LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Day surgery for breast cancer: effects of a psychoeducational telephone intervention on functional status and emotional distress.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To determine the efficacy of a nursing intervention based on self-regulation theory known as the Attentional Focus and Symptom Management Intervention (AFSMI) in enhancing physical and emotional well-being in women who underwent day surgery for breast cancer.


DESIGN
Randomized clinical block trial; subjects were randomly allocated to the experimental group (n = 61) or the usual care (control) group (n = 56). Subjects in the experimental group received the AFSMI during two phone sessions, at 3-4 days and 10-11 days after surgery.


SETTING
The convenience sample was drawn from five regional centers located in different geographic areas (urban and rural regions) in Quebec, Canada.


SAMPLE
117 patients with primary breast cancer who underwent day surgery as part of their initial treatment for cancer.


METHODS
Data collection and nursing intervention via telephone interviews.


MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Functional status and emotional distress.


FINDINGS
Significant differences between the experimental and control group were found at post-test on home management, total mood disturbance, confusion, and tension scores.


CONCLUSIONS
The AFSMI was effective in reducing emotional distress and enhancing physical functioning.


IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Findings validate the use of the self-regulation model in designing individualized nursing interventions. Redirecting attention and focusing on concrete objective features hold potential in developing other innovative nursing interventions.
Graphic Symbol Recognition: An Overview

Symbol recognition is one of the primary stages of any graphics recognition system. This paper reviews the current state of the art in graphic symbol recognition and raises some open issues that need further investigation. V~7ork on symbol recognition tends to be highly application specific. Therefore, this review presents the symbol recognition methods in the context of specific applications. 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n Conversion of information from its paper based graphical representation into intelligent computer data has been the topic of intensive research in the last decade. Symbol recognition is at the heart of most graphics recognition systems that have been developed or proposed. This paper presents a survey of symbol recognition methods and applications published in the last ten years. The Oxford Advanced Learner's dictionary defines the word 'symbol' as "image, object, etc. that suggests or refers to something else; emblem; mark or sign with a particular meaning, e.g. plus or minus signs in mathematics, punctuation marks, musical notation, etc." In the field of document analysis, however, the word symbol has often been used for alphanumeric characters as well. A survey of character recognition techniques is beyond the scope of this paper. In order to distinguish symbol recognition from character recognition, we use the term 'graphic symbol recognition'. The related area of diagram recognition, another topic of this session in the workshop, was reviewed thoroughly in a survey paper [1] at the last graphics recognition workshop [2, 3]. Drawing recognition was also reviewed in the last workshop [4]. The focus of this study is therefore limited to graphic symbol recognition. However, to provide a frame of reference for symbol recognition, we briefly discuss the various stages in a diagram/drawing recognition system. The first phase of any such system is the image preprocessing step. In this stage, operations such as noise removal, binarization, and thinning are performed. The second stage performs detection of graphical primitives such as lines, arcs, text regions, etc. The symbol recognition stage most often uses graphical primitives as inputs; in some systems, symbol recognition is performed directly using the raw or preprocessed image. The syntactic phase imposes a grammar on the recognized graphical symbols and primitives. In the semantic phase, meaningful information is extracted from the syntactically correct set of symbols and primitives.
Pharmacokinetic evaluation of rifabutin in combination with lopinavir-ritonavir in patients with HIV infection and active tuberculosis.

BACKGROUND
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated tuberculosis is difficult to treat, given the propensity for drug interactions between the rifamycins and the antiretroviral drugs. We examined the pharmacokinetics of rifabutin before and after the addition of lopinavir-ritonavir.


METHODS
We analyzed 10 patients with HIV infection and active tuberculosis in a state tuberculosis hospital. Plasma was collected for measurement of rifabutin, the microbiologically active 25-desacetyl-rifabutin, and lopinavir by validated high-performance liquid chromatography assays. Samples were collected 2-4 weeks after starting rifabutin at 300 mg thrice weekly without lopinavir-ritonavir, 2 weeks after the addition of lopinavir-ritonavir at 400 and 100 mg, respectively, twice daily to rifabutin at 150 mg thrice weekly, and (if rifabutin plasma concentrations were below the normal range) 2 weeks after an increase in rifabutin to 300 mg thrice weekly with lopinavir-ritonavir. Noncompartmental and population pharmacokinetic analyses (2-compartment open model) were performed.


