LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Variations in Medical Oncology Utilization for Pancreatic Cancer Patients in Nova Scotia

Introduction Population studies have shown that only the minority of pancreatic cancer patients receive cancer directed therapy. Methods Primary aim of this study was to evaluate the referral rate for systemic chemotherapy, as a proxy for the quality of health care delivered to patients with pancreatic cancer in the province of Nova Scotia (Canada). The study population included a cohort of all patients older than 18 years of age who had the diagnosis of PC over a ten year period (April 1, 2001-March 31, 2011). Diagnostic codes of the International Classification of Disease for Oncology, 3rd edition were used to select patients with pancreatic cancer from the Nova Scotia Cancer Registry. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to assess characteristics associated with the likelihood of receiving cancer directed therapy in the form of adjuvant or palliative chemotherapy. Results A total of 1,161 patients were included with mean age of 72 years. Elixhauser comorbdity score >1 was present in 41% of the cohort with 31% of patients living in rural areas and 40% belonging to low income groups. Surgical therapy was performed in 11.7%. Among patients who underwent resection, 60% were referred to medical oncologists for adjuvant chemotherapy vs. 36% for patients who were not surgical candidates (P<0.0001). Medical oncology consultations were completed only in 46% of patients who underwent surgical therapy vs. 31% of patients who were not surgical candidates (P<0.0001). Multivariate analysis of factors associated with referral to medical oncology services were younger age and low comorbidity status. Conclusions In Nova Scotia, cancer directed therapy in the form of surgery or chemotherapy for PC is offered only to a minority of patients. Rates of cancer directed therapy may reflect appropriate considerations of patients' preferences and functional status, however, other factors, including physicians' attitudes, may play a significant role.
Changes in sagittal lumbar configuration with a new method of extension traction: nonrandomized clinical controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if a new method of lumbar extension traction can increase lordosis in chronic low back pain (LBP) subjects with decreased lordosis.


DESIGN
Nonrandomized controlled trial with follow-up at 3 months and 1(1/2) years.


SETTING
Primary care spine clinic in Nevada.


PATIENTS
Beginning in mid-1998, the first 48 consecutive patients, who met the inclusion criteria of chronic LBP with decreased lordosis and who completed the treatment program were matched for sex, age, height, weight, and pain scores to 30 control subjects with chronic LBP, who received no treatment.


INTERVENTIONS
A new form of 3-point bending lumbar extension traction was provided in-office 3 to 4 times a week for 12+/-4 weeks. Per session, traction duration was started at 3 minutes and was increased to a maximum of 20 minutes. For short-term pain relief, torsion lumbar spinal manipulation was provided in the initial 3 weeks.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Pain as measured on a visual analog scale (VAS) and standing lateral lumbar radiographic measurements.


RESULTS
Pain scales and radiographic measurements did not change in the control subjects. In the traction group, VAS ratings decreased from mean +/- standard deviation of 4.4+/-1.9 pretreatment to 0.6+/-0.9 posttreatment (P<.001), and radiographic angles (except at T12-L1) showed statistically significant changes. Mean changes were 5.7 degrees at L4-5 (P<.001), 11.3 degrees between posterior tangents on L1 and L5 (P<.001), 9.1 degrees in Cobb angle at T12-S1 (P<.001), 4.6 degrees in pelvic tilt (P<.001), and 4.7 degrees in Ferguson's sacral base angle (P<.001). At long-term follow-up (17(1/2)mo), 34 of the 48 (71%) subjects returned. Improvements in lordosis were maintained in all 34.


CONCLUSIONS
This new method of lumbar extension traction is the first nonsurgical rehabilitative procedure to show increases in lumbar lordosis in chronic LBP subjects with hypolordosis. The fact that there was no change in control subjects' lumbar lordosis indicates the stability of the lumbar lordosis and the repeatability of x-ray procedures. Because, on average, chronic LBP patients have hypolordosis, additional randomized trials should be performed to evaluate the clinical significance of restoration of the lumbar lordosis in chronic LBP subjects.
Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation in a Coupled General Circulation Model: Unforced Variations versus Forced Changes

