LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of anterior pituitary dysfunction in patients following traumatic brain injury in a German multi-centre screening program.

INTRODUCTION
We determined the prevalence of anterior pituitary dysfunction in a multi-centre screening program across five German endocrine centres in patients rehabilitating from TBI (GCS<13).


PATIENTS & METHODS
246 patients (39+/-14 yrs; 133 males, 12+/-8 months after TBI) underwent a series of baseline endocrine tests with central assessment of TSH, free T4, prolactin, LH, FSH, testosterone (m), estradiol (f), cortisol, GH, and IGF-I. If IGF-I was <-2 SDS dynamic testing was performed. GHD was defined according to BMI-dependent cut-off values for GH response to GHRH+arginine of <4.2, <8.0 and <11.5 ng/ml in obese, overweight and lean subjects, respectively, or <3 micro g/l in ITT. Hypocortisolism was suggested when basal cortisol was <200 nmol/l and confirmed by ITT (peak<500 nmol/l).


RESULTS
In TBI patients some degree of impaired pituitary function was shown in 21% (n=52/246). Total, multiple and isolated deficits were present in 1%, 2% and 18%, respectively. 19% had an IGF-I of <-1 SDS, 9% of <-2 SDS. In 5% GHD was confirmed. 9% had hypogonadism. 4% had hypocortisolism and 1% of patients had confirmed ACTH-deficiency. 12% had TSH-deficiency.


SUMMARY
In summary, in this large series carried out on an unselected group of TBI survivors we have found hypopituitarism in every fifth patient with predominantly secondary hypogonadism and hypothyreosis. Regarding somatotrope insufficiency IGF-I is decreased in 50% of GHD patients.


CONCLUSION
These findings strongly suggest that patients who suffer head trauma should routinely undergo endocrine evaluation.
A multifunctional, reconfigurable pulse generator for high-frequency ultrasound imaging

High-frequency (>;20 MHz) ultrasound (HFUS) imaging systems have made it possible to image small structures with fine spatial resolution. They find a variety of biomedical applications in dermatology, ophthalmology, intravascular imaging, and small-animal imaging. One critical technical challenge of HFUS is to generate high-voltage, high-frequency pulsed signals to effectively excite the transducer for a high SNR. This paper presents the development of a multifunctional, reconfigurable pulse generator for HFUS imaging. The pulse generator can produce a high-voltage unipolar pulse, a bipolar pulse, or arbitrary pulses for B-mode imaging, Doppler measurement, and modulated excitation imaging. The characteristics of the pulses, such as timing, waveform, and frequency are reconfigurable by a high-speed field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Customized software was developed to interface with the FPGA through a USB connector for pulse selection, and easy, flexible, real-time pulse management. The hardware was implemented in a compact, printed circuit board (PCB)-based scheme using state-of-the-art electronics for cost-effectiveness and fully digital control. Testing results show that the unipolar pulse can reach over 165 Vpp with a 6-dB bandwidth of 70 MHz, and the bipolar pulse and arbitrary pulses can reach 150 and 60 Vpp with central frequencies of 60 and 120 MHz, respectively.
Behavioral Intention Formation in Knowledge Sharing: Examining the Roles of Extrinsic Motivators, Social-Psychological Factors, and Organizational Climate

Individuals' knowledge does not transform easily into organizational knowledge even with the implementation of knowledge repositories. Rather, individuals tend to hoard knowledge for various reasons. The aim of this study is to develop an integrative understanding of the factors supporting or inhibiting individuals' knowledge-sharing inten tions. We employ as our theoretical framework the theory of reasoned action (TRA), and augment it with extrinsic motivators, social-psychological forces and organizational climate factors that are believed to influence individuals' knowledge sharing intentions. MIS Quarterly Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 87-111/March 2005 87 Bock et al./Behavioral Intention Formation in Knowledge Sharing Through a field survey of 154 managers from 27 Korean organizations, we confirm our hypothesis that attitudes toward and subjective norms with regard to knowledge sharing as well as organiza tional climate affect individuals' intentions to share knowledge. Additionally, we find that anticipated reciprocal relationships affect individuals' attitudes toward knowledge sharing while both sense of self-worth and organizational climate affect sub jective norms. Contrary to common belief, we find anticipated extrinsic rewards exert a negative ef fect on individuals' knowledge-sharing attitudes.
Normalized ( Pointwise ) Mutual Information in Collocation Extraction

