LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of a self-management education program for people with type 2 diabetes: results of a 12 month trial.

AIM
Patient education that enhances one's self-management ability is of utmost importance for improving patient outcomes in chronic diseases. We developed a 12 month self-management education program for type 2 diabetes, based on a previous 6 month program, and examined its efficacy.


METHODS
A randomized controlled trial was carried out on outpatients with type 2 diabetes from two hospitals who met the criteria and gave consent to participate. They were randomly divided into an intervention group that followed the program and a control group that followed usual clinical practise. The intervention group received <30 min of monthly interviews based on the program's textbook and biweekly telephone calls from a nurse educator throughout the 12 months.


RESULTS
Of the 50 participants in the intervention group and the 25 participants in the control group, 42 and 23, respectively, completed the program (a completion rate of 84.0%). The body weight, HbA1c, self-efficacy, dietary and exercise stages, quality of life, diastolic blood pressure, and total cholesterol level were significant by two-way repeated-measures anova. As for changes over time within the groups, only the intervention group showed significant differences by Friedman's test. The complication prevention behaviors showed a high implementation rate in the intervention group. The overall evaluation of this program by the participants was very high and, therefore, they highly recognized the need for this type of program.


CONCLUSIONS
Self-management education works successfully in relation to patients' behavior modification skills, degree of goal attainment, and self-efficacy, consequently improving their health outcomes.
Liquidity Spillovers in Sovereign Bond and CDS Markets: An Analysis of The Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis

At the end of 2009, countries in the Eurozone (euro area) began to experience a sudden divergence of bond yields as the market perception of sovereign default risk increased. The theory of complete markets suggests that sovereign debt and credit default swap (CDS) credit spreads should track each other closely. In addition, liquidity risk should be priced into both instruments in such a way that buying exposure to the same default risk is identically priced. We use a time-varying vector autoregression framework to establish the credit and liquidity spreads interactions over the 2009-2010 crisis period. We find substantial variation in the patterns of the transmission effect between maturities and across countries. Our major result is that for several countries, including Greece, Ireland and Portugal the liquidity of the sovereign CDS market has a substantial time varying influence on sovereign bond credit spreads. This evidence is of particular importance in the current policy context.
Personalized Ranking Metric Embedding for Next New POI Recommendation

The rapidly growing of Location-based Social Networks (LBSNs) provides a vast amount of check-in data, which enables many services, e.g., point-ofinterest (POI) recommendation. In this paper, we study the next new POI recommendation problem in which new POIs with respect to users’ current location are to be recommended. The challenge lies in the difficulty in precisely learning users’ sequential information and personalizing the recommendation model. To this end, we resort to the Metric Embedding method for the recommendation, which avoids drawbacks of the Matrix Factorization technique. We propose a personalized ranking metric embedding method (PRME) to model personalized check-in sequences. We further develop a PRME-G model, which integrates sequential information, individual preference, and geographical influence, to improve the recommendation performance. Experiments on two real-world LBSN datasets demonstrate that our new algorithm outperforms the stateof-the-art next POI recommendation methods.
Datenkompetenzen für die Massen - Muss Self-Service-Data-Mining scheitern?

