LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Self-reported and performance-based functional outcomes after surgical repair of proximal hamstring avulsions.

BACKGROUND
Because a proximal hamstring avulsion results in residual loss of function, surgical repair is recommended. Few studies have investigated postoperative function with validated outcomes.


PURPOSE
To examine lower extremity function after surgical repair of proximal hamstring avulsions using validated self-reported and performance-based functional outcomes.


STUDY DESIGN
Case series; Level of evidence, 4.


METHODS
Operative records from 2006 to 2010 were retrospectively reviewed in 3 hospitals. A total of 39 patients who had undergone surgical repair of a proximal hamstring avulsion were identified, and 36 met the inclusion criteria. Thirty-one patients completed questionnaires with demographic background data and quality of life-related questions: the Lower Extremity Functional Scale (LEFS) and the Proximal Hamstring Injury Questionnaire (PHIQ). Thirty patients were evaluated using a Biodex dynamometer for isokinetic quadriceps and hamstring strength measurements at a velocity of 60 deg/s, and 27 patients performed 4 single-legged hop tests.


RESULTS
Twenty-eight repairs were acute (<4 weeks), and 3 were chronic. There were complete ruptures of all 3 tendons in 17 (55%) cases. The mean follow-up was 30 months. Most patients experienced little or no pain or limitations during activities of daily living. The mean LEFS score was 89%, and 29 (94%) of the 31 patients were satisfied with the result after surgery. Eighteen (58%) of the 31 patients had returned to their preinjury activity level. Significant differences in the mean hamstring strength (peak torque) (P < .001) and single-legged hop test (P = .01) between the uninvolved and involved leg were found. Twenty-two (71%) of the 31 patients did not fully trust their operated leg during physical activities and feared sustaining a hamstring injury. Return to activity significantly correlated with the single-legged hop test, the LEFS score, and the questions regarding trust and fear.


CONCLUSION
In this study, using both validated self-reported and performance-based outcome measures after surgical repair of proximal hamstring avulsions, minor pain and limitations to activities of daily living were seen. Isokinetic hamstring strength in the operated leg was significantly lower compared with the nonoperated leg, and a majority of the patients did not trust the operated leg completely during physical activity.
Using argumentation to control lexical choice: a functional unification implementation

Using Argumentation to Control Lexical Choice: A Functional Unification Implementation
Designing social media policy for government: Eight essential elements

Government agencies are increasingly looking to leverage social media to improve the quality of government services and elicit greater citizen engagement. Developing a social media policy can be an important first step for government agencies considering using social media and can ultimately serve as a key enabler for responsibly and effectively leveraging social media tools. Yet, many governments are struggling with what such a policy should encompass and convey. This report outlines the different reasons government employees engage in social media use and begins to answer the question, what are the core elements of a government social media policy? Our analysis identified eight essential elements for a social media policy: 1) employee access, 2) account management, 3) acceptable use, 4) employee conduct, 5) content, 6) security, 7) legal issues, and 8) citizen conduct. The report closes with brief guidance on strategies for getting started.
A General Method for Amortizing Variational Filtering

iterations with AVF on the TIMIT data set. Above: Output predictions and reconstructions. Below: Validation performance and inference improvement vs. inference iterations. We evaluate amortized variational filtering (AVF) on three dynamical latent variable models: VRNN (Chung et al., 2015), SRNN (Fraccaro et al., 2016), and SVG (Denton & Fergus, 2018). We train these models on speech, MIDI music, and video data sets. Deep latent variable models are often used for dynamical tasks, like reinforcement learning or time-series prediction. A central challenge is performing efficient online inference of the hidden states (filtering). In the static setting, amortized variational techniques are widely used for inference, but applying these techniques to dynamical problems has required hand-crafting an inference procedure for every new model. We propose a general purpose method for efficiently performing accurate inference in any dynamical latent variable model. A General Method for Amortizing Variational Filtering Joseph Marino, Milan Cvitkovic, Yisong Yue   California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
A Sensor Simulation System for Mobile Robots

Cyberbotics Ltd. develops Webots, a mobile robotics simulation software that provides you with a rapid prototyping environment for modelling, programming and simulating mobile robots. The provided robot libraries enable you to transfer your control programs to several commercially available real mobile robots. Webots lets you define and modify a complete mobile robotics setup, even several different robots sharing the same environment. For each object, you can define a number of properties, such as shape, color, texture, mass, friction, etc. You can equip each robot with a large number of available sensors and actuators. You can program these robots using your favorite development environment, simulate them and optionally transfer the resulting programs onto your real robots. Webots has been developed in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, thoroughly tested, well documented and continuously maintained for over 7 years. It is now the main commercial product available from Cyberbotics Ltd.
Back to the Future ? Understanding Change in Food Habits of Farmers ' Market Customers

