LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
FastSLAM 2 . 0 : An Improved Particle Filtering Algorithm for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping that Provably Converges

In [15], Montemerlo et al. proposed an algorithm called FastSLAM as an efficient and robust solution to the simultaneous localization and mapping problem. This paper describes a modified version of FastSLAM that overcomes important deficiencies of the original algorithm. We prove convergence of this new algorithm for linear SLAM problems and provide real-world experimental results that i l lustrate an order of magnitude improvement in accuracy over the original FastSLAM algorithm.
The potential therapeutic effect of melatonin in gastro-esophageal reflux disease

BACKGROUND
Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) defined as a condition that develops when the reflux of stomach contents causes troublesome symptoms and/or complications. Many drugs are used for the treatment of GERD such as omeprazole (a proton pump inhibitor) which is a widely used antiulcer drug demonstrated to protect against esophageal mucosal injury. Melatonin has been found to protect the gastrointestinal mucosa from oxidative damage caused by reactive oxygen species in different experimental ulcer models. The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of exogenous melatonin in the treatment of reflux disease in humans either alone or in combination with omeprazole therapy.


METHODS
36 persons were divided into 4 groups (control subjects, patients with reflux disease treated with melatonin alone, omeprazole alone and a combination of melatonin and omeprazole for 4 and 8 weeks) Each group consisted of 9 persons. Persons were subjected to thorough history taking, clinical examination, and investigations including laboratory, endoscopic, record of esophageal motility, pH-metry, basal acid output and serum gastrin.


RESULTS
Melatonin has a role in the improvement of Gastro-esophageal reflux disease when used alone or in combination with omeprazole. Meanwhile, omeprazole alone is better used in the treatment of GERD than melatonin alone.


CONCLUSION
The present study showed that oral melatonin is a promising therapeutic agent for the treatment of GERD. It is an effective line of treatment in relieving epigastric pain and heartburn. However, further studies are required to confirm the efficacy and long-term safety of melatonin before being recommended for routine clinical use.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
QA13NCT00915616.
Application of Synchronous Text-Based Dialogue Systems in Mental Health Interventions: Systematic Review

BACKGROUND
Synchronous written conversations (or "chats") are becoming increasingly popular as Web-based mental health interventions. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to evaluate and summarize the quality of these interventions.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to review the current evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of online one-on-one mental health interventions that use text-based synchronous chat.


METHODS
A systematic search was conducted of the databases relevant to this area of research (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online [MEDLINE], PsycINFO, Central, Scopus, EMBASE, Web of Science, IEEE, and ACM). There were no specific selection criteria relating to the participant group. Studies were included if they reported interventions with individual text-based synchronous conversations (ie, chat or text messaging) and a psychological outcome measure.


RESULTS
A total of 24 articles were included in this review. Interventions included a wide range of mental health targets (eg, anxiety, distress, depression, eating disorders, and addiction) and intervention design. Overall, compared with the waitlist (WL) condition, studies showed significant and sustained improvements in mental health outcomes following synchronous text-based intervention, and post treatment improvement equivalent but not superior to treatment as usual (TAU) (eg, face-to-face and telephone counseling).


CONCLUSIONS
Feasibility studies indicate substantial innovation in this area of mental health intervention with studies utilizing trained volunteers and chatbot technologies to deliver interventions. While studies of efficacy show positive post-intervention gains, further research is needed to determine whether time requirements for this mode of intervention are feasible in clinical practice.
Prevalence and molecular identification of Chlamydia abortus in commercial dairy goat farms in a hot region in Mexico

The aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence and presence of Chlamydia abortus in Saanen breed female goats from commercial dairy goat farms under intensive production in the municipality of Guanajuato, Mexico. Sera were collected to determine the prevalence of anti-C. abortus IgG antibodies using recombinant enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (rELISA) and cell culture. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to prove the presence of the pathogen in swab samples collected from the vagina and rectum of selected animals. Additionally, foetal tissue samples from a sudden abortion were collected. C. abortus prevalence in female goats of commercial milking farms sampled in Guanajuato, Mexico, was 4.87 % (n = 246). Seropositive animals were found in six out of nine (66.6 %) dairy goat farms sampled, and prevalence among animals in individual farms ranged between 3.44 and 13.51 %. C. abortus was detected using PCR in spleen tissue from the aborted foetus. PCR-based detection, as well as isolation from vaginal and rectal swabs, was not possible in the present study. Isolation through cell culture was also unsuccessful from aborted foetal tissue samples. In conclusion, the results from rELISA and PCR show that C. abortus is present in dairy goat farms in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico.
Long-term Escherichia coli asymptomatic bacteriuria among women with diabetes mellitus.

