LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Attempto Controlled English Meets the Challenges of Knowledge Representation, Reasoning, Interoperability and User Interfaces

We present Attempto Controlled English — a user- 
friendly first-order logic language with a rich English 
syntax — and its associated tools, and demonstrate how 
they meet the challenges of knowledge representation, 
reasoning, interoperability and user interfaces created 
by large software projects like the semantic web.
Equal opportunity tactic: Redesigning and applying competition games in classrooms

Competition, despite its potential drawbacks, is an easily adopted and frequently used motivator in classrooms. Individual abilities, in the years of schooling, are inevitably different, and performance in competition is heavily ability dependent, resulting that more-able students always win while less-able students always lose. Students easily perceive how well they perform through the result of competition, which is termed as perceived performance in this paper. Consistently demonstrating lower perceived performance than their peers, the less-able students feel discouraged and frustrated, hardly having the same opportunity for owning the sense of achievement as the more-able students. In this study, the authors designed a computerized mechanism, equal opportunity tactic, to lessen the difference in perceived performance between more-able and less-able students. Equal opportunity tactic is incorporated into a version of a competitive learning game called AnswerMatching, in which every student is assigned an opponent with similar ability. An experiment was also conducted to preliminarily investigate the effectiveness and effects of the tactic. Results showed that equal opportunity tactic could reduce the effect of individual ability difference on the perceived performance as well as the belief about how well students could achieve. In other words, less-able students could have similar opportunity of success and build confidence similar to more-able students in a competition. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Mental health services: use and disparity among diverse college students.

OBJECTIVE
In this empirical study, the authors examined (1) actual use of counseling for emotional problems and (2) the assumptions that ethnicity, sex, social class, and psychological distress are associated with disparities in use of counseling.


PARTICIPANTS
Participants were 1,773 diverse undergraduate students at an urban university.


METHODS
The authors collected data via self-administered questionnaires between 1999 and 2005; they used a cross-sectional correlational research design, including analysis of variance statistical procedures.


RESULTS
Students' level of counseling use (10%) was similar to that estimated for a national college sample. Students reporting higher levels of distress were more likely to use counseling; however, more than three-fourths of students who reported clinically significant levels of distress had not received counseling.


CONCLUSIONS
The authors observed no disparities in use of mental health services in terms of sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
Application for Text Processing of Cardiology Medical Records

This paper approaches the problem of processing medical records with the aim of data analysis from a larger set of domain specific medical data. We solve this problem in cooperation with doctors from Department of Cardiology of the East Slovak Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. For this purpose, we designed, implemented and tested first prototype of a software system able to read and process medical records about cardiological patients and provide anonymized data for further analysis.
n-3PUFA and Holter-derived autonomic variables in patients with heart failure: data from the Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della Sopravvivenza nell'Insufficienza Cardiaca (GISSI-HF) Holter substudy.

BACKGROUND
n-3 Polyunsaturated fatty acid (n-3PUFA) supplementation in the Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della Sopravvivenza nell'Insufficienza Cardiaca (GISSI-HF) study reduced total mortality in patients with heart failure (HF), but the mechanism of action is still debated. The hypothesis of the present GISSI-HF substudy was that n-3PUFA may have beneficial effects on cardiac autonomic control.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effect of 1 g/day of n-3PUFA vs placebo on heart rate variability variables, deceleration capacity, and turbulence slope.


METHODS
The GISSI-HF study enrolled patients with HF of any cause and severity. Twenty-four-hour (range 16-24 hours) Holter recordings were performed and analyzed in 388 patients at baseline, 3 months, and 12 months. Baseline characteristics were compared by using the χ(2) test, t test, or nonparametric Wilcoxon 2-sample test. Changes over time were tested by using the analysis of covariance adjusted by baseline values.


