I trial of topotecan (at doses of 0.75 to 1.0 mg/m(2)/day) on days 1 to 3 with etoposide (70-80 mg/m(2)/day) and cisplatin (20-25 mg/m(2)/day) on days 8 to 10. The timing of the drug sequence was based on the prior Phase I pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies of camptothecin and etoposide, and the level of the TOP targets in peripheral blood monocytes.


RESULTS
Fifteen patients (7 males and 8 females) received 40 courses of therapy across three dose levels. The median age was 56 (range, 39-77), and the median performance status was 1 (range, 0-2). The diagnoses included: non-small cell lung cancer (7), head and neck cancer (2), cancer of unknown primary (2), and 1 each of ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, gastric cancer, and renal cancer. Level 1 (topotecan 1.0 mg/m(2)/day; etoposide 80 mg/m(2)/day; and cisplatin 25 mg/m(2)/day) produced severe and prolonged febrile neutropenia in the first patient treated, and the subsequent patients were then entered onto a reduced dose level (cohort 2: topotecan 0.75 mg/m(2)/day; etoposide 70 mg/m(2)/day; and cisplatin 20 mg/m(2)/day). Three of 6 patients on cohort 2 experienced grade IV neutropenia >5 days, and a decision was then made to add filgrastim at 5 micro g/kg rather than additionally reduce the dosages (cohort 3). Eight patients were then treated on cohort 3, and 1 of the 8 patients experienced a grade 4 neutropenia. Thus, cohort level three was considered the recommended dose for Phase II studies. Twelve of the 15 patients had disease assessable for response to therapy. Seven achieved stable disease for >/==" BORDER="0">2 months, whereas 5 showed continued progression of their disease.


CONCLUSIONS
These data show that sequencing TOP 1 and 2 inhibitors is feasible, and topotecan 0.75 mg/m(2)/day days 1-3; etoposide 70 mg/m(2)/day days 8-10; and cisplatin 20 mg/m(2)/day days 8-10 with filgrastim at 5 micro g/kg is an appropriate dose and schedule to test the concept of modulating TOP levels by sequencing the administration of the respective TOP inhibitors.
Impact of Urban Economic Openness on Real Estate Prices: Evidence from Thirty-Five Cities in China

Article history: Received 10 December 2009 Received in revised form 25 August 2010 Accepted 26 August 2010 Available online 8 September 2010 Over the past decade, China's major cities have experienced significant real estate price increase which has been fueled by the sustained growth of the economic fundamentals. It is well believed that deeper integration with the world market is one of the major reasons for such high speed macroeconomic growth. In this paper, we examined the linkage between urban economic openness, the ratio of trade volume as a percentage of GDP, and urban real estate prices basing on the quality of life theory as well as Balassa–Samuelson (B–S) effects. Using panel data of 35 large Chinese cities from the year 1998 to 2006, we empirically find that for every 1% increase in urban economic openness, urban real estate prices will increase significantly by 0.282%, after controlling for other traditional demand–supply factors. Urban economic openness alone accounted for about 15.90% appreciations of Chinese real estate prices during the sample period, which is not neglectable. This result implies that urban real estate price fluctuations are potentially affected by international economic factors. The economic distance to the international market could be deemed as productive and consumption amenity for a city as well. This study enriches the perception of quality of life factors, and furthermore provides a new perspective for understanding the real estate price dynamics in the globalized economic development today. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Dynamics of the martial arts high front kick.

Fast unloaded movements (i.e. striking, throwing and kicking) are typically performed in a proximo-distal sequence, where initially high proximal segments accelerate while distal segments lag behind, after which proximal segments decelerate while distal segments accelerate. The aims of this study were to examine whether proximal segment deceleration is performed actively by antagonist muscles or is a passive consequence of distal segment movement, and whether distal segment acceleration is enhanced by proximal segment deceleration. Seventeen skilled taekwon-do practitioners were filmed using a high-speed camera while performing a high front kick. During kicking, EMG recordings were obtained from five major lower extremity muscles. Based on the kinematic data, inverse dynamics computations were performed yielding muscle moments and motion-dependent moments. The results indicated that thigh deceleration was caused by motion-dependent moments arising from lower leg motion and not by active deceleration. This was supported by the EMG recordings. Lower leg acceleration was caused partly by a knee extensor muscle moment and partly by a motion-dependent moment arising from thigh angular velocity. Thus, lower leg acceleration was not enhanced by thigh deceleration. On the contrary, thigh deceleration, although not desirable, is unavoidable because of lower leg acceleration.
Complex adaptive systems

Course Description: A graduate level introduction to selected topics in complex adaptive systems focusing on computational tools to simulate and measure complexity, and analysis of biological and social complex adaptive systems. Topics include definitions of complexity, cellular automata, evolution and genetic algorithms, dynamical systems, scaling and fractals, ant colonies and ant colony algorithms.
Locomotion and turning patterns of a peristaltic crawling earthworm robot composed of flexible units

An earthworm moves by peristaltic crawling, which propagates extension and contraction waves along the anteroposterior direction from the anterior to posterior part, by varying the thickness and length of its segments. This locomotion mechanism is in contact with a large area on the ground when the robot moves. Furthermore, the amount of space required is less than that for other locomotion mechanisms. Therefore, this mechanism is suitable for not only rescue robots but also exploration robots in the ground and automatic endoscopic robots. In this study, we developed a peristaltic robot with a flexible feature actuated by servomotors. We proposed different turning patterns. In addition, we confirmed that the robot could move not only on a plane surface but also in a tube. The experiments revealed good performance.
Optimization of in vitro expansion of human multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells for cell-therapy approaches: further insights in the search for a fetal calf serum substitute.

There is great interest in mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) for cell-therapy and tissue engineering approaches. MSCs are currently expanded in vitro in the presence of fetal calf serum (FCS); however, FCS raises concerns when used in clinical grade preparations. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether MSCs expanded in medium supplemented with platelet-lysate (PL), already shown to promote MSC growth, are endowed with biological properties appropriate for cell-therapy approaches. We confirm previously published data showing that MSCs expanded in either FCS or PL display comparable morphology, phenotype, and differentiation capacity, while PL-MSCs were superior in terms of clonogenic efficiency and proliferative capacity. We further extended these data by investigating the immune-regulatory effect of MSCs on the alloantigen-specific immune response in mixed lymphocyte culture (MLC). We found that MSCs-PL are comparable to MSCs-FCS in their capacity to: (i) decrease alloantigen-induced cytotoxic activity; (ii) favor differentiation of CD4+ T-cell subsets expressing a Treg phenotype; (iii) increase early secretion of IL-10 in MLC supernatant, as well as induce a striking augmentation of IL-6 production. As compared with MSCs-PL, MSCs-FCS were more efficient in suppressing alloantigen-induced lymphocyte subset proliferation and reducing early IFNgamma-secretion. Resistance to spontaneous transformation into tumor cells of expanded MSCs was demonstrated by molecular karyotyping and maintenance of normal morphology/phenotype after prolonged in vitro culture. Our data support the immunological functional plasticity of MSCs and suggest that MSCs-PL can be used as an alternative to MSCs-FCS, although these latter cells might be more suitable for preventing/treating alloreactivity-related immune complications.