LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of hygiene among school children in Angolela, Ethiopia.

INTRODUCTION
Poor hygiene practices and inadequate sanitary conditions play major roles in the increased burden of communicable diseases within developing countries. This study evaluated the KAP of hygiene among rural school children in Ethiopia and assessed the extent to which proper knowledge of hygiene was associated with personal hygiene characteristics.


METHODS
This cross-sectional study was comprised of 669 students who were interviewed by trained staff Participants were in grades 1-6 at Angolela Primary School, located in rural Ethiopia. Data consisted of hygiene and hand washing practices, knowledge about sanitation, personal hygiene characteristics, and presence of gastrointestinal parasitic infection. Results. Approximately 52% of students were classified as having adequate knowledge of proper hygiene. Most students reported hand washing before meals (99.0%), but only 36.2% reported using soap. Although 76.7% of students reported that washing hands after defecation was important, only 14.8% reported actually following this practice. Students with adequate knowledge of proper hygiene were more likely to have clean clothes (AOR 1.62, CI 1.14-2.29) and to have a lower risk of parasitic infection (AOR 0.78, CI 0.56-1.09) although statistical significance was not achieved for the latter


DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Study findings underscore the need for more hand washing and hygiene education in schools; and provide objective evidence that may guide the development of comprehensive health and hygiene intervention programs in rural Ethiopian schools. Successful implementation of these programs is likely to substantially attenuate the transmissible disease burden borne by school children in rural settings.
Weakly Forced Mock Walker Cells

Mock Walker cells driven by weak sea surface temperature (SST) forcing are studied using planetary-scale cloud system–resolving simulations and a simplified framework that represents convection with its linear response functions and parameterizes the large-scale flow based on the gravity wave equation. For sinusoidal SST forcings of the same amplitude, as the horizontal domain size increases, the mock Walker cells strengthen substantially and shorter vertical scales in the vertical velocity profile diminish. This is explained by the fact that temperature anomalies required to sustain a vertical velocity profile of given amplitude are stronger in cases of larger horizontal and smaller vertical scales. Such temperature anomalies become significant at planetary scales so that properly accounting for the horizontal momentum balance, including convective momentum transport (CMT), becomes necessary, while a weak temperature gradient approach that neglects horizontal momentum balance is no longer adequate. The downward advection component of the CMT in particular is important for capturing a number of features of the mock Walker cells. The extent of convective organization also affects the mock Walker cell through its effects on the sensitivities of convective heating and moistening to temperature and moisture anomalies. For strongly organized convection with deep inflows, these sensitivities are consistent with a layer mode of convective overturning, instead of the parcel mode as in unorganized convection, resulting in a weaker second baroclinic component in the mock Walker cells.
Games solved: Now and in the future

In this article we present an overview on the state of the art in games solved in the domain of twoperson zero-sum games with perfect information. The results are summarized and some predictions for the near future are given. The aim of the article is to determine which game characteristics are predominant when the solution of a game is the main target. First, it is concluded that decision complexity is more important than state-space complexity as a determining factor. Second, we conclude that there is a trade-off between knowledge-based methods and brute-force methods. It is shown that knowledge-based methods are more appropriate for solving games with a low decision complexity, while brute-force methods are more appropriate for solving games with a low state-space complexity. Third, we found that there is a clear correlation between the first-player’s initiative and the necessary effort to solve a game. In particular, threat-space-based search methods are sometimes able to exploit the initiative to prove a win. Finally, the most important results of the research involved, the development of new intelligent search methods, are described.  2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.
Diet, growth, and the risk for type 1 diabetes in childhood: a matched case-referent study.

OBJECTIVE
To study the association between type 1 diabetes risk and previous intake of energy, accounting for body size and previous intake of nutrients and foods, accounting for the energy intake.


RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
We conducted an incident population-based case-referent study in Stockholm, Sweden, including 99 of 100 eligible 7- to 14-year-old diabetic children and 180 of 200 age-, sex-, and area-matched referent children identified through the Swedish population register. Average daily energy and nutrient intake 1 year before diabetes diagnosis/interview was estimated using the food frequency questionnaire with assessment of consumed food amounts. Mean SD scores of growth measurements taken during the last 4 years before the diagnosis were used. Odds ratios (ORs) were calculated by conditional logistic regression.


RESULTS
Average intake of energy, carbohydrate, fat, and protein was significantly higher among the case subjects as well as mean weight-for-age SD score. Higher energy intake and weight-for-age were both associated with increased diabetes risk after adjustment for each other: OR (95% CI) for medium and high levels of energy intake were 1.33 (0.52-3.42) and 5.23 (1.67-16.38), respectively, and for weight-for-age were 3.20 (1.30-7.88) and 3.09 (1.16-8.22), respectively. High intake of carbohydrates, especially disaccharides and sucrose, increased diabetes risk.


CONCLUSIONS
Higher energy intake and larger body size were independently associated with increased diabetes risk. Of the different nutrients, higher intake of carbohydrates, particularly disaccharides and sucrose, increased the risk. Lifestyle habits leading to higher energy intake and more rapid growth in childhood may contribute to the increase of childhood-onset type 1 diabetes by different mechanisms.
Parameter estimation in general state-space models using particle methods : New trends in statistical information processing

Particle filtering techniques are a set of powerful and versatile simulation-based methods to perform optimal state estimation in nonlinear non-Gaussian state-space models. If the model includes fixed parameters, a standard technique to perform parameter estimation consists of extending the state with the parameter to transform the problem into an optimal filtering problem. However, this approach requires the use of special particle filtering techniques which suffer from several drawbacks. We consider here an alternative approach combining particle filtering and gradient algorithms to perform batch and recursive maximum likelihood parameter estimation. An original particle method is presented to implement these approaches and their efficiency is assessed through simulation.
Wormhole and C-field: Revisited

Recently, Rahaman et al [ Nuovo.Cim 119B, 1115(2004)] have shown that the static spherically symmetric solutions in presence of C-field give rise to wormhole geometry. We highlight some of the characteristics of this wormhole, which have not been considered in the previous study.
Interaction of sorafenib and cytochrome P450 isoenzymes in patients with advanced melanoma: a phase I/II pharmacokinetic interaction study

In vitro data indicate that the sorafenib is a moderate inhibitor of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes, including CYP3A4, CYP2C19, and CYP2D6. This phase I/II study in patients with advanced melanoma evaluated the potential effect of sorafenib on the pharmacokinetics of midazolam, omeprazole, and dextromethorphan, specific substrates of CYP3A4, CYP2C19, and CYP2D6, respectively. Twenty-one patients received sorafenib 400 mg twice daily for 28 consecutive days. On days 1 and 28, a cocktail containing midazolam 2 mg, omeprazole 20 mg, and dextromethorphan 30 mg was administered. Pharmacokinetic analyses were performed on day 1 without sorafenib and day 28 after steady-state sorafenib exposure; sorafenib pharmacokinetics were evaluated on day 28. We defined an interaction to be excluded if the 90% confidence interval of the ratio of all day 28:day 1 analyses fell within a range from 0.80 to 1.25. In all, 18 patients were evaluable. On day 28, area under the plasma concentration–time curve from time 0 to 12 h (AUC0–12) and maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) for sorafenib were 38.1 mg h/l and 4.9 mg/l, respectively. Day 28:day 1 ratios for AUC from time 0 extrapolated to infinity (AUC0–inf) and Cmax for midazolam were 0.85 and 0.98, respectively. Day 28:day 1 ratio for 5-OH-omeprazole:omeprazole plasma concentration at 3 h postdose was 1.26, slightly outside of the 0.80–1.25 range. Thus, an interaction could not be excluded, but is considered unlikely to be clinically significant. Day 28:day 1 ratio for dextromethorphan:dextrorphan concentration in urine was 0.94. Sorafenib had an acceptable safety profile. The most frequently observed grade 3–4 toxicities in cycle 1 included elevated lipase (19%) and hypertension (10%). In this patient population, our results demonstrate that exposures of probes of CYP3A4, CYP2D6, or CYP2C19 activity are potentially altered by administration of sorafenib at 400 mg twice daily. However, these differences are sufficiently small that a clinically significant inhibition or induction of these important drug metabolizing P450 isoenzymes is unlikely. Clinical and, where possible, drug level monitoring may still be appropriate for drugs of narrow therapeutic range co-administered with sorafenib.
POMDPs Make Better Hackers: Accounting for Uncertainty in Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing is a methodology for assessing network security, by generating and executing possible hacking attacks. Doing so automatically allows for regular and systematic testing. A key question is how to generate the attacks. This is naturally formulated as planning under uncertainty, i.e., under incomplete knowledge about the network configuration. Previous work uses classical planning, and requires costly pre-processes reducing this uncertainty by extensive application of scanning methods. By contrast, we herein model the attack planning problem in terms of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP). This allows to reason about the knowledge available, and to intelligently employ scanning actions as part of the attack. As one would expect, this accurate solution does not scale. We devise a method that relies on POMDPs to find good attacks on individual machines, which are then composed into an attack on the network as a whole. This decomposition exploits network structure to the extent possible, making targeted approximations (only) where needed. Evaluating this method on a suitably adapted industrial test suite, we demonstrate its effectiveness in both runtime and solution quality.
Feature extraction for paper currency recognition

