LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Pulmonary arterial hypertension in systemic lupus erythematosus may benefit by addition of immunosuppression to vasodilator therapy: an observational study.

OBJECTIVE
To document changes in pulmonary arterial systolic pressure (PASP) in patients with SLE who have received CYC for any indication.


METHODS
Twenty-four patients with SLE pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) with a PASP of >30 mmHg by transthoracic echocardiography received i.v. CYC (n = 24) or steroids (n = 24) with or without vasodilators (n = 20). Baseline clinical characteristics and PASP were evaluated before and after therapy at 6 months. Responders were defined as those who had a decrease in PASP of >15 mmHg from baseline along with improvement in their New York Heart Association functional class.


RESULTS
There were 11 responders (45.83%), with a decrease in mean PASP from 59.33 mmHg at baseline to 43.29 mmHg at the end of 6 months (P < 0.0001). The decrease in mean PASP from 39.75 mmHg at baseline to 34.4 mmHg at the end of 6 months was significant in four patients who received immunosuppression alone (P = 0.04). There was no difference in baseline PASP and disease activity between responders and non-responders. Two deaths were noted.


CONCLUSION
Immunosuppression and vasodilators produced significant improvement in SLE PAH over 6 months.
A Bayesian approach for shadow extraction from a single image

This paper addresses the problem of shadow extraction from a single image of a complex natural scene. No simplifying assumption on the camera and the light source other than the Lambertian assumption is used. Our method is unique because it is capable of translating very rough user-supplied hints into the effective likelihood and prior functions for our Bayesian optimization. The likelihood function requires a decent estimation of the shadowless image, which is obtained by solving the associated Poisson equation. Our Bayesian framework allows for the optimal extraction of smooth shadows while preserving texture appearance under the extracted shadow. Thus our technique can be applied to shadow removal, producing some best results to date compared with the current state-of-the-art techniques using a single input image. We propose related applications in shadow compositing and image repair using our Bayesian technique.
Inertial navigation systems for mobile robots

A low-cost solid-state inertial navigation system (INS) for mobile robotics applications is described. Error models for the inertial sensors are generated and included in an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) for estimating the position and orientation of a moving robot vehicle. Two Merent solid-state gyroscopes have been evaluated for estimating the orientation of the robot. Performance of the gyroscopes with error models is compared to the performance when the error models are excluded from the system. The results demonstrate that without error compensation, the error in orientation is between 5-15"/min but can be improved at least by a factor of 5 if an adequate error model is supplied. Siar error models have been developed for each axis of a solid-state triaxial accelerometer and for a conducting-bubble tilt sensor which may also be used as a low-cost accelerometer. Linear position estimation with information from accelerometers and tilt sensors is more susceptible to errors due to the double integration process involved in estimating position. With the system described here, the position drift rate is 1-8 cds , depending on the frequency of acceleration changes. An integrated inertial platform consisting of three gyroscopes, a triaxial accelerometer and two tilt sensors is described. Results from tests of this platform on a large outdoor mobile robot system are described and compared to the results obtained from the robot's own radar-based guidance system. Like all inertial systems, the platform requires additional information from some absolute position-sensing mechanism to overcome long-term drift. However, the results show that with careful and detailed modeling of error sources, low-cost inertial sensing systems can provide valuable orientation and position information particularly for outdoor mobile robot applications.
A Load Balancing Based Cloud Computing Techniques and Challenges

Cloud Computing refers to the use and access of multiple server based computational resources via a digital network(WAN).Cloud users may access the resources using computer note book, pad computer, smart phone, or other device. In cloud computing applications are provided and managed by the cloud server and data is also stored remotely in cloud configuration. As Cloud Computing is growing rapidly and clients are demanding more services and better results, load balancing for the Cloud has become a very interesting and important research area. Load balancing ensures that all the processor in the system or every node in the network does approximately the equal amount of work at any instant of time. Here in this paper we have discussed many different load balancing techniques used to solve the issue in cloud computing environment. This paper presents various approaches given by the researchers using the load balancing techniques. Keywords-Cloud computing, Virtualization, Load Balancing, Fault Tolerance, Load Balancer.
[High prevalence of drug consumption and sexual risk behaviors in men who have sex with men].

BASIS AND OBJECTIVE
To describe the pattern of drug use among men who have sex with men (MSM) living in Spain and its association with sexual risk practices.


MATERIAL AND METHOD
The European MSM Internet Survey was implemented in 2010 in 38 European countries on websites for MSM and collected data on sociodemographics, sexual behavior, and other sexual health variables. The association between unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) with casual partners and drug consumption was evaluated using multivariate logistic regression models.


RESULTS
Among the 13,111 participants, most consumed drugs were cannabis (30.1%), popper (28.4%) and cocaine (18.7%). The risk of UAI with casual partners was 1.5 among those who had used drugs in relation to the other participants. The proportion of MSM who had injected drugs at least once in life was 2.5%, and 1.4% in the last 12 months. The prevalence of UAI with casual partners (53.4%), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (23%), hepatitis C (8.2%) and sexually transmitted infections (STI) (15.8%) was higher in MSM injectors related to those who had not used injected drugs (P<.05).


CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study confirm a high prevalence of drug use in MSM and their relationship to sexual risk behavior. Although the use of injected drugs in MSM is a minority, this group reported a higher level of sexual risk behaviors, self-reported HIV, hepatitis C and other STI.
The concept of reflection in nursing: qualitative findings on student and teacher perspectives.

BACKGROUND AND AIM
This study sought to increase the understanding of the concept of reflection within nursing. The research focused on the social construction of reflection through a post-registration, palliative care programme in the United Kingdom (UK).


DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS
An interpretive ethnographic approach was used to study reflection from the perspective of students and teachers, whilst paying attention to local organisational, contextual and cultural issues.


METHODS
Data collection included: observations of teaching and learning interactions, interviews, extracts from programme documentation and student reflective learning contracts (RLCs).


FINDINGS
Findings identified a learning culture committed to reflection as a valuable way of helping nurses make sense of their practice. Similar to Barnett's (1997) concept of 'critical being', students and teachers described reflection as a way of 'being' rather than simply 'thinking' or 'doing', since reflection intertwined propositional, affective and active elements. This process of reflective 'being' was connected with a humanistic approach to nursing, which emphasises the importance of actively using and expressing oneself in order to care for people.


CONCLUSION
This paper contributes empirical knowledge on the meaning of reflection in nursing regarding: teachers' and students' perspectives, reflection as a way to make sense of practice, and reflection as a way of 'being' and its association with humanistic nursing.
Prediction of cell-penetrating peptides with feature selection techniques.

Cell-penetrating peptides are a group of peptides which can transport different types of cargo molecules such as drugs across plasma membrane and have been applied in the treatment of various diseases. Thus, the accurate prediction of cell-penetrating peptides with bioinformatics methods will accelerate the development of drug delivery systems. The study aims to develop a powerful model to accurately identify cell-penetrating peptides. At first, the peptides were translated into a set of vectors with the same dimension by using dipeptide compositions. Secondly, the Analysis of Variance-based technique was used to reduce the dimension of the vector and explore the optimized features. Finally, the support vector machine was utilized to discriminate cell-penetrating peptides from non-cell-penetrating peptides. The five-fold cross-validated results showed that our proposed method could achieve an overall prediction accuracy of 83.6%. Based on the proposed model, we constructed a free webserver called C2Pred (http://lin.uestc.edu.cn/server/C2Pred).
MIL 03443, a dunite from asteroid 4 Vesta: Evidence for its classification and cumulate origin

The absence of dunite (>90 vol% olivine) in the howardite, eucrite, and diogenite (HED) meteorite suite, when viewed with respect to spectroscopic and petrologic evidence for olivine on Vesta, is problematic. Herein, we present petrologic, geochemical, and isotopic evidence confirming that Miller Range (MIL) 03443, containing 91 vol% olivine, should be classified with the HED clan rather than with mesosiderites. Similarities in olivine and pyroxene FeO ⁄MnO ratios, mineral compositions, and unusual mineral inclusions between MIL 03443 and the diogenites support their formation on a common parent body. This hypothesis is bolstered by oxygen isotopic and bulk geochemical data. Beyond evidence for its reclassification, we present observations and interpretations that MIL 03443 is probably a crustal cumulate rock like the diogenites, rather than a sample of the Vestan mantle.
The importance of rating scales in measuring patient-reported outcomes

BACKGROUND
A critical component that influences the measurement properties of a patient-reported outcome (PRO) instrument is the rating scale. Yet, there is a lack of general consensus regarding optimal rating scale format, including aspects of question structure, the number and the labels of response categories. This study aims to explore the characteristics of rating scales that function well and those that do not, and thereby develop guidelines for formulating rating scales.


METHODS
Seventeen existing PROs designed to measure vision-related quality of life dimensions were mailed for self-administration, in sets of 10, to patients who were on a waiting list for cataract extraction. These PROs included questions with ratings of difficulty, frequency, severity, and global ratings. Using Rasch analysis, performance of rating scales were assessed by examining hierarchical ordering (indicating categories are distinct from each other and follow a logical transition from lower to higher value), evenness (indicating relative utilization of categories), and range (indicating coverage of the attribute by the rating scale).


RESULTS
The rating scales with complicated question format, a large number of response categories, or unlabelled categories, tended to be dysfunctional. Rating scales with five or fewer response categories tended to be functional. Most of the rating scales measuring difficulty performed well. The rating scales measuring frequency and severity demonstrated hierarchical ordering but the categories lacked even utilization.


CONCLUSION
Developers of PRO instruments should use a simple question format, fewer (four to five) and labelled response categories.
On the Triangle Conjecture

In the following N denotes the set of nonnegative integers, A = {a, b} a two-letters alphabet and A* the free monoid of base A. An element w of A* is called a word and ]w] denotes its length. A subset X of A* is a code over A if X is the base of the free submonoid X* of A*, i.e., if any work of X*\ 1 has a unique factorization in terms of the elements of X. It has been conjectured by Perrin and Schtitzenberger as follows (see [3]).
PINE WOOD MODIFICATION BY HEAT TREATMENT IN AIR

Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) wood has low dimensional stability and durability. Heat treatment was made in an oven using hot air during 2 to 24 h and at 170-200 oC. A comparison was made against steam heat treatment. The equilibrium moisture content and the dimensional stability (ASE) in radial and tangential directions were evaluated at 35%, 65%, and 85% relative humidity. MOE, bending strength and wettability were also determined. At the same mass loss, improvements of equilibrium moisture content and dimensional stability were higher for oven heat treatment, but the same was true for mechanical strength degradation. A 50% decrease in hemicellulose content led to a similar decrease in bending strength.
Adolescents' sleep behaviors and perceptions of sleep.

BACKGROUND
Sleep duration affects the health of children and adolescents. Shorter sleep durations have been associated with poorer academic performance, unintentional injuries, and obesity in adolescents. This study extends our understanding of how adolescents perceive and deal with their sleep issues.


METHODS
General education classes were randomly selected from a convenience sample of three high schools in the Midwest. Three hundred eighty-four ninth- to twelfth-grade students (57%) completed a self-administered valid and reliable questionnaire on sleep behaviors and perceptions of sleep.


RESULTS
Most respondents (91.9%) obtained inadequate sleep (<or= 9 hours) on most school nights of the week, with 10% reporting less than 6 hours of sleep each week night. The majority indicated that not getting enough sleep had the following effects on them: being more tired during the day (93.7%), having difficulty paying attention (83.6%), lower grades (60.8%), increase in stress (59.0%), and having difficulty getting along with others (57.7%). Some students reported engaging in harmful behaviors to help them sleep: taking sleeping pills (6.0%), smoking a cigarette to relax (5.7%), and drinking alcohol in the evening (2.9%). Students who received fewer hours of sleep were significantly more likely to report being stressed (p = .02) and were more likely to be overweight (p = .04).


CONCLUSIONS
Inadequate sleep time may be contributing to adolescent health problems such as increased stress and obesity. Findings indicate a need for sleep hygiene education for adolescents and their parents. A long-term solution to chronic sleep deprivation among high school students could include delaying high school start times, such as was done successfully in the Minneapolis Public School District.
A two-phase study evaluating the relationship between Thimerosal-containing vaccine administration and the risk for an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis in the United States

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined by standardized criteria of qualitative impairments in social interaction, qualitative impairments in communication, and restricted and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. A significant number of children diagnosed with ASD suffer a loss of previously-acquired skills, which is suggestive of neurodegeneration or a type of progressive encephalopathy with an etiological pathogenic basis occurring after birth. To date, the etiology of ASD remains under debate, however, many studies suggest toxicity, especially from mercury (Hg), in individuals diagnosed with an ASD. The present study evaluated concerns about the toxic effects of organic-Hg exposure from Thimerosal (49.55% Hg by weight) in childhood vaccines by conducting a two-phased (hypothesis generating/hypothesis testing) study with documented exposure to varying levels of Thimerosal from vaccinations. A hypothesis generating cohort study was undertaken to evaluate the relationship between exposure to organic-Hg from a Thimerosal-containing Diphtheria-Tetanus-acellular-Pertussis (DTaP) vaccine in comparison to a Thimerosal-free DTaP vaccine administered, from 1998 through 2000, for the risk of ASD as reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database (phase I). A hypothesis testing case–control study was undertaken to evaluate the relationship between organic-Hg exposure from Thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccines administered at specific intervals in the first six months of life among cases diagnosed with an ASD and controls born between 1991 through 1999 in the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database (phase II). In phase I, it was observed that there was a significantly increased risk ratio for the incidence of ASD reported following the Thimerosal-containing DTaP vaccine in comparison to the Thimerosal-free DTaP vaccine. In phase II, it was observed that cases diagnosed with an ASD were significantly more likely than controls to receive increased organic-Hg from Thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccine administered within the first, second, and sixth month of life. Routine childhood vaccination is an important public health tool to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with infectious diseases, but the present study provides new epidemiological evidence supporting an association between increasing organic-Hg exposure from Thimerosal-containing childhood vaccines and the subsequent risk of an ASD diagnosis.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND SPORT PREFERENCES OF 10 TO 14-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN : A 5-YEAR PROSPECTIVE STUDY

Contemporary conceptions of physical education pedagogy stress the importance of considering students’ physical, affective, and cognitive developmental states in developing curricula (Aschebrock, 1999; Crum, 1994; Grineski, 1996; Humel, 2000; Hummel & Balz, 1995; Jones & Ward, 1998; Kurz, 1995; Siedentop, 1996; Virgilio, 2000). Sport and physical activity preference is one variable that is likely to change with development. Including activities preferred by girls and boys in physical education curricula could produce several benefits, including greater involvement in lessons and increased enjoyment of physical education (Derner, 1994; Greenwood, Stillwell, & Byars, 2000; Knitt et al., 2000; Lee, Fredenburg, Belcher, & Cleveland, 1999; Sass H. & Sass I., 1986; Strand & Scatling, 1994; Volke, Poszony, & Stumpf, 1985). These are significant goals, because preference for physical activity and enjoyment of physical education are important predictors for overall physical activity participation (Sallis et al., 1999a, b). Although physical education curricula should be based on more than simply students’ preferences, student preferences can inform the design of physical education, other schoolbased physical activity programs, and programs sponsored by other agencies. Young people’s physical activity and sport preferences are likely to vary by age, sex, socio-economic status and nationality. Although several studies have been conducted over many years (Greller & Cochran, 1995; Hoffman & Harris, 2000; Kotonski-Immig, 1994; Lamprecht, Ruschetti, & Stamm, 1991; Strand & Scatling, 1994; Taks, Renson, & Vanreusel, 1991; Telama, 1978; Walton et al., 1999), current understanding of children’s preferences in specific sports and movement activities is limited. One of the main limitations is the cross-sectional nature of the data, so the stability of sport and physical activity preferences over time is not known. The main aim of the present research is to describe the levels and trends in the development of sport and physical activity preferences in girls and boys over a period of five years, from the age of 10 to 14. Further, the study aims to establish the stability of preferences over time.
Predicting suicide attempts with the SAD PERSONS scale: a longitudinal analysis.