This study analyses how attending farmers markets may affect consumers’ willingness to change food habits toward high-quality products. A discrete choice model was applied using data collected through an extensive field survey in 2009, which involved 400 consumers in 12 different farmers’ markets in Italy. Changing consumption habits was examined taking into account attendees' personal profile, motivations, the main features of the farmers' markets, as well as the local social context. Attendees reported an increased consumption of organic products, and fresh vegetables. Motivation seems to play an important role as a driver of change. Results also indicate that consumers sensitive to environmental issues related to their consumption choices, are more likely to change food habits in favor of high-quality foods as well as consumers who are looking for fresh products. Based on these findings, possible interventions are explored to further develop farmers' markets and promote high-quality consumption.
Bayesian Spline-type Smoothing in Generalized Regression Models

Spline smoothing in non-or semiparametric regression models is usually based on the roughness penalty approach. For regression with normal errors, the spline smoother also has a Bayesian justiication: Placing a smoothness prior over the regression function, it is the mean of the posterior given the data. For non-normal regression this equivalence is lost, but the spline smoother can still be viewed as the posterior mode. In this paper, we provide a full Bayesian approach to spline-type smoothing. The focus is on generalized additive models, however the models can be extended to other non-normal regression models. Our approach uses Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to simulate samples from the posterior. Thus it is possible to estimate characteristics like the mean, median, moments, and quantiles of the posterior, or interesting functionals of the regression function. Also, this provides an alternative for the choice of smoothing parameters. For comparison , our approach is applied to real-data examples analyzed previously by the roughness penalty approach.
Reputation systems: A survey and taxonomy

In our increasingly interconnected world, the need for reputation is becoming more important as larger numbers of people and services interact online. Reputation is a tool to facilitate trust between entities, as it increases the efficiency and effectiveness of online services and communities. As most entities will not have any direct experience of other entities, they must increasingly come to rely on reputation systems. Such systems allow the prediction who is likely to be trustworthy based on feedback from past transactions. In this paper we introduce a new taxonomy for reputation systems, along with: a reference model for reputation context, a model of reputation systems, a substantial survey, and a comparison of existing reputation research and deployed reputation systems. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
LOW-SPEED PERMANENT-MAGNET SYNCHRONOUS GENERATOR FOR SMALL-SCALE WIND POWER APPLICATIONS

Tendencies in development of wind power industry including direct-drive small-scale wind power plants and generators have been analyzed. Synchronous generators with permanent magnet excitation for direct-drive wind power turbines are described. Primary magnetic field distribution and effect of armature reaction have been studied for design of a low-speed multipole permanent-magnet synchronous generator with radial magnetic flux. The test results of a prototype permanent-magnet generator are analyzed and compared with the calculated data and characteristics.
Automated measurement of proprioception following stroke.

BACKGROUND
Proprioception provides feedback which is essential for adequate motor control. Despite having detrimental functional implications, the assessment of proprioception deficits in current clinical practice is mostly qualitative and inadequate for diagnosis and longitudinal monitoring of subtle impairments and their effect on motor function.


PURPOSE
To evaluate a novel quantitative approach to the assessment of proprioception deficits in stroke patients.


METHOD
We designed and implemented an automated protocol where a magnetic motion tracking system and a sensor attached to each of the patient's hands, enables registration of trajectories in 3D coordinates. In this protocol the patient's affected and healthy hands are placed respectively below and above a square board. With vision blocked, the subject's affected hand is passively moved to one of four locations, and then the patient is instructed to actively position the healthy hand directly above his/her perceived location of the affected hand. The positional difference between the two hands is automatically recorded by the system. This procedure is repeated several times and the magnitude and direction of errors are used to quantify the proprioception deficit. The data for this pilot study was collected in a sample of 22 stroke patients and an age-matched group of neurologically intact subjects.


RESULTS
Stroke patients had significantly higher mean distance error compared with the control group (average values of 7.9 and 5.3 cm, respectively), and showed higher instability (variance) in repeated performance (average values of the standard deviation of errors 3.4 and 1.8 cm, respectively). Significant correlation was found between the mean distance error and the results of semi-quantitative clinical tests of proprioception.


CONCLUSION
The system provides a reliable quantitative measure of upper limb proprioception, offering considerable advantage over the traditional means applied in the clinic.
Image-based Human Character Modeling and Reconstruction for Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

We design a modeling platform to construct virtual environments for Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy. In this platform, the scene is built by image-based reconstruction followed by manual refinement (when needed). The main technical contribution of this paper is on enhanced human character modeling, which is done through reconstructing 3D face geometry, body shape and posture from provided 2D photos.
USING EMBODIED DESIGN IMPROVISATION AS A DESIGN RESEARCH TOOL

Embodied design improvisation is a generative and evaluative technique to elicit tacit knowledge about embodied experience. It incorporates storyboarding, Wizard of Oz prototyping, domain expert improvisation, video prototyping and crowdsourced experimentation. We have been developing this technique to design physical interactions with expressive, robotic everyday devices, eliciting the tacit rules and behavior patterns that comport with the social expectations established by human-human interactions. By codifying and providing an example of this technique, we hope to encourage its adoption in other design domains.
When study site contributes to outcomes in a multi-center randomized trial: a secondary analysis of decisional conflict in men with localized prostate cancer

PURPOSE
Evaluate baseline factors that may explain the influence of study site on decisional conflict (DC) in men from the Personal Patient Profile: Prostate (P3P) randomized trial.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
476 cases from 5 P3P sites were included. Participants completed baseline demographic assessments, 4 subscales of the DC scale at baseline (uncertainty, informed, values clarity, and support), the Expanded Prostate Cancer Index Composite (short form) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Site data regarding typical practices were collected. Linear regressions were used to model the relation between baseline DC scores and study site adjusting for the list of variables.


RESULTS
Baseline decisional uncertainly (p = 0.001) and informed (p = 0.03) subscales were significantly different across sites. Participant demographic and baseline measures were significantly different (p < 0.05) between sites except for trait anxiety. We identified participant level factors that explained study site differences at baseline for the decisional uncertainty and values clarity subscales: a preferred treatment choice at study entry, whether the study program was accessed at home vs. in clinic, number of doctors consulted pre-study, working status, state anxiety, information from the media or a health care provider, and perceived knowledge level. State anxiety was associated with higher DC across all subscales.


CONCLUSIONS
Individual characteristics of men seeking consultation for LPC were associated with DC at baseline, not the site alone; anxiety contributed to higher conflict. These findings will inform future development and implementation of the P3P and other decision support interventions.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
NCT00692653.
Parallelizing Nonnumerical Code with Selective Scheduling and Software Pipelining

Instruction-level parallelism (ILP) in nonnumerical code is regarded as scarce and hard to exploit due to its irregularity. In this article, we introduce a new code-scheduling technique for irregular ILP called “selective scheduling” which can be used as a component for superscalar and VLIW compilers. Selective scheduling can compute a wide set of independent operations across all execution paths based on renaming and forward-substitution and can compute available operations across loop iterations if combined with software pipelining. This scheduling approach has better heuristics for determining the usefulness of moving one operation versus moving another and can successfully find useful code motions without resorting to branch profiling. The compile-time overhead of selective scheduling is low due to its incremental computation technique and its controlled code duplication. We parallelized the SPEC integer benchmarks and five AIX utilities without using branch probabilities. The experiments indicate that a fivefold speedup is achievable on realistic resources with a reasonable overhead in compilation time and code expansion and that a solid speedup increase is also obtainable on machines with fewer resources. These results improve previously known characteristics of irregular ILP.
Influence of Palm Methyl Ester (PME) as an Alternative Fuel In Multicylinder Diesel Engine

Palm oil is one of the vegetable oil, which is converted to biodiesel through a transesterification process using methanol as the catalyst. Palm oil biodiesel or palm methyl ester (PME) can be used in diesel engines without any modification, and can be blended with conventional diesel to produce different proportions of PME-diesel blend fuels. The physical properties of PME were evaluated experimentally and theoretically. The effect of using neat PME as fuel on engine performance and emissions was evaluated using a commercial four-cylinder four-stroke IDI diesel engine. The experimental results on an engine operated with PME exhibited higher brake specific fuel consumption in comparison with the conventional fuel. With respect to the incylinder pressure and heat release rate, these increased features by over 8.11% and 9.3% with PME compared to conventional diesel. The overall results show that PME surpassed the diesel combustion quality due to its psychochemical properties and higher oxygen content.
Freight Modelling : Data Issues , Survey Methods , Demand and Network Models

The paper discusses requirements for freight modelling and presents specific approaches concerning freight surveys, demand and network modelling, rail freight optimisation and freight assignment including: • Surveying methods for collecting road based demand data. • WIVER/VISEVA: a demand modelling system for urban and regional commercial transport. • SPIN: a multimodal network model for intermodal freight transport in Europe. • VISUM Cargo: a tool for optimising rail freight transport • Freight assignment: discussion of unimodal and intermodal assignment
Building brand identity in competitive markets : a conceptual model

