LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Whole-blood neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin to predict adverse events in acute kidney injury: A prospective observational cohort study.

PURPOSE
Acute kidney injury is common in intensive care units and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. We evaluated the ability of whole-blood neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (wbNGAL) to predict mortality and need for renal replacement therapy (RRT) in critically ill patients with kidney dysfunction.


METHODS
We prospectively enrolled adult patients in 5 Canadian intensive care units. We measured wbNGAL at the time of enrollment to determine whether NGAL concentration could predict the primary composite outcome of death or need for RRT by day 30 in addition to other secondary outcomes.


RESULTS
We recruited 234 patients; 227 were included in the analysis. In a multivariable model, wbNGAL did not predict 30-day mortality or need for RRT (odds ratio, 1.05; 95% confidence interval, 0.99-1.12). Neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin was similar in patients who died (654 [303-1180] ng/mL) vs those who survived (541.5 [255.5-1080] ng/mL, P=.26) by 90 days. Whole-blood NGAL poorly predicted the primary outcome (area under receiver operator curve, 0.65; 95% confidence interval, 0.58-0.73).


CONCLUSIONS
In a cohort of critically ill patients with abnormal kidney function, wbNGAL was not effective in the prediction of death or RRT within 30 days. These data do not support the use of this biomarker for the detection of clinical outcomes in this population.
How accurate is the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy on telescreening? The Indian scenario.

CONTEXT
Diabetes mellitus is a healthcare burden in India. Seventy-four percent of India's population lives in rural areas with limited access to healthcare resources. Telemedicine can play a big role in screening people with diabetes at grassroots level. In the telescreening model, single field 45-degree photographs are used for detecting diabetic retinopathy. The American Academy of Ophthalmology does not recommends single-field fundus photography as an adequate substitute for a comprehensive ophthalmic examination because it may lead to a higher rate of underdiagnosis. We conducted a telescreening project using single-field fundus photography to determine its accuracy compared to the traditional camp-based screenings.


ISSUES
In this project we compared the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy between an ophthalmologist-based and an ophthalmologist-led model on two different samples of people self-reporting with diabetes in rural South India. Between 2004 and 2005 in rural South India, 3522 people with diabetes mellitus underwent ophthalmologist-based diabetic retinopathy screening and 4456 people with diabetes underwent ophthalmologist-led (telescreening) diabetic retinopathy screening. The two population groups were randomly separated. In the ophthalmologist-based program, a trained retina specialist travels along with the camp team and screens patients at the camp site for diabetic retinopathy. In the ophthalmologist-led program (telescreening), fundus photographs are transmitted to the base hospital for further evaluation and grading. A total of 519 people (14.7%) were diagnosed to have diabetic retinopathy in the ophthalmologist-based model, and 853 people (19.1%) in the ophthalmologist-led model p < 0.0001). More sight-threatening retinopathies were found in the ophthalmologist-led model than in the ophthalmologist-based model (6.3% vs. 5%).


LESSONS LEARNED
The ophthalmologist-led (telescreening) model did not underestimate the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy. Therefore, because it obviates the need for travel by an ophthalmologist, it is a good method for diabetic retinopathy screening in rural areas of India.
Trunk muscle activation levels during eight stabilization exercises used in the functional kinetics concept: A controlled laboratory study.

BACKGROUND
To ensure accurate implementation of stabilization exercises in rehabilitation, physical therapists need to understand the muscle activation patterns of prescribed exercise.


OBJECTIVE
Compare muscle activity during eight trunk and lumbar spine stabilization exercises of the Functional Kinetics concept by Klein-Vogelbach.


METHODS
A controlled laboratory study with a single-group repeated-measures design was utilized to analyze surface electromyographic intensities of 14 female and 6 male young healthy participants performing eight exercises. Data were captured from the rectus abdominis, external/internal oblique and lumbar paraspinalis. The normalized muscle activation levels (maximum voluntary isometric contraction, MVIC) for three repetitions during each exercise and muscle were analyzed.


RESULTS
Side bridging (28 ± 20%MVIC) and advanced planking (29 ± 20%MVIC) reached the highest activity in the rectus abdominis. For external and internal oblique muscles, side bridging also showed the greatest activity of 99 ± 36%MVIC and 52 ± 25%MVIC, respectively. Apart from side bridging (52 ± 14%MVIC), the supine roll-out (31 ± 12%MVIC) and prone roll-out (31 ± 9%MVIC) showed the greatest activity for the paraspinalis. The advanced quadruped, seated back extension and flexion on chair/Swiss Ball, prone roll-out and advanced one-leg back bridging only yielded negligible muscle activities for the rectus abdominis (< 5%MVIC).


