LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of thoracolumbar burst fractures: short-segment pedicle instrumentation versus kyphoplasty.

UNLABELLED
The management of amyelic thoracolumbar burst fractures remains controversial. In this study, we compared the clinical efficacy of percutaneous kyphoplasty (PKP) and short-segment pedicle instrumentation (SSPI). Twenty-three patients were treated with PKP, and 25 patients with SSPI. They all presented with Type A3 amyelic thoracolumbar fractures. Clinical outcomes were evaluated by a Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) preoperatively, postoperatively, and at two years follow-up. Radiographic data including the anterior and posterior vertebral body height, kyphotic angle, as well as spinal canal compromise was also evaluated. The patients in both groups were similar regarding age, bone mineral density (BMD), follow-up period, severity of the deformity and fracture. Blood loss, operation time, and bed-rest time were less in the PKP group. VAS, ODI score improved more rapidly after surgery in the PKP group. No significant difference was found in VAS and ODI scores between the two groups at final follow-up (p > 0.05). Meanwhile, the height of anterior vertebrae (Ha), the height of posterior vertebrae (Hp) and the kyphosis angle showed significant improvement in each group (p < 0.05). The postoperative improvement in spinal canal compromise was not statistically significant in the PKP group (p > 0.05); there was a significant improvement in the SSPI group (p < 0.05). Moreover, these postoperative radiographic assessments showed significant differences between the two groups regarding the improvement of canal compromise (p < 0.05). At final follow-up, remodeling of spinal canal compromise was detected in both groups.


CONCLUSION
Both PKP and SSPI appeared as effective and reliable operative techniques for selected amyelic thoracolumbar fractures in the short-term. PKP had a significantly smaller blood loss and shorter bed-rest time, but SSPI provided a better reduction. Long-time studies should be conducted to support these clinical outcomes.
Multi-project reticle floorplanning and wafer dicing

Multi-project Wafers (MPW) are an efficient way to share the rising costs of mask tooling between multiple prototype and low production volume designs. Packing the different die images on a multi-project reticle leads to new and highly challenging floorplanning formulations, characterized by unusual constraints and complex objective functions. In this paper we study multi-project reticle floorplanning and wafer dicing problems under the prevalent side-to-side wafer dicing technology. Our contributions include practical mathematical programming algorithms and efficient heuristics based on interval-graph coloring which find side-to-side wafer dicing plans with maximum yield for a fixed multi-project reticle floorplan and given per-die maximum dicing margins. We also give novel shelf packing and simulated annealing reticle floorplanning algorithms for maximizing wafer-dicing yield. Experimental results show that our algorithms improve wafer-dicing yield significantly compared to existing industry tools and academic min-area floorplanners.
Long-term association between self-reported signs and symptoms and heart failure hospitalizations: the Atherosclerosis Risk In Communities (ARIC) Study.

AIMS
Although studies of the accuracy of heart failure (HF) classification scoring systems are available, few have examined their performance when restricted to self-reported items.


METHODS AND RESULTS
We evaluated the association between a simplified version of the Gothenburg score, a validated HF score comprised of cardiac and pulmonary signs and symptoms and medication use, and incident HF hospitalizations in 15,430 Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study participants. Gothenburg scores (range: 0-3) were constructed using self-reported items obtained at study baseline (1987-89). Incident HF hospitalization over 14.7 years of follow-up was defined as the first identified hospitalization with an ICD-9 discharge code of 428 (n = 1,668). Self-reported Gothenburg scores demonstrated very high agreement with the original metric comprised of self-reported and clinical measures and were directly associated with incident HF hospitalizations: [score = 1: hazard rate ratio (HRR) = 1.23 (1.07-1.42); score = 2: HRR = 2.17 (1.92-2.43); score = 3: HRR = 3.98 (3.37-4.70)].


CONCLUSION
In a population-based cohort, self-reported Gothenburg criteria items were associated with hospitalized HF over a prolonged follow-up time. The association was also consistent across groups defined by sex and race, suggesting that this simple score deserves further study as a screening tool for the identification of individuals at high risk of HF in resource-limited settings.
c-Met: Structure, functions and potential for therapeutic inhibition