In this paper, we discuss the related information theoretical association measures of mutual information and pointwise mutual information, in the context of collocation extraction. We introduce normalized variants of these measures in order to make them more easily interpretable and at the same time less sensitive to occurrence frequency. We also provide a small empirical study to give more insight into the behaviour of these new measures in a collocation extraction setup.
Particulate matter air pollution components and risk for lung cancer.

BACKGROUND
Particulate matter (PM) air pollution is a human lung carcinogen; however, the components responsible have not been identified. We assessed the associations between PM components and lung cancer incidence.


METHODS
We used data from 14 cohort studies in eight European countries. We geocoded baseline addresses and assessed air pollution with land-use regression models for eight elements (Cu, Fe, K, Ni, S, Si, V and Zn) in size fractions of PM2.5 and PM10. We used Cox regression models with adjustment for potential confounders for cohort-specific analyses and random effect models for meta-analysis.


RESULTS
The 245,782 cohort members contributed 3,229,220 person-years at risk. During follow-up (mean, 13.1 years), 1878 incident cases of lung cancer were diagnosed. In the meta-analyses, elevated hazard ratios (HRs) for lung cancer were associated with all elements except V; none was statistically significant. In analyses restricted to participants who did not change residence during follow-up, statistically significant associations were found for PM2.5 Cu (HR, 1.25; 95% CI, 1.01-1.53 per 5 ng/m(3)), PM10 Zn (1.28; 1.02-1.59 per 20 ng/m(3)), PM10 S (1.58; 1.03-2.44 per 200 ng/m(3)), PM10 Ni (1.59; 1.12-2.26 per 2 ng/m(3)) and PM10 K (1.17; 1.02-1.33 per 100 ng/m(3)). In two-pollutant models, associations between PM10 and PM2.5 and lung cancer were largely explained by PM2.5 S.


CONCLUSIONS
This study indicates that the association between PM in air pollution and lung cancer can be attributed to various PM components and sources. PM containing S and Ni might be particularly important.
A support vector machine-based model for detecting top management fraud

Detecting fraudulent financial statements (FFS) is critical in order to protect the global financial market. In recent years, FFS have begun to appear and continue to grow rapidly, which has shocked the confidence of investors and threatened the economics of entire countries. While auditors are the last line of defense to detect FFS, many auditors lack the experience and expertise to deal with the related risks. This study introduces a support vector machine-based fraud warning (SVMFW) model to reduce these risks. The model integrates sequential forward selection (SFS), support vector machine (SVM), and a classification and regression tree (CART). SFS is employed to overcome information overload problems, and the SVM technique is then used to assess the likelihood of FFS. To select the parameters of SVM models, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is applied. Finally, CART is employed to enable auditors to increase substantive testing during their audit procedures by adopting reliable, easy-to-grasp decision rules. The experiment results show that the SVMFW model can reduce unnecessary information, satisfactorily detect FFS, and provide directions for properly allocating audit resources in limited audits. The model is a promising alternative for detecting FFS caused by top management, and it can assist in both taxation and the banking system. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Multilevel Classifiers in Recognition of Handwritten Kannada Numerals

