LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Total Fluid and Water Consumption and the Joint Effect of Exposure to Disinfection By-Products on Risk of Bladder Cancer

BACKGROUND
Findings on water and total fluid intake and bladder cancer are inconsistent; this may, in part, be due to different levels of carcinogens in drinking water. High levels of arsenic and chlorinated by-products in drinking water have been associated with elevated bladder cancer risk in most studies. A pooled analysis based on six case-control studies observed a positive association between tap water and bladder cancer but none for nontap fluid intake, suggesting that contaminants in tap water may be responsible for the excess risk.


OBJECTIVES
We examined the association between total fluid and water consumption and bladder cancer risk, as well as the interaction between water intake and trihalomethane (THM) exposure, in a large case-control study in Spain.


METHODS
A total of 397 bladder cancer cases and 664 matched controls were available for this analysis. Odds ratios (OR) were estimated using unconditional logistic regression, controlling for potential confounders.


RESULTS
Total fluid intake was associated with a decrease in bladder cancer risk [OR = 0.62; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.40-0.95 for highest vs. lowest quintile comparison]. A significant inverse association was observed for water intake (for > 1,399 vs. < 400 mL/day, OR = 0.47; 95% CI, 0.33-0.66; p for trend < 0.0001), but not for other individual beverages. The inverse association between water intake and bladder cancer persisted within each level of THM exposure; we found no statistical interaction (p for interaction = 0.13).


CONCLUSION
Findings from this study suggest that water intake is inversely associated with bladder cancer risk, regardless of THM exposure level.
MR lymphangiography in the treatment of lymphedema.

Lymphedema is a common condition frequently seen in cancer patients who have had lymph node dissection +/- radiation treatment. Traditional management is mainly non-surgical and unsatisfactory. Surgical treatment has relied on excisional techniques in the past. Physiologic operations have more recently been devised to help improve this condition. Assessing patients and deciding which of the available operations to offer them can be challenging. MRI is an extremely useful tool in patient assessment and treatment planning. J. Surg. Oncol. 2017;115:18-22. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Participation in medical decision-making: Attitudes of Italians with multiple sclerosis

BACKGROUND
Patient involvement in decisions regarding their care has been advocated, but preferences have not been adequately canvassed, particularly in people with multiple sclerosis (MS).


OBJECTIVES
To cross-culturally adapt and validate the Italian version of the Control Preference Scale (CPS) subsequently used to assess preferences of people with MS.


METHODS
Translation-adaptation into Italian of CPS from the original Canadian English followed by administration in 140 people with MS from five Italian centers (with re-administration in 35) and semi-structured interview.


RESULTS
Cross-cultural adaptation of CPS was successful. The 140 people with MS, who varied in clinical and general characteristics, considered the CPS clear and acceptable. Test-retest reliability was moderate (weighted Kappa 0.65; p<0.001). A collaborative role was preferred (61%), followed by passive (33%) and active (6%) roles. Education (odds ratio [OR] 2.43, 95% confidence limits [CI] 1.05-5.66) and length of follow-up at referral center (OR 0.36, 95% CI 0.14-0.92) were associated with choice of an active/collaborative role in the logistic model.


CONCLUSIONS
The Italian CPS was well accepted by our MS population. Our data indicate that a high proportion of Italians with MS prefer a more passive role and this should be considered during the clinical encounter.
27.4 A 0.35mW 12b 100MS/s SAR-assisted digital slope ADC in 28nm CMOS

In recent years, the operation speed of SAR ADCs has improved with the scaling of CMOS technology. SAR ADCs achieve a few hundreds of MS/s with 8-to-10b resolution. The SNR of high-speed SAR ADCs is mainly dominated by comparator noise and usually limited to 50 to 60dB. The power consumption increases exponentially to suppress comparator noise in a limited comparison time to improve SNR. Noise-tolerant SAR ADCs [1] reduce comparator power in the first few bit cycles by using a coarse comparator. However, the fine comparator in the remaining bit cycles still consumes significant power to achieve an SNR greater than 60dB. SAR-assisted pipelined ADCs [2,3] do not require a low-noise comparator, but design restrictions in advanced CMOS processes make high-performance amplifier design challenging. Using a low-gain or a dynamic amplifier induces gain errors between stages. Besides, the amplifier and back-end stages result in extra noise and area. Digital-slope ADCs [4] are inherently low-noise by quantizing the signal in the time domain, but the hardware cost grows exponentially with resolution and the maximum conversion rate is halved with each additional bit of resolution. Hence this ADC type is unattractive for resolutions higher than 8b. This paper reports a 12b hybrid ADC combining a 7b low-power SAR coarse ADC with a 6b low-noise digital-slope fine ADC. The 100MS/s ADC achieves 64.43dB SNDR at Nyquist input with 0.35mW from a 0.9V supply.
Reverse mathematics and well-ordering principles: A pilot study

Abstract The larger project broached here is to look at the generally Π 2 1 sentence “if X is well-ordered then f ( X ) is well-ordered” , where f is a standard proof-theoretic function from ordinals to ordinals. It has turned out that a statement of this form is often equivalent to the existence of countable coded ω -models for a particular theory T f whose consistency can be proved by means of a cut elimination theorem in infinitary logic which crucially involves the function f . To illustrate this theme, we prove in this paper that the statement “if X is well-ordered then e X is well-ordered” is equivalent to ACA 0 + . This was first proved by Marcone and Montalban [Alberto Marcone, Antonio Montalban, The epsilon function for computability theorists, draft, 2007] using recursion-theoretic and combinatorial methods. The proof given here is principally proof-theoretic, the main techniques being Schutte’s method of proof search (deduction chains) [Kurt Schutte, Proof Theory, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1977] and cut elimination for a (small) fragment of L ω 1 , ω .
Guillain-Barré syndrome and Zika virus outbreaks.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW
Arboviruses have been associated with central and peripheral nervous system injuries, in special the flaviviruses. Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), transverse myelitis, meningoencephalitis, ophthalmological manifestations, and other neurological complications have been recently associated to Zika virus (ZIKV) infection. In this review, we aim to analyze the epidemiological aspects, possible pathophysiology, and what we have learned about the clinical and laboratory findings, as well as treatment of patients with ZIKV-associated neurological complications.


RECENT FINDINGS
In the last decades, case series have suggested a possible link between flaviviruses and development of GBS. Recently, large outbreaks of ZIKV infection in Asia and the Americas have led to an increased incidence of GBS in these territories. Rapidly, several case reports and case series have reported an increase of all clinical forms and electrophysiological patterns of GBS, also including cases with associated central nervous system involvement. Finally, cases suggestive of acute transient polyneuritis, as well as acute and progressive postinfectious neuropathies associated to ZIKV infection have been reported, questioning the usually implicated mechanisms of neuronal injury.


SUMMARY
The recent ZIKV outbreaks have triggered the occurrence of a myriad of neurological manifestations likely associated to this arbovirosis, in special GBS and its variants.
Dense Multi-path U-Net for Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation in Multiple Image Modalities

Delineating infarcted tissue in ischemic stroke lesions is crucial to determine the extend of damage and optimal treatment for this life-threatening condition. However, this problem remains challenging due to high variability of ischemic strokes’ location and shape. Recently, fully-convolutional neural networks (CNN), in particular those based on U-Net [27], have led to improved performances for this task [7]. In this work, we propose a novel architecture that improves standard U-Net based methods in three important ways. First, instead of combining the available image modalities at the input, each of them is processed in a different path to better exploit their unique information. Moreover, the network is densely-connected (i.e., each layer is connected to all following layers), both within each path and across different paths, similar to HyperDenseNet [11]. This gives our model the freedom to learn the scale at which modalities should be processed and combined. Finally, inspired by the Inception architecture [32], we improve standard U-Net modules by extending inception modules with two convolutional blocks with dilated convolutions of different scale. This helps handling the variability in lesion sizes. We split the 93 stroke datasets into training and validation sets containing 83 and 9 examples respectively. Our network was trained on a NVidia TITAN XP GPU with 16 GBs RAM, using ADAM as optimizer and a learning rate of 1×10−5 during 200 epochs. Training took around 5 hours and segmentation of a whole volume took between 0.2 and 2 seconds, as average. The performance on the test set obtained by our method is compared to several baselines, to demonstrate the effectiveness of our architecture, and to a state-of-art architecture that employs factorized dilated convolutions, i.e., ERFNet [26].
Qualitative Treatment-Subgroup Interactions in a Randomized Clinical Trial of Treatments for Adolescents with ADHD: Exploring What Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Works for Whom.