Purpose – The purpose of this conceptual paper is to identify important elements of brand building based on a literature review and case studies of successful brands in India. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on a review of the literature and takes a case study approach. The paper suggests the framework for building brand identity in sequential order, namely, positioning the brand, communicating the brand message, delivering the brand performance, and leveraging the brand equity. Findings – Brand-building effort has to be aligned with organizational processes that help deliver the promises to customers through all company departments, intermediaries, suppliers, etc., as all these play an important role in the experience customers have with the brand. Originality/value – The paper uses case studies of leading Indian brands to illustrate the importance of action elements in building brands in competitive markets.
APPLICABILITY OF SHAPE MEMORY ALLOY WIRE FOR AN ACTIVE , SOFT ORTHOTIC

INTRODUCTION Treatments for gait pathologies associated with neuromuscular disorders (such as dropfoot, spasticity, etc.) may employ a passive mechanical brace [1]. Depending on the gait pathology, the brace may be applied to the hip, knee, ankle, or any combination thereof. While passive mechanical braces provide certain benefits, they may lead to additional medical problems. For example, an ankle-foot orthotic (AFO) is typically used to prevent the toe from dragging on the ground in the case of drop-foot. Rigid versions of the AFO constrain the ankle to a specific position. By limiting the range of motion, the toe can clear the ground, thus allowing gait to progress more naturally. However, the use of the AFO may result in a reduction in power generation at the ankle, as it limits active plantar flexion. Moreover, the AFO may lead to disuse atrophy of the muscles, such as the tibialis anterior muscle, potentially leading to long-term dependence [2]. While previous researchers have examined actuating a rigid orthotic [3], we examine using NiTi shape memory alloy (SMA) wires to embed actuation within a soft material. In this manner, the orthotic can provide variable assistance depending on the gait cycle phase, activity level, and needs of the wearer. Thus, the subject can have individualized control, causing the muscles to be used more appropriately, possibly leading to a reeducation of the motor system and eventual independence from the orthotic system.
The nutrition transition: worldwide obesity dynamics and their determinants

OBJECTIVE: This paper explores the major changes in diet and physical activity patterns around the world and focuses on shifts in obesity.DESIGN: Review of results focusing on large-scale surveys and nationally representative studies of diet, activity, and obesity among adults and children.SUBJECTS: Youth and adults from a range of countries around the world.MEASUREMENTS: The International Obesity Task Force guidelines for defining overweight and obesity are used for youth and the body mass index ≥25 kg/m2 and 30 cutoffs are used, respectively, for adults.RESULTS: The nutrition transition patterns are examined from the time period termed the receding famine pattern to one dominated by nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases (NR-NCDs). The speed of dietary and activity pattern shifts is great, particularly in the developing world, resulting in major shifts in obesity on a worldwide basis. Data limitations force us to examine data on obesity trends in adults to provide a broader sense of changes in obesity over time, and then to examine the relatively fewer studies on youth. Specifically, this work provides a sense of change both in the United States, Europe, and the lower- and middle-income countries of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.CONCLUSION: The paper shows that changes are occurring at great speed and at earlier stages of the economic and social development of each country. The burden of obesity is shifting towards the poor.
Evaluation of acupuncture in the management of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy.

AIM
To clinically evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture when used in the management of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (PN).


BACKGROUND
During cancer treatment, certain chemotherapies can cause varying degrees of PN. Patients' quality of life can be seriously impaired through loss of sensation, pain or mobility problems. Conventional medications routinely used to manage neuropathic symptoms have poor side-effect profiles and there is little or no evidence justifying their use to treat chemotherapy-related neurotoxicities. There are studies suggesting that acupuncture may be an effective therapy in treating PN across a number of different aetiologies. Design A retrospective service evaluation.


METHOD
Patients (n=18) were referred for acupuncture by the medical staff and/ornurse specialists or they self-referred for treatment. A course of six weekly acupuncture sessions was offered to them, and their details were recorded on an evaluation form prior to session one. Points were selected by acupuncturists, based on patient presentation, and needles remained in situ for 30-45 min. Treatments took place in outpatient clinics, chemotherapy day case ward or a drop-in clinic based in a physiotherapy gym. The evaluation form was completed at the end of session 6 by a therapist who had not been involved in patient care.


RESULTS
82% (n=14) of patients reported an improvement in symptoms following their course of acupuncture; one patient with advanced disease died during the 6 weeks. Some patients derived additional benefits from the treatment including a reduction in analgesic use and improved sleeping patterns. The most common acupoints used were SP6 (n=18), ST36 (n=18) and LV3 (n=14).


CONCLUSION
Although these results are encouraging, they are uncontrolled. They suggest that acupuncture could be an option for these patients and controlled trials using validated patient-reported outcome measures are justified.