LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
A model to prioritize access to elective surgery on the basis of clinical urgency and waiting time

BACKGROUND
Prioritization of waiting lists for elective surgery represents a major issue in public systems in view of the fact that patients often suffer from consequences of long waiting times. In addition, administrative and standardized data on waiting lists are generally lacking in Italy, where no detailed national reports are available. This is true although since 2002 the National Government has defined implicit Urgency-Related Groups (URGs) associated with Maximum Time Before Treatment (MTBT), similar to the Australian classification. The aim of this paper is to propose a model to manage waiting lists and prioritize admissions to elective surgery.


METHODS
In 2001, the Italian Ministry of Health funded the Surgical Waiting List Info System (SWALIS) project, with the aim of experimenting solutions for managing elective surgery waiting lists. The project was split into two phases. In the first project phase, ten surgical units in the largest hospital of the Liguria Region were involved in the design of a pre-admission process model. The model was embedded in a Web based software, adopting Italian URGs with minor modifications. The SWALIS pre-admission process was based on the following steps: 1) urgency assessment into URGs; 2) correspondent assignment of a pre-set MTBT; 3) real time prioritization of every referral on the list, according to urgency and waiting time. In the second project phase a prospective descriptive study was performed, when a single general surgery unit was selected as the deployment and test bed, managing all registrations from March 2004 to March 2007 (1809 ordinary and 597 day cases). From August 2005, once the SWALIS model had been modified, waiting lists were monitored and analyzed, measuring the impact of the model by a set of performance indexes (average waiting time, length of the waiting list) and Appropriate Performance Index (API).


RESULTS
The SWALIS pre-admission model was used for all registrations in the test period, fully covering the case mix of the patients referred to surgery. The software produced real time data and advanced parameters, providing patients and users useful tools to manage waiting lists and to schedule hospital admissions with ease and efficiency. The model protected patients from horizontal and vertical inequities, while positive changes in API were observed in the latest period, meaning that more patients were treated within their MTBT.


CONCLUSION
The SWALIS model achieves the purpose of providing useful data to monitor waiting lists appropriately. It allows homogeneous and standardized prioritization, enhancing transparency, efficiency and equity. Due to its applicability, it might represent a pragmatic approach towards surgical waiting lists, useful in both clinical practice and strategic resource management.
Calcium use during in-hospital pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation: a report from the National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.

OBJECTIVES
Specific patterns of calcium use during in-hospital pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation have not been reported since publication of pediatric advanced life support guidelines by the American Heart Association in 2000 recommended that calcium use during cardiopulmonary resuscitation be limited to select circumstances. We hypothesized that calcium is used frequently during in-hospital pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation and that its use is associated with worse survival to hospital discharge.


METHODS
We reviewed 1477 consecutive pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation index events (for patients younger than 18 years) submitted to the National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation from January 2000 through July 2004. The primary outcome was survival to hospital discharge. Secondary outcomes included survival of event and neurologic outcome. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to analyze the association between calcium use and outcomes.


RESULTS
Calcium was used in 659 (45%) of 1477 events. Calcium was more likely to be used during cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the settings of pediatric facilities, ICUs, cardiac surgery, cardiopulmonary resuscitation duration of > or = 15 minutes, asystole, and concurrently with other advanced life support medications: epinephrine, vasopressin, sodium bicarbonate, and magnesium sulfate. The use of calcium during cardiopulmonary resuscitation adjusted for confounding factors was associated with decreased survival to discharge and was not associated with favorable neurologic outcome.


CONCLUSIONS
Calcium is used frequently during in-hospital pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Although epidemiologic associations do not necessarily indicate causality, calcium use during cardiopulmonary resuscitation is associated with decreased survival to hospital discharge and unfavorable neurologic outcome.
Impact of a selenium chemoprevention clinical trial on hospital admissions of HIV-infected participants.

PURPOSE
To evaluate the impact of selenium chemoprevention (200 microg/day) on hospitalizations in HIV-positive individuals.


METHOD
Data were obtained from 186 HIV+ men and women participating in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled selenium clinical trial (1998-2000). Supplements were dispensed monthly, and clinical evaluations were conducted every 6 months. Inpatient hospitalizations, hospitalization costs, and rates of hospitalization were determined 2 years before and during the trial.


RESULTS
At enrollment, no significant differences in CD4 cell counts or viral burden were observed between the two study arms. Fewer placebo-treated participants were using antiretrovirals (p <.05). The total number of hospitalizations declined from 157 before the trial to 103 during the 2 year study. A marked decrease in total admission rates (RR = 0.38; p =.002) and percent of hospitalizations due to infection/100 patients for those receiving selenium was observed (p =.01). As a result, the cost for hospitalization decreased 58% in the selenium group, compared to a 30% decrease in the placebo group (p =.001). In the final analyses, selenium therapy continued to be a significant independent factor associated with lower risk of hospitalization (p =.001).