This paper proposes a new technique for paper currency recognition. In this technique, three characteristics of paper currencies including size, color and texture are used in the recognition. By using image histogram, plenitude of different colors in a paper currency is computed and compared with the one in the reference paper currency. The Markov chain concept has been employed to model texture of the paper currencies as a random process. The method proposed in this paper can be used for recognizing paper currencies from different countries. In this method, using only one intact example of paper currency from each denomination is enough for training the system. We tested this method on more than 100 denominations from different countries, and the system was able to recognize 95% of data, correctly.
Antithrombotic therapy after bioprosthetic aortic valve implantation: Warfarin versus aspirin, a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND
The optimal medical strategy for prevention of thromboembolic events after surgical bioprosthetic aortic valve replacement (BAVR) is still debated. The objective of this study was to compare warfarin therapy (target INR of 2.0 to 3.0) with aspirin 150mg daily as antithrombotic therapy for the first three months after BAVR with or without concomitant coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). The aim was to evaluate thromboembolic complications, major bleeding complications and death.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Prospective, single-centre, open-label, randomized controlled trial. 370 patients were enrolled, 328 were available for data analysis.


RESULTS
At baseline the warfarin and aspirin groups were comparable. Thromboembolic events were comparable between groups 11 (6.6%) vs. 12 (7.5%), p=0.83. Major bleeding events occurred numerically more often in warfarin patients 9 (5.4%) vs. 3 (1.9%), p=0.14. Warfarin was in multivariate analysis significantly associated with major bleeding OR 5.18 (CI 1.06-25.43), p=0.043. 90-day mortality was comparable between groups 8 (4.7%) vs. 6 (3.7%), p=0.79.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that aspirin might be equally effective as warfarin in preventing thromboembolic events after BAVR, but with less major bleedings. Although this is numerically the largest trial testing this hypothesis in a prospective randomized trial, further adequately powered studies are warranted.
Quantitative near infrared spectroscopic analysis of Q-Switched Nd:YAG treatment of generalized argyria.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Generalized argyria is a blue-gray hyperpigmentation of the skin resulting from ingestion or application of silver compounds, such as silver colloid. Case reports have noted improvement after Q-Switched Neodymium-Yttrium Aluminum Garnet laser (1,064 nm QS Nd:YAG) laser treatment to small surface areas. No reports have objectively monitored laser treatment of generalized argyria over large areas of skin, nor have long-term outcomes been evaluated.


STUDY DESIGN/MATERIALS AND METHODS
An incremental treatment plan was developed for a subject suffering from argyria. A quantitative near infrared spectroscopic measurement technique was employed to non-invasively analyze tissue-pigment characteristics pre- and post-laser treatment. Post-treatment measurements were collected at weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4, and again at 1 year.