CONCLUSION
Based on the data obtained, recommendations for selective trunk muscle activation during eight stabilization exercises were established, which will guide physical therapists in the development of exercises tailored to the needs of their patients.
Human resource governance: what does governance mean for the health workforce in low- and middle-income countries?

BACKGROUND
Research on practical and effective governance of the health workforce is limited. This paper examines health system strengthening as it occurs in the intersection between the health workforce and governance by presenting a framework to examine health workforce issues related to eight governance principles: strategic vision, accountability, transparency, information, efficiency, equity/fairness, responsiveness and citizen voice and participation.


METHODS
This study builds off of a literature review that informed the development of a framework that describes linkages and assigns indicators between governance and the health workforce. A qualitative analysis of Health System Assessment (HSA) data, a rapid indicator-based methodology that determines the key strengths and weaknesses of a health system using a set of internationally recognized indicators, was completed to determine how 20 low- and middle-income countries are operationalizing health governance to improve health workforce performance.


RESULTS/DISCUSSION
The 20 countries assessed showed mixed progress in implementing the eight governance principles. Strengths highlighted include increasing the transparency of financial flows from sources to providers by implementing and institutionalizing the National Health Accounts methodology; increasing responsiveness to population health needs by training new cadres of health workers to address shortages and deliver care to remote and rural populations; having structures in place to register and provide licensure to medical professionals upon entry into the public sector; and implementing pilot programs that apply financial and non-financial incentives as a means to increase efficiency. Common weaknesses emerging in the HSAs include difficulties with developing, implementing and evaluating health workforce policies that outline a strategic vision for the health workforce; implementing continuous licensure and regulation systems to hold health workers accountable after they enter the workforce; and making use of health information systems to acquire data from providers and deliver it to policymakers.


CONCLUSIONS
The breadth of challenges facing the health workforce requires strengthening health governance as well as human resource systems in order to effect change in the health system. Further research into the effectiveness of specific interventions that enhance the link between the health workforce and governance are warranted to determine approaches to strengthening the health system.
Enhanced binding revisited for a spinless particle in nonrelativistic QED

We consider a spinless particle coupled to a quantized Bose field and show that such a system has a ground state for two classes of short-range potentials which are alone too weak to have a zero-energy resonance.
Anxiety in children and adolescents with chronic kidney disease--multicenter national study results.

BACKGROUND/AIMS
Chronic medical illness is a significant risk factor for the development of psychiatric disorders. The aims of the study were: to investigate the level of anxiety in children with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and to identify factors associated with the presence of that emotional problem.


METHODS
CKD children on hemodialysis (HD, n=22), peritoneal dialysis (PD, n=20,) and on conservative treatment (CT, n=95) were enrolled in the study. We used State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) for adolescents and STAI-C for children. Socio-demographic and physical factors were assessed.


RESULTS
There was a significantly higher level of anxiety-state among HD children (8-12 years) compared with other groups of participants of the same age and Polish population norms. The level of anxiety among adolescents (13-18 years), both anxiety-state and anxiety-trait, was significantly higher in the HD group compared with other groups, which did not differ among themselves. In the HD adolescents, there was a correlation between the anxiety-state and the duration of the disease as well as with the number of hospitalizations. PD adolescents in the mainstream education had higher levels of anxiety-state and anxiety-trait compared with home schooled patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Even though children and adolescents with CKD are at risk of developing a variety of emotional disorders, the level of anxiety among the researched group, with the exception of HD patients, was not significantly different than the level of anxiety among healthy subjects. Adolescents on HD who present a high level of anxiety should undergo long-term psychological treatment.
Is craniosacral therapy effective for migraine? Tested with HIT-6 Questionnaire.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether or not craniosacral therapy alleviates migraine symptoms.


METHODS
A cross-over experimental design was used with twenty participants, aged between 20 and 50 years, who suffered from at least two migraine attacks per month. Participants were randomly assigned to two equal-sized groups, A and B. All received six craniosacral treatments over four weeks and the groups answered the "HIT-6" Questionnaire four times; every four weeks (Times 1, 2, 3 and 4). Group A, received treatment after answering the questionnaire the first time, but Group B, answered the questionnaire twice before receiving treatment.


RESULTS
Immediately after treatments and one month afterwards there was significant lowering in HIT-6 scorings compared with prior to treatment. There was also significant difference in HIT-6 scorings between Times 1 and 4 (p = 0.004). The effect size was 0.43-0.55.


CONCLUSION
The results indicate that craniosacral treatment can alleviate migraine symptoms. Further research is suggested.
X-ray-based attenuation correction for positron emission tomography/computed tomography scanners.

