LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Online focus groups as a tool to collect data in hard-to-include populations: examples from paediatric oncology

BACKGROUND
The purpose of this article is to describe and evaluate the methodology of online focus group discussions within the setting of paediatric oncology.


METHODS
Qualitative study consisting of separate moderated asynchronous online discussion groups with 7 paediatric cancer patients (aged 8-17), 11 parents, and 18 survivors of childhood cancer (aged 8-17 at diagnosis).


RESULTS
All three participant groups could be actively engaged over a one-week period. Respondents highly valued the flexibility and convenience of logging in at their own time and place to join the discussion. Adolescent patients and survivors emphasized that the anonymity experienced made them feel comfortable to express their views in detail. The findings indicate a strong preference for online group discussions across all participant groups.


CONCLUSION
The findings show that online focus group methodology is a feasible tool for collecting qualitative data within the setting of paediatric oncology, and may offer new opportunities to collect data in other hard-to-include populations. The evaluations seem to indicate that the online group discussions have given participants an opportunity to articulate their experiences and views in a way they might not have done in a traditional group discussion.
Analysis of demand variability and robustness in strategic transportation planning

Thesis (M. Eng. in Logistics)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division; and, (S.M. in Transportation)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2010.
Effects of mind-body exercises on the physiological and psychosocial well-being of individuals with Parkinson's disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVES
The effects of mind-body exercises on individuals with chronic illnesses have attracted increasing attention. However, little effort had been made to systematically review the effects of these mind-body exercises on individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). This review aimed to appraise the current evidence of the effects of mind-body exercises on the physiological and psychological outcomes for the PD population.


DESIGN
Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.


DATA SOURCES
Four English databases, namely, the EMBASE, Ovid Medline, Psych Info, and Cochrane Library, were searched on January 2016.


REVIEW METHODS
Studies involving participants with idiopathic PD were included if mind-body exercises were applied and compared with a non-exercise control to improve physiological and psychosocial well-being. The Effective Public Health Practice Project quality assessment tool was used for quality appraisal. RevMan 5.3 was employed to perform this meta-analysis. A subgroup analysis regarding the types and the dose of intervention was conducted to explore the sources of heterogeneity.


RESULTS
Ten studies met the inclusion criteria for quality appraisal. The overall methodological rating of these studies indicated that one study was strong; five studies were moderate; and four studies were weak. Nine articles comprising five Tai Chi, two yoga, and two dance studies were included in the meta-analysis. The results of this review showed that mind-body exercises had a large, significant beneficial effect in motor symptoms in terms of UPDRS III for people with mild to moderate PD [SMD=-0.91, 95% CI (-1.37, -0.45), p<0.05]. Significant subgroup differences were found among various types of mind-body exercises (p=0.001). Yoga demonstrated the largest and most significant beneficial effect in reducing UPDRS III scores [SMD=-2.35, 95% CI (-3.21, -1.50), p<0.01]. The pooled meta-analysis results showed that mind-body exercises had a large, significant effect in improving postural instability in terms of the Berg Balance Scale [SMD=1.48, 95% CI (0.91, 2.06), p<0.01] and Timed Up and Go test [SMD=-0.97, 95% CI (-1.46, -0.47), p<0.01] and moderate, significant effect in improving functional mobility in terms of the Six-minute Walk test [SMD=0.78, 95% CI (0.35, 1.21), p<0.05].


CONCLUSIONS
This review found that mind-body exercises demonstrated immediate moderate to large beneficial effects on motor symptoms, postural instability, and functional mobility among individuals with mild to moderate PD. However, the effects of mind-body exercises on psychosocial well-being had not been amply investigated, especially for yoga intervention. Future research should address the psychosocial effects of mind-body exercises on the PD population.
TARGIT-E(lderly)—Prospective phase II study of intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) in elderly patients with small breast cancer