RESULTS
Immediate apparent removal of pigment was observed with 1 Q-switched 1,064 nm Nd:YAG laser treatment (3-6 mm spot; 0.8-2 J/cm(2) ) per area. Entire face, neck, upper chest, and arms were treated over multiple sessions. Treatments were very painful and general anesthesia was utilized in order to treat large areas. Near-infrared spectroscopy was used to characterize and quantify the concentration of silver particles in the dermis based on the absorption features of the silver particles as well as the optical scattering effects they impart. We were able to estimate that there was, on average, 0.042 mg/ml concentration of silver prior to treatment and that these levels went below the minimum detectable limit of the instrument post-treatment. There was no recurrence of discoloration over the 1-year study period.


CONCLUSION
QS 1,064 nm laser treatment of argyria is a viable method to restore normal skin pigmentation with no evidence of recurrence over study period. Quantitative spectroscopic measurements: (1) confirmed dyspigmentation was due to silver, (2) validated our clinical assessment of no recurrence up to 1-year post-treatment, and (3) indicated no collateral tissue damage with treatments.
Quantum Search with Variable Times

Since Grover’s seminal work, quantum search has been studied in great detail. In the usual search problem, we have a collection of n items x 1,…,x n and we would like to find i:x i =1. We consider a new variant of this problem in which evaluating x i for different i may take a different number of time steps. Let t i be the number of time steps required to evaluate x i . If the numbers t i are known in advance, we give an algorithm that solves the problem in $O(\sqrt{t_{1}^{2}+t_{2}^{2}+\ldots+t_{n}^{2}})$ steps. This is optimal, as we also show a matching lower bound. The case, when t i are not known in advance, can be solved with a polylogarithmic overhead. We also give an application of our new search algorithm to computing read-once functions.
Inadvertent Polychlorinated Biphenyls in Commercial Paint Pigments†

A polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) that was not produced as part of the Aroclor mixtures banned in the 1980s was recently reported in air samples collected in Chicago, Philadelphia, the Arctic, and several sites around the Great Lakes. In Chicago, the congener 3,3'-dichlorobiphenyl or PCB11 was found to be the fifth most concentrated congener and ubiquitous throughout the city. The congener exhibited strong seasonal concentration trends that suggest volatilization of this compound from common outdoor surfaces. Due to these findings and also the compound's presence in waters that received waste from paint manufacturing facilities, we hypothesized that PCB11 may be present in current commercial paint. In this study we measured PCBs in paint sold on the current retail market. We tested 33 commercial paint pigments purchased from three local paint stores. The pigment samples were analyzed for all 209 PCB congeners using gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). More than 50 PCB congeners including several dioxin-like PCBs were detected, and the PCB profiles varied due to different types of pigments and different manufacturing processes. PCB congeners were detected in azo and phthalocyanine pigments which are commonly used in paint but also in inks, textiles, paper, cosmetics, leather, plastics, food and other materials. Our findings suggest several possible mechanisms for the inadvertent production of specific PCB congeners during the manufacturing of paint pigments.
Appraising evaluations of screening/diagnostic tests: the importance of the study populations.

Sensitivity and specificity are the indices most commonly reported when describing the performance of a screening or diagnostic test. These indices, and their corresponding predictive values or likelihood ratios, are fundamental test properties since they allow the user to determine the consequences of selecting a particular cut oV criterion for referral or further investigative tests. (Sensitivity is the proportion of diseased individuals correctly identified as diseased and specificity is the proportion of non-diseased individuals correctly identified as non-diseased. The positive predictive value (PPV) is the proportion of patients with positive screening test results who are found to have disease and the negative predictive value (NPV) is the proportion of patients with negative screening test results who are found not to have disease, based on the gold standard. Given a test result, a likelihood ratio describes how many times more likely a patient with disease is to have that test result, compared with a patient without the disease.) A recent article has highlighted the importance of complying with methodological standards when evaluating diagnostic or screