LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Do countries or hospitals with longer hospital stays for acute heart failure have lower readmission rates?: Findings from ASCEND-HF.

BACKGROUND
Hospital readmission is an important clinical outcome of patients with heart failure. Its relation to length of stay for the initial hospitalization is not clear.


METHODS AND RESULTS
We used hierarchical modeling of data from a clinical trial to examine variations in length of stay across countries and across hospitals in the United States and its association with readmission within 30 days of randomization. Main outcomes included associations between country-level length of stay and readmission rates, after adjustment for patient-level case mix; and associations between length of stay and readmission rates across sites in the United States. Across 27 countries with 389 sites and 6848 patients, mean length of stay ranged from 4.9 to 14.6 days (6.1 days in the United States). Rates of all-cause readmission ranged from 2.5% to 25.0% (17.8% in the United States). There was an inverse correlation between country-level mean length of stay and readmission (r=-0.52; P<0.01). After multivariable adjustment, each additional inpatient day across countries was associated with significantly lower risk of all-cause readmission (odds ratio, 0.86; 95% confidence interval, 0.75-0.98; P=0.02) and heart failure readmission (odds ratio, 0.79; 95% confidence interval, 0.69-0.99; P=0.03). Similar trends were observed across US study sites concerning readmission for any cause (odds ratio, 0.92; 95% confidence interval, 0.85-1.00; P=0.06) and readmission for heart failure (odds ratio, 0.90; 95% confidence interval, 0.80-1.01; P=0.07). Across countries and across US sites, longer median length of stay was independently associated with lower risk of readmission.


CONCLUSIONS
Countries with longer length of stay for heart failure hospitalizations had significantly lower rates of readmission within 30 days of randomization. These findings may have implications for developing strategies to prevent readmission, defining quality measures, and designing clinical trials in acute heart failure.


CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION
URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00475852.
Matching Events in a Content-Based Subscription System

Content-based subscription systems are an emerging alternative to traditional publish-subscribe systems, because they permit more flexible subscriptions along multiple dimensions. In these systems, each subscription is a predicate which may test arbitrary attributes within an event. However, the matching problem for content-based systems — determining for each event the subset of all subscriptions whose predicates match the event — is still an open problem. We present an efficient, scalable solution to the matching problem. Our solution has an expected time complexity that is sub-linear in the number of subscriptions, and it has a space complexity that is linear. Specifically, we prove that for predicates reducible to conjunctions of elementary tests, the expected time to match a random event is no greater than O(N ) where N is the number of subscriptions, and is a closed-form expression that depends on the number and type of attributes (in some cases, 1=2). We present some optimizations to our algorithms that improve the search time. We also present the results of simulations that validate the theoretical bounds and that show acceptable performance levels for tens of thousands of subscriptions. Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853-7501, aguilera@cs.cornell.edu IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y. 10598, fstrom, sturman, tusharg@watson.ibm.com Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1304 W. Springfield Ave, Urbana, I.L. 61801, astley@cs.uiuc.edu
Technical market indicators optimization using evolutionary algorithms

Real world stock markets predictions such as stock prices, unpredictability, and stock selection for portfolios, are challenging problems. Technical indicators are applied to interpret stock market trending and investing decision. The main difficulty of an indicator usage is deciding its appropriate parameter values, as number of days of the periods or quantity and kind of indicators. Each stock index, price or volatility series is different among the rest. In this work, Evolutionary Algorithms are proposed to discover correct indicator parameters in trading. In order to check this proposal the Moving Average Convergence-Divergence (MACD) technical indicator has been selected. Preliminary results show that this technique could work well on stock index trending. Indexes are smoother and easier to predict than stock prices. Required future works should include several indicators and additional parameters.
Cheilitis glandularis: clinico-histopathological diagnostic criteria.

OBJECTIVES
To present a combination of clinical and histopathological criteria for diagnosing cheilitis glandularis (CG), and to evaluate the association between CG and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC).


MATERIALS AND METHODS
The medical literature in English was searched from 1950 to 2010 and selected demographic data, and clinical and histopathological features of CG were retrieved and analysed.


RESULTS
A total of 77 cases have been published and four new cases were added to the collective data. The clinical criteria applied included the coexistence of multiple lesions and mucoid/purulent discharge, while the histopathological criteria included two or more of the following findings: sialectasia, chronic inflammation, mucous/oncocytic metaplasia and mucin in ducts. Only 47 (58.0%) cases involving patients with a mean age of 48.5 ± 20.3 years and a male-to-female ratio of 2.9:1 fulfilled the criteria. The lower lip alone was most commonly affected (70.2%). CG was associated with SCC in only three cases (3.5%) for which there was a clear aetiological factor for the malignancy.