Data Mining ist ein Prozess, bei dem mittels statistischer Verfahren komplexe Muster in meist großen Mengen von Daten gesucht werden. Damit dieser von Organisationen verstärkt zur Entscheidungsunterstützung eingesetzt werden kann, wäre es hilfreich, wenn Domänenexperten durch Self-Service-Anwendungen in die Lage versetzt würden, diese Form der Analysen eigenständig durchzuführen, damit sie nicht mehr auf Datenwissenschaftler und IT-Fachkräfte angewiesen sind. In diesem Artikel soll eine Versuchsreihe vorgestellt werden, die eine Bewertung darüber ermöglicht, wie geeignet etablierte Data-MiningSoftwareplattformen (IBM SPSS Modeler, KNIME, RapidMiner und WEKA) sind, um sie Gelegenheitsanwendern zur Verfügung zu stellen. In den vorgestellten Versuchen sollen Entscheidungsbäume im Fokus stehen, eine besonders einfache Form von Algorithmen, die der Literatur und unserer Erfahrung nach am ehesten für die Nutzung in Self-Service-Data-Mining-Anwendungen geeignet sind. Dabei werden mithilfe eines einheitlichen Datensets auf den verschiedenen Plattformen Entscheidungsbäume für identische Zielvariablen konstruiert. Die Ergebnisse sind im Hinblick auf die Klassifikationsgenauigkeit zwar relativ ähnlich, die Komplexität der Modelle variiert jedoch. Aktuelle grafische Benutzeroberflächen lassen sich zwar auch ohne tiefgehende Kompetenzen in den Bereichen Informatik und Statistik bedienen, sie ersetzen aber nicht den Bedarf an datenwissenschaftlichen Kompetenzen, die besonders beim Schritt der Datenvorbereitung zum Einsatz kommen, welcher den größten Teil des Data-Mining-Prozesses ausmacht.
Does a ‘direct’ transfer protocol reduce time to coronary angiography for patients with non-ST-elevation acute coronary syndromes? A prospective observational study

OBJECTIVE
National guidelines recommend 'early' coronary angiography within 96 h of presentation for patients with non-ST elevation acute coronary syndromes (NSTE-ACS). Most patients with NSTE-ACS present to their district general hospital (DGH), and await transfer to the regional cardiac centre for angiography. This care model has inherent time delays, and delivery of timely angiography is problematic. The objective of this study was to assess a novel clinical care pathway for the management of NSTE-ACS, known locally as the Heart Attack Centre-Extension or HAC-X, designed to rapidly identify patients with NSTE-ACS while in DGH emergency departments (ED) and facilitate transfer to the regional interventional centre for 'early' coronary angiography.


METHODS
This was an observational study of 702 patients divided into two groups; 391 patients treated before the instigation of the HAC-X pathway (Pre-HAC-X), and 311 patients treated via the novel pathway (Post-HAC-X). Our primary study end point was time from ED admission to coronary angiography. We also assessed the length of hospital stay.


RESULTS
Median time from ED admission to coronary angiography was 7.2 (IQR 5.1-10.2) days pre-HAC-X compared to 1.0 (IQR 0.7-2.0) day post-HAC-X (p<0.001). Median length of hospital stay was 3.0 (IQR 2.0-6.0) days post-HAC-X v 9.0 (IQR 6.0-14.0) days pre-HAC-X (p<0.0005). This equates to a reduction of six hospital bed days per NSTE-ACS admission.


CONCLUSIONS
The introduction of this novel care pathway was associated with significant reductions in time to angiography and in total hospital bed occupancy for patients with NSTE-ACS.
Omicron ACO. A New Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a metaheuristic inspired by the foraging behavior of ant colonies that has been successful in the resolution of hard combinatorial optimization problems like the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). This paper proposes the Omicron ACO (OA), a novel population-based ACO alternative originally designed as an analytical tool. To experimentally prove OA advantages, this work compares the behavior between the OA and the MMAS as a function of time in two well-known TSP problems. A simple study of the behavior of OA as a function of its parameters shows its robustness.
Antidepressant effects after short-term and chronic stimulation of the subgenual cingulate gyrus in treatment-resistant depression

BACKGROUND
Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subcallosal cingulate gyrus (SCG) is an experimental approach in treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Apart from its potential long-term antidepressant effects acute stimulation effects have been described. We investigated putative neuroanatomical clusters in which such acute effects accumulate and followed patients over the long-term.


METHODS
We assessed safety and efficacy of DBS in six patients with TRD receiving bilateral DBS with electrodes implanted in the SCG. First, high intensity 130 Hz stimulation was applied on five consecutive days after surgery for 24 h comprising a sham condition in a double-blind, randomized design. Acute stimulation was conducted at all four homologous electrode contacts on both sides. Afterwards, chronic stimulation was initiated and the clinical effect was evaluated at 24-36 weeks compared to baseline (50% reduction in HAMD scores). The primary outcome criterion was depression severity as assessed with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-24); secondary outcome parameters were the Montgomery-Åsberg Rating-Scale and Beck Depression Inventory following DBS. The clinical effect over the three scores was compared to sham stimulation and was correlated to the anatomical localization of active contacts by stereotactically delimiting the cluster of most effective contacts in responding patients.