CONCLUSION
Selenium supplementation appears to be a beneficial adjuvant treatment to decrease hospitalizations as well as the cost of caring for HIV-1-infected patients.
A General Evaluation Framework for Text Based Conversational Agent

This paper details the development of a new evaluation framework for a text based Conversational Agent (CA). A CA is an intelligent system that handle spoken or/and text based conversations between machine and human. Generally, the lack of evaluation frameworks for CAs effects its development. The idea behind any system’s evaluation is to make sure about the system’s functionalities and to continue development on it. A specific CA has been chosen to test the proposed framework on it; namely ArabChat. The ArabChat is a rule based CA and uses pattern matching technique to handle user’s Arabic text based conversations. The proposed and developed evaluation framework in this paper is natural language independent. The proposed framework is based on the exchange of specific information between ArabChat and user called “Information Requirements”. This information are tagged for each rule in the applied domain and should be exist in a user’s utterance (conversation). A real experiment has been done in Applied Science University in Jordan as an information point advisor for their native Arabic students to evaluate the ArabChat and then evaluating the proposed evaluation framework. Keywords—Artificial intelligence; Conversational Agent and evaluation
Physics and proof theory

Axiomatization of Physics (and science in general) has many drawbacks that are correctly criticized by opposing philosophical views of science. This paper shows that, by giving formal proofs a more prominent role in the formalization, many of the drawbacks can be solved and many of the opposing views are naturally conciliated. Moreover, this approach allows, by means of proof theory, to open new conceptual bridges between the disciplines of Physics and Computer Science.
One Mouse per Child: interpersonal computer for individual arithmetic practice

Single Display Groupware (SDG) allows multiple people in the same physical space to interact simultaneously over a single communal display through individual input devices that work on the same machine. The aim of this paper is to show how SDG can be used to improve the way resources are used in schools, allowing students to work simultaneously on individual problems at a shared display, and achieve personalized learning with individual feedback within different cultural contexts. We used computational fluency to apply our concept of ‘One Mouse per Child’. It consists of a participatory approach that makes use of personal feedback on an interpersonal computer for the whole classroom. This allows for N simultaneous intelligent tutoring systems, where each child advances at his or her own pace, both within a lecture and throughout the curricular units. Each student must solve a series of mathematical exercises, generated according to his or her performance through a set of pedagogical rules incorporated into the system. In this process, the teacher has an active mediating role, intervening when students require attention. Two exploratory studies were performed. The first study was a multicultural experience between two such distanced socio-economic realities as Chile and India. It showed us that even in different environmental conditions, it is possible to implement this technology with minimal equipment (i.e. a computer, a projector, and one mouse per child). The second study was carried out in a third grade class in a low-income school in Santiago de Chile. The students were asked to solve mainly addition exercises. We established statistically relevant results and observed that the software proved most beneficial for the students with the lowest initial results. This happens because the system adapts to the students’ needs, reinforcing the content they most need to work on, thus generating a personalized learning process.
Diffusion-bonded metal materials

FIELD: technological processes. SUBSTANCE: use for diffusion bonding of metal particles. Summary of the invention consists in that the method for diffusion bonding of metallic materials includes: application of ZrH 2 nanoparticles (106) to a first metallic material and performing a diffusion bonding operation to bond the first metallic material to the second metallic material, wherein at least one of the first metallic material or the second metallic material comprises a surface oxide layer, and during the diffusion bonding operation of the ZrH 2 nanoparticle enter into a chemical reaction with a layer of surface oxide. EFFECT: ensured possibility of diffusion bonding of metal particles. 16 cl, 4 dwg
Comparison of clinical versus ultrasound-determined synovitis in juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

OBJECTIVE
To compare clinical evaluation and ultrasonography (US) in the assessment of joint synovitis in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).


METHODS
Thirty-two patients underwent clinical evaluation of 52 joints by 2 pediatric rheumatologists. Joints were assessed for swelling, tenderness/pain on motion, and restricted motion. The same joints were scanned independently by an experienced sonographer for synovial hyperplasia, joint effusion, and power Doppler (PD) signal.