CONCLUSIONS
The proposed diagnostic criteria can assist in delineating true CG from a variety of lesions with a comparable clinical/histopathological presentation. CG in association with premalignant/malignant epithelial changes of the lower lip may represent secondary, reactive changes of the salivary glands.
A randomised, double-blind comparison of the angiotensin II receptor antagonist, irbesartan, with the full dose range of enalapril for the treatment of mild-to-moderate hypertension

Objective: To compare the anti-hypertensive efficacy, safety, and tolerability of irbesartan with those of the full dose range of enalapril in patients with mild-to-moderate hypertension. Design and methods: A total of 200 patients were randomised to irbesartan 75 mg or enalapril 10 mg (once daily). Doses were doubled at Weeks 4 and/or 8 if seated diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was ⩾90 mm Hg. Trough blood pressure was measured after completion of a 4- to 5-week placebo lead-in period and again after 2, 4, 8, and 12 weeks of treatment. Main outcome measures: Efficacy was evaluated by determining the change from baseline in trough seated blood pressure and the proportion of patients normalised (seated DBP <90 mm hg) at week 12. safety and tolerability were assessed by adverse events reported by physicians, by patients in response to a specific-symptoms questionnaire, by open-ended questioning of patients by physicians, and by clinical laboratory evaluations. Results: Both treatments significantly lowered blood pressure with no significant difference in efficacy between treatment groups. At Week 12, the percentage of patients titrated to either enalapril 40 mg or irbesartan 300 mg was 24% and 28%, respectively. The frequency of overall adverse events was similar in both groups. The incidence of cough in the enalapril and irbesartan groups was 17% and 10%, respectively. In contrast to other AII receptor antagonists, there was no change in uric acid concentrations with irbesartan. Conclusions: Irbesartan was as effective as the full dose range of enalapril. Irbesartan also demonstrated an excellent tolerability profile.
Enhanced gait-related improvements after therapist- versus robotic-assisted locomotor training in subjects with chronic stroke: a randomized controlled study.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Locomotor training (LT) using a treadmill can improve walking ability over conventional rehabilitation in individuals with hemiparesis, although the personnel requirements often necessary to provide LT may limit its application. Robotic devices that provide consistent symmetrical assistance have been developed to facilitate LT, although their effectiveness in improving locomotor ability has not been well established.


METHODS
Forty-eight ambulatory chronic stroke survivors stratified by severity of locomotor deficits completed a randomized controlled study on the effects of robotic- versus therapist-assisted LT. Both groups received 12 LT sessions for 30 minutes at similar speeds, with guided symmetrical locomotor assistance using a robotic orthosis versus manual facilitation from a single therapist using an assist-as-needed paradigm. Outcome measures included gait speed and symmetry, and clinical measures of activity and participation.


RESULTS
Greater improvements in speed and single limb stance time on the impaired leg were observed in subjects who received therapist-assisted LT, with larger speed improvements in those with less severe gait deficits. Perceived rating of the effects of physical limitations on quality of life improved only in subjects with severe gait deficits who received therapist-assisted LT.


CONCLUSIONS
Therapist-assisted LT facilitates greater improvements in walking ability in ambulatory stroke survivors as compared to a similar dosage of robotic-assisted LT.
FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING FRAUD DETECTION USING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

The paper investigates the inherent problems of financial fraud detection and proposes a forensic accounting framework using business intelligence as a plausible means of addressing them. The paper adopts an empirical case study approach to present how business intelligence could be used effectively in the detection of financial accounting fraud. The proposed forensic accounting framework using business intelligence (BI) provides a three-phase model via novel knowledge discovery technique to perform the financial analysis such as ratio analysis for a business case scenario. The implementation of the framework practically demonstrates by using their accounting data how the technologies and the investigative methods of trend analysis could be adopted in order to investigate fraudulent financial reporting unlike traditional methods of vertical and horizontal analysis for the business case study. Finally, the results justify the effectiveness of the proposed BI model in proactively identifying, classifying and evaluating financial fraud in the organisation. This research further leads to practical follow-up steps that would serve as guidelines for the forensic accounting auditors and management to focus on the prime areas of financial fraud present in the case study. Overall, the proposed model caters to detecting various types of accounting fraud as well as aids in continuous improvement of an organisation’s accounting, audit, systems and policies through the feedback loop. © 2015 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved.
Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption

Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption To date, 16 states have passed medical marijuana laws, yet very little is known about their effects. Using state-level data, we examine the relationship between medical marijuana laws and a variety of outcomes. Legalization of medical marijuana is associated with increased use of marijuana among adults, but not among minors. In addition, legalization is associated with a nearly 9 percent decrease in traffic fatalities, most likely to due to its impact on alcohol consumption. Our estimates provide strong evidence that marijuana and alcohol are substitutes. JEL Classification: I00, I1
The Dynamic Role of Small Firms: Evidence from the U.S.