RESULTS
Rifabutin at 300 mg without lopinavir-ritonavir produced a low maximum plasma concentration (C(max)) in 5 of 10 patients. After the addition of lopinavir-ritonavir to rifabutin at 150 mg, 9 of 10 had low C(max) values. Eight patients had dose increases to 300 mg of rifabutin with lopinavir-ritonavir. Most free rifabutin (unbound to plasma protein) C(max) values were below the tuberculosis minimal inhibitory concentration. For most patients, values for the area under the plasma concentration-time curve were as low or lower than those associated with treatment failure or relapse and with acquired rifamycin resistance in Tuberculosis Trials Consortium/US Public Health Service Study 23. One of the 10 patients experienced relapse with acquired rifamycin resistance.


CONCLUSION
The recommended rifabutin doses for use with lopinavir-ritonavir may be inadequate in many patients. Monitoring of plasma concentrations is recommended.
Evaluation of the patient generated index as a measure of quality-of-life in people with severe traumatic brain injury.

OBJECTIVES
Quality-of-life (QoL) measures may be useful in quantifying the personal impact of an acquired brain injury and as an indicator of the effectiveness of service provision. This study investigated the validity of the patient generated index (PGI) as a measure of QoL with a sample of adults who had sustained a severe traumatic brain injury.


METHOD
Fifty-five participants with an acquired brain injury were selected from four regional rehabilitation centres. Each participant completed validated questionnaires measuring subjective satisfaction with life, community integration, emotional distress, socially desirable responding and the patient generated index.


RESULTS
The criterion-related validity of the PGI was demonstrated through a statistically significant positive correlation with life satisfaction. Evidence of construct validity was observed through significant correlations with measures of emotional distress and community integration. Depression had a strong negative association with QoL. Social desirability correlated significantly with both indices of QoL, suggesting that this variable may be treated as a covariate.


CONCLUSION
The results offer some preliminary evidence for the validity of the PGI as a measure of QoL in people with severe brain injury.
A survey of network virtualization

Due to the existence of multiple stakeholders with conflicting goals and policies, alterations to the existing Internet architecture are now limited to simple incremental updates; deployment of any new, radically different technology is next to impossible. To fend off this ossification, network virtualization has been propounded as a diversifying attribute of the future inter-networking paradigm. By introducing a plurality of heterogeneous network architectures cohabiting on a shared physical substrate, network virtualization promotes innovations and diversified applications. In this paper, we survey the existing technologies and a wide array of past and state-of-the-art projects on network virtualization followed by a discussion of major challenges in this area. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A comparative study on the mineralogy, chemistry and chronology of the Apollo 16 crystalline impact melt breccias. Part II: Chronology.

The controversy on how to interpret the ages of lunar highland breccias has recently been discussed by James [1]. Are the measured ages testimony of true events in lunar history; do they represent the age of the ancient crustal rocks, mixed ages of unequilibrated matrix-phenocryst relationships, or merely thermal events subsequent to the formational event ? It is certain from analyses of terrestrial impact melt breccias that the melt matrix of whole impact melt sheets is isotopically equilibrated due to the extensive mixing process of the early cratering stage [2,3]. It has been shown that isotopic equilibration takes place between impact melt matrix and target rock clasts therein, with the intensity of isotopic exchange depending on the degree of shock metamorphism, thermal metamorphism and the size of the clasts [4]. Therefore, impact melt breccias - if they are relatively clast-poor and mineralogically well studied - can be considered to be the most reliable source for information on the impact history of the lunar highland.
A new variable-speed AC generator system using brushless self-excited type synchronous machine

A new variable speed synchronous generator system is proposed. The system consists of a brushless self-excited type of synchronous machine and a voltage source PWM frequency changer. In the generator, the field current is obtained by superimposing another field on the stator rotating field, which is achieved by control of a PWM power converter, so that AC voltages are induced and half-rectified in rotor field windings. Neither an exciter nor additional exciting equipment is required for this generator. In order to superimpose the additional field on the stator field, two modulation schemes for the PWM converter of the frequency changer are given and the characteristics of this generation system are discussed on the basis of simulation and experimental results.<<ETX>>
Recognition of human activities using SVM multi-class classifier

Even great efforts have been made for decades, the recognition of human activities is still an unmature technology that attracted plenty of people in computer vision. In this paper, a system framework is presented to recognize multiple kinds of activities from videos by an SVM multi-class classifier with a binary tree architecture. The framework is composed of three functionally cascaded modules: (a) detecting and locating people by non-parameter background subtraction approach, (b) extracting various of features such as local ones from the minimum bounding boxes of human blobs in each frames and a newly defined global one, contour coding of the motion energy image (CCMEI), and (c) recognizing activities of people by SVM multi-class classifier whose structure is determined by a clustering process. The thought of hierarchical classification is introduced and multiple SVMs are aggregated to accomplish the recognition of actions. Each SVM in the multi-class classifier is trained separately to achieve its best classification performance by choosing proper features before they are aggregated. Experimental results both on a homebrewed activity data set and the public Schüldt’s data set show the perfect identification performance and high robustness of the system. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Effect of lameness on sow longevity.