Patients ≥ 70 years with small, low-risk breast cancer who are operated but not irradiated how local relapse rates around 4% after 4 years. With adjuvant whole breast radiotherapy (WBRT) the local relapse rate drops to 1% after 4 years under Tamoxifen. It has been demonstrated that the efficacy of radiotherapy of the tumor bed only in a selected group can be non-inferior to WBRT. This prospective, multicentric single arm phase II study is based on the protocol of the international TARGIT-A study. The TARGIT-E study should confirm the efficacy of a single dose of intraoperative radiotherapy (IORT) in a well selected group of elderly patients with small breast cancer and absence of risk factors. Patients will receive IORT (20 Gy with Intrabeam system/Carl Zeiss) during breast conserving surgery. In presence of risk factors postoperative WBRT will be added to complete the radiotherapeutic treatment according to international guidelines. Endpoints are the local relapse rate (within 2 cm of the tumor bed), ipsilateral in breast relapse, cancer-specific and overall survival and contralateral breast cancer as well as documentation of quality of life and cosmetic outcome. The expected local relapse rates are 0.5/1/1.5% after 2.5/5/7.5 years, respectively. Discontinuation of the trial is scheduled if rates of local relapse rates rise to 3/4/6% after 2.5/5/7.5 years. Power calculations result in 540 patients with a calculated dropout rate of 20% and loss to follow-up of 20%, an alpha of 0.01 and a beta 0.05. There will be a pre- and a post-pathology stratum (n = 270 each). It is a pragmatic trial in which each participating centre has the option to modify entry criteria and criteria for WBRT according to this core protocol after consultation with the steering committee and local ethics committee (e.g. size, free margins). Only centers with access to the Intrabeam system (Carl Zeiss) can recruit patients into the trial. Its aim is to confirm the efficacy and toxicity of IORT in a well selected collective of elderly patients with breast cancer. NCT01299987
A Comparison of Peri-Procedural Myocardial Infarction between Paclitaxel-Coated Balloon and Drug-Eluting Stent on De Novo Coronary Lesions

PURPOSE
This study compared the impact of paclitaxel-coated balloons (PCB) or drug eluting stents (DES) on peri-procedural myocardial infarction (PMI) on de novo coronary lesion in stable patients.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
In this observational study, we compared the incidence of PMI amongst patients with single vessel de novo coronary lesions who underwent treatment with a PCB or DES. Propensity score-matching analysis was used to assemble a cohort of patients with similar baseline characteristics. PMI was classified as myocardial infarction occurring within 48 hours after percutaneous coronary intervention with a threshold of 5 x the 99th percentile upper reference limit of normal for creatine kinase-myocardial band (CK-MB) or troponin T (TnT).


RESULTS
One hundred four patients (52 receiving PCB and 52 receiving DES) were enrolled in this study. The peak mean values of CK-MB and TnT were significantly higher in the DES group. There was a significantly higher rate of PMI in the DES group (23.1% vs. 1.9%, p=0.002). Total occlusion of the side-branch occurred in two patients treated with DES, while no patients treated with PCB. In multivariable analysis, DES was the only independent predictor of PMI compared with PCB (odds ratio 42.85, 95% confidence interval: 3.44-533.87, p=0.004).


CONCLUSION
Treatment with a PCB on de novo coronary lesion might be associated with a significant reduction in the risk of PMI compared to DES.
Part-of-Speech Tagging and Partial Parsing

The initial impetus for the current popularity of statistical methods in computational linguistics was provided in large part by the papers on part-of-speech tagging by Church [20], DeRose [25], and Garside [34]. In contradiction to common wisdom, these taggers showed that it was indeed possible to carve partof-speech disambiguation out of the apparently monolithic problem of natural language understanding, and solve it with impressive accuracy. The concensus at the time was that part-of-speech disambiguation could only be done as part of a global analysis, including syntactic analysis, discourse analysis, and even world knowledge. For instance, to correctly disambiguate help in give John helpN versus let John helpV, one apparently needs to parse the sentences, making reference to the differing subcategorization frames of give and let. Similar examples show that even world knowledge must be taken into account. For instance, off is a preposition in I turned off highway I-90, but a particle in I turned off my radio, so assigning the correct part of speech in I turned off the spectroroute depends on knowing whether spectroroute is the name of a road or the name of a device. Such examples do demonstrate that the problem of part-of-speech disambiguation cannot be solved without solving all the rest of the natural-language understanding problem. But Church, DeRose and Garside showed that, even if an exact solution is far beyond reach, a reasonable approximate solution is quite feasible. In this chapter, I would like to survey further developments in part-of-speech disambiguation (‘tagging’). I would also like to consider a question raised by the success of tagging, namely, what piece of the NL-understanding problem we can carve off next. ‘Partial parsing’ is a cover term for a range of different techniques for recovering some but not all of the information contained in a traditional syntactic analysis. Partial parsing techniques, like tagging techniques, aim for reliability and robustness in the face of the vagaries of natural text, by sacrificing completeness of analysis and accepting a low but non-zero error rate.
Pillow angel ethics.

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Early Childhood Risk Factors for Decreased FEV1 at Age Six to Seven Years in Young Children with Cystic Fibrosis.

RATIONALE
There are limited objective measures of the severity of lung disease before children are able to routinely perform spirometry, generally at age 6 years. Identifying risk factors for reduced lung function at age 6 provides opportunities to intervene and slow the progression of cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease.


