LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
A double-blind, randomized controlled trial to compare the effect of biannual peripheral magnetic resonance imaging, radiography and standard of care disease progression monitoring on pharmacotherapeutic escalation in rheumatoid and undifferentiated inflammatory arthritis: study protocol for a rando

BACKGROUND
Permanent joint damage is a major consequence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the most common and destructive form of inflammatory arthritis. In aggressive disease, joint damage can occur within 6 months from symptom onset. Early, intensive treatment with conventional and biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) can delay the onset and progression of joint damage. The primary objective of the study is to investigate the value of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or radiography (X-ray) over standard of care as tools to guide DMARD treatment decision-making by rheumatologists for the care of RA.


METHODS
A double-blind, randomized controlled trial has been designed. Rheumatoid and undifferentiated inflammatory arthritis patients will undergo an MRI and X-ray assessment every 6 months. Baseline adaptive randomization will be used to allocate participants to MRI, X-ray, or sham-intervention groups on a background of standard of care. Prognostic markers, treating physician, and baseline DMARD therapy will be used as intervention allocation parameters. The outcome measures in rheumatology RA MRI score and the van der Heijde-modified Sharp score will be used to evaluate the MRI and X-ray images, respectively. Radiologists will score anonymized images for all patients regardless of intervention allocation. Disease progression will be determined based on the study-specific, inter-rater smallest detectable difference. Allocation-dependent, intervention-concealed reports of positive or negative disease progression will be reported to the treating rheumatologist. Negative reports will be delivered for the sham-intervention group. Study-based radiology clinical reports will be provided to the treating rheumatologists for extra-study X-ray requisitions to limit patient radiation exposure as part of diagnostic imaging standard of care. DMARD treatment dose escalation and therapy changes will be measured to evaluate the primary objective. A sample size of 186 (62 per group) patients will be required to determine a 36% difference in pharmacological treatment escalation between the three groups with intermediate dispersion of data with 90% power at a 5% level of significance.


DISCUSSION
This study will determine if monitoring RA and undifferentiated inflammatory arthritis patients using MRI and X-ray every 6 months over 2 years provides incremental evidence over standard of care to influence pharmacotherapeutic decision-making and ultimately hinder disease progression.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
This trial has been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT00808496 (registered on 12 December 2008).
The art and business of revitalizing a 50-year-old science and technology magazine

By the time you flip to this page you will have noticed there is something dramatically different with Communications of the ACM.
Baby-Led Weaning: The Evidence to Date

PURPOSE OF REVIEW
Infants are traditionally introduced to solid foods using spoon-feeding of specially prepared infant foods.


RECENT FINDINGS
However, over the last 10-15 years, an alternative approach termed 'baby-led weaning' has grown in popularity. This approach involves allowing infants to self-feed family foods, encouraging the infant to set the pace and intake of the meal. Proponents of the approach believe it promotes healthy eating behaviour and weight gain trajectories, and evidence is starting to build surrounding the method. This review brings together all empirical evidence to date examining behaviours associated with the approach, its outcomes and confounding factors.


SUMMARY
Overall, although there is limited evidence suggesting that a baby-led approach may encourage positive outcomes, limitations of the data leave these conclusions weak. Further research is needed, particularly to explore pathways to impact and understand the approach in different contexts and populations.
Index reduction for differential-algebraic equations by minimal extension

In this paper a new index reduction technique is discussed for the treatment of differential-algebraic systems for which extra structural information is available. Based on this information reduced derivative arrays are formed and instead of using expensive subspace computations the index reduction is obtained by introducing new variables. The new approach is demonstrated for several important classes of differential-algebraic systems, where the structural information is available. These include multibody systems and circuit simulation problems. The effectiveness of the new approach is demonstrated via numerical examples.
Hardness of parameter estimation in graphical models

We consider the problem of learning the canonical parameters specifying an undirected graphical model (Markov random field) from the mean parameters. For graphical models representing a minimal exponential family, the canonical parameters are uniquely determined by the mean parameters, so the problem is feasible in principle. The goal of this paper is to investigate the computational feasibility of this statistical task. Our main result shows that parameter estimation is in general intractable: no algorithm can learn the canonical parameters of a generic pair-wise binary graphical model from the mean parameters in time bounded by a polynomial in the number of variables (unless RP = NP). Indeed, such a result has been believed to be true (see [1]) but no proof was known. Our proof gives a polynomial time reduction from approximating the partition function of the hard-core model, known to be hard, to learning approximate parameters. Our reduction entails showing that the marginal polytope boundary has an inherent repulsive property, which validates an optimization procedure over the polytope that does not use any knowledge of its structure (as required by the ellipsoid method and others).
Electrochemical Sensors for Soil Nutrient Detection: Opportunity and Challenge

Soil testing is the basis for nutrient recommendation and formulated fertilization. This study presented a brief overview of potentiometric electrochemical sensors (ISE and ISFET) for soil NPK detection. The opportunities and challenges for electrochemical sensors in soil testing were
Copeptin for rapid rule out of acute myocardial infarction in emergency department.

BACKGROUND
Copeptin, in combination with conventional troponin (cTn), has been suggested as a means of rapid rule out of the diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). This study aims to assess the value of copeptin for rule out of AMI, according to the pre-test probability (PTP).


METHODS
In a prospective multicentric study, we enrolled patients presenting into emergency departments with chest pain <6h, copeptin was measured, and PTP was quoted. The discharge diagnosis was adjudicated by 2 independent experts using all available data, including cTnI.


RESULTS
317 patients were included: 148 (46%) had low, 110 (35%) moderate and 59 (19%) high PTP. Final diagnosis was AMI in 45 patients (14%). Median copeptin level was higher in AMI patients compared with that in patients having other diagnoses (23.2 vs. 9.9 pmol/L, p=0.01). A copeptin level ≥10.7 pmol/L in combination with cTnI detected AMI with higher sensitivity than for cTnI alone (98 [87-100] vs. 71 [55-83] %, p=0.001), whatever the PTP. The negative predictive value of the combination copeptin+cTnI was increased, compared to that of cTnI alone (99 [97-100] vs. 95 [92-97] %, p<0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
In triage of chest pain patients, the additional use of copeptin with conventional cTnI might allow a rapid and reliable rule out of the diagnosis of AMI regardless of the PTP.
Simultaneous quantitative determination of olmesartan and hydrochlorothiazide in human plasma and urine by liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry.

A specific, sensitive and rapid method based on high performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) was developed for the simultaneous determination of olmesartan (OLM) and hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) in human plasma and urine. Solid-phase extraction (SPE) was used to isolate the analytes from biological matrices followed by injection of the extracts onto a C(18) column with isocratic elution. Detection was carried out on a triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode using negative electrospray ionization (ESI). The method was validated over the concentration range of 1.00-1000 ng/mL and 5.00-5000 ng/mL for OLM in human plasma and urine as well as 0.500-200 ng/mL and 25.0-25,000 ng/mL for HCTZ in human plasma and urine, respectively. Inter- and intra-run precision of OLM and HCTZ were less than 15% and the accuracy was within 85-115% for both plasma and urine. The average extraction recoveries were 96.6% and 92.7% for OLM, and 87.2% and 72.1% for HCTZ in human plasma and urine, respectively. The linearity, recovery, matrix effect and stability were validated for OLM/HCTZ in human plasma and urine.
Diazepam prevents progression of kindled alcohol withdrawal behaviour

The purpose of the present experiment was to study the “kindling” hypothesis of alcohol withdrawal stating that exposure to repeated episodes of alcohol withdrawal results in an increased severity of subsequent withdrawal reactions. Two groups of male Wistar rats were subjected to 13 episodes of 2 days severe alcohol intoxication and 5 days alcohol withdrawal. Animals in the control group (n=80) developed clinical withdrawal signs following each intoxication episode. In the diazepam group (n=80) the withdrawal reactions during episodes 1–9 were blocked by intraperitoneal diazepam administration (0–30 mg/kg) 8, 11 and 15 h into withdrawal. During episode 10–13 diazepam treatment was terminated and convulsive withdrawal behaviour was observed 9–15 h after last alcohol dose. The probability of seizure activity during these four withdrawal episodes was calculated as 0.239 and 0.066 in the control and the diazepam groups, respectively. Based on Monte Carlo simulation techniques, this difference was found to be statistically significant (P<0.05). No differences in the non-convulsive alcohol withdrawal symptoms tremor, hyperactivity and rigidity were detected between controls and diazepam animals after diazepam treatment. It was concluded that the increased convulsive behaviour in the control group was caused by cumulated kindling-like cerebral alterations during the previous repeated alcohol withdrawal phases.
Hyper/J: multi-dimensional separation of concerns for Java

Hyper/J™ supports flexible, multi-dimensional separation of concerns for Java™ software. This demonstration shows how to use Hyper/J in some important development and evolution seenarios, emphasizing the software engineering benefits it provides.
An Approach for Weakly-Supervised Deep Information Retrieval

(1) Disregard pseudo-queries that do not retrieve their pseudo-relevant document in the top nrank. (2) Select the top nneg retrieved documents are negative training examples. General Approach: Generate mock interaction embeddings and filter training examples down to those the most nearly match a set of template query-document pairs (given a distance function). Since interaction embeddings specific to what a model “sees,” interaction filters are model-specific.
Inulin and oligofructose do not influence the absorption of cholesterol, or the excretion of cholesterol, Ca, Mg, Zn, Fe, or bile acids but increases energy excretion in ileostomy subjects

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of inulin and oligofructose on cholesterol absorption and excretion of cholesterol, bile acids, energy, nitrogen and minerals in man.DESIGN: Double-blind cross-over study.SETTING: Metabolic kitchen with policlinic visits, Sahlgrenska Hospital, Göteborg, SwedenSUBJECTS: Patients with conventional ileostomy because of ulcerative colitis.INTERVENTIONS: 17 g of inulin, 17 g of oligofructose and 7 g of sucrose were added to a controlled diet during three experimental periods of three days each. Ileostomy effluents were collected and analysed. Differences between experimental and control diet were investigated with the Wilcoxon’s sign and values test.RESULTS: Inulin and oligofructose were recovered in the ileostomy effluent to 88% (95% CI, 76–100%) and 89% (64–114%) respectively. Dry solid excretion increased by 14.4 g (11.3–17.5) on inulin, and by 14.7 g (13.0–16.4 g) on oligofructose and energy excretion increased 245 kJ (190–307 kJ) on inulin and 230 kJ (217–315 kJ) on oligofructose compared to control diet (P<0.05). Cholesterol absorption, excretion of cholesterol, bile acids, nitrogen, fat, calcium, magnesium, zinc and iron were not affected by inulin and oligofructose.CONCLUSIONS: Inulin and oligofructose are not digested in the small intestine. They do not affect mineral excretion and hence hardly mineral absorption. They do not increase fat or nitrogen excretion from the small intestine. Any physiological effect of inulin and oligofructose is probably mediated through other mechanisms than altered excretion from the small intestine.SPONSORSHIPS: This work was supported by grants from Swedish Council for Agriculture and Forestry, from Gothenburg Medical Society and from ORAFTI Ltd Belgium.
Effectiveness of a selective, personality-targeted prevention program for adolescent alcohol use and misuse: a cluster randomized controlled trial.

CONTEXT
Selective school-based alcohol prevention programs targeting youth with personality risk factors for addiction and mental health problems have been found to reduce substance use and misuse in those with elevated personality profiles.


OBJECTIVES
To report 24-month outcomes of the Teacher-Delivered Personality-Targeted Interventions for Substance Misuse Trial (Adventure trial) in which school staff were trained to provide interventions to students with 1 of 4 high-risk (HR) profiles: anxiety sensitivity, hopelessness, impulsivity, and sensation seeking and to examine the indirect herd effects of this program on the broader low-risk (LR) population of students who were not selected for intervention.


DESIGN
Cluster randomized controlled trial.


SETTING
Secondary schools in London, United Kingdom.


PARTICIPANTS
A total of 1210 HR and 1433 LR students in the ninth grade (mean [SD] age, 13.7 [0.33] years).


INTERVENTION
Schools were randomized to provide brief personality-targeted interventions to HR youth or treatment as usual (statutory drug education in class).


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Participants were assessed for drinking, binge drinking, and problem drinking before randomization and at 6-monthly intervals for 2 years.


RESULTS
Two-part latent growth models indicated long-term effects of the intervention on drinking rates (β = -0.320, SE = 0.145, P = .03) and binge drinking rates (β = -0.400, SE = 0.179, P = .03) and growth in binge drinking (β = -0.716, SE = 0.274, P = .009) and problem drinking (β = -0.452, SE = 0.193, P = .02) for HR youth. The HR youth were also found to benefit from the interventions during the 24-month follow-up on drinking quantity (β = -0.098, SE = 0.047, P = .04), growth in drinking quantity (β = -0.176, SE = 0.073, P = .02), and growth in binge drinking frequency (β = -0.183, SE = 0.092, P = .047). Some herd effects in LR youth were observed, specifically on drinking rates (β = -0.259, SE = 0.132, P = .049) and growth of binge drinking (β = -0.244, SE = 0.073, P = .001), during the 24-month follow-up.


CONCLUSIONS
Findings further support the personality-targeted approach to alcohol prevention and its effectiveness when provided by trained school staff. Particularly novel are the findings of some mild herd effects that result from this selective prevention program.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00776685.
Effectiveness and safety of an induction therapy with epoetin alfa in anemic cancer patients receiving concomitant chemotherapy.

BACKGROUND
Epoetin alfa, administered at standard dosages of 10,000-20,000 IU three times weekly or 40,000-60,000 IU once weekly, has been shown to significantly increase hemoglobin (Hb) levels, decrease transfusion requirements, and improve quality-of-life parameters in patients undergoing chemotherapy.Objective. This open-label, nonrandomized, historically controlled study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of an induction dose of epoetin alfa in patients with moderate or severe anemia who were receiving chemotherapy.


METHODS
Nineteen patients with solid tumors and Hb levels < 9.0 g/dl were enrolled. The patients received single s.c. injections of epoetin alfa, 40,000 IU, on study days 1, 4, 7, 10, and 13, and were then observed for the following 30 days. Nineteen other cancer patients who had matching characteristics and had received epoetin alfa, 10,000 IU, three times weekly for the 45-day study period, served as historical controls. The primary efficacy variable was change in Hb level from baseline to days 15 (approximately week 2) and 45 (approximately week 6.5). Secondary efficacy variables included the percent response (Hb increase > or = 1 g/dl) and percent major response (Hb increase > or = 2 g/dl) at days 15 and 45, the durations of response and major response after day 45, the proportion of patients transfused within the 45 study days, the changes in Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status score at days 15 and 45, and the ability to maintain the planned chemotherapy dose (dose intensity) over the 45-day study.


RESULTS
Mean increases in Hb level in the epoetin alfa 40,000 IU group were significantly greater than those in the historical control group both at day 15 and at day 45. The increase in Hb level in the control group approximated increases reported with standard 3-times-weekly epoetin alfa at day 15 but was somewhat lower than the increases typically seen by day 45, presumably due to the fact that, in the present study, the epoetin alfa dose was not doubled in initial nonresponders, as is commonly done with standard epoetin alfa treatment. The rates of major response for epoetin alfa 40,000 IU patients (37% at day 15 and 84% at day 45) were higher than those for control patients (16% and 21%, respectively). Also, the transfusion rate was lower and performance status scores were better in the epoetin alfa 40,000 IU patients than in the control patients. In all, 74% of epoetin alfa 40,000 IU patients versus 47% of control patients received 100% of the planned chemotherapy dose. Epoetin alfa was well tolerated in both treatment groups.


CONCLUSIONS
Results of this study suggest that epoetin alfa at a dose of 40,000 IU administered five times over 2 weeks may confer even higher response rates than those seen with standard dosing regimens. These encouraging results support further study of the proposed induction dose of epoetin alfa in a larger, randomized, prospectively controlled trial.
Bag-of-concepts: Comprehending document representation through clustering words in distributed representation

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A German multicenter, randomized phase III trial comparing irinotecan-carboplatin with etoposide-carboplatin as first-line therapy for extensive-disease small-cell lung cancer.

BACKGROUND
This trial was designed to prove superiority of irinotecan over etoposide combined with carboplatin in extensive-disease small-cell lung cancer.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
Patients were randomly assigned to receive carboplatin area under the curve 5 mg x min/ml either in combination with irinotecan 50 mg/m2 on days 1, 8, and 15 (IP) or etoposide 140 mg/m2 on days 1-3 (EP). Primary end point was progression-free survival (PFS) at 6 months. Secondary end points were overall survival (OS), response rate, and toxicity.


RESULTS
Of 226 patients, 216 were eligible. Median PFS was 6.0 months [95% confidence interval (CI) 5.0-7.0] in the IP arm and 6.0 months (95% CI 5.2-6.8) in EP arm (P = 0.07). Median survival was 10.0 months (95% CI 8.4-11.6) and 9.0 months (95% CI 7.6-10.4) in the IP and EP arm (P = 0.06), respectively. Hazard ratios for disease progression and OS were 1.29 (95% CI 0.96-1.73, P = 0.095) and 1.34 (95% CI 0.97-1.85, P = 0.072), respectively. No difference in response rates was observed. Grade 3 and 4 hematologic toxicity favored the IP arm, whereas diarrhea was significantly more frequent in the IP arm.


CONCLUSION
This trial failed to show superiority of irinotecan over etoposide in combination with carboplatin.
Almost orthogonal linear codes are locally testable

A code is said to be locally testable if an algorithm can distinguish between a codeword and a vector being essentially far from the code using a number of queries that is independent of the code's length. The question of characterizing codes that are locally testable is highly complex. In this work we provide a sufficient condition for linear codes to be locally testable. Our condition is based on the weight distribution (spectrum) of the code and of its dual. Codes of (large) length n and minimum distance n/2 - /spl Theta/(/spl radic/n) have size which is at most polynomial in n. We call such codes almost-orthogonal. We use our condition to show that almost-orthogonal codes are locally testable, and, moreover, their dual codes can be spanned by words of constant weights (weight of a codeword refers to the number of its non-zero coordinates). Dual-BCH(n, t) codes are generalizations of the well studied Hadamard codes (t = 1 is Hadamard). Alon et al. (2003) raised the question whether Dual-BCH(n, t) codes are locally testable for constant t. As these codes are known to be almost-orthogonal, we solve this question. We further show that BCH(n, t) code is spanned by its almost shortest words, that is by codewords of weight at most 2t + 2, while the minimum weight is 2t + 1. Our results can be straightforwardly extended to Goppa codes and trace subcodes of algebraic-geometric codes.
Validity of Bone Marrow Stromal Cell Expansion by Animal Serum-Free Medium for Cell Transplantation Therapy of Cerebral Infarct in Rats—A Serial MRI Study

This study was aimed to test the hypothesis that human bone marrow stromal cells (hBMSC) expanded in fetal calf serum (FCS)-free, platelet lysate (PL)-containing medium would retain their capacity of migration, survival, and neural differentiation when transplanted into the infarct brain, using serial in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Cell growth kinetic analysis revealed that hBMSC maintain their proliferative activity when cultured either in conventional FCS-containing medium or FCS-free, PL-containing medium. Subsequently, hBMSC were labeled with a superparamagnetic iron oxide agent and were stereotactically transplanted into the ipsilateral striatum of rats at 7 days after permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion. Serial MRI performed over 8 weeks revealed that they retain their migratory capacity towards the cerebral infarct. Moreover, double fluorescence immunohistochemistry also revealed that they preserve their capacity of differentiation into the neural cells in the peri-infarct area. The hBMSC expanded in the FCS-free, PL-containing medium retain their capacity of migration, survival, and differentiation when stereotactically transplanted into the infarct brain. The present findings strongly suggest the clinical utility of PL as a substitute to expand autologous hBMSC for cerebral infarct in the future.