A 1200-yr unforced control run and future climate change simulations using the Parallel Climate Model (PCM), a coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–sea ice global model with no flux adjustments and relatively high resolution ( 2.8° for the atmosphere and 2/3° for the oceans) are analyzed for changes in Atlantic Ocean circulations. For the forced simulations, historical greenhouse gas and sulfate forcing of the twentieth century and projected forcing for the next two centuries are used. The Atlantic thermohaline circulation (THC) shows large multidecadal (15–40 yr) variations with mean-peak amplitudes of 1.5–3.0 Sv (1 Sv 10 m s ) and a sharp peak of power around a 24-yr period in the control run. Associated with the THC oscillations, there are large variations in North Atlantic Ocean heat transport, sea surface temperature (SST) and salinity (SSS), sea ice fraction, and net surface water and energy fluxes, which all lag the variations in THC strength by 2–3 yr. However, the net effect of the SST and SSS variations on upper-ocean density in the midlatitude North Atlantic leads the THC variations by about 6 yr, which results in the 24-yr period. The simulated SST and sea ice spatial patterns associated with the THC oscillations resemble those in observed SST and sea ice concentrations that are associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The results suggest a dominant role of the advective mechanism and strong coupling between the THC and the NAO, whose index also shows a sharp peak around the 24-yr time scale in the control run. In the forced simulations, the THC weakens by 12% in the twenty-first century and continues to weaken by an additional 10% in the twenty-second century if CO2 keeps rising, but the THC stabilizes if CO2 levels off. The THC weakening results from stabilizing temperature increases that are larger in the upper and northern Atlantic Ocean than in the deep and southern parts of the basin. In both the control and forced simulations, as the THC gains (loses) strength and depth, the separated Gulf Stream (GS) moves southward (northward) while the subpolar gyre centered at the Labrador Sea contracts from (expands to) the east with the North Atlantic Current (NAC) being shifted westward (eastward). These horizontal circulation changes, which are dynamically linked to the THC changes, induce large temperature and salinity variations around the GS and NAC paths.
Cereal-Based Gluten-Free Food: How to Reconcile Nutritional and Technological Properties of Wheat Proteins with Safety for Celiac Disease Patients

The gluten-free diet is, to date, the only efficacious treatment for patients with Celiac Disease. In recent years, the impressive rise of Celiac Disease incidence, dramatically prompted changes in the dietary habit of an increasingly large population, with a rise in demand of gluten-free products. The formulation of gluten-free bakery products presents a formidable challenge to cereal technologists. As wheat gluten contributes to the formation of a strong protein network, that confers visco-elasticity to the dough and allows the wheat flour to be processed into a wide range of products, the preparation of cereal-based gluten-free products is a somehow difficult process. This review focuses on nutritional and technological quality of products made with gluten-free cereals available on the market. The possibility of using flour from naturally low toxic ancient wheat species or detoxified wheat for the diet of celiacs is also discussed.
Evaluating the efficacy, safety and evolution of renal function with early initiation of everolimus-facilitated tacrolimus reduction in de novo liver transplant recipients: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND
Introduction of calcineurin inhibitors had led to improved survival rates in liver transplant recipients. However, long-term use of calcineurin inhibitors is associated with a higher risk of chronic renal failure, neurotoxicity, de novo malignancies, recurrence of hepatitis C viral (HCV) infection and hepatocellular carcinoma. Several studies have shown that everolimus has the potential to provide protection against viral replication, malignancy, and progression of fibrosis, as well as preventing nephrotoxicity by facilitating calcineurin inhibitor reduction without compromising efficacy. The Hephaistos study evaluates the beneficial effects of early initiation of everolimus in de novo liver transplant recipients.


METHODS/DESIGN
Hephaistos is an ongoing 12-month, multi-center, open-label, controlled study aiming to enroll 330 de novo liver transplant recipients from 15 centers across Germany. Patients are randomized in a 1:1 ratio (7-21 days post-transplantation) to receive everolimus (trough levels 3-8 ng/mL) with reduced tacrolimus (trough levels <5 ng/mL), or standard tacrolimus (trough levels 6-10 ng/mL) after entering a run-in period (3-5 days post-transplantation). In the run-in period, patients are treated with induction therapy, mycophenolate mofetil, tacrolimus, and corticosteroids according to local practice. Randomization is stratified by HCV status and model of end-stage liver disease scores at transplantation. The primary objective of the study is to exhibit superior renal function (estimated glomerular filtration rate assessed by the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD)-4 formula) with everolimus plus reduced tacrolimus compared to standard tacrolimus at Month 12. Other objectives are: to assess the incidence of treated biopsy-proven acute rejection, graft loss, or death; the incidences of components of the composite efficacy endpoint; renal function via estimated glomerular filtration rate using various formulae (MDRD-4, Nankivell, Cockcroft-Gault, chronic kidney disease epidemiology collaboration and Hoek formulae); the incidence of proteinuria; the incidence of adverse events and serious adverse events; the incidence and severity of cytomegalovirus and HCV infections and HCV-related fibrosis.