OBJECTIVES
To evaluate early childhood predictors of lung function at age 6-7 in a large U.S. CF cohort in the current era of widespread early eradication therapy for Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa).


METHODS
Participants were children with CF enrolled before age 4 in the Early Pseudomonas Infection Control (EPIC) Observational Study, a multicenter, longitudinal study that enrolled P. aeruginosa-negative children not exceeding 12 years of age. Linear regression was used to estimate the association between potential early childhood risk factors and the best FEV1% predicted at age 6-7 years.


MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS
Four hundred and eighty-four children (of 1,797 enrolled in the EPIC Observational Study) met the eligibility criteria for this analysis. Mean (SD) age at enrollment was 2.0 (1.3) years. In a multivariable model adjusted for age at enrollment, the following risk factors were significantly associated with lower mean (95% confidence interval) FEV1% predicted at age 6-7: weight percentile less than 10% during the year of enrollment (-5.3 [-9.1, -1.5]), P. aeruginosa positive during the year of enrollment (-2.8 [-5.7, 0.0]), crackles or wheeze during the year of enrollment (-5.7 [-9.4, -1.9]), mother's education of high school or less (-4.2 [-7.3, -1.2]), and mother smoked during pregnancy (-4.4 [-8.8, 0.1]).


CONCLUSIONS
In this large U.S. cohort, we identified several early childhood risk factors for lower FEV1 at age 6-7 years, most of which are modifiable. Clinical trial registered with www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT00097773).
Measurements, performance and analysis of LoRa FABIAN, a real-world implementation of LPWAN

Up to recently, two main approaches were used for connecting the “things” in the growing Internet of Things (IoT) — one based on multi-hop mesh networks, using short-range technologies and unlicensed spectrum, and the other based on long-range cellular network technologies using corresponding licensed frequency bands. New type of connectivity used in Low-Power Wide Area networks (LPWAN), challenges these approaches by using low-rate long-range transmission technologies in unlicensed sub-GHz frequency bands. In this paper, we do performance testing on one such star-topology network, based on Semtech's LoRa™ technology, and deployed in the city of Rennes — LoRa FABIAN. In order to check the quality of service (QoS) that this network can provide, generally and in given conditions, we conducted a set of performance measurements. We performed our tests by generating and then observing the traffic between IoT nodes and LoRa IoT stations using our LoRa FABIAN protocol stack. With our experimental setup, we were able to generate traffic very similar to the one that can be used by real application such as sensor monitoring. This let us extract basic performance metrics, such as packet error rate (PER), but also metrics related specifically to the LoRa physical layer, such as the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Signal to Noise ratio (SNR), within various conditions. Our findings provide insight about the performance of LoRa networks, but also about evaluation methods for these type of networks. We gathered measurement data that we make freely available together with the tools we used.
Structural and Functional Brain Alterations in End Stage Renal Disease Patients on Routine Hemodialysis: A Voxel-Based Morphometry and Resting State Functional Connectivity Study

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Cognitive impairment is a well-described phenomenon in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. However, its pathogenesis remains poorly understood. The primary focus of this study was to examine structural and functional brain deficits in ESRD patients.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Thirty ESRD patients on hemodialysis (without clinical neurological disease) and 30 age- and gender-matched control individuals (without renal or neurological problems) were recruited in a prospective, single-center study. High-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and resting state functional MRI were performed on both groups to detect the subtle cerebral deficits in ESRD patients. Voxel-based morphometry was used to characterize gray matter deficits in ESRD patients. The impact of abnormal morphometry on the cerebral functional integrity was investigated by evaluating the alterations in resting state functional connectivity when brain regions with gray matter volume reduction were used as seed areas.


RESULTS
A significant decrease in gray matter volume was observed in ESRD patients in the bilateral medial orbito-prefrontal cortices, bilateral dorsal lateral prefrontal cortices, and the left middle temporal cortex. When brain regions with gray matter volume reduction were used as seed areas, the integration was found to be significantly decreased in ESRD patients in the fronto-cerebellum circuits and within prefrontal circuits. In addition, significantly enhanced functional connectivity was found between the prefrontal cortex and the left temporal cortex and within the prefrontal circuits.


