LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Helisal Rapid Blood Test and 14C-Urea Breath Test in Determining Helicobacter pylori Status and Predicting Ulcer Disease in Dyspeptic Patients

Objective:Noninvasive tests for Helicobacter pylori are used increasingly. Our aim was to compare the Helisal Rapid Blood (HRB) test and 14C-urea breath test (UBT) for determining H. pylori status and predicting ulcer disease.Methods:Three hundred fifty-one consecutive patients with dyspepsia (mean age 40 yr; range 16–77 yr) had an HRB test and UBT followed by endoscopy with biopsies of the antrum and body for histology and antral urease slide test (CLO test). Patients were excluded if they had previously confirmed ulcer disease, gastric surgery, or anti-H. pylori therapy or were taking nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.Results:Sixty-three percent of the patients were “gold standard”H. pylori positive (positive CLO test, positive staining), 34% were gold standard negative (negative CLO test, negative staining), and 3% had conflicting CLO test and histology. The UBT was superior to HRB for determining H. pylori status (sensitivity 98%vs 92%, p= 0.04; specificity 100%vs 69%, p < 0.001). The specificity of the HRB decreased with increasing patient age (74% for age < 46 yr; 57% for age ≥46 yr). A negative UBT was superior to a negative HRB test for predicting the absence of ulcer disease (47%vs 36%; p < 0.01). A positive UBT was similar to a positive HRB in predicting the presence of ulcer disease (92%vs 84%; p= 0.23).Conclusions:The HRB test is inferior to the UBT for determining H. pylori status. The tests have a similar ability to predict the presence of ulcer disease when positive, but a negative UBT is a better predictor of the absence of ulcer disease.
High Dengue Case Capture Rate in Four Years of a Cohort Study in Nicaragua Compared to National Surveillance Data

Dengue is a major public health problem in tropical and subtropical regions; however, under-reporting of cases to national surveillance systems hinders accurate knowledge of disease burden and costs. Laboratory-confirmed dengue cases identified through the Nicaraguan Pediatric Dengue Cohort Study (PDCS) were compared to those reported from other health facilities in Managua to the National Epidemiologic Surveillance (NES) program of the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health. Compared to reporting among similar pediatric populations in Managua, the PDCS identified 14 to 28 (average 21.3) times more dengue cases each year per 100,000 persons than were reported to the NES. Applying these annual expansion factors to national-level data, we estimate that the incidence of confirmed pediatric dengue throughout Nicaragua ranged from 300 to 1000 cases per 100,000 persons. We have estimated a much higher incidence of dengue than reported by the Ministry of Health. A country-specific expansion factor for dengue that allows for a more accurate estimate of incidence may aid governments and other institutions calculating disease burden, costs, resource needs for prevention and treatment, and the economic benefits of drug and vaccine development.
Mirror therapy in chronic stroke survivors with severely impaired upper limb function: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND
Mirror therapy (MT) has been proposed to improve the motor function of chronic individuals with stroke with mild to moderate impairment. With regards to severe upper limb paresis, MT has shown to provide limited motor improvement in the acute or sub-acute phase. However, no previous research has described the effects of MT in chronic individuals with stroke with severely impaired upper limb function.


AIM
The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of MT on chronic stroke survivors with severe upper-limb impairment in comparison with passive mobilization.


DESIGN
A randomized controlled trial.


SETTING
Rehabilitative outpatient unit.


POPULATION
A total of 31 chronic subjects poststroke with severely impaired upper limb function were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (N.=15), or a control group (N.=16).


METHODS
Twenty-four intervention sessions were performed for both groups. Each session included 45-minute period of MT (experimental group) or passive mobilization (control group), administered three days a week. Participants were assessed before and after the intervention with the Wolf Motor Function Test, the Fugl-Meyer Assessment, and the Nottingham Sensory Assessment.


RESULTS
Improvement in motor function was observed in both groups on the time (P=0.002) and ability (P=0.001) subscales of the Wolf Motor Function Test. No differences were detected in kinesthesis or stereognosis. However, the experimental group showed a significant improvement in tactile sensation that was mainly observed as an increased sensitivity to light touches.


CONCLUSIONS
In comparison with passive mobilization, MT in chronic stroke survivors with severely impaired upper-limb function may provide a limited but positive effect on light touch sensitivity while providing similar motor improvement.


CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT
MT is a therapeutic approach that can be used in the rehabilitation of severely impaired upper limb in chronic stroke survivors, specifically to address light touch sensitivity deficits.
The role of topography on catchment-scale water residence time: CATCHMENT-SCALE WATER RESIDENCE TIME

[1] The age, or residence time, of water is a fundamental descriptor of catchment hydrology, revealing information about the storage, flow pathways, and source of water in a single integrated measure. While there has been tremendous recent interest in residence time estimation to characterize watersheds, there are relatively few studies that have quantified residence time at the watershed scale, and fewer still that have extended those results beyond single catchments to larger landscape scales. We examined topographic controls on residence time for seven catchments (0.085– 62.4 km) that represent diverse geologic and geomorphic conditions in the western Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Our primary objective was to determine the dominant physical controls on catchment-scale water residence time and specifically test the hypothesis that residence time is related to the size of the basin. Residence times were estimated by simple convolution models that described the transfer of precipitation isotopic composition to the stream network. We found that base flow mean residence times for exponential distributions ranged from 0.8 to 3.3 years. Mean residence time showed no correlation to basin area (r < 0.01) but instead was correlated (r = 0.91) to catchment terrain indices representing the flow path distance and flow path gradient to the stream network. These results illustrate that landscape organization (i.e., topography) rather than basin area controls catchment-scale transport. Results from this study may provide a framework for describing scale-invariant transport across climatic and geologic conditions, whereby the internal form and structure of the basin defines the first-order control on base flow residence time.
Computer forensic timeline visualization tool

Computer Forensics is mainly about investigating crime where computers have been involved. There are many tools available to aid the investigator with this task. We have created a prototype of a new type of tool called CyberForensic TimeLab where all evidence is indexed by their time variables and plotted on a timeline. We believed that this way of visualizing the evidence allows the investigators to find coherent evidence faster and more intuitively. We have performed a user test where a group of people has evaluated our prototype tool against a modern commercial computer forensic tool and the results of this preliminary test are very promising. The results show that users completed the task in shorter time, with greater accuracy and with less errors using CyberForensic TimeLab. The subjects also experienced that the prototype were more intuitive to use and that it allowed them to easier locate evidence that was coherent in time. a 2009 Digital Forensic Research Workshop. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The effects of post-adoption beliefs on the expectation-confirmation model for information technology continuance

The expectation-confirmation model (ECM) of IT continuance is a model for investigating continued information technology (IT) usage behavior. This paper reports on a study that attempts to expand the set of post-adoption beliefs in the ECM, in order to extend the application of the ECM beyond an instrumental focus. The expanded ECM, incorporating the post-adoption beliefs of perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and perceived ease of use, was empirically validated with data collected from an on-line survey of 811 existing users of mobile Internet services. The data analysis showed that the expanded ECM has good explanatory power (R 1⁄4 57:6% of continued IT usage intention and R 1⁄4 67:8% of satisfaction), with all paths supported. Hence, the expanded ECM can provide supplementary information that is relevant for understanding continued IT usage. The significant effects of post-adoption perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment signify that the nature of the IT can be an important boundary condition in understanding the continued IT usage behavior. At a practical level, the expanded ECM presents IT product/service providers with deeper insights into how to address IT users’ satisfaction and continued patronage. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Cost optimized provisioning of elastic resources for application workflows

Workflow technologies have become a major vehicle for easy and efficient development of scientific applications. In the meantime, state-of-the-art resource provisioning technologies such as cloud computing enable users to acquire computing resources dynamically and elastically. A critical challenge in integrating workflow technologies with resource provisioning technologies is to determine the right amount of resources required for the execution of workflows in order to minimize the financial cost from the perspective of users and to maximize the resource utilization from the perspective of resource providers. This paper suggests an architecture for the automatic execution of large-scale workflow-based applications on dynamically and elastically provisioned computing resources. Especially, we focus on its core algorithm named PBTS (Partitioned Balanced Time Scheduling), which estimates the minimum number of computing hosts required to execute a workflow within a user-specified finish time. The PBTS algorithm is designed to fit both elastic resource provisioning models such as Amazon EC2 and malleable parallel application models such as MapReduce. The experimental results with a number of synthetic workflows and several real science workflows demonstrate that PBTS estimates the resource capacity close to the theoretical low bound. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Deep Learning applied to NLP

Convolutional Neural Network (CNNs) are typically associated with Computer Vision. CNNs are responsible for major breakthroughs in Image Classification and are the core of most Computer Vision systems today. More recently CNNs have been applied to problems in Natural Language Processing and gotten some interesting results. In this paper, we will try to explain the basics of CNNs, its different variations and how they have been applied to NLP.
A survey of bio-inspired robotics hands implementation: New directions in dexterous manipulation