DISCUSSION
This study aims to demonstrate superior renal function, comparable efficacy, and safety in de novo liver transplant recipients receiving everolimus with reduced tacrolimus compared with standard tacrolimus. This study also evaluates the antiviral benefit by early initiation of everolimus.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
NCT01551212 .
Implementing a Personal Health Record Cloud Platform Using Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption

Work on designing and implementing a patient-centric, personal health record cloud platform based on open-source Indivo X system. We adopt cipher text-policy attribute-based encryption to provide privacy protection and fine-grained access control.
An ontology for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to infer ASD phenotypes from Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised data

OBJECTIVE
Our goal is to create an ontology that will allow data integration and reasoning with subject data to classify subjects, and based on this classification, to infer new knowledge on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and related neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). We take a first step toward this goal by extending an existing autism ontology to allow automatic inference of ASD phenotypes and Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria based on subjects' Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) assessment data.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Knowledge regarding diagnostic instruments, ASD phenotypes and risk factors was added to augment an existing autism ontology via Ontology Web Language class definitions and semantic web rules. We developed a custom Protégé plugin for enumerating combinatorial OWL axioms to support the many-to-many relations of ADI-R items to diagnostic categories in the DSM. We utilized a reasoner to infer whether 2642 subjects, whose data was obtained from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, meet DSM-IV-TR (DSM-IV) and DSM-5 diagnostic criteria based on their ADI-R data.


RESULTS
We extended the ontology by adding 443 classes and 632 rules that represent phenotypes, along with their synonyms, environmental risk factors, and frequency of comorbidities. Applying the rules on the data set showed that the method produced accurate results: the true positive and true negative rates for inferring autistic disorder diagnosis according to DSM-IV criteria were 1 and 0.065, respectively; the true positive rate for inferring ASD based on DSM-5 criteria was 0.94.


DISCUSSION
The ontology allows automatic inference of subjects' disease phenotypes and diagnosis with high accuracy.


CONCLUSION
The ontology may benefit future studies by serving as a knowledge base for ASD. In addition, by adding knowledge of related NDDs, commonalities and differences in manifestations and risk factors could be automatically inferred, contributing to the understanding of ASD pathophysiology.
Quantum Search on Structured Problems

This paper shows how a basic property of unitary transformations can be used for meaningful computations. This approach immediately leads to search-type applications, where it improves the number of steps by a square-root-a simple minded search that takes steps, can be improved to approximately steps. The quantum search algorithm is one of several immediate consequences of this framework. Several novel search-related applications are presented.
TopoText : Context-Preserving Semantic Exploration Across Multiple Spatial Scales

TopoText is a context-preserving technique for visualizing semantic data for multi-scale spatial aggregates to gain insight into spatial phenomena. Conventional exploration requires users to navigate across multiple scales but only presents the information related to the current scale. This limitation potentially adds more steps of interaction and cognitive overload to the users. TopoText renders multi-scale aggregates into a single visual display combining novel text-based encoding and layout methods that draw labels along the boundary or filled within the aggregates. The text itself not only summarizes the semantics at each individual scale, but also indicates the spatial coverage of the aggregates and their underlying hierarchical relationships. We validate TopoText with both a user study as well as several application examples. ACM Classification
A Reliability Evaluation Framework on Composite Web Service

The composition of web-based services is a process that usually requires advanced programming skills and vast knowledge about specific technologies. How to carry out web service composition according to functional sufficiency and performance is widely studied. Non-functional characteristics like reliability and security play an important role in the selection of web services composition process. This paper provides a web service reliability model for atomic web service without structural information and the composite web service consist of atomic web service and its redundant services. It outlines a framework based on client feedback to gather trustworthiness attributes to service registry for reliability evaluation.
Coordination of supply chains by option contracts: A cooperative game theory approach

a Institute of Systems Science, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, PR China b School of International Trade and Economics, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, PR China c Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, PR China d Department of Applied Mathematics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, PR China e School of Business, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY 11530, USA f School of Business, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, PR China
Performance analysis of the batches algorithm for range-Doppler map formation in Passive Bistatic Radar

Passive Bistatic Radar (PBR), or Passive Coherent Location, is gaining interest in the radar community as it provides some advantages with respect to active radar. Although, passive radar does not aim to replace active radar, it provides a good complement to it. The computational effort that is required to implement the required signal processing is one of the drawbacks that affect passive radar. In this paper a computationally affordable algorithm is proposed and its performance tested by using a numerical simulation.
Spectra with Only Unary Function Symbols

The spectrum of a first-order sentence is the set of cardinalities of its finite models. This paper is concerned with spectra of sentences over languages that contain only unary function symbols. In particular, it is shown that a set S of natural numbers is the spectrum of a sentence over the language of one unary function symbol precisely if S is an eventually periodic set.
Is structured group psychoeducation for bipolar patients effective in ordinary mental health services? A controlled trial in Italy.