OBJECTIVE
This study explored qualitative treatment-subgroup interactions within data of a RCT with two cognitive behavioral treatments (CBT) for adolescents with ADHD: a planning-focused (PML) and a solution-focused CBT (SFT). Qualitative interactions imply that which treatment is best differs across subgroups of patients, and are therefore most relevant for personalized medicine.


METHODS
Adolescents with ADHD (N = 159) received either PML or SFT. Pre-, post- and three-month follow-up data were gathered on parent-rated ADHD symptoms and planning problems. Pretreatment characteristics were explored as potential qualitative moderators of pretest to follow-up treatment effects, using an innovative analyses technique (QUINT; Dusseldorp & Van Mechelen, 2014). In addition, qualitative treatment-subgroup interactions for the therapeutic changes from pre- to posttest and from post- to follow-up test were investigated.


RESULTS
For the entire time span from pretest to follow-up only a quantitative interaction was found, while from posttest to follow-up qualitative interactions were found: Adolescents with less depressive symptoms but more anxiety symptoms showed more improvement when receiving PML than SFT, while for other adolescents the effects of PML and SFT were comparable.


DISCUSSION
Whereas subgroups in both treatments followed different trajectories, no subgroup was found for which SFT outperformed PML in terms of the global change in symptoms from pretest to three months after treatment. This implies that, based on this exploratory study, there is no need for personalized treatment allocation with regard to the CBTs under study for adolescents with ADHD. However, for a subgroup with comorbid anxiety symptoms but low depression PML clearly appears the treatment of preference.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
Nederlands Trial Register NTR2142.
Mental practice with motor imagery in stroke recovery: randomized controlled trial of efficacy

This randomized controlled trial evaluated the therapeutic benefit of mental practice with motor imagery in stroke patients with persistent upper limb motor weakness. There is evidence to suggest that mental rehearsal of movement can produce effects normally attributed to practising the actual movements. Imagining hand movements could stimulate restitution and redistribution of brain activity, which accompanies recovery of hand function, thus resulting in a reduced motor deficit. Current efficacy evidence for mental practice with motor imagery in stroke is insufficient due to methodological limitations. This randomized controlled sequential cohort study included 121 stroke patients with a residual upper limb weakness within 6 months following stroke (on average <3 months post-stroke). Randomization was performed using an automated statistical minimizing procedure. The primary outcome measure was a blinded rating on the Action Research Arm test. The study analysed the outcome of 39 patients involved in 4 weeks of mental rehearsal of upper limb movements during 45-min supervised sessions three times a week and structured independent sessions twice a week, compared to 31 patients who performed equally intensive non-motor mental rehearsal, and 32 patients receiving normal care without additional training. No differences between the treatment groups were found at baseline or outcome on the Action Research Arm Test (ANCOVA statistical P=0.77, and effect size partial η2=0.005) or any of the secondary outcome measures. Results suggest that mental practice with motor imagery does not enhance motor recovery in patients early post-stroke. In light of the evidence, it remains to be seen whether mental practice with motor imagery is a valid rehabilitation technique in its own right.
Design of secure digital communication systems using chaotic modulation, cryptography and chaotic synchronization