Recently, significant advances have been made in ROBOTICS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and other COGNITIVE related fields, allowing tomakemuch sophisticated biomimetic robotics systems. In addition, enormous number of robots have been designed and assembled, explicitly realize biological oriented behaviors. Towards much skill behaviors and adequate grasping abilities (i.e. ARTICULATION and DEXTEROUS MANIPULATION), a new phase of dexterous hands have been developed recently with biomimetically oriented and bio-inspired functionalities. In this respect, this manuscript brings a detailed survey of biomimetic based dexterous robotics multi-fingered hands. The aim of this survey, is to find out the state of the art on dexterous robotics end-effectors, known in literature as (ROBOTIC HANDS) or (DEXTEROUSMULTI-FINGERED) robot hands. Hence, this review finds such biomimetic approaches using a framework that permits for a common description of biological and technical based hand manipulation behavior. In particular, the manuscript focuses on a number of developments that have been taking place over the past two decades, and some recent developments related to this biomimetic field of research. In conclusions, the study found that, there are rich research efforts in terms of KINEMATICS, DYNAMICS, MODELING and CONTROL methodologies. The survey is also indicating that, the topic of biomimetic inspired robotics systems make significant contributions to robotics hand design, in four main directions for future research. First, they provide a genuine world test of models of biologically inspired hand designs and dexterous manipulation behaviors. Second, they provide novel manipulation articulations and mechanisms available for industrial and domestic uses, most notably in the field of human like hand design and real world applications. Third, this survey has also indicated that, there are quite large number of attempts to acquire biologically inspired hands. These attempts were almost successful, where they exposed more novel ideas for further developments. Such inspirations were directed towards a number of topics related (HAND MECHANICS AND DESIGN), (HAND TACTILE SENSING), (HAND FORCE SENSING), (HAND SOFT ACTUATION) and (HANDCONFIGURATIONAND TOPOLOGY). FOURTH, in terms of employing AI related sciences and cognitive thinking, it was also found that, rare and exceptional research attempts were directed towards the employment of biologically inspired thinking, i.e. (AI, BRAIN AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES) for hand upper control and towards much sophisticated dexterous movements. Throughout the study, it has been found there are number of efforts in terms of mechanics and hand designs, tactical sensing, however, for hand soft actuation, it seems this area of research is still far away from having a realistic muscular type fingers and hand movements. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Theoretical and Experimental Analysis for Current in a Dual-Inverter-Fed Open-End Winding Induction Motor Drive With Reduced Switching PWM

A dual two-level voltage source inverter (VSI) can synthesize a three-level voltage space vector employing an open-end winding induction motor. Space-vector-based pulsewidth modulation (PWM) variants for this dual VSI are proposed in this paper that offer the dual advantage of limiting the switching power loss to a single VSI at all instants and also reducing the switching commutations in the dual VSI by 50%. The influence of different error volt seconds (affected with different PWM variants) on the motor phase current in the dual VSI is critically analyzed. To this end, two analytical approaches (one using error-voltage trajectory information and the other using switching state information of the dual VSI) are also proposed in this paper to predict the current trajectory and the ripple content in the drive system. Expressions for rms ripple current are developed with different PWM variants. The efficacy of the proposed analytical approaches to predict the current trajectory and the ripple content is confirmed from the experimental results. All the PWM variants are first simulated using MATLAB and verified experimentally by conducting tests on a three-phase open-end winding induction motor drive controlled with volts per hertz control. The implementation of the PWM algorithms only requires instantaneous magnitudes of three-phase reference voltages and completely avoids the sector identification and lookup tables.
On the persistence of pseudo-holomorphic curves on an almost complex torus (with an appendix by Jürgen Pöschel)

In recent years pseudo-holomorphic curves on almost complex manifolds have played an important role in connection with the developments in symplectic geometry, notably on account of Gromov's work [8] in 1985. In particular, the existence of compact pseudo-holomorphic curves of the type of S 2 or the closed disc have been established on particular manifolds. In this paper we study, unrelated from symplectic geometry, non-compact pseudo-holomorphic curves on an almost complex torus (T2n,J). These curves carry a complex structure and therefore represent Riemann surfaces. In our case they are of the type of ~ or a cylinder ~* = IE\(0). In particular we are interested in the question of the persistence of these curves under perturbation of the almost complex structure. This question has similar features as that of the persistence of invariant tori in classical mechanics, as initiated by Kolmogorov [2,15,18]. However, in contrast with that theory we are dealing with nonlinear elliptic systems of partial differential equations of Cauchy-Riemann type. Our results provide global solutions for such systems.
Theoretical Issues In Amorphous-Silicon Materials And Device Research

The characterization necessary to account for the physical properties and device performance of any semiconducting material is presented. This can be divided into five major categories. The results of intensive studies of hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin films are reviewed in detail. It is concluded that many important characteristics of these commercially important materials are still not known with any degree of certainty.
Analgesic and Anti-inflammatory Activities of Flower Extracts of Punica granatum Linn. (Punicaceae)

Punica granatum has been used for centuries to confer health benefits in a number of inflammatory diseases. Based on its usage in Ayurvedic and Unani medicine, dietary supplements containing pomegranate extract are becoming popular for the treatment and prevention of arthritis and other inflammatory diseases. Pet-ether, dichloromethane and methanol fractions of flower part were chosen for pharmacological screening and analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities in animal model. The anti-inflammatory activity was assessed using the carrageenan-induced rat paw edema model. The analgesic effect was measured in mice using the acetic acid-induced writhing test. In the acetic acid-induced writhing test in mice, pet-ether, dichloromethane and methanol fractions at 200 mg/kg doses level showed 75.77% (p<0.001), 68.56% (p<0.001), 54.64% (p<0.001) inhibition of writhing, respectively. In rat paw edema model induced by carrageenan, pet-ether, dichloromethane and methanol fractions were found to reduce significantly (p<0.001) the formation of edema at the 100 mg/kg dose level and showed 26.92% (p<0.001), 27.97%(p<0.001), 21.85%(p<0.001) inhibition respectively of edema volume at the end of 4 h. Punica granatum possesses evident analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities. The results signify the traditional uses of Punica granatum for inflammation and pain.
A Hybrid-Control Approach to the Parking Problem of a Wheeled Vehicle Using Limited View-Angle Visual Feedback

In this paper we consider the mobile robot parking problem, i.e., the stabilization of a wheeled vehicle to a given position and orientation, using only visual feedback from low-cost cameras. We take into account the practically most relevant problem of keeping the tracked features in sight of the camera while maneuvering to park the vehicle. This constraint, often neglected in the literature, combines with the non-holonomic nature of the vehicle kinematics in a challenging controller design problem. We provide an effective solution to such a problem by using a combination of previous results on non-smooth control synthesis and recently developed hybrid control techniques. Simulations and experimental results on a laboratory vehicle are reported, showing the practicality of the proposed approach. KEY WORDS—parking of wheeled robots, visual servoing, hybrid control, non-holonomic systems
Shorter daily dwelling time in peritoneal dialysis attenuates the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition of mesothelial cells

BACKGROUND
Peritoneal dialysis (PD) therapy is known to induce morphological and functional changes in the peritoneal membrane. Long-term exposure to conventional bio-incompatible dialysate and peritonitis is the main etiology of inflammation. Consequently, the peritoneal membrane undergoes structural changes, including angiogenesis, fibrosis, and hyalinizing vasculopathy, which ultimately results in technique failure. The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) of mesothelial cells (MCs) plays an important role during the above process; however, the clinical parameters associated with the EMT process of MCs remain to be explored.


METHODS
To investigate the parameters impacting EMT during PD therapy, 53 clinical stable PD patients were enrolled. EMT assessments were conducted through human peritoneal MCs cultured from dialysate effluent with one consistent standard criterion (MC morphology and the expression of an epithelial marker, cytokeratin 18). The factors potentially associated with EMT were analyzed using logistic regression analysis. Primary MCs derived from the omentum were isolated for the in vitro study.


RESULTS
Forty-seven percent of the patients presented with EMT, 28% with non-EMT, and 15% with a mixed presentation. Logistic regression analysis showed that patients who received persistent PD therapy (dwelling time of 24 h/day) had significantly higher EMT tendency. These results were consistent in vitro.


CONCLUSIONS
Dwelling time had a significant effect on the occurrence of EMT on MCs.
Testing Object-Oriented Software Systems

A software system is a model of a problem domain in an attempt to solve the problem. Traditionally the system is constructed of units consisting of related functions-related by virtue of being constituents of a higher level function. Recently, a new approach to system decomposition has become popular. The new approach looks at the objects that make up the problem domain. Hence the name object-oriented. The data and it’s operations are collected into a unit called a class. An object is an instance of a class with its own copy of the class’ private data. In structured programming one thinks in terms of inputs, function, and outputs. In objectoriented programming (OOP) the approach is different-a message is passed to an object requesting an operation on the object. A class can inherit data and/or operations from an existing parent (or base) class. In C + + the new class is called a detived class. The inheritance feature, more than any, makes OOP a viable approach. Stroustrup [27] says, “Object-oriented programming is programming with inheritance. ”