A synergy of positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) scanners is the use of the CT data for x-ray-based attenuation correction of the PET emission data. Current methods of measuring transmission use positron sources, gamma-ray sources, or x-ray sources. Each of the types of transmission scans involves different trade-offs of noise versus bias, with positron transmission scans having the highest noise but lowest bias, whereas x-ray scans have negligible noise but the potential for increased quantitative errors. The use of x-ray-based attenuation correction, however, has other advantages, including a lack of bias introduced from post-injection transmission scanning, which is an important practical consideration for clinical scanners, as well as reduced scan times. The sensitivity of x-ray-based attenuation correction to artifacts and quantitative errors depends on the method of translating the CT image from the effective x-ray energy of approximately 70 keV to attenuation coefficients at the PET energy of 511 keV. These translation methods are usually based on segmentation and/or scaling techniques. Errors in the PET emission image arise from positional mismatches caused by patient motion or respiration differences between the PET and CT scans; incorrect calculation of attenuation coefficients for CT contrast agents or metallic implants; or keeping the patient's arms in the field of view, which leads to truncation and/or beam-hardening (or x-ray scatter) artifacts. Proper interpretation of PET emission images corrected for attenuation by using the CT image relies on an understanding of the potential artifacts. In cases where an artifact or bias is suspected, careful inspection of all three available images (CT and PET emission with and without attenuation correction) is recommended.
Hepatic porphyrias in children

Clinically overt hepatic porphyria is uncommon in children. The autosomal dominant acute hepatic porphyrias, acute intermittent porphyria (AIP), variegate porphyria (VP) and hereditary coproporphyria (HCP), are rarely present before puberty. Identification of asymptomatic children who have inherited these disorders is an important aspect of the management of the disease in their families and requires either enzymatic or DNA methods. Homozygous variants of AIP, VP and HCP usually present in early childhood and have phenotypes of variable severity. Mutational analysis is currently elucidating the relationship between these disorders and their autosomal dominant counterparts. 5-Aminolaevulinate dehydratase deficiency porphyria is a rare, autosomal recessive acute porphyria that may present at any age. Two cutaneous hepatic porphyrias are seen in children. Porphyria cutanea tarda (PCT), although mainly an adult disease, has been reported in young children with the autosomal dominant (type II) form of the disorder. Hepatoerythropoietic porphyria usually develops before the age of 2 years; patients are homo- or heteroallelic for uroporphyrinogen decarboxylase mutations, at least one of which is known to cause type II PCT.
Auto-encoder based dimensionality reduction

Auto-encoder — a tricky three-layered neural network, known as auto-association before, constructs the “building block” of deep learning, which has been demonstrated to achieve good performance in various domains. In this paper, we try to investigate the dimensionality reduction ability of auto-encoder, and see if it has some kind of good property that might accumulate when being stacked and thus contribute to the success of deep learning. Based on the above idea, this paper starts from auto-encoder and focuses on its ability to reduce the dimensionality, trying to understand the difference between auto-encoder and state-of-the-art dimensionality reduction methods. Experiments are conducted both on the synthesized data for an intuitive understanding of the method, mainly on two and threedimensional spaces for better visualization, and on some real datasets, including MNIST and Olivetti face datasets. The results show that auto-encoder can indeed learn something different from other methods. Besides, we preliminarily investigate the influence of the number of hidden layer nodes on the performance of auto-encoder and its possible relation with the intrinsic dimensionality of input data.
Advancing Sustainability of Open Educational Resources

This paper discusses the concept of Open Educational Resources (OERs). The discussion then shift to OER sustainability, a fundamental element essential for the success of OER. Special attention is given to the following as they relate to the OER sustainability: instructional design & presentation; cost of production and maintenance; support; and OER communities of practice as relate to scalability. The paper concludes with recommendations for OERs future research.
Charging Utility Maximization in Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks by Charging Multiple Sensors Simultaneously