RESULTS
At baseline, 36% of the patients were older than 70 years, 82% were men, 92% presented a left ventricular ejection fraction<40%, and 80% were in New York Heart Association class II. An increase in mean RR interval, standard deviation of all normal-to-normal RR intervals, very low frequency power (all P<.05), and turbulence slope (P = .05) was observed after 3 months in the n-3PUFA group compared to the placebo group, independently of the frequency of dietary fish consumption or beta-blocker treatment. These differences between study groups were no longer statistically significant at 12 months. A per-protocol analysis in patients compliant with study treatment showed similar results.


CONCLUSIONS
n-3PUFA supplementation partially restored autonomic modulation in patients with chronic HF; this effect was maximal after 3 months of treatment.
The German hospital malnutrition study.

BACKGROUND & AIMS
Malnutrition is frequently observed in chronic and severe diseases and associated with impaired outcome. In Germany general data on prevalence and impact of hospital malnutrition are missing.


METHODS
Nutritional state was assessed by subjective global assessment (SGA) and by anthropometric measurements in 1,886 consecutively admitted patients in 13 hospitals (n=1,073, university hospitals; n=813, community or teaching hospitals). Risk factors for malnutrition and the impact of nutritional status on length of hospital stay were analyzed.


RESULTS
Malnutrition was diagnosed in 27.4% of patients according to SGA. A low arm muscle area and arm fat area were observed in 11.3% and 17.1%, respectively. Forty-three % of patients 70 years old were malnourished compared to only 7.8% of patients <30 years. The highest prevalence of malnutrition was observed in geriatric (56.2%), oncology (37.6%), and gastroenterology (32.6%) departments. Multivariate analysis revealed three independent risk factors: higher age, polypharmacy, and malignant disease (all P<0.01). Malnutrition was associated with an 43% increase of hospital stay (P<0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
In German hospitals every fourth patient is malnourished. Malnutrition is associated with increased length of hospital stay. Higher age, malignant disease and major comorbidity were found to be the main contributors to malnutrition. Adequate nutritional support should be initiated in order to optimize the clinical outcome of these patients.
Neonatal exposure to a combination of N-methyl-D-aspartate and gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptor anesthetic agents potentiates apoptotic neurodegeneration and persistent behavioral deficits.

BACKGROUND
During the brain growth spurt, the brain develops and modifies rapidly. In rodents this period is neonatal, spanning the first weeks of life, whereas in humans it begins during the third trimester and continues 2 yr. This study examined whether different anesthetic agents, alone and in combination, administered to neonate mice, can trigger apoptosis and whether behavioral deficits occur later in adulthood.


METHODS
Ten-day-old mice were injected subcutaneously with ketamine (25 mg/kg), thiopental (5 mg/kg or 25 mg/kg), propofol (10 mg/kg or 60 mg/kg), a combination of ketamine (25 mg/kg) and thiopental (5 mg/kg), a combination of ketamine (25 mg/kg) and propofol (10 mg/kg), or control (saline). Fluoro-Jade staining revealed neurodegeneration 24 h after treatment. The behavioral tests--spontaneous behavior, radial arm maze, and elevated plus maze (before and after anxiolytic)--were conducted on mice aged 55-70 days.


RESULTS
Coadministration of ketamine plus propofol or ketamine plus thiopental or a high dose of propofol alone significantly triggered apoptosis. Mice exposed to a combination of anesthetic agents or ketamine alone displayed disrupted spontaneous activity and learning. The anxiolytic action of diazepam was less effective when given to adult mice that were neonatally exposed to propofol.


CONCLUSION
This study shows that both a gamma-aminobutyric acid type A agonist (thiopental or propofol) and an N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist (ketamine) during a critical stage of brain development potentiated neonatal brain cell death and resulted in functional deficits in adulthood. The use of thiopental, propofol, and ketamine individually elicited no or only minor changes.
EOQ Revisited with Sustainability Considerations

The Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) model is a pure economic model in classical inventory control theory. The model is designed to find the order quantity so as to minimize total cost under a deterministic setting. In this study, we revise the standard EOQ model to incorporate sustainability considerations that include environmental and social criteria in addition to the conventional economics. We propose models for a number of different settings and analyze these revised models. Based on our analysis, we show how these additional criteria can be appended to traditional cost accounting in order to address sustainability in supply chain management. We propose a number of useful and practical insights for managers and policy makers.
Social-QAS: Tailorable Quality Assessment Service for Social Media Content

More than 3 billion people use the Internet, many of whom also use social media services such as the social network Facebook with about 1.35 billion active users monthly or the microblogging platform Twitter numbering approximately 284 million active users monthly. This paper researches how a tailorable quality assessment service can assist the use of citizen-generated content from social media. In particular, we want to study how users can articulate their personal quality criteria appropriately. A presentation of related work is followed by an empirical study on the use of social media in the field of emergency management, focusing on situation assessment practices by the emergency services. Based on this, we present the tailorable quality assessment service (QAS) for social media content, which has been implemented and integrated into an existing application for both volunteers and the emergency services.
Combined hormone replacement therapy does not protect women against the age-related decline in endothelium-dependent vasomotor function.

BACKGROUND
Improvement in endothelial function may be an important mechanism by which estrogen replacement therapy protects postmenopausal women against coronary artery disease. However, combined hormone replacement therapy is more frequently used owing to the risk of uterine cancer with estrogen-only therapy. Concurrent progesterone treatment may attenuate the beneficial effects of estrogens not only on the lipid profile but also on the endothelium.


METHODS AND RESULTS
We studied endothelial vasomotor function in 100 healthy postmenopausal women aged 53.3+/-2.9 years randomized to either combined hormone replacement therapy (n=46) or no substitution (n=54) 2.9+/-0.5 years earlier. In addition, 30 healthy premenopausal women aged 30.3+/-4.2 years were studied. With external ultrasound, brachial artery diameter was measured at rest, during reactive hyperemia (with increased flow causing endothelium-dependent dilation), and after sublingual nitroglycerin (causing endothelium-independent dilation). Compared with premenopausal women, flow-mediated dilation was significantly reduced in both postmenopausal groups. In the postmenopausal women, total cholesterol was lower in the treated women (5.66+/-0.83 versus 6.13+/-0.92 mmol/L; P=.025), whereas HDL cholesterol was similar (1.91+/-0.53 versus 1.85+/-0.46 mmol/L; P=NS). Dilation to flow and to nitroglycerin was similar in the two postmenopausal groups (flow: 2.5+/-2.9% versus 2.2+/-2.2%, P=NS; nitrate: 18.7+/-5.9% versus 17.2+/-6.2%, P=NS).


CONCLUSIONS
Long-term combined oral hormone replacement therapy is without beneficial effects on endothelial vasomotor function in healthy postmenopausal women. This supports the view that progesterone may attenuate the beneficial effects of unopposed estrogen replacement.
Area Studies and Comparative Politics

Professor Kling of Washington University in St. Louis reviews the history, accomplishments, and future of comparative political research on Latin America. What scholars choose to study and how they go at it are described. Real progress in Latin American studies, says the author, depends on blending the traditional and modern versions of area studies.
Model for Electrical Field Distribution in the Human Esophagus
during Stimulation with Patch and Ring Electrodes

Introduction. Electrical stimulation is used in experimental human pain models. The aim was to develop a model that visualizes the distribution of electrical field in the esophagus close to ring and patch electrodes mounted on an esophageal catheter and to explain the obtained sensory responses. Methods. Electrical field distribution in esophageal layers (mucosa, muscle layers, and surrounding tissue) was computed using a finite element model based on a 3D model. Each layer was assigned different electrical properties. An electrical field exceeding 20 V/m was considered to activate the esophageal afferents. Results. The model output showed homogeneous and symmetrical field surrounding ring electrodes compared to a saddle-shaped field around patch electrodes. Increasing interelectrode distance enlarged the electrical field in muscle layer. Conclusion. Ring electrodes with 10 mm interelectrode distance seem optimal for future catheter designs. Though the model needs further validation, the results seem useful for electrode designs and understanding of electrical stimulation patterns.
Polyketide Synthase Genes from Marine Dinoflagellates

Abstract Rapidly developing techniques for manipulating the pathways of polyketide biosynthesis at the genomic level have created the demand for new pathways with novel biosynthetic capability. Polyketides derived from dinoflagellates are among the most complex and unique structures identified thus far, yet no studies of the biosynthesis of dinoflagellate-derived polyketides at the genomic level have been reported. Nine strains representing 7 different species of dinoflagellates were screened for the presence of type I and type II polyketide synthases (PKSs) by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and reverse transcriptase PCR. Seven of the 9 strains yielded products that were homologous with known and putative type I PKSs. Unexpectedly, a PKS gene was amplified from cultures of the dinoflagellate Gymnodinium catenatum, a saxitoxin producer, which is not known to produce a polyketide. In each case the presence of a PKS gene was correlated with the presence of bacteria in the cultures as identified by amplification of the bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA gene. However, amplification from polyadenylated RNA, the lack of PKS expression in light-deprived cultures, residual phylogenetic signals, resistance to methylation-sensitive restriction enzymes, and the lack of hybridization to bacterial isolates support a dinoflagellate origin for most of these genes.
Clinical and analytical evaluation of an enzyme immunoassay for myelin basic protein in cerebrospinal fluid.

BACKGROUND
RIA of myelin basic protein (MBP) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is commonly used as a biochemical marker of demyelination in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Our aim was to develop a sufficiently sensitive ELISA for MBP and evaluate it clinically in patients with MS.


METHODS
The ELISA used anti-bovine MBP antibody coated on plates and biotinylated anti-MBP antibody. The bound antibody complex was quantified with streptavidin-horseradish peroxidase. MBP was determined in CSF from 84 MS patients and 55 patients with other neurological diseases.


RESULTS
The respective within- and between-assay CVs were 4.7% and 7.2% at 200 ng/L, and 6. 3% and 8.8% at 2000 ng/L. The detection limit was 30 ng/L. Most of the MS patients with acute exacerbations had markedly increased MBP in the CSF. Longitudinal studies of six MS patients with recurrent exacerbation confirmed this observation. MBP concentrations from 78 MS patients, as tested with our ELISA, correlated well with those obtained by RIA (r = 0.9; P: <0.01), but the detection limit of the ELISA was much lower than that of the RIA.


CONCLUSIONS
This convenient ELISA with higher sensitivity than the existing assays is a suitable routine assay that provides a diagnostic indicator of myelin breakdown in the central nervous system; moreover, it is an excellent indicator of MS disease activity.
Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969)

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) was an existentialist philosopher, deeply influenced by Kant, Kierkegaard, and Max Weber, whose philosophy formed a subjectivist counterpart, within the existentialist movement, to the fundamental ontology of Martin Heidegger. His works exercised great influence in a number of theoretical fields in Germany in the middle years of the twentieth century. He began his career as a psychiatrist, and published enduringly influential works in this field: notably his General Psychopathology (1913). The major philosophical publication of his philosophical career was the three-volume work Philosophy (1932), which attempted to fuse Kantian and Hegelian ideas to provide an account of the experiential formation of human consciousness. In this work, he analyzed consciousness as proceeding from the level of immediate knowledge and progressing through a sequence of antinomies toward a level of truthfully unified reflection and self-knowledge. Also of philosophical importance are Jaspers's interventions in religious debate. The central idea in Jaspers's philosophy of religion is the concept of philosophical faith, in which he promoted a critical-recuperative attitude toward religious inquiry and attempted to convert elements of religious doctrine into a (secularist) account of human possibilities and freedoms. The ambition behind his work on religion and myth was to liberate transcendent knowledge from theology, and to permit an interpretive transformation of religiously conceived essences into aspects of human self-interpretation. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
existentialism; 
philosophy; 
religion
How well can the IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN support quality of service?

This paper studies an important problem in the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF)-based wireless local area network (WLAN): how well can the network support quality of service (QoS). Specifically, this paper analyzes the network's performance in terms of maximum protocol capacity or throughput, delay, and packet loss rate. Although the performance of the 802.11 protocol, such as throughput or delay, has been extensively studied in the saturated case, it is demonstrated that maximum protocol capacity can only be achieved in the nonsaturated case and is almost independent of the number of active nodes. By analyzing packet delay, consisting of medium access control (MAC) service time and waiting time, accurate estimates were derived for delay and delay variation when the throughput increases from zero to the maximum value. Packet loss rate is also given for the nonsaturated case. Furthermore, it is shown that the channel busyness ratio provides precise and robust information about the current network status, which can be utilized to facilitate QoS provisioning. The authors have conducted a comprehensive simulation study to verify their analytical results and to tune the 802.11 to work at the optimal point with maximum throughput and low delay and packet loss rate. The simulation results show that by controlling the total traffic rate, the original 802.11 protocol can support strict QoS requirements, such as those required by voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) or streaming video, and at the same time achieve high channel utilization.
Combined Anterior-Posterior Surgery Versus Posterior Surgery for Thoracolumbar Burst Fractures: A Systematic Review of the Literature

STUDY DESIGN
A systematic quantitative review of the literature.


OBJECTIVE
To compare combined anterior-posterior surgery versus posterior surgery for thoracolumbar fractures in order to identify better treatments.


SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA
Axial load of the anterior and middle column of the spine can lead to a burst fracture in the vertebral body. The management of thoracolumbar burst fractures remains controversial. The goals of operative treatment are fracture reduction, fixation and decompressing the neural canal. For this, different operative methods are developed, for instance, the posterior and the combined anterior-posterior approach. Recent systematic qualitative reviews comparing these methods are lacking.


METHODS
We conducted an electronic search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS and the Cochrane Central Register for Controlled Trials.


RESULTS
Five observational comparative studies and no randomized clinical trials comparing the combined anteriorposterior approach with the posterior approach were retrieved. The total enrollment of patients in these studies was 755 patients. The results were expressed as relative risk (RR) for dichotomous outcomes and weighted mean difference (WMD) for continuous outcomes with 95% confidence intervals (CI).


CONCLUSIONS
A small significantly higher kyphotic correction and improvement of vertebral height (sagittal index) observed for the combined anterior-posterior group is cancelled out by more blood loss, longer operation time, longer hospital stay, higher costs and a possible higher intra- and postoperative complication rate requiring re-operation and the possibility of a worsened Hannover spine score. The surgeons' choices regarding the operative approach are biased: worse cases tended to undergo the combined anterior-posterior approach.
A deep learning model integrating FCNNs and CRFs for brain tumor segmentation

Accurate and reliable brain tumor segmentation is a critical component in cancer diagnosis, treatment planning, and treatment outcome evaluation. Build upon successful deep learning techniques, a novel brain tumor segmentation method is developed by integrating fully convolutional neural networks (FCNNs) and Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) in a unified framework to obtain segmentation results with appearance and spatial consistency. We train a deep learning based segmentation model using 2D image patches and image slices in following steps: 1) training FCNNs using image patches; 2) training CRFs as Recurrent Neural Networks (CRF-RNN) using image slices with parameters of FCNNs fixed; and 3) fine-tuning the FCNNs and the CRF-RNN using image slices. Particularly, we train 3 segmentation models using 2D image patches and slices obtained in axial, coronal and sagittal views respectively, and combine them to segment brain tumors using a voting based fusion strategy. Our method could segment brain images slice-by-slice, much faster than those based on image patches. We have evaluated our method based on imaging data provided by the Multimodal Brain Tumor Image Segmentation Challenge (BRATS) 2013, BRATS 2015 and BRATS 2016. The experimental results have demonstrated that our method could build a segmentation model with Flair, T1c, and T2 scans and achieve competitive performance as those built with Flair, T1, T1c, and T2 scans.