This paper presents a secure digital communication system based on chaotic modulation, cryptography, and chaotic synchronization techniques. The proposed system consists of a Chaotic Modulator (CM), a Chaotic Secure Transmitter (CST), a Chaotic Secure Receiver (CSR) and a Chaotic Demodulator (CDM). The CM module incorporates a chaotic system and a novel Chaotic Differential Peaks Keying (CDPK) modulation scheme to generate analog patterns corresponding to the input digital bits. The CST and CSR modules are designed such that a single scalar signal is transmitted in the public channel. Furthermore, by giving certain structural conditions of a particular class of chaotic system, the CST and the nonlinear observer-based CSR with an appropriate observer gain are constructed to synchronize with each other. These two slave systems are driven simultaneously by the transmitted signal and are designed to synchronize and generate appropriate cryptography keys for encryption and decryption purposes. In the CDM module, a nonlinear observer is designed to estimate the chaotic modulating system in the CM. A demodulation mechanism is then applied to decode the transmitted input digital bits. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated through the numerical simulation of an illustrative communication system. Synchronization between the chaotic circuits of the transmitter and receiver modules is guaranteed through the Lyapunov stability theorem. Finally, the security features of the proposed system in the event of attack by an intruder in either the time domain or the frequency domain are discussed. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A comparative effectiveness study of patient-rated and radiographic outcome after 2 types of decompression with fusion for spondylotic myelopathy: anterior cervical discectomy versus corpectomy.

OBJECT
Both anterior cervical discectomy with fusion (ACDF) and anterior cervical corpectomy with fusion (ACCF) are used to treat cervical spondylotic myelopathy; however, there is currently no evidence for the superiority of one over the other in terms of patient-rated outcomes. This comparative effectiveness study compared the patient-rated and radiographic outcomes of 2-level ACDF versus 1-level ACCF.


METHODS
This single-center study was nested within the EuroSpine Spine Tango data acquisition system. Inclusion criteria were the following: consecutive patients presenting with signs of cervical spondylotic myelopathy who underwent 2-level ACDF or 1-level ACCF between 2004 and 2011. Before and 12 months after surgery, patients completed the multidimensional Core Outcome Measures Index (COMI) and also rated global treatment outcome and satisfaction with care on 5-point Likert scales. Cervical lordosis, segmental height, and fusion rate were assessed radiographically before and immediately after surgery and at the last follow-up (20.4 ± 13.7 months, mean ± SD).


RESULTS
In total, 118 consecutive patients (80 in the ACDF group and 38 in the ACCF group) were included. Age, sex, comorbidity, baseline symptoms, baseline radiographic data, operation duration, and complication rates did not differ significantly between the 2 groups. Blood loss was significantly (p < 0.04) lower in the ACDF group. Postoperative mean segmental height was significantly (p = 0.0006) greater for ACDF (42.0 ± 4.2 mm, mean ± SD) than for ACCF (39.0 ± 4.0 mm), and global average lordosis improved to a significantly (p = 0.003) greater extent in ACDF (by 1.6° ± 4.1°) than in ACCF (by -1.0° ± 4.0°). Fusion rates for ACDF were 97.5% and for ACCF were 94.7% (p = 0.59). The 12-month patient-rated outcomes did not differ significantly between ACDF and ACCF: 82.4% and 68.6% had a good global outcome (operation helped/helped a lot) (p = 0.10), 86.5% and 82.9% were satisfied/very satisfied with care (p = 0.62), and the reduction in the multidimensional COMI was 2.8 ± 2.7 and 2.2 ± 3 points (p = 0.30), respectively. The postoperative increase in lordosis angle showed low but significant correlations with the improvement in arm pain (r = 0.25, p = 0.014), highest pain (r = 0.25, p = 0.013), and function (r = 0.24, p = 0.016).


CONCLUSIONS
Both ACDF and ACCF are safe and effective in the treatment of cervical spondylotic myelopathy, indicated by similarly good patient-rated outcomes 1 year after surgery. This precludes any conclusions regarding the superiority of one technique over the other, although it should be noted that ACDF resulted in less blood loss and greater improvements in cervical lordosis and segmental height than ACCF. Patients with improved lordosis angle had a better clinical outcome.
Shaping the Future: The Dialectic of Law and Environmental Values