The recognition of handwritten numeral is an important area of research for its applications in post office, banks and other organizations. This paper presents automatic recognition of handwritten Kannada numerals based on structural features. Five different types of features, namely, profile based 10-segment string, water reservoir; vertical and horizontal strokes, end points and average boundary length from the minimal bounding box are used in the recognition of numeral. The effect of each feature and their combination in the numeral classification is analyzed using nearest neighbor classifiers. It is common to combine multiple categories of features into a single feature vector for the classification. Instead, separate classifiers can be used to classify based on each visual feature individually and the final classification can be obtained based on the combination of separate base classification results. One popular approach is to combine the classifier results into a feature vector and leaving the decision to next level classifier. This method is extended to extract a better information, possibility distribution, from the base classifiers in resolving the conflicts among the classification results. Here, we use fuzzy k Nearest Neighbor (fuzzy k-NN) as base classifier for individual feature sets, the results of which together forms the feature vector for the final k Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) classifier. Testing is done, using different features, individually and in combination, on a database containing 1600 samples of different numerals and the results are compared with the results of different existing methods. Keywords—Fuzzy k Nearest Neighbor, Multiple Classifiers, Numeral Recognition, Structural features.
Assessment of Quality of Life in a Double-Blind, Randomized Clinical Trial of Imidapril and Captopril for Hypertensive Chinese in Taiwan

Purpose. Although the role of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors for the treatment of hypertension has been well established, no data has been generated regarding the influence of ACE inhibitors for health-related quality-of-life (QOL) dimensions for Chinese patients. Materials. A double-blind, active-control, randomized clinical trial was used to compare the effects of two ACE inhibitors, imidapril and captopril, on quality-of-life dimensions in one outpatient clinic in one tertiary clinical-care facility. After a 2–3 week washout period with placebo, 59 patients with mild-to-moderate hypertension were randomly assigned to receive imidapril (5 to 10 mg per day) or captopril (25 to 50 mg twice per day) for 12 weeks. Patients completed the Short-form 36 (SF 36) health survey questionnaire, which evaluates 8 QOL dimensions, just before treatment, during the 8th week, and at the end of treatment (12th week). ANOVA for repeated measures was used to analyze the QOL-score changes over time and compare treatments, and to assess the interaction of treatment duration and group on these scores. Results. No significant differences were demonstrated for changes in blood-pressure, frequency of adverse effects and withdrawal of patients from the study comparing the two drugs. Significant improvement, however, was demonstrated for mental-component summary scores after 12 weeks of treatment for both drugs (P = 0.029). No significant differences were established for individual QOL dimensions comparing the two drugs. A significantly higher baseline systolic blood pressure was found in the participants who did not complete the questionnaire than in those who did. Conclusions. Similar and significant improvements were determined for the mental-component QOL summary scores for the two ACE inhibitors, imidapril and captopril, and no significant differences were demonstrated comparing treatments.
Research Guides: Industrial Engineering Technology: Welcome

The Industrial Engineering Technology curriculum prepares graduates to perform as technical leaders in manufacturing and service organizations. The study and application of methods and techniques for developing & implementing integrated systems.
Determinantal Probability: Basic Properties and Conjectures

We describe the fundamental constructions and properties of determinantal probability measures and point processes, giving streamlined proofs. We illustrate these with some important examples. We pose several general questions and conjectures.
Semantic Analysis in The Mikrokosmos Machine Translation Project

The Mikrokosmos (uK) Machine Translation System is a knowledge-based machine translation (KBMT) system under development at New Mexico State University. Unlike previous research in interlingual MT, this project is a large-scale, practical MT system. By the end of the year, a lexicon of approximately 20,000 Spanish words (with over 35,000 word senses) supported by an ontology of 6000 concepts will be in place. High quality semantic analyses of over 400 article-length Spanish texts in the domain of company mergers and acquisitions will have been produced. In the coming year, uK intends to expand into other languages, notably Thai. This paper introduces the central concepts involved in KBMT, including Text-Meaning Representation (TMR), ontology, and the semantic lexicon. The semantic analyzer ‘‘engine’’ will then be described in detail, with examples of how knowledge from the ontology, lexicon and syntactic analysis are combined to create the basic semantic dependency structures found in the TMR outputs. Several issues in semantic analysis programming will be briefly probed, including dependency-directed processing, ‘‘best-first’’ search, and knowledgeable treatment of unexpected and ambiguous inputs.
Laparoscopic splenectomy in children--a multicenter experience.