RESULTS
Acute 24 h of stimulation showed only moderate reductions in mean HAMD-24, MADRS and BDI scores. At the last observation (24-36 weeks), two patients were remitters (HAMD-24 < 10) and the four other patients were non-responders.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results confirm that stimulation of the SCG is capable of exerting moderate acute and chronic antidepressant effects. The predictive value of these findings needs to be addressed in future studies.
Regulatory T-cell directed therapies in liver diseases.

Immunological self-tolerance is maintained in two stages; central and peripheral tolerance. The thymus orchestrates self-tolerance by negative selection (clonal deletion) of self-reactive T cells and by producing CD4CD25Foxp3 regulatory T cells (Tregs). Tregs are essential for the maintenance of peripheral self-tolerance and immune homeostasis in various tissues including the liver [1]. Depletion of Tregs in rodents result in spontaneous development of a variety of organ-specific and systemic autoimmune diseases and reconstitution of Tregs prevents disease development [2]. Tregs constitutively express the transcription factor FOXP3. In humans, mutations in the FOXP3 gene result in impairment of Treg development and function. This leads to the occurrence of immune-dysregulation, polyendocrinopathy, enteropathy, X-linked (IPEX) syndrome accompanying autoimmune diseases (in particular, type 1 diabetes and thyroiditis), inflammatory bowel disease, and allergy [1]. In addition to their thymic origin, FOXP3 Tregs can also be generated in the periphery (Addendum). FOXP3 is essential for the development of Tregs, yet its expression is insufficient for establishing the Treg cell lineage. Treg cell development was achieved by the combination of two independent processes, i.e., the expression of FOXP3 and the establishment of a Treg cell-specific CpG hypomethylation pattern [3]. They both are required for Treg cell-type gene expression, lineage stability, and full suppressive activity. Thymusderived and/or peripherally generated FOXP3 Tregs control a variety of lymphocyte populations, especially CD4 helper T (Th) cells and CD8 cytotoxic T cells. The liver is constantly exposed to food antigens and low levels of endotoxin from the gut via the portal vein. Thus it requires mechanisms to suppress immune responses to harmless antigens whilst maintaining the capacity to respond to infectious agents [4]. Blood enters the liver parenchyma via the hepatic sinusoids, which is a low-flow fenestrated vascular channels lined by liver
High rate, low-latency multi-touch sensing with simultaneous orthogonal multiplexing

We present "Fast Multi-Touch" (FMT), an extremely high frame rate and low-latency multi-touch sensor based on a novel projected capacitive architecture that employs simultaneous orthogonal signals. The sensor has a frame rate of 4000 Hz and a touch-to-data output latency of only 40 microseconds, providing unprecedented responsiveness. FMT is demonstrated with a high-speed DLP projector yielding a touch-to-light latency of 110 microseconds.
Political Discourse on Social Media: Echo Chambers, Gatekeepers, and the Price of Bipartisanship

Echo chambers, i.e., situations where one is exposed only to opinions that agree with their own, are an increasing concern for the political discourse in many democratic countries. This paper studies the phenomenon of political echo chambers on social media. We identify the two components in the phenomenon: the opinion that is shared (“echo”), and the place that allows its exposure (“chamber” — the social network), and examine closely at how these two components interact. We de ne a production and consumption measure for social-media users, which captures the political leaning of the content shared and received by them. By comparing the two, we nd that Twitter users are, to a large degree, exposed to political opinions that agree with their own. We also nd that users who try to bridge the echo chambers, by sharing content with diverse leaning, have to pay a “price of bipartisanship” in terms of their network centrality and content appreciation. In addition, we study the role of “gatekeepers,” users who consume content with diverse leaning but produce partisan content (with a single-sided leaning), in the formation of echo chambers. Finally, we apply these ndings to the task of predicting partisans and gatekeepers from social and content features. While partisan users turn out relatively easy to identify, gatekeepers prove to be more challenging. ACM Reference format: Kiran Garimella, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Aristides Gionis, and Michael Mathioudakis. 2018. Political Discourse on Social Media: Echo Chambers, Gatekeepers, and the Price of Bipartisanship. In Proceedings of WWW ’18, Lyon, France, April 23–27, 2018, 10 pages. DOI: 10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnn
SPARTAN: a spectral and information theoretic approach to partial-scan

We propose a new partial-scan algorithm, the first to use toggling rates of the flip-flops (analyzed using DSP methods) and Shannon entropy measures of flip-flops to select flip-flops for scan. This improves the testability of the circuit-under-test (CUT). Entropy is maximized throughout the circuit to maximize the information flow (the principle of maximum entropy), which improves testability. We propose using partial-scan for testing, to maximize fault coverage (FC), reduce test volume (TV), reduce test application time (TAT), and reduce test power (TP) but we allow for full-scan during silicon debug. Full-scan is commonly used for testing, to reduce sequential automatic test-pattern generation (ATPG) to the complexity of combinational ATPG, but comes with serious TV, TAT, and TP overheads. Partial-scan significantly reduces circuit delay, when compared to full-scan, because critical flip-flops in the circuit data path do not have the extra hardware for full-scan, and therefore are roughly 5% faster, and use 10% less area. This is particularly critical for microprocessors. The HITEC ATPG program generated results for this new partial-scan algorithm.
IMUTUS : an interactive system for learning to play a musical instrument

IMUTUS (Interactive Music Tuition System) is a EU project that aims to develop a practising environment for the recorder, combining new technologies and new approaches for music learning. Automatic analysis and evaluation of student performances play a central role in the student-system interaction. The performance evaluation module identifies typical performance errors, and provides feedback that relates to performance skills, helping the student to improve. The performance evaluation process is based on the knowledge and experience of recorder teachers, obtained via questionnaires, interviews and structured evaluations of recorded student performances. Another important feature of the performance evaluation is that it can be guided by teachers writing the content for IMUTUS by means of annotations.
Inflammation, sanitation, and consternation: loss of contact with coevolved, tolerogenic microorganisms and the pathophysiology and treatment of major depression.

CONTEXT
Inflammation is increasingly recognized as contributing to the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD), even in individuals who are otherwise medically healthy. Most studies in search of sources for this increased inflammation have focused on factors such as psychosocial stress and obesity that are known to activate inflammatory processes and increase the risk for depression. However, MDD may be so prevalent in the modern world not just because proinflammatory factors are widespread, but also because we have lost contact with previously available sources of anti-inflammatory, immunoregulatory signaling.


OBJECTIVE
To examine evidence that disruptions in coevolved relationships with a variety of tolerogenic microorganisms that were previously ubiquitous in soil, food, and the gut, but that are largely missing from industrialized societies, may contribute to increasing rates of MDD in the modern world.


DATA SOURCES
Relevant studies were identified using PubMed and Ovid MEDLINE.


STUDY SELECTION
Included were laboratory animal and human studies relevant to immune functioning, the hygiene hypothesis, and major depressive disorder identified via PubMed and Ovid MEDLINE searches.


DATA EXTRACTION
Studies were reviewed by all authors, and data considered to be potentially relevant to the contribution of hygiene-related immune variables to major depressive disorder were extracted.


DATA SYNTHESIS
Significant data suggest that a variety of microorganisms (frequently referred to as the "old friends") were tasked by coevolutionary processes with training the human immune system to tolerate a wide array of non-threatening but potentially proinflammatory stimuli. Lacking such immune training, vulnerable individuals in the modern world are at significantly increased risk of mounting inappropriate inflammatory attacks on harmless environmental antigens (leading to asthma), benign food contents and commensals in the gut (leading to inflammatory bowel disease), or self-antigens (leading to any of a host of autoimmune diseases). Loss of exposure to the old friends may promote MDD by increasing background levels of depressogenic cytokines and may predispose vulnerable individuals in industrialized societies to mount inappropriately aggressive inflammatory responses to psychosocial stressors, again leading to increased rates of depression.


CONCLUSION
Measured exposure to the old friends or their antigens may offer promise for the prevention and treatment of MDD in modern industrialized societies.
The neglected role of abdominal compliance in organ-organ interactions.

This article is one of ten reviews selected from the Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency medicine 2016. Other selected articles can be found online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/annualupdate2016. Further information about the Annual Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine is available from http://www.springer.com/series/8901.
Influenza vaccines in low and middle income countries: a systematic review of economic evaluations.

OBJECTIVES
Economic evaluations on influenza vaccination from low resource settings are scarce and have not been evaluated using a systematic approach. Our objective was to conduct a systematic review on the value for money of influenza vaccination in low- and middle-income countries.


METHODS
PubMed and EMBASE were searched for economic evaluations published in any language between 1960 and 2011. Main outcome measures were costs per influenza outcome averted, costs per quality-adjusted life years gained or disability-adjusted life years averted, costs per benefit in monetary units or cost-benefit ratios.


RESULTS
Nine economic evaluations on seasonal influenza vaccine met the inclusion criteria. These were model- or randomized-controlled-trial (RCT)-based economic evaluations from middle-income countries. Influenza vaccination provided value for money for elderly, infants, adults and children with high-risk conditions. Vaccination was cost-effective and cost-saving for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients and in elderly above 65 y from model-based evaluations, but conclusions from RCTs on elderly varied.


CONCLUSION
Economic evaluations from middle income regions differed in population studied, outcomes and definitions used. Most findings are in line with evidence from high-income countries highlighting that influenza vaccine is likely to provide value for money. However, serious methodological limitations do not allow drawing conclusions on cost-effectiveness of influenza vaccination in middle income countries. Evidence on cost-effectiveness from low-income countries is lacking altogether, and more information is needed from full economic evaluations that are conducted in a standardized manner.
Reducing the metabolic cost of running with a tethered soft exosuit

Assisting hip extension with a tethered exosuit and a simulation-optimized force profile reduces metabolic cost of running.
A highly scalable 8-layer Vertical Gate 3D NAND with split-page bit line layout and efficient binary-sum MiLC (Minimal Incremental Layer Cost) staircase contacts

We demonstrate an 8-layer 3D Vertical Gate NAND Flash with WL half pitch =37.5nm, BL half pitch=75nm, 64-WL NAND string with 63% array core efficiency. This is the first time that a 3D NAND Flash can be successfully scaled to below 3Xnm half pitch in one lateral dimension, thus an 8-layer stack device already provides a very cost effective technology with lower cost than the conventional sub-20nm 2D NAND. Our new VG architecture has two key features: (1) To improve the manufacturability a new layout that twists the even/odd BL's (and pages) in the opposite direction (split-page BL) is adopted. This allows the island-gate SSL devices [1] and metal interconnections be laid out in double pitch, creating much larger process window for BL pitch scaling; (2) A novel staircase BL contact formation method using binary sum of only M lithography and etching steps to achieve 2M contacts. This not only allows precise landing of the tight-pitch staircase contacts, but also minimizes the process steps and cost. We have successfully fabricated an 8-layer array using TFT BE-SONOS charge-trapping device. The array characteristics including reading, programming, inhibit, and block erase are demonstrated.
Staphylococcus Intermedius Infections: Case Report and Literature Review

Staphylococcus intermedius is part of the normal skin and oral flora of dogs. Case reports of human infections are rare, but the true incidence is unknown because the pathogen is frequently misidentified as Staphylococcus aureus. Reported cases range from soft tissue infections to brain abscess. Most reported cases in humans have been related to dog exposure. We report a case of a 73 year old female with S. intermedius surgical wound infection one month following a left elbow total arthroplasty. This is the first reported human case of S. intermedius infection of a mechanical prosthesis. The presumed source of infection was the patient's dog. The patient was treated with vancomycin, then switched to cefazolin and rifampin once susceptibilities were known. Case reports suggest that patients generally respond well to tailored antibiotics with complete or near-complete recovery. S. intermedius should be included in the differential diagnosis of invasive infection amongst patients with close contact with dogs.