RESULTS
In total, 1,664 joints were assessed both clinically and with US. On clinical examination, 98 joints (5.9%) were swollen, 59 joints (3.5%) were tender, and 40 joints (2.4%) had restricted motion. On US evaluation, 125 joints (7.5%) had synovial hyperplasia, 153 joints (9.2%) had joint effusion, and 53 joints (3.2%) had PD signal. A total of 104 (6.3%) and 167 (10%) joints had clinical and US synovitis, respectively. Of the 1,560 clinically normal joints, 86 (5.5%) had subclinical synovitis (i.e., had synovitis on US). US led to classifying 5 patients as having polyarthritis who were classified as having oligoarthritis or were found to have no synovitis on clinical evaluation. US variables were moderately correlated with clinical measures of joint swelling, but poorly correlated with those of joint tenderness/pain on motion and restricted motion. Overall, correlations were lower for PD signal than for synovial hyperplasia and joint effusion.


CONCLUSION
We found that subclinical synovitis as detected by US is common in children with JIA. This finding may have important implications for patient classification and may affect the choice of the optimal therapeutic strategy in individual patients.
Design of Low-Power CMOS Cell Structures Using Subthreshold Conduction Region

Business intelligence (BI) has been referred to as the process of making better decisions through the use of people, processes, data and related tools and methodologies. Data mining is the extraction of hidden stating information from large databases. It is a powerful new technology with large potential to help the company's to focus on the most necessary information in the data warehouse. This study gives us an idea of how data mining is applied in exhibiting business intelligence thereby helping the organizations to make better decisions. Keywords-Business intelligence, data mining, database, information technology, management information system ——————————  ——————————
Optimal k-Coverage Charging Problem

Wireless rechargeable sensor networks, consisting of sensor nodes with rechargeable batteries and mobile chargers to replenish their batteries, have gradually become a promising solution to the bottleneck of energy limitation that hinders the wide deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSN). In this paper, we focus on the mobile charger scheduling and path optimization scenario in which the k-coverage ability of a network system needs to be maintained. We formulate the optimal kcoverage charging problem of finding a feasible path for a mobile charger to charge a set of sensor nodes within their estimated charging deadlines under the constraint of maintaining the kcoverage ability of the network system, with an objective of minimizing the energy consumption on traveling per tour. We show the hardness of the problem that even finding a feasible path for the trivial case of the problem is an NP-complete one. We model the problem and apply dynamic programming to design an algorithm that finds an exact solution to the optimal k-coverage charging problem. However, the computational complexity is still prohibitive for large size networks. We then introduce Deep Q-learning, a reinforcement learning algorithm to tackle the problem. Traditional heuristic or Mixed-Integer and Constraint Programming approaches to such combinatorial optimization problems need to identify domain-specific heuristics, while reinforcement learning algorithms could discover domainspecific control policies automatically. Specifically, Deep QLearning applies Deep Neural Network (DNN) to approximate the reward function that provides feedback to the control policy. It can handle complicated problems with huge size of states like the optimal k-coverage charging problem. It is also fast to learn the reward function. We implement three other heuristic algorithms for comparison and then conduct extensive simulations with experimental data included. Results demonstrate that the proposed Deep Q-Learning algorithm consistently produces optimal solutions or closed ones and significantly outperforms other methods.
SKEW DETECTION IN IMAGE PROCESSING

Many researchers proposed different methodologies for the text skew estimation in binary images/gray scale images. They have been used widely for the skew identification of the printed text. There exist so many ways algorithms for detecting and correcting a slant or skew in a given document or image. Some of them provide better accuracy but are slow in speed, others have angle limitation drawback. So a new technique for skew detection in the paper, will reduce the time and cost. Keywords— Document image processing, Skew detection, Nearest-neighbour approach, Moments, Hough transformation.
Nonlinear optics in zero index materials

Phase-matching is critical for coherent nonlinear optical processes, allowing nonlinear sources to combine constructively, resulting in more efficient emission. We experimentally demonstrate phase mismatch-free nonlinear propagation in a bulk zero index metamaterial.
Tectonostratigraphy and provenance of an accretionary complex within the Yarlung-Zangpo suture zone, southern Tibet: Insights into subduction-accretion processes in the Neo-Tethys