OBJECTIVE
To analyze the association of lameness and performance variables on sow longevity by use of time-to-event analysis.


DESIGN
Cohort study.


ANIMALS
674 sows from a commercial breeding herd.


PROCEDURES
A lameness assessment was performed on each sow. Data on farrowing performance and longevity were collected for the sows during 3 or fewer parities from the database of the herd during 2005 and 2006. The association of risk factors with sow longevity within 350 days after lameness assessment was analyzed via Cox regression analysis. Pigs per day, total production days, and survival at 350 days after lameness evaluation were compared between lame and nonlame sows.


RESULTS
Numbers of preweaning baby pig deaths, stillborn pigs, and mummified pigs were negatively associated with sow longevity within 350 days after lameness assessment. A higher number of pigs born alive and younger parity of sows were protective. Lame sows had a higher risk (1.710 times as high) of removal from the herd within 350 days after lameness assessment. The number of pigs born alive per day, survival of sows at 350 days, and total number of days in the herd were lower in lame sows.


CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Results of this study indicated significant differences in the survivability of lame and nonlame sows in a commercial herd. Parity and farrowing performance variables were factors influencing sow longevity in this herd. Producers need to minimize sow lameness and remove lame sows from a herd early (when treatment is not an option) to minimize economic loss.
Empirical Evidence on the Relationship between Stock Market Volatility and Macroeconomics Volatility in Malaysia

The relationship between the volatility of stock market returns and macroeconomic volatilities has been a focus of many empirical studies. Many studies were conducted to examine this relationship based on the data from developed markets, and only few were carried out in the case of emerging market. Several methods have been used to measure volatility empirically. Recently, many studies have used conditional variance and GARCH models to estimate volatility. This paper examines the relationship between stock market returns volatility in Malaysia with five selected macroeconomic volatilities; GDP, inflation, exchange rate, interest rates, and money supply based on monthly data from January 2000 to June 2012. The volatility in this paper was estimated using GARCH(1,1) models, and the relationship between stock market volatility and macroeconomic volatilities has been examined using bi-variate and multivariate VAR Granger causality tests as well as through regression analysis. We found little support on the existence of the relationship between stock market volatility and macroeconomic volatilities. Only volatility in inflation was found to be Granger-caused stock market volatility, while out of five macroeconomic variables, only volatility in interest rates was found Granger-caused stock market volatility. The volatilities of macroeconomic variables as a group also does not Granger cause volatility in stock market returns. The result from regression analysis shows that only money supply volatility is significantly related to stock market volatility. The volatilities of macroeconomic variables as a group are also not significantly related to stock market volatility. The weak relationship between stock market volatility and macroeconomic volatilities is possible due to lack of institutional investors in the market, and may also indicate the existence of information asymmetry problem among investors.
Calcium transients in astrocyte endfeet cause cerebrovascular constrictions

Cerebral blood flow (CBF) is coupled to neuronal activity and is imaged in vivo to map brain activation. CBF is also modified by afferent projection fibres that release vasoactive neurotransmitters in the perivascular region, principally on the astrocyte endfeet that outline cerebral blood vessels. However, the role of astrocytes in the regulation of cerebrovascular tone remains uncertain. Here we determine the impact of intracellular Ca2+ concentrations ([Ca2+]i) in astrocytes on the diameter of small arterioles by using two-photon Ca2+ uncaging to increase [Ca2+]i. Vascular constrictions occurred when Ca2+ waves evoked by uncaging propagated into the astrocyte endfeet and caused large increases in [Ca2+]i. The vasoactive neurotransmitter noradrenaline increased [Ca2+]i in the astrocyte endfeet, the peak of which preceded the onset of arteriole constriction. Depressing increases in astrocyte [Ca2+]i with BAPTA inhibited the vascular constrictions in noradrenaline. We find that constrictions induced in the cerebrovasculature by increased [Ca2+]i in astrocyte endfeet are generated through the phospholipase A2–arachidonic acid pathway and 20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid production. Vasoconstriction by astrocytes is a previously unknown mechanism for the regulation of CBF.
A prospective study of supraventricular activity and incidence of atrial fibrillation.