PURPOSE
Splenectomy is frequently required in children for various hematologic pathologic findings. Because of progress in minimally invasive techniques, laparoscopic splenectomy (LS) has become feasible. The objective of this report is to present a multicenter experience of 159 laparoscopic splenectomies.


METHODS
Records of 159 children, who underwent LS in 3 pediatric surgery centers between 1996 and 2006, were reviewed retrospectively with a special questionnaire. The indication for splenectomy were hematologic disorders (147), esophageal varices (6), splenic cyst (5), and tumor of the tail of the pancreas (1). The LS was performed using standard laparoscopic technique and instrumentation.


RESULTS
There were 75 boys and 84 girls. Median age was 12.5 years (range, 2-19.4 years). Laparoscopic splenectomy alone was performed in 118 cases and LS with cholecystectomy or cholecystotomy in 36. In 5 cases, LS was performed together with fundoplication. Eight LS required conversion to an open procedure for following reasons: severe bleeding (3), massive splenomegaly (1), anatomical (2), and technical aspects (2). Accessory spleens were identified in 20 cases (12.6%). There was no mortality. Complications consisted of 8 conversions and postoperatively of mild generalized infection in 3 children and abdominal bleeding that resulted in re-laparoscopy in 1 case.


CONCLUSIONS
Laparoscopic splenectomy can be safely and effectively performed in children.
Cache design trade-offs for power and performance optimization: a case study

Caches consume a significant amount of energy in modern microprocessors. To design an energy-efficient microprocessor, it is important to optimize cache energy consumption. This paper examines performance and power trade-offs in cache designs and the effectiveness of energy reduction for several novel cache design techniques targeted for low power.
The effects of auditory stimulation with music on heart rate variability in healthy women

OBJECTIVES
There are no data in the literature with regard to the acute effects of different styles of music on the geometric indices of heart rate variability. In this study, we evaluated the acute effects of relaxant baroque and excitatory heavy metal music on the geometric indices of heart rate variability in women.


METHODS
We conducted this study in 21 healthy women ranging in age from 18 to 35 years. We excluded persons with previous experience with musical instruments and persons who had an affinity for the song styles. We evaluated two groups: Group 1 (n = 21), who were exposed to relaxant classical baroque musical and excitatory heavy metal auditory stimulation; and Group 2 (n = 19), who were exposed to both styles of music and white noise auditory stimulation. Using earphones, the volunteers were exposed to baroque or heavy metal music for five minutes. After the first music exposure to baroque or heavy metal music, they remained at rest for five minutes; subsequently, they were re-exposed to the opposite music (70-80 dB). A different group of women were exposed to the same music styles plus white noise auditory stimulation (90 dB). The sequence of the songs was randomized for each individual. We analyzed the following indices: triangular index, triangular interpolation of RR intervals and Poincaré plot (standard deviation of instantaneous beat-by-beat variability, standard deviation of the long-term RR interval, standard deviation of instantaneous beat-by-beat variability and standard deviation of the long-term RR interval ratio), low frequency, high frequency, low frequency/high frequency ratio, standard deviation of all the normal RR intervals, root-mean square of differences between the adjacent normal RR intervals and the percentage of adjacent RR intervals with a difference of duration greater than 50 ms. Heart rate variability was recorded at rest for 10 minutes.


RESULTS
The triangular index and the standard deviation of the long-term RR interval indices were reduced during exposure to both music styles in the first group and tended to decrease in the second group whereas the white noise exposure decreased the high frequency index. We observed no changes regarding the triangular interpolation of RR intervals, standard deviation of instantaneous beat-by-beat variability and standard deviation of instantaneous beat-by-beat variability/standard deviation in the long-term RR interval ratio.