CONCLUSIONS
Our study revealed that both the structural and functional cerebral cortices were impaired in ESRD patients on routine hemodialysis.
EFFICIENT VM LOAD BALANCING ALGORITHM FOR A CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

Dr. Bhupendra Verma, Professor and Head Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Director PG Course, Technocrates Institute of Technology, Bhopal, M.P., India ABSTRACT Cloud computing is a fast growing area in computing research and industry today. With the advancement of the Cloud, there are new possibilities opening up on how applications can be built and how different services can be offered to the end user through Virtualization, on the internet. There are the cloud service providers who provide large scaled computing infrastructure defined on usage, and provide the infrastructure services in a very flexible manner which the users can scale up or down at will. The establishment of an effective load balancing algorithm and how to use Cloud computing resources efficiently for effective and efficient cloud computing is one of the Cloud computing service providers’ ultimate goals. In this paper firstly analysis of different Virtual Machine (VM) load balancing algorithms is done. Secondly, a new VM load balancing algorithm has been proposed and implemented for an IaaS framework in Simulated cloud computing environment; i.e. ‘Weighted Active Monitoring Load Balancing Algorithm’ using CloudSim tools, for the Datacenter to effectively load balance requests between the available virtual machines assigning a weight, in order to achieve better performance parameters such as response time and Data processing time.
Workforce profile, organisation structure and role responsibility for ventilation and weaning practices in Australia and New Zealand intensive care units.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
To provide an analysis of the scope of nursing practice and inter-professional role responsibility for ventilatory decision-making in Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) intensive care units (ICU).


BACKGROUND
Currently, little empirical data describe nurses' role in decision-making for ventilation and its weaning. Delineation of roles and responsibilities for ventilatory practices vary according to unit structure, staffing and skill-mix, patient case-mix and unit leadership models.


METHODS
Self-administered questionnaire sent to nurse managers of eligible ICUs within ANZ. Results. Survey responses were available from 54/180 ICUs. The majority (71%) of responding ICUs were located within metropolitan areas and categorised as a tertiary level ICU (50%). The mean number of nurses employed per ICU bed was 4.7 in Australia and 4.2 in NZ, with 69% (IQR: 47-80%) of nurses holding a postgraduate specialty qualification. All units reported a 1:1 nurse-to-patient ratio for ventilated patients with 71% reporting a 1:2 nurse-to-patient ratio for non- ventilated patients. Key ventilator decisions, including assessment of weaning and extubation readiness, were reported as predominantly made by nurses and doctors in collaboration. Overall, nurses described high levels of autonomy and influence in ventilator decision-making. Decisions to change ventilator settings, including FiO(2) (91%, 95% CI: 80-97), ventilator rate (65%, 95% CI: 51-77) and pressure support adjustment (57%, 95% CI: 43-71), were made independently by nurses.


CONCLUSIONS
The results of this survey suggest, within the ANZ context, nurses participate actively in ventilation and weaning decisions. In addition, the results support an association between the education profile and skill-mix of nurses and the level of collaborative practice in ICU. Relevance to clinical practice. Mechanical ventilation may result in significant complications if not applied appropriately. Collaborative practice that encourages nursing input into decision-making may improve patient outcomes and reduce complications.
American sign language recognition in game development for deaf children

CopyCat is an American Sign Language (ASL) game, which uses gesture recognition technology to help young deaf children practice ASL skills. We describe a brief history of the game, an overview of recent user studies, and the results of recent work on the problem of continuous, user-independent sign language recognition in classroom settings. Our database of signing samples was collected from user studies of deaf children playing aWizard of Oz version of the game at the Atlanta Area School for the Deaf (AASD). Our data set is characterized by disfluencies inherent in continuous signing, varied user characteristics including clothing and skin tones, and illumination changes in the classroom. The dataset consisted of 541 phrase samples and 1,959 individual sign samples of five children signing game phrases from a 22 word vocabulary. Our recognition approach uses color histogram adaptation for robust hand segmentation and tracking. The children wear small colored gloves with wireless accelerometers mounted on the back of their wrists. The hand shape information is combined with accelerometer data and used to train hidden Markov models for recognition. We evaluated our approach by using leave-one-out validation; this technique iterates through each child, training on data from four children and testing on the remaining child's data. We achieved average word accuracies per child ranging from 91.75% to 73.73% for the user-independent models.
On the Controllability of Parabolic Systems with a Nonlinear Term Involving the State and the Gradient

We present some results concerning the controllability of a quasi-linear parabolic equation (with linear principal part) in a bounded domain of RN with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We analyze the controllability problem with distributed controls (supported on a small open subset) and boundary controls (supported on a small part of the boundary). We prove that the system is null and approximately controllable at any time if the nonlinear term f(y,∇y) grows slower than |y| log(1+ |y|+ |∇y|)+ |∇y| log(1+ |y|+ |∇y|) at infinity (generally, in this case, in the absence of control, blow-up occurs). The proofs use global Carleman estimates, parabolic regularity, and the fixed point method.