IN TRO D U CTIO N ................................................................................................ 234 I. THE LAW -VALUE DIALECTIC .............................................................. 235 A . The Im portance of Values ............................................................. 236 B. The Continuing Importance of Law ............................................. 239 C. Law and Dynam ic Values ............................................................ 241 II. V ALUE D EVELOPM ENT ........................................................................ 241 A. Development of General Moral Capacity ..................................... 242 B. Development of Environmental Values ....................................... 244 1. Direct Environmental Values and Affection for N atu re ................................................................................... 244 2. Indirect Environmental Values ......................................... 249 III. VALUE IMPLEMENTATION: BUILDING A SENSE OF INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY AND RESPONSIBILITY ......................................................... 253 IV. LESSONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ............................................ 256 A . Provide Easy Access to Nature .................................................... 256 B. Encourage Robust Public Discussion of Values .......................... 260 C. Highlight the Impacts of Individual Choices ................................ 263 D. Use M arket Strategies with Care ................................................. 265 C O N CLU SIO N ................................................................................................... 267
The prevalence and impact of fibroids and their treatment on the outcome of pregnancy in women with recurrent miscarriage.

BACKGROUND
Although uterine fibroids have been associated with spontaneous miscarriage, to our knowledge there have been no studies in the literature assessing their role in the recurrent miscarriage (RM) population. The aims of this study are to examine the impact of different types of fibroids on the pregnancy outcome of women with RM and to investigate to what extent resection of fibroids distorting the uterine cavity affects the outcome of a future pregnancy.


METHODS
The study analysed retrospective and prospective data from a large tertiary referral RM clinic. Couples were investigated as per an established protocol. Fibroids were diagnosed using combined transvaginal ultrasound and hysterosalpingography. Fibroids distorting the uterine cavity were resected via hysteroscopy. Two study groups were subsequently examined: women with cavity-distorting fibroids who underwent surgery (n =25) and women with fibroids not distorting the cavity who did not undergo any intervention (n =54). The latter was compared with a control group of women with unexplained RM (n =285).


RESULTS
The prevalence of fibroids was found to be 8.2% (79/966). In total, 264 pregnancies of women with fibroids and 936 pregnancies of women with unexplained RM were analysed. Women with intracavitary distortion and undergoing myomectomy significantly reduced their mid-trimester miscarriage rates in subsequent pregnancies from 21.7 to 0% (P< 0.01). This translated to an increase in the live birth rate from 23.3 to 52.0% (P< 0.05). Women with fibroids not distorting the cavity behaved similarly to women with unexplained RM achieving a 70.4% live birth rate in their subsequent pregnancies without any intervention.


CONCLUSIONS
Fibroids are associated with increased mid-trimester losses amongst women with RM. Resection of fibroids distorting the uterine cavity can eliminate the mid-trimester losses and double the live birth rate in subsequent pregnancies. Women with fibroids not distorting the uterine cavity can achieve high live birth rates without intervention.
8-Loop Antenna Array in the 5 Inches Size Smartphone for 5G Communication the 3.4 GHz-3.6 GHz Band MIMO Operation

This dissertation proposes a design and architecture of eight loop antennas proposed in a limited space, a 3.5 GHz band (3.4 GHz-3.6 GHz) for 5G communication [1], and a multi-input multiple-output (MIMO) smartphone. In the limited space of a simulated 5 inches screen smartphone, taking into account of the cell phone battery and LCD screens and electronic components may affect the antenna, the surrounding environment is defined as copper metal ground. The overall size of the smartphone is 70 × 145 × 8 mm3 and is designed for an antenna range of 10 × 55 × 5 mm3 and 10 × 100 × 5 mm3, the single designed loop antenna volume is 14.2 × 9.4 mm2 suitable for as the 5G smart phone embedded antenna. Three and five loop antennas are placed on the top of the FR4 board in a stacking manner of two sides. For these 8 proposed loop antenna with enough bandwidth of the band 3.4-3.6 GHz [2], return losses S11 to S88 Spec. < −6 dB, mutually acceptable isolation approximately 15 dB, the correlation value ECC (Envelope Correlation Coefficient) of any two antennas less than 0.2 [3], the single loop antenna efficiency is about 40% and the overall antenna gain is 2 dBi. The experimental results are presented and discussed.