BACKGROUND
Atrial fibrillation (AF) episodes are thought to be started by an electrical trigger reaching susceptible atria. Such a trigger could be present long before the occurrence of sustained symptomatic arrhythmia.


OBJECTIVE
We sought to determine whether supraventricular extrasystoles (SVESs) and supraventricular tachycardias (SVTs) measured at 24-hour Holter electrocardiogram were associated with an increased incidence of AF.


METHODS
In 1998-2000, 389 individuals (44% men; mean age 65 years) were examined using 24-hour Holter electrocardiogram. Six individuals with known prevalent AF were excluded. After a mean follow-up of 10.3 years, there were 45 cases of incident AF. Hazard ratios (HRs) were computed using multivariable Cox regression adjusting for age, sex, systolic blood pressure, height, weight, smoking, and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance.


RESULTS
Frequency of SVESs as well as SVT episodes per hour were independent predictors of incident AF (HR per log unit 1.38; 95% confidence interval 1.14-1.68; P = .001 and HR 1.95; 95% confidence interval 1.21-3.13; P = .006, respectively). Further adjustment for education level, alcohol use, use of medication, and physical activity did not substantially alter the results, nor did analysis using competing risks regression accounting for a competing risk of death. The maximum duration of SVT or the heart rate at SVT was not significantly associated with the incidence of AF.


CONCLUSION
SVESs and SVTs independently predict AF. The prognostic significance was similar for SVESs, SVTs, and a combination of the two. Repeated efforts to detect AF could be of merit in individuals with frequent supraventricular activity.
An On-Chip Loopback Block for RF Transceiver Built-In Test

This brief addresses the realization of an on-chip block for built-in testing of RF transceivers with the loopback method. Design issues and measurement results are discussed, giving practical insights into closing the signal path between transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) sections. The circuit is intended for cost-efficient production testing of RF front-end blocks with on-chip power detectors and bit-error-rate analysis at baseband frequencies for integrated transceivers operating in the 1.9- to 2.4-GHz range. It can provide 40-200 MHz Tx-Rx frequency shifting and 26-42 dB continuous attenuation while consuming a 0.052-mm2 die area in 0.13-mum CMOS technology and ~ 12 mW of power when activated in test mode.
Land ownership security in Malawi.

This study examines factors that determine land ownership security among households in the rural areas (customary tenure sector) in Malawi. A framework for understanding land ownership security in the customary sector is proposed and using empirical data from different parts of Malawi, logistic regression analysis shows that the developed framework helps to explain land ownership security in practice. Though land ownership insecurity is almost negligible in the studied areas, this study has found that households that are categorized by the framework as non-indigenous (the weakest category of the four) are associated with a higher likelihood of feeling land tenure insecurity than the other categories (indigenous, weakly indigenous, absolutely indigenous). The modes of land acquisition, years that one resides in a community and gender of the household head also do determine land tenure security and women are found to be relatively land tenure secure than men. This study argues that outcomes from studies seeking to examine the link between land tenure security and land use efficiency in Malawi may become clearer if the developed framework or its variants are used to model the influence of customary land access systems on land ownership security because titling/no titling dummy variables do not say much about land ownership security in areas where customary systems dominate. Since women have a higher probability of feeling land tenure secure in matrilineal systems, development projects should endeavour to empower them as well so that they may equally participate in household level decision making as this would help them effectively use their land even in cases where their husbands feel land tenure insecure and hence withdraw their expertise from production. Again, the traditional system of land transfer is found to be resilient and this leads to questions about whether land titling could be an urgent need for people in the studied areas.
Automatic collision avoidance using model-predictive online optimization

In many traffic emergency situations a collision cannot be prevented by braking alone. Therefore, we propose an obstacle avoidance algorithm that simultaneously optimizes steering and braking. As an emergency scenario approaches the driving limits, a strong nonlinear constraint between braking and cornering develops, suggesting the formulation of a nonlinear constrained online optimization. On this account the proposed algorithm embarks on the nonlinear model-predictive control (NMPC) paradigm, which is capable of solving the optimization problem online. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated in a simulated pedestrian collision avoidance scenario.