OBJECTIVE
The SAD PERSONS scale is a widely used risk assessment tool for suicidal behavior despite a paucity of supporting data. The objective of this study was to examine the ability of the scale in predicting suicide attempts.


METHOD
Participants consisted of consecutive referrals (N=4,019) over 2 years (January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2010) to psychiatric services in the emergency departments of the 2 largest tertiary care hospitals in the province of Manitoba, Canada. SAD PERSONS and Modified SAD PERSONS (MSPS) scale scores were recorded for individuals at their index and all subsequent presentations. The 2 main outcome measures in the study included current suicide attempts (at index presentation) and future suicide attempts (within the next 6 months). The ability of the scales to predict suicide attempts was evaluated with logistic regression, sensitivity and specificity analyses, and receiver operating characteristic curves.


RESULTS
566 people presented with suicide attempts (14.1% of the sample). Both SAD PERSONS and MSPS showed poor predictive ability for future suicide attempts. Compared to low risk scores, high risk baseline scores had low sensitivity (19.6% and 40.0%, respectively) and low positive predictive value (5.3% and 7.4%, respectively). SAD PERSONS did not predict suicide attempts better than chance (area under the curve =0.572; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.51-0.64; P value nonsignificant). Stepwise regression identified 5 original scale items that accounted for the greatest proportion of future suicide attempt variance. High risk scores using this model had high sensitivity (93.5%) and were associated with a 5-fold higher likelihood of future suicide attempt presentation (odds ratio =5.58; 95% CI, 2.24-13.86; P<.001).


CONCLUSION
In their current form, SAD PERSONS and MSPS do not accurately predict future suicide attempts.
Determination of normal values for navicular drop during walking: a new model correcting for foot length and gender

BACKGROUND
The navicular drop test is a measure to evaluate the function of the medial longitudinal arch, which is important for examination of patients with overuse injuries. Conflicting results have been found with regard to differences in navicular drop between healthy and injured participants. Normal values have not yet been established as foot length, age, gender, and Body Mass Index (BMI) may influence the navicular drop. The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of foot length, age, gender, and BMI on the navicular drop during walking.


METHODS
Navicular drop was measured with a novel technique (Video Sequence Analysis, VSA) using 2D video. Flat reflective markers were placed on the medial side of the calcaneus, the navicular tuberosity, and the head of the first metatarsal bone. The navicular drop was calculated as the perpendicular distance between the marker on the navicular tuberosity and the line between the markers on calcaneus and first metatarsal head. The distance between the floor and the line in standing position between the markers on calcaneus and first metatarsal were added afterwards.


RESULTS
280 randomly selected participants without any foot problems were analysed during treadmill walking (144 men, 136 women). Foot length had a significant influence on the navicular drop in both men (p < 0.001) and women (p = 0.015), whereas no significant effect was found of age (p = 0.27) or BMI (p = 0.88). Per 10 mm increase in foot length, the navicular drop increased by 0.40 mm for males and 0.31 mm for females. Linear models were created to calculate the navicular drop relative to foot length.


CONCLUSION
The study demonstrated that the dynamic navicular drop is influenced by foot length and gender. Lack of adjustment for these factors may explain, at least to some extent, the disagreement between previous studies on navicular drop. Future studies should account for differences in these parameters.