Wireless energy charging has been regarded as a promising technology for prolonging sensor lifetime in wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs). Most existing studies focused on one-to-one charging between a mobile charger and a sensor that suffers charging scalability and efficiency issues. A new charging technique – one-to-many charging scheme that allows multiple sensors to be charged simultaneously by a single charger can well address the issues. In this paper, we investigate the use of a mobile charger to charge multiple sensors simultaneously in WRSNs under the energy capacity constraint on the mobile charger. We aim to minimize the sensor energy expiration time by formulating a novel charging utility maximization problem, where the amount of utility gain by charging a sensor is proportional to the amount of energy received by the sensor. We also consider the charging tour length minimization problem of minimizing the travel distance of the mobile charger if all requested sensors must be charged, assuming that the mobile charger has sufficient energy to support all requested sensor charging and itself travelling. Specifically, in this paper, we first devise an approximation algorithm with a constant approximation ratio for the charging utility maximization problem if the energy consumption of the mobile charger on its charging tour is negligible. Otherwise, we develop an efficient heuristic for it through a non-trivial reduction from a length-constrained utility maximization problem. We then, devise the very first approximation algorithm with a constant approximation ratio for the charging tour length minimization problem through exploiting the combinatorial property of the problem. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms through experimental simulations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are promising, and outperform the other heuristics in various settings.
Cloud Computing Reference Architecture from Different Vendor ’ s Perspective Demeke

The provision of on-demand access to Cloud computing services and infrastructure is attracting numerous consumers, as a result migrating from traditional server centric network to Cloud computing becomes inevitable to benefit from the technology through overall expense diminution. This growth of Cloud computing service consumers may influence the future data centers and operational models. The issue of inter-cloud operability due to different Cloud computing vendors Reference Architecture (RA) needs to be addressed to allow consumers to use services from any vendor. In this paper we present the Cloud computing RA of major vendors available in scientific literature and the RA of National Institute of Standard Technology(NIST) by comparing the nature of their RA (role based/layer based) and mapping activities and capabilities to the layer(s) or role(s). Keywords—Cloud Computing, Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (RA), Cloud Service Consumers, Cloud Service Providers, SaaS , PaaS , IaaS
Insulin and Metformin Regulate Circulating and Adipose Tissue Chemerin

OBJECTIVE
To assess chemerin levels and regulation in sera and adipose tissue from women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and matched control subjects.


RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Real-time RT-PCR and Western blotting were used to assess mRNA and protein expression of chemerin. Serum chemerin was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. We investigated the in vivo effects of insulin on serum chemerin levels via a prolonged insulin-glucose infusion. Ex vivo effects of insulin, metformin, and steroid hormones on adipose tissue chemerin protein production and secretion into conditioned media were assessed by Western blotting and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, respectively.


RESULTS
Serum chemerin, subcutaneous, and omental adipose tissue chemerin were significantly higher in women with PCOS (n = 14; P < 0.05, P < 0.01). Hyperinsulinemic induction in human subjects significantly increased serum chemerin levels (n = 6; P < 0.05, P < 0.01). In adipose tissue explants, insulin significantly increased (n = 6; P < 0.05, P < 0.01) whereas metformin significantly decreased (n = 6; P < 0.05, P < 0.01) chemerin protein production and secretion into conditioned media, respectively. After 6 months of metformin treatment, there was a significant decrease in serum chemerin (n = 21; P < 0.01). Importantly, changes in homeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance were predictive of changes in serum chemerin (P = 0.046).


CONCLUSIONS
Serum and adipose tissue chemerin levels are increased in women with PCOS and are upregulated by insulin. Metformin treatment decreases serum chemerin in these women.
Fingerprinting Australia's rivers with clay minerals and the application for the marine record of climate change

Clay mineral assemblages from sediments taken from 46 rivers around Australia and in the Murray– Darling Basin were analysed and found to be characteristic for each individual river and drainage area. These clay mineral fingerprints are not necessarily associated with present climate in the drainage area, but represent an input from a local clay reservoir that was formed from the weathering of a typical combination of local bedrock over prolonged periods of time. Consequently, the clay composition of these reservoirs does not correspond to simple latitudinal patterns of clay minerals, which conventionally states that physically eroded mica/illite and chlorite occur in cold and high latitudes, and smectite and kaolinite formed from chemical weathering are found under the warm and humid climate conditions of low latitudes. Likewise, there is no latitudinal zonation of clays on the sea floor surrounding Australia. The comparison of river clays and clay mineral assemblages on the sea floor suggests that river suspensions contribute considerably to the terrigenous component in marine sediments around Australia. Although highly episodic and event-controlled, significant amounts of river clays are discharged into the ocean. They are entrained in ocean currents and can be traced for long distances. Comparing clay mineral suites in different time-slices of marine sediment cores can be a suitable tool to reconstruct palaeoclimatic processes such as varying river discharge, aridity or humidity of the source area, sea-level fluctuations and intensity and direction of ocean currents. With clay mineral fingerprints from individual drainage areas, clays in sediment cores can be traced back in many cases to the source area. Thus, the different clay mineral suites from the Last Glacial Maximum and from the present day in 14 deep-sea sediment cores from around Australia can be explained by fluctuations in climate-related processes.