Studies on signal transduction pathways have generated various promising molecular targets for therapeutic inhibition in cancer therapy. Receptor tyrosine kinases represent an important class of such therapeutic targets. c-Met is a receptor tyrosine kinase that has been shown to be overexpressed and/or mutated in a variety of malignancies. A number of c-Met activating mutations, many of which are located in the tyrosine kinase domain, have been detected in various solid tumors and have been implicated in invasion and metastasis of tumor cells. It is known that stimulation of c-Met via its natural ligand, hepatocyte growth factor (also known as scatter factor, HGF/SF) results in a plethora of biological and biochemical effects in the cell. Activation of c-Met signaling can lead to scattering, angiogenesis, proliferation, enhanced cell motility, invasion, and eventual metastasis. In this review, the role of c-Met dysregulation in tumor progression and metastasis is discussed in detail with particular emphasis on c-Met mutations. Moreover, we summarize current knowledge on various pathways of c-Met signal transduction, highlighting the central role in the cytoskeletal functions. In this summary is included recent data in our laboratory indicating that phosphorylation of focal adhesion proteins, such as paxillin, p125FAK, and PYK2, occurs in response to c-Met stimulation in lung cancer cells. Most importantly, current data on c-Met suggest that when mutated or overexpressed in malignant cells, c-Met would serve as an important therapeutic target.
Arqueología de la imagen. Historia del cine experimental en Uruguay

“Archeology of the Image” is the name of the research directed by the writer. It takes place at the Contemporary Art Foundation, a collective of artists based in the city of Montevideo. This work takes as its starting point the film memory retrieval in the country and create from this a focus of converging audiovisual production where different ways of understanding the film.
Physical health symptoms reported by trafficked women receiving post-trafficking support in Moldova: prevalence, severity and associated factors

BACKGROUND
Many trafficked people suffer high levels of physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Yet, there has been limited research on the physical health problems associated with human trafficking or how the health needs of women in post-trafficking support settings vary according to socio-demographic or trafficking characteristics.


METHODS
We analysed the prevalence and severity of 15 health symptoms reported by 120 trafficked women who had returned to Moldova between December 2007 and December 2008 and were registered with the International Organisation for Migration Assistance and Protection Programme. Women had returned to Moldova an average of 5.9 months prior to interview (range 2-12 months).


RESULTS
Headaches (61.7%), stomach pain (60.9%), memory problems (44.2%), back pain (42.5%), loss of appetite (35%), and tooth pain (35%) were amongst the most commonly reported symptoms amongst both women trafficked for sexual exploitation and women trafficked for labour exploitation. The prevalence of headache and memory problems was strongly associated with duration of exploitation.


CONCLUSIONS
Trafficked women who register for post-trafficking support services after returning to their country of origin are likely to have long-term physical and dental health needs and should be provided with access to comprehensive medical services. Health problems among women who register for post-trafficking support services after returning to their country of origin are not limited to women trafficked for sexual exploitation but are also experienced by victims of labour exploitation.
AmphiBot II: An Amphibious Snake Robot that Crawls and Swims using a Central Pattern Generator

This article presents AmphiBot II, an amphibious snake robot designed for both serpentine locomotion (crawling) and swimming. It is controlled by an on-board central pattern generator (CPG) inspired by those found in vertebrates. The CPG is modelled as a chain of coupled nonlinear oscillators, and is designed to produce travelling waves. Its parameters can be modified on the fly. We present the hardware of the robot and the structure of the CPG, then the systematic parameter tests done in simulation and with the real robot to characterize how the speed of locomotion depends on the parameters determining the frequency, amplitude and wavelength of the body undulation. Keywords— AmphiBot II, amphibious robot, snake robot, central pattern generator, swimming, crawling
Prognostic Implications of Tumor Diameter in Association With Gene Expression Profile for Uveal Melanoma.

IMPORTANCE
Uveal melanoma (UM) can be divided into prognostically significant subgroups based on a prospectively validated and widely used 15-gene expression profile (GEP) test. Class 1 UMs have a low risk and class 2 UMs have a high risk for metastasis.


OBJECTIVE
To determine whether any clinicopathologic factors provide independent prognostic information that may enhance the accuracy of the GEP classification.


DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
This retrospective observational study performed at 2 ocular oncology referral centers included 339 patients in a primary cohort and 241 patients in a validation cohort. Both cohorts had a diagnosis of UM arising from the ciliary body and/or choroid. All patients underwent tumor biopsy for GEP prognostic testing. Clinicopathologic variables included patient age and sex, tumor thickness, largest basal tumor diameter (LBD), ciliary body involvement, and pathologic cell type. Patients from the primary cohort were enrolled from November 1, 1998, to March 16, 2012; from the validation cohort, from November 4, 1996, to November 7, 2013. Follow-up for the primary cohort was completed on August 18, 2013; for the validation cohort, December 10, 2013. Data were analyzed from November 12, 2013, to November 25, 2015.


MAIN OUTCOME AND MEASURES
Progression-free survival (PFS). The secondary outcome was overall survival.