This paper provides a conceptual and empirical account of the dynamic role of SMEs in the US economy. Evidence is provided to show that SMEs are important sources of employment growth and innovation. For example, the net employment gain during 1990-95 is shown to be greater among smaller firms than among larger firms. Furthermore, while large firms often produce a larger number of patents per firm, the patenting rate for small firms is typically higher than that for large firms when measured on a per-employee basis. It is noted that public policy is shifting away from traditional measures which were based on a static conception of industrial organization and thus emphasized anti-trust, regulation and public ownership solutions, towards measures which are geared towards supporting the dynamic role of SMEs. These measures focus on providing an enabling environment for enterprise start-ups, job creation, knowledge spillovers and technological change.
A new fuzzy-based maximum power point tracker for photovoltaic applications

A new fuzzy maximum power point tracker (MPPT) for photovoltaic systems is proposed. Fuzzy controller input parameters dI dP , ) dI dP ( ∆ and variation of duty cycle ( DC ∆ ) are used to generate the optimal MPPT converter duty cycle, such that solar panel maximum power is generated under different operating conditions. A photovoltaic system including a solar panel, a fuzzy MPP tracker and a resistive load is designed, simulated and constructed. The fuzzy MPP tracker includes a buck dc/dc converter, fuzzy controller and interfacing circuits. Theoretical and experimental results are used to indicate the advantages and limitations of the proposed technique.
Qualitatively and quantitatively evaluating harm-reduction goal setting among chronically homeless individuals with alcohol dependence.

INTRODUCTION
Most treatment programs for alcohol dependence have prioritized alcohol abstinence as the primary treatment goal. However, abstinence-based goals are not always considered desirable or attainable by more severely affected populations, such as chronically homeless people with alcohol dependence. Because these individuals comprise a multimorbid and high-utilizing population, they are in need of more focused research attention that elucidates their preferred treatment goals. The aim of this secondary study was therefore to qualitatively and quantitatively document participant-generated treatment goals


METHODS
Participants were currently or formerly chronically homeless individuals (N=31) with alcohol dependence who participated in a pilot of extended-release naltrexone and harm-reduction counseling. Throughout the treatment period, study interventionists elicited participants' goals and recorded them on an open-ended grid. In subsequent weeks, progress towards and achievement of goals was obtained via self-report and recorded by study interventionists. Conventional content analysis was performed to classify participant-generated treatment goals


RESULTS
Representation of the three top categories remained stable over the course of treatment. In the order of their frequency, they included drinking-related goals, quality-of-life goals and health-related goals. Within the category of drinking-related goals, participants consistently endorsed reducing drinking and alcohol-related consequences ahead of abstinence-based goals. Quantitative analyses indicated participants generated an increasing number of goals over the course of treatment. Proportions of goals achieved and progressed towards kept pace with this increase


CONCLUSIONS
Findings confirmed hypotheses that chronically homeless people with alcohol dependence can independently generate and achieve treatment goals towards alcohol harm reduction and quality-of-life improvement.
US medical specialty global health training and the global burden of disease

BACKGROUND
Rapid growth in global health activity among US medical specialty education programs has lead to heterogeneity in types of activities and global health training models. The breadth and scope of this activity is not well chronicled.


METHODS
Using a standardized search protocol, we examined the characteristics of US medical residency global health programs by number of programs, clinical specialty, nature of activity (elective, research, extended curriculum based field training), and geographic location across seven different clinical medical residency education specialties. We tabulated programmatic activity by clinical discipline, region and country. We calculated the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient to estimate the association between programmatic activity and country-level disease burden.


RESULTS
Of the 1856 programs assessed between January and June 2011, there were 380 global health residency training programs (20%) working in 141 countries. 529 individual programmatic activities (elective-based rotations, research programs, extended curriculum-based field training, or other) occurred at 1337 specific sites. The majority of the activities consisted of elective-based rotations. At the country level, disease burden had a statistically significant association with programmatic activity (Spearman's ρ = 0.17) but only explained 3% of the total variation between countries.


CONCLUSIONS
There were a substantial number of US medical specialty global health programs, but a relative paucity of surgical and mental health programs. Elective-based programs were more common than programs that offer longitudinal experiences. Despite heterogeneity, there was a small but statistically significant association between program location and the global burden of disease. Areas for further study include the degree to which US-based programs develop partnerships with their program sites, the significance of this activity for training, and number and breadth of programs in medical specialty global health education in other countries around the world.
Design and rationale of a comparative effectiveness trial evaluating transcendental meditation against established therapies for PTSD.