CONCLUSION
We suggest that relaxant baroque and excitatory heavy metal music slightly decrease global heart rate variability because of the equivalent sound level.
[Effects of gastric bypass on estimated cardiovascular risk in morbidly obese patients with metabolic syndrome].

INTRODUCTION
The major goal of surgical treatment in morbid obesity is to decrease morbidity and mortality associated with excess weight. In this sense, the main factors of death are cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of gastric bypass on cardiovascular risk estimation in patients after bariatric surgery.


MATERIAL AND METHODS
We retrospectively evaluated pre and postoperative cardiovascular risk estimation of 402 morbidly obese patients who underwent laparoscopic gastric bypass. The major variable studied is the cardiovascular risk estimation that is calculated preoperatively and after 12 months. Cardiovascular risk estimation analysis has been performed with the REGICOR Equation. REGICOR formulation allows calculating a 10 year risk of cardiovascular events adapted to the Spanish population and is expressed in percentages.


RESULTS
We reported an overall 4.1±3.0 mean basal REGICOR score. One year after the operation, cardiovascular risk estimation significantly decreased to 2,2±1,6 (P<.001). In patients with metabolic syndrome according to ATP-III criteria, basal REGICOR score was 4.8±3.1 whereas in no metabolic syndrome patients 2.2±1.8. Evaluation 12 months after surgery, determined a significant reduction in both groups (metabolic syndrome and non metabolic syndrome) with a mean REGICOR score of 2.3±1.6 and 1.6±1.0 respectively.


CONCLUSION
The results of our study demonstrate favorable effects of gastric bypass on the cardiovascular risk factors included in the REGICOR equation.
LibGuides: NZ Environmental Politics: Find Articles

How to find journal articles for NZ Environmental Politics. Lists the best databases to find articles about a topic, and tips to help you find a specific article from a citation.
Levels and determinants of switching following intrauterine device discontinuation in 14 developing countries.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the levels and determinants of switching to any reversible modern contraceptive method following intrauterine device (IUD) discontinuation due to method-related reasons among women in developing countries.


STUDY DESIGN
We analysed 5-year contraceptive calendar data from 14 Demographic and Health Surveys, conducted in 1993-2008 (n=218,092 women; 17,151 women contributed a total of 18,485 IUD episodes). Life-table methods were used to determine overall and cause-specific probabilities of IUD discontinuation at 12 months of use. For IUD episodes discontinued due to method-related reasons, the probability of switching to another reversible modern method within 3 months was estimated, overall and by place of residence, education level, motivation for use, age category and wealth tertiles. Country-specific rate ratios (RR) were estimated using generalized linear models, and pooled RRs using meta-analyses.


RESULTS
The median duration of uninterrupted IUD use was 37 months. At 12 months, median probability of discontinuation was 13.2% and median probability of discontinuation due to method-related reasons was 8.9%. Within 3 months of discontinuation due to method-related reasons, half of the women had switched to another reversible modern method, 12% switched to traditional methods, 12% became pregnant, and 25% remained at risk for pregnancy. More educated women were more likely to switch to another reversible modern method than women with primary education or less (pooled RR 1.47; 95% CI 1.10-1.96), as were women in the highest wealth tertile (pooled RR 1.38; 95% CI 1.04-1.83) and women who were limiting births (pooled RR 1.35; 95% CI 1.08-1.68).


CONCLUSION
Delays to switching and switching to less reliable methods following IUD discontinuation remain a problem, exposing women to the risk of unwanted pregnancy. Family planning programmes should aim to improve quality of services through strengthening of counselling and follow-up services to support women's continuation of effective methods.


IMPLICATIONS
The risk of unintended pregnancy following IUD discontinuation remains high in developing countries. The quality of family planning services may be an important factor in switching to alternative modern contraceptive methods. Service providers should focus on counselling services and follow-up of women to support the continued use of effective methods.