RESULTS
The primary cohort included 339 patients (175 women [51.6%]; mean [SD] age, 61.8 [13.6] years). The most significant prognostic factor was GEP classification (exp[b], 10.33; 95% CI, 4.30-24.84; P < .001). The only other variable that provided independent prognostic information was LBD (exp[b], 1.13; 95% CI, 1.02-1.26; P = .02). Among class 2 UMs, LBD showed a modest but significant association with PFS (exp[b], 1.13; 95% CI, 1.04-1.24; P = .005). The 5-year actuarial metastasis-free survival estimates (SE) were 97% (3%) for class 1 UMs with LBD of less than 12 mm, 90% (4%) for class 1 UMs with LBD of at least 12 mm, 90% (9%) for class 2 UMs with LBD of less than 12 mm, and 30% (7%) for class 2 UMs with LBDs of at least 12 mm. The independent prognostic value of LBD and the 12-mm LBD cutoff were corroborated in the independent validation 241-patient cohort.


CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Class 2 UMs had better prognosis when the LBD was less than 12 mm at the time of treatment. These findings could have important implications for patient counseling, primary tumor treatment, clinical trial enrollment, metastatic surveillance, and adjuvant therapy.
A finite difference scheme for fractional sub-diffusion equations on an unbounded domain using artificial boundary conditions

One-dimensional fractional anomalous sub-diffusion equations on an unbounded domain are considered in our work. Beginning with the derivation of the exact artificial boundary conditions, the original problem on an unbounded domain is converted into mainly solving an initial-boundary value problem on a finite computational domain. The main contribution of our work, as compared with the previous work, lies in the reduction of fractional differential equations on an unbounded domain by using artificial boundary conditions and construction of the corresponding finite difference scheme with the help of method of order reduction. The difficulty is the treatment of Neumann condition on the artificial boundary, which involves the time-fractional derivative operator. The stability and convergence of the scheme are proven using the discrete energy method. Two numerical examples clarify the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method. 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Expectation propagation: a probabilistic view of Deep Feed Forward Networks

We present a statistical mechanics model of deep feed forward neural networks (FFN). Our energy-based approach naturally explains several known results and heuristics, providing a solid theoretical framework and new instruments for a systematic development of FFN. We infer that FFN can be understood as performing three basic steps: encoding, representation validation and propagation. We obtain a set of natural activations – such as sigmoid, tanh and ReLu – together with a state-of-the-art one, recently obtained by Ramachandran et al. [1] using an extensive search algorithm. We term this activation ESP (Expected Signal Propagation), explain its probabilistic meaning, and study the eigenvalue spectrum of the associated Hessian on classification tasks. We find that ESP allows for faster training and more consistent performances over a wide range of network architectures.
A double standard for "Hooking Up": How far have we come toward gender equality?

While sexual attitudes have liberalized in the past half century, research is mixed as to whether attitudes have become less gendered over time. Recent studies on college students' sexual and romantic relationships suggest that a sexual double standard continues to organize sexuality on many campuses. Data from the Online College Social Life Survey shed light on students' evaluation of casual sex, or "hooking up." In addition to exploring gendered attitudinal patterns, we use gender structure theory to explore how individual characteristics and normative expectations of campus group affiliations shape attitudes. While three quarters of students do not hold different standards for men and women's hooking up, attitudes are more conservative than liberal, with almost half of students losing respect for men and women who hook up "a lot." However, men are more likely to hold a traditional double standard, while women are more likely to espouse egalitarian conservative attitudes. Individual characteristics, including age, religion, race, social class and sexual orientation are frequently related to sexual attitudes, as are number of hook ups, fraternity/sorority affiliation and varsity athletic participation.
Blockchain beyond bitcoin

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize applications and redefine the digital economy.
External Sampling

We initiate the study of sublinear-time algorithms in the external memory model [1]. In this model, the data is stored in blocks of a certain size B , and the algorithm is charged a unit cost for each block access. This model is well-studied, since it reflects the computational issues occurring when the (massive) input is stored on a disk. Since each block access operates on B data elements in parallel, many problems have external memory algorithms whose number of block accesses is only a small fraction (e.g. 1/B ) of their main memory complexity. 
 
However, to the best of our knowledge, no such reduction in complexity is known for any sublinear-time algorithm. One plausible explanation is that the vast majority of sublinear-time algorithms use random sampling and thus exhibit no locality of reference. This state of affairs is quite unfortunate, since both sublinear-time algorithms and the external memory model are important approaches to dealing with massive data sets, and ideally they should be combined to achieve best performance. 
 
In this paper we show that such combination is indeed possible. In particular, we consider three well-studied problems: testing of distinctness , uniformity and identity of an empirical distribution induced by data. For these problems we show random-sampling-based algorithms whose number of block accesses is up to a factor of $1/\sqrt{B}$ smaller than the main memory complexity of those problems. We also show that this improvement is optimal for those problems. 
 
Since these problems are natural primitives for a number of sampling-based algorithms for other problems, our tools improve the external memory complexity of other problems as well.
Introduction to FACTS Controllers in Wind Power Farms: A Technological Review

This paper presents a state-of-the-art on enhancement of different performance parameters of power systems such as voltage profile, damping of oscillations, loadability, reduce the active and reactive power losses, sub-synchronous resonance (SSR) problems, transient stability, and dynamic performance, by optimally placed of FACTS controllers such as TCSC, SVC, STATCOM, SSSC, UPFC, IPFC, HPFC in wind power Systems. Also this paper presents the current status on enhancement of different performance parameters of power systems by optimally placed of FACTS controllers in wind power Systems. Authors strongly believe that this survey article will be very much useful to the researchers for finding out the relevant references in the field of the enhancement of different performance parameters of power systems such as voltage profile, damping of oscillations, loadability, reduce the active and reactive power losses, sub-synchronous resonance (SSR) problems, transient stability, and dynamic performance, by optimally placed of FACTS controllers in wind power Systems. Keywords-Wind Power Systems, Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS), FACTS Controllers, Static Var Compensator (SVC), Thristor Controlled Series Capacitor (TCSC), Thristor Controlled Phase Angle Regulator (TCPAR), Sub-synchronous Series Compensator (SSSC),Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM), Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC), Interlink Power Flow Controller (IPFC),and Hybrid Power Flow Controller (HPFC).
Individual attitudes and organisational knowledge sharing

The purpose of this empirical study is to explore how employees process information after they have collected it, and investigate how individual attitudes to learning, sharing and storing influence organisational knowledge sharing. The data are derived from 499 respondents working in international tourist hotels in Taiwan. The results show that two significant factors, individual attitudes to (a) learning and (b) sharing, significantly impact on organisational knowledge sharing. This study implies that front-line managers should help rank-and-file employees to both learn and share knowledge and encourage the habituation of such behaviour patterns. It is suggested that this practice would enhance organisational performance. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
IMM-EKF based Road Vehicle Navigation with Low Cost GPS/INS

Actual solutions for the road vehicle navigation problem point to the combination of GPS, odometry and inertial sensors. To combine the information coming from these sensors, most of actual researchers rely on the implementation of variations of the Kalman filter (KF) and the extended Kalman filter (EKF) for non-linear systems. Despite the fact that, in these filters, the definition of the proper vehicle model is of extreme importance, there is not a unique common filter suitable for all the usual situations in which a road vehicle is involved. The diversity of possible maneuvers and the need of realistic noise considerations adjusted to each driving situation encourage the application of IMM (interactive multi-model) techniques in the road navigation. Traditionally applied to the aerial sector, IMM based methods run different models at the same time, selecting that one which better represents the system behavior anytime. For road vehicles, the IMM-EKF solution presented in this paper allows the exploitation of highly dynamic models just when required, avoiding the impoverishment of the solution due to unrealistic noise considerations during straight or mild trajectories. Selected results presented in this paper confirm the improvements obtained by using the IMM-EKF developed, as compared with the single model solution
Choledocholithiasis: repetitive thick-slab single-shot projection magnetic resonance cholangiopancreaticography versus endoscopic ultrasonography

This prospective study compares repetitive thick-slab single-shot projection magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) with endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) for the detection of choledocholithiasis. Fifty-seven consecutive patients (36 women, mean age 61) referred for suspected choledocholithiasis underwent MRCP, followed by EUS. Each procedure was performed by different operators blinded to the results of the other investigation. MR technique included a turbo spin-echo T2-weighted axial sequence with selective fat saturation (SPIR/TSE, TE=70 ms, TR=1,600 ms), followed by coronal dynamic MRCP. The same thick-slab slice was sequentially acquired 12 times as breath-hold single-shot projection imaging (SSh, TE=900 ms, TE=8,000 ms) centred on the common bile duct (CBD). Two experienced radiologists independently and blindly evaluated MR images for the detection of CBD stones. Their inter-observer agreement kappa was determined. Secondly, the two observers read MR images in consensus again. CBD stones were demonstrated in 18 out of 57 patients (31.6 %) and confirmed by endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (ERCP, n=17) or intraoperative cholangiography (n=1). Clinical follow-up served as the “gold standard” in patients with negative results without following invasive procedure (n=28). Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive and negative predictive value for MRCP resulting from consensus reading were 94.9%, 94.4%, 94.7%, 97.4% and 89.5%, respectively. Corresponding values of EUS were 97.4%, 94.4%, 96.5%, 97.4% and 94.4%. Inter-observer agreement kappa was 0.81. Repetitive thick-slab single-shot projection MRCP is an accurate non-invasive imaging modality for suspected choledocholithiasis and should be increasingly used to select those patients who require a subsequent therapeutic procedure, namely ERCP.