BACKGROUND
Although meditation therapies such as the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique are commonly used to assist with stress and stress-related diseases, there remains a lack of rigorous clinical trial research establishing the relative efficacy of these treatments overall and for populations with psychiatric illness. This study uses a comparative effectiveness design to assess the relative benefits of TM to those obtained from a gold-standard cognitive behavioral therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a Veteran population.


METHODS AND DESIGN
This paper describes the rationale and design of an in progress randomized controlled trial comparing TM to an established cognitive behavioral treatment - Prolonged Exposure (PE) - and an active control condition (health education [HE]) for PTSD. This trial will recruit 210 Veterans meeting DSM-IV criteria for PTSD, with testing conducted at 0 and 3 months for PTSD symptoms, depression, mood disturbance, quality of life, behavioral factors, and physiological/biochemical and gene expression mechanisms using validated measures. The study hypothesis is that TM will be noninferior to PE and superior to HE on changes in PTSD symptoms, using the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS).


DISCUSSION
The described study represents a methodologically rigorous protocol evaluating the benefits of TM for PTSD. The projected results will help to establish the overall efficacy of TM for PTSD among Veterans, identify bio-behavioral mechanisms through which TM and PE may improve PTSD symptoms, and will permit conclusions regarding the relative value of TM against currently established therapies for PTSD.
Genetic modifiers of nutritional status in cystic fibrosis.

BACKGROUND
Improved nutrition early in life is associated with better pulmonary function for patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). However, nutritional status is poorly correlated with the CFTR genotype.


OBJECTIVE
We investigated the extent to which modifier genes influence nutrition in children with CF.


DESIGN
BMI data were longitudinally collected from the CF Twin-Sibling Study and Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Patient Registry for twins and siblings from 2000 to 2010. A nutritional phenotype was derived for 1124 subjects by calculating the average BMI z score from 5-10 y of age (BMI-z(5to10)). The genetic contribution to the variation in BMI-z(5to10) (ie, heritability) was estimated by comparing the similarity of the phenotype in monozygous twins to that in dizygous twins and siblings. Linkage analysis identified potential modifier-gene loci.


RESULTS
The median BMI-z(5to10) was -0.07 (range: -3.89 to 2.30), which corresponded to the 47th CDC percentile. BMI-z(5to10) was negatively correlated with pancreatic insufficiency, history of meconium ileus, and female sex but positively correlated with later birth cohorts and lung function. Monozygous twins showed greater concordance for BMI-z(5to10) than did dizygous twins and siblings; heritability estimates from same-sex twin-only analyses ranged from 0.54 to 0.82. For 1010 subjects with pancreatic insufficiency, genome-wide significant linkage was identified on chromosomes 1p36.1 [log of odds (LOD): 5.3] and 5q14 (LOD: 5.1). These loci explained ≥16% and ≥15%, respectively, of the BMI variance.


CONCLUSIONS
The analysis of twins and siblings with CF indicates a prominent role for genes other than CFTR to BMI variation. Specifically, regions on chromosomes 1 and 5 appear to harbor genetic modifiers of substantial effect.
The Ray Engine

Assisted by recent advances in programmable graphics hardware, fast rasterization-based techniques have made significant progress in photorealistic rendering, but still only render a subset of the effects possible with ray tracing. We are closing this gap with the implementation of ray-triangle intersection as a pixel shader on existing hardware. This GPU ray-intersection implementation reconfigures the geometry engine into a ray engine that efficiently intersects caches of rays for a wide variety of host-based rendering tasks, including ray tracing, path tracing, form factor computation, photon mapping, subsurface scattering and general visibility processing.
Real-Time Detection and Classification of Road Lane Markings

This paper presents a method for detection and recognition of road lane markings using an uncalibrated onboard camera. Initially, lane boundaries are detected based on a linear parabolic model. Then, we build a simple model to represent pixels related to the pavement, and explore this model to estimate pixels related to lane markings. A set of features is computed based on the detected lane markings, and a cascade of binary classifiers is adopted to distinguish five types of markings: dashed, dashed-solid, solid-dashed, single-solid and double-solid. Experimental results show that the proposed method presents good classification results under a variety of situations (shadows, varying illumination, etc.).
On the influence of social bots in online protests. Preliminary findings of a Mexican case study

Social bots can affect online communication among humans. We study this phenomenon by focusing on #YaMeCanse, the most active protest hashtag in the history of Twitter in Mexico. Accounts using the hashtag are classified using the BotOrNot bot detection tool. Our preliminary analysis suggests that bots played a critical role in disrupting online communication about the protest movement.