BACKGROUND
Recent reviews of evidence-based guidelines for the clinical management of Bipolar Disorders (BD) have recommended that "all patients with BD be offered group or individual psychoeducation" to prevent relapse, improve treatment adherence, quality of life, and functioning. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of psychoeducation in routine mental health services in reducing number of hospitalisations and number of days spent in hospital, at a 1-year follow-up.


METHODS
A total of 102 outpatients were recruited from two Italian Departments of Mental Health. Inclusion criteria were a lifetime BD type I or II diagnosis, assessed with SCID, and ≥ 3 months of euthymia. Exclusion criteria were DSM-IV Axis I comorbidity, mental retardation (IQ<70), organic brain damage, or deafness. All participants received standard psychiatric care, including standard pharmacological treatment; the experimental group also received 21 group psychoeducation sessions, weekly held and conducted according to Colom and Vieta's model.


RESULTS
The number of patients hospitalised during the 1-year follow-up, the mean number of hospitalisations per patient, and the mean number of hospitalisation days were significantly lower for psychoeducated patients.


CONCLUSION
Our findings support the view that group psychoeducation is an effective way to prevent hospitalisation and decrease hospital days in pharmacologically treated patients with bipolar disorder also in routine clinical settings. The results confirm that psychoeducation promotes improvement in illness course by preventing acute phases and enhancing mood stability, and consequently, improvement in the quality of life for people with BD.
Research methods in the social sciences

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Female genital cutting: current practices and beliefs in western Africa.

OBJECTIVE
To conduct a cross-national comparative study of the prevalence and correlates of female genital cutting (FGC) practices and beliefs in western Africa.


METHODS
Data from women who responded to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys between 2005 and 2007 were used to estimate the frequencies of ever having been circumcised, having had a daughter circumcised, and believing that FGC practices should continue. Weighted logistic regression using data for each country was performed to determine the independent correlates of each outcome.


FINDINGS
The prevalence of FGC was high overall but varied substantially across countries in western Africa. In Sierra Leone, Gambia, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, the prevalence of FGC was 94%, 79%, 74% and 72%, respectively, whereas in Ghana, Niger and Togo prevalence was less than 6%. Older age and being Muslim were generally associated with increased odds of FGC, and higher education was associated with lower odds of FGC. The association between FGC and wealth varied considerably. Burkina Faso was the only country in our study that experienced a dramatic reduction in FGC prevalence from women (74%) to their daughters (25%); only 14.2% of the women surveyed in that country said that they believe the practice should continue.


CONCLUSION
The prevalence of FGC in western Africa remains high overall but varies substantially across countries. Given the broad range of experiences, successful strategies from countries where FGC is declining may provide useful examples for high-prevalence countries seeking to reduce their own FGC practices.
Boolean localization, in practice.

A new proof of the existence of the standard closed model structure for the category of simplicial presheaves on an arbitrary Grothendieck site is given. This proof uses the principle of Boolean localization. 1991 Mathematics Subject Classi cation: Primary 55U10, secondary 18F20, 55U35.
Entrepreneurship: Concepts, Theory and Perspective. Introduction

The creation of a country’s wealth and dynamism depends upon the competitiveness of its firms and this, in turn, relies fundamentally on the capabilities of its entrepreneurs and managers.
Influence of low back pain status on pelvis-trunk coordination during walking and running.

STUDY DESIGN
Two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance.


OBJECTIVE
To assess pelvis and trunk three-dimensional segmental excursions and coordination differences during walking and running between runners with low back pain (LBP), runners with resolved LBP, and a control group with no history of LBP.


SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA
Studies have documented differences in pelvis and trunk coordination between those with moderate to severe LBP during walking. Few studies document pelvis and trunk mechanics in those with low to moderate LBP and individuals who recover from LBP even though these individuals comprise 80% of LBP cases and are at increased risk for re-injury.


METHODS
Recreational runners walked and ran on a treadmill at speeds including 0.8 to 3.8 m/s at 0.5 m/s increments. Pelvis and trunk kinematic data were collected during the last 20 s of each stage. Coordination analysis quantified the portion of gait cycle each group spent in trunk only motion, pelvis-only motion, in-phase, and antiphase relationships.


RESULTS
During walking, the LBP group spent more of the gait cycle in-phase in the frontal plane (P = 0.030). During running, the LBP group showed greater pelvis axial rotation than the control group (P = 0.014) and spent more of the gait cycle in-phase in the transverse plane (P = 0.019). Also during running, the LBP (P = 0.035) and the resolved LBP (P = 0.037) groups demonstrated reduced antiphase coordination compared to controls.


CONCLUSION
Coordination analysis demonstrates a reduction in relative motion between the pelvis and trunk despite low disability levels in our LBP group and no pain in our group with a history of LBP.