Abstract Accretionary complexes record critical information about the history of subduction and accretion along the southern margin of Asia prior to the India–Asia collision. This paper presents detailed field mapping, petrographic and detrital zircon U–Pb data from an accretionary complex within the Yalung–Zangpo suture zone, southern Tibet. From structurally higher to lower levels, the accretionary complex consists of a serpentinite melange, the chert-matrix Tangga melange, the mud-matrix Pomunong melange, and the coherent Rongmawa Formation. The Tangga melange consists of Late Triassic–Early Cretaceous abyssal chert and siliceous shale with blocks of chert and mafic to ultra-mafic rocks. The Tangga melange was accreted beneath ophiolitic rocks during the Aptian. The Pomunong melange consists of a Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous hemipelagic siliceous shale and chert matrix with blocks from Early Permian seamounts and from Late Cretaceous trench-fill sandstones; it was accreted beneath the Tangga melange after the Aptian but prior to 71 Ma. Structurally beneath these melanges to the south, the uppermost Cretaceous Rongmawa Formation consists of turbiditic sandstone, pelagic chert, and siliceous shale and records a transition in depositional setting from lower abyssal plain to upper trench. Detrital zircons from sandstone blocks of the Pomunong melange and the coherent Rongmawa Formation display similar U–Pb age spectra and are dominated by peaks at 71–231 Ma, 481–693 Ma, and 701–1372 Ma. These age peaks overlap with igneous crystallization ages and detrital zircon ages from sedimentary strata in the Lhasa terrane. Our data indicate that the serpentinite melange, Tangga melange, Pomunong melange and Rongmawa Formation comprise a southward-younging accretionary complex that developed during the northward subduction of Neo-Tethyan oceanic lithosphere beneath the south margin of the Lhasa terrane and that all exposed ophiolitic and accretionary complex assemblages were accreted to the Asian margin prior to the India–Asia continental collision.
Which road do I take? A learning-based model of route-choice behavior with real-time information

This paper presents a learning-based model of route-choice behavior when information is provided in real time. In a laboratory controlled experiment, participants made a long series of binary route-choice trials relying on real-time information and learning from their personal experience reinforced through feedback. A discrete choice model with a Mixed Logit specification, accounting for panel effects, was estimated based on the experiment's data. It was found that information and experience have a combined effect on drivers' route-choice behavior. Information expedited learning and in the short run increased risk-seeking behavior. Informed participants tended to base their decisions on memorization relating to previous outcomes compared to non-informed participants who tended to rely mostly on recent outcomes. Informed participants were also more prone to risk-seeking and had greater sensitivity to travel time variability. In comparison, non-informed participants appeared to be more risk-averse and less sensitive to changes in levels of variability. These results have important policy implications on the design and implementation of ATIS initiatives. The advantage of incorporating insights from behavioral research to improve estimations obtained from discrete choice models is also discussed.
Study protocol: a randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial to study the effect of vitamin D supplementation on glycaemic control in type 2 Diabetes Mellitus SUNNY trial

BACKGROUND
Besides the classical role of vitamin D on calcium and bone homeostasis, vitamin D deficiency has recently been identified as a contributing factor in the onset of insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, it is uncertain whether vitamin D deficiency and poor glycaemic control are causally interrelated or that they constitute two independent features of type 2 diabetes mellitus. There are limited clinical trials carried out which measured the effect of vitamin D supplementation on glycaemic control.The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of vitamin D supplementation on glycaemic control and quality of life in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.


METHODS/DESIGN
In a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial conducted in five general practices in the Netherlands three hundred patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus treated with lifestyle advises or metformin or sulphonylurea-derivatives are randomised to receive either placebo or 50,000 IU Vitamin D3 at monthly intervals. The primary outcome measure is the change in glycated haemoglobin level between baseline and six months. Secondary outcome measures include blood pressure, anthropometric parameters, lipid profile, insulin resistance, quality of life, advanced glycation end products and safety profiles. Quality of life will be measured by The Short Form (SF-36) Health Survey questionnaire. Advanced glycation end products are measured by an AGE-reader.


DISCUSSION
This trial will be the first study exploring the effect of vitamin D supplementation on both glycaemic control and quality of life in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Our findings will contribute to the knowledge of the relationship between vitamin D status and insulin resistance in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
The Netherlands trial register: NTR3154.
Knowledge of the firm and the evolutionary theory of the multinational corporation

Correspondence: Bruce Kogut, INSEAD, Boulevard de Constance, 77305 Fontainebleau Cedex, France. Tel: +33 1607242 05 Fax: +33 1607455 00/01 E-mail: Bruce.KOGUT@insead.edu Abstract Firms are social communities that specialize in the creation and internal transfer of knowledge. The multinational corporation arises not out of the failure of markets for the buying and selling of knowledge, but out of its superior efficiency as an organizational vehicle by which to transfer this knowledge across borders. We test the claim that firms specialize in the internal transfer of tacit knowledge by empirically examining the decision to transfer the capability to manufacture new products to wholly owned subsidiaries or to other parties. The empirical results show that the less codifiable and the harder to teach is the technology, the more likely the transfer will be to wholly owned operations. This result implies that the choice of transfer mode is determined by the efficiency of the multinational corporation in transferring knowledge relative to other firms, not relative to an abstract market transaction. The notion of the firm as specializing in the transfer and recombination of knowledge is the foundation to an evolutionary theory of the multinational corporation Journal of International Business Studies (2003) 34, 516–529. doi:10.1057/palgrave. jibs.8400058