BACKGROUND
Persistent Escherichia coli asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB) is common among persons with diabetes mellitus, but the duration of colonization and the rates of recolonization are unknown. We estimated the duration of colonization and the rate of recolonization among successively isolated E. coli from diabetic women with ASB and compared the virulence profiles with uropathogenic and commensal E. coli.


METHODS
A total of 105 women with diabetes were enrolled in a randomized, controlled clinical trial for treatment of ASB in Manitoba, Canada, and were observed at least every 3 months for up to 3 years. We analyzed 517 isolates from 70 women with repeated E. coli ASB for genetic similarity using enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus polymerase chain reaction. Unique strains were screened for uropathogenic virulence characteristics using dot blot hybridization and compared with different collections of E. coli isolates.


RESULTS
On average, differences were found among women assigned to treatment for ASB, those treated only for symptomatic infections, and untreated women in (1) follow-up time with bacteriuria (29%, 31%, and 66%, respectively; P<.001), (2) duration of bacteriuria (2.2, 2.5, and 3.7 months, respectively; P=.04), and (3) carriage of unique isolates (2.4, 2.8, and 4 months, respectively; P=.03). Women assigned to antibiotic treatment usually had recurrent infection (76%), 64% of the time with a genetically new E. coli strain. Virulence characteristics of these isolates were comparable to those of fecal isolates from healthy women.


CONCLUSIONS
Treatment may reduce the overall proportion of time infected in the long term and carriage of a unique strain, but most treatment regimens were followed by subsequent recolonization. Infecting strains did not have virulence factors characteristic of uropathogenic E. coli.
Paying Informally in the Albanian Health Care Sector: A Two-Tiered Stochastic Frontier Bargaining Model

The 'watch dog' role of the media, the impact of migration processes, health care access for children in developing countries, mitigation of the effects of Global Warming are typical examples of governance issues – issues to be tackled at the base; issues to be solved by creating and implementing effective policy. students to pave the road for innovative policy developments in Europe and the world today. Our master's and PhD programmes train you in analysing, monitoring and evaluating public policy in order to strengthen democratic governance in domestic and international organisations. The School carefully crafts its training activities to give national and international organisations, scholars and professionals the tools needed to harness the strengths of changing organisations and solve today' s challenges, and more importantly, the ones of tomorrow. Acknowledgement: The study is part of Project ASSPRO CEE 2007 (Grant Agreement no. 217431) funded by the European Commission under the 7 th Framework Programme, Theme 8 Socioeconomic Sciences and Humanities. The content of the publication is the sole responsibility of the authors and it in no way represents the views of the Commission or its services. Abstract This paper looks at informal payments in the health care sector in Albania and the bargaining power of patients and medical staff. We develop a two-tiered stochastic frontier model to measure the effect of bargaining power of medical staff and patients on the extent of informal payments. We use data from the Albania Living Standards Measurement Survey 2005 and calculate patients' maximum willingness to pay and medical staff' expected payments for both outpatient and inpatient visits. The results show that medical staff have consistently more bargaining power than patients, while patients and medical staff bargain more in outpatient than in inpatient care. Higher education, difficulty to pay for health care, and location of hospital increase the bargaining power of patients, while type of illness and location of hospital increase the bargaining power of medical staff.
Principles of Nonunique Structures

The paper describes the effect of the nonunique structure and properties of SHS ceramic materials obtained at combustion of various reagents in gaseous nitrogen. SHS ceramics structures are shown: pseudo-homogeneous, framework, with uniaxial, spherical, and needle-like particles. The relationship of structure with electrophysical and anticorrosion properties is discussed.
Empowering collaborative commerce with Web services enabled business process management systems

Collaborative commerce (C-Commerce) is a set of technologies and business practices that allows companies to build stronger relationships with their trading partners through integrating complex and cross-enterprise processes governed by business logic and rules, as well as workflows. Business Process Management (BPM) is a key element of C-Commerce solutions for complex process coordination. It provides a mechanism to support e-businesses in modeling, deploying, and managing business processes that involve various applications with greater flexibility. Traditional BPM solutions often lack the capability to integrate external applications in that they have very limited support for interoperability. In recent years, Web services have emerged as a promising enabling technology for BPM in support of C-Commerce. Web services offer effective and standard-based means to improve interoperability among different software applications over Internet protocols. This paper aims to give an in-depth analysis of BPM and Web services in the context of C-Commerce. We propose an architecture for Web services enabled BPM in C-Commerce and provide technical insights into why Web services can enhance business process coordination. Finally, an implementation of a dynamic e-procurement application based on the proposed architecture is presented. With the advent of Web service standards and business process integration tools that support them, BPM systems enabled by Web services are empowering the development of more flexible and dynamic C-Commerce. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Development of a short measure of psychological recovery in serious mental illness: the STORI-30.

OBJECTIVE
To develop a brief measure of stage of psychological recovery from mental illness by identifying the best-performing items of the 50-item Stages of Recovery Instrument (STORI).


METHOD
Item response modelling was used to identify a short form of the full-length STORI. The resulting items were subjected to factor analysis to further refine the subscales. A second data set was used to confirm the construct validity of the new measure. A correlational analysis was conducted to examine relationships among the five subscale scores.


RESULTS
Analyses identified 30 items that represented the five stages of the full STORI. The five stage subscale scores of the shorter measure, the STORI-30, showed a pattern of correlations that demonstrated an ordinal relationship between the stages.


CONCLUSIONS
There is a need for recovery-oriented measures to augment established clinical assessment tools. The shorter version of the STORI, the STORI-30, shows promise as a brief measure of stage of recovery, more feasible for routine clinical use. Further psychometric and longitudinal testing is recommended. Qualitative research would be valuable in establishing acceptability to consumers and the clinical usefulness of the STORI-30.
Heuristic search planning to reduce exploration uncertainty

The path followed by a mobile robot while mapping an environment (i.e. an exploration trajectory) plays a large role in determining the efficiency of the mapping process and the accuracy of any resulting metric map of the environment. This paper examines some important aspects of path planning in this context: the trade-offs between the speed of the exploration process versus the accuracy of resulting maps; and alternating between exploration of new territory and planning through known maps. The resulting motion planning strategy and associated heuristic are targeted to a robot building a map of an environment assisted by a Sensor Network composed of uncalibrated monocular cameras. An adaptive heuristic exploration strategy based on A* search over a combined distance and uncertainty cost function allows for adaptation to the environment and improvement in mapping accuracy. We assess the technique using an illustrative experiment in a real environment and a set of simulations in a parametric family of idealized environments.
Using Combined Forecasts with Changing Weights for Electricity Demand Profiling

Day-ahead half-hourly demand forecasts are required for scheduling and for calculating the daily electricity pool price. One approach predicts turning points on the demand curve and then produces half-hourly forecasts by a heuristic procedure, called profiling, which is based on a past demand curve. This paper investigates possible profiling improvements. Using a cubic smoothing spline in the heuristic leads to a slight improvement. Often, several past curves could reasonably be used in the profiling method. Consequently, there are often several demand curve forecasts available. Switching and smooth transition forecast combination models are considered. These models enable the combining weights to vary across the 48 half-hours which is appealing as different forecasts may be more suitable for different periods. Several criteria are used to control the changing weights, including weather, and the methodology is extended to the case of more than two forecasts. Empirical analysis gives encouraging results.
VE1 immunohistochemistry predicts BRAF V600E mutation status and clinical outcome in colorectal cancer.

AIM
VE1 is a monoclonal antibody detecting mutant BRAFV(600E) protein by immunohistochemistry. Here we aim to determine the inter-observer agreement and concordance of VE1 with mutational status, investigate heterogeneity in colorectal cancers and metastases and determine the prognostic effect of VE1 in colorectal cancer patients.


METHODS
Concordance of VE1 with mutational status and inter-observer agreement were tested on a pilot cohort of colorectal cancers (n = 34), melanomas (n = 23) and thyroid cancers (n = 8). Two prognostic cohorts were evaluated (n = 259, Cohort 1 and n = 226, Cohort 2) by multiple-punch tissue microarrays. VE1 staining on preoperative biopsies (n = 118 patients) was compared to expression in resections. Primary tumors and metastases from 13 patients were tested for VE1 heterogeneity using a tissue microarray generated from all available blocks (n = 100 blocks).


RESULTS
Inter-observer agreement was 100% (kappa = 1.0). Concordance between VE1 and V600E mutation was 98.5%. Cohort 1: VE1 positivity (seen in 13.5%) was associated with older age (p = 0.0175) and MLH1 deficiency (p < 0.0001). Cohort 2: VE1 positivity (seen in 12.8%) was associated with female gender (p = 0.0016), right-sided tumor location (p < 0.0001), higher tumor grade (p < 0.0001) and mismatch repair (MMR)-deficiency (p < 0.0001). In survival analysis, MMR status and postoperative therapy were identified as possible confounding factors. Adjusting for these features, VE1 was an unfavorable prognostic factor. Preoperative biopsy staining matched resections in all cases except one. No heterogeneity was found across any primary/metastatic tumor blocks.


CONCLUSION
VE1 is highly concordant for V600E and homogeneously expressed suggesting staining can be analysed on resection specimens, preoperative biopsies, metastatic lesions and tissue microarrays.
Bioactive dental restorative materials: a review.

PURPOSE
To present an updated knowledge on the remineralizing dental restorative materials and their performance in vivo and/or in vitro.


METHODS
A search of English peer-reviewed dental literature over the last 30 years from PubMed and MEDLINE databases was conducted, and the key words included: remineralization, pulp capping, restoration, composite, cement, primer, bonding, adhesive, liner and sealant. Titles and abstracts of the articles listed from search results were reviewed and evaluated for appropriateness.


RESULTS
A variety of dental restorative materials are able to promote tooth remineralization and/or inhibit tooth demineralization. These remineralizing materials include fluoride- and/or calcium-containing pulp capping materials, bonding agents, resin composites, resin cements, glass-ionomer cements, and sealants.
Caudal regression syndrome and popliteal webbing in connection with maternal diabetes mellitus: a case report and literature review

INTRODUCTION
Most cases of caudal regression are sporadic or associated with gestational/maternal diabetes. The condition is thought to be part of a spectrum including imperforate anus, sacral agenesis and sirenomelia. Infants of diabetic mothers have two to three times the average incidence of congenital anomalies.


CASE PRESENTATION
We report on a 7-year-old boy from non-consanguineous family in Austria was born with features of caudal regression syndrome. A constellation of malformation complex such as caudal regression syndrome and anorectal malformation complex were evident at birth. Of great interest was the abnormal articulation between the pelvis and the remaining abnormal spine. Spinal-pelvic instability, dislocation of the hip, and knee-flexion contracture associated with popliteal webbing were the major orthopaedic abnormalities.


CONCLUSION
We showed that an offspring of a diabetic mother was at significant risk of developing caudal regression syndrome. Our present patient demonstrated type1 of Welch and Aterman classification. There was total sacral agenesis associated with subtotal lumbar agenesis. The lowest vertebrae were resting above an iliac amphiathrosis. We strongly encourage primary care providers to discuss the consequences of maternal diabetes mellitus as part of routine anticipatory guidance for antenatal/prenatal management. Careful diabetic control in the preconceptional period and the first eight weeks of pregnancy may lower the chances of congenital anomalies.
From software product lines to software ecosystems

Software product line companies increasingly expand their platform outside their organizational boundaries, in effect transitioning to a software ecosystem approach. In this paper, we discuss the emerging trend of software ecosystems and provide a overview of the key concepts and implications of adopting a software ecosystem approach. We define the notion of software ecosystems and introduce a taxonomy. Finally, we explore the implications of software ecosystems to the way companies build software.
Does rumination mediate the relationship between mindfulness and depressive relapse?

OBJECTIVES
Major depressive disorder is a significant mental illness that is highly likely to recur, particularly after three or more previous episodes. Increased mindfulness and decreased rumination have both been associated with decreased depressive relapse. The aim of this study was to investigate whether rumination mediates the relationship between mindfulness and depressive relapse.


DESIGN
This prospective design involved a secondary data analysis for identifying causal mechanisms using mediation analysis.


METHODS
This study was embedded in a pragmatic randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) in which 203 participants (165 females, 38 males; mean age: 48 years), with a history of at least three previous episodes of depression, completed measures of mindfulness, rumination, and depressive relapse over a 2-year follow-up period. Specific components of mindfulness and rumination, being nonjudging and brooding, respectively, were also explored.


RESULTS
While higher mindfulness scores predicted reductions in rumination and depressive relapse, the relationship between mindfulness and relapse was not found to be mediated by rumination, although there appeared to be a trend.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results strengthen the argument that mindfulness may be important in preventing relapse but that rumination is not a significant mediator of its effects. The study was adequately powered to detect medium mediation effects, but it is possible that smaller effects were present but not detected.


PRACTITIONER POINTS
Mindfulness may be one of several components of MBCT contributing to prevention of depressive relapse. Although the original rationale for MBCT rested largely on a model of relapse causally linked to rumination, our findings suggest that the mechanism by which mindfulness impacts relapse is more complex than a simple effect on rumination.
Maternal Weight Gain During Pregnancy and Child Weight at Age 3 Years

Objectives To determine the importance of pregnancy weight gain as a predictor of overweight (Body Mass Index [BMI] >85th percentile) in offspring at age 3 years and if its influence varies by maternal BMI. Methods Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were conducted on a sample of 208 mother-child pairs from an earlier observational cohort study on postpartum weight retention. Results In the final reduced regression model, maternal early pregnancy BMI was positively and significantly associated with overweight in offspring, as were birth weight above the sample median of 3,600 g and maternal smoking during pregnancy (P ≤ 0.01). In addition, a significant interaction was found between maternal BMI and gestational weight gain (P = 0.03). The risk of offspring overweight that is associated with 5 excess pounds of net pregnancy weight gain increases with maternal BMI. Conclusions Excess pregnancy weight gain is associated with increased risk of child overweight at age 3 years and its impact is greater among high and obese BMI women than it is in normal BMI women. Reducing maternal BMI in the preconception period in overweight women and preventing excessive weight gain in pregnancy for all women appear to be appropriate strategies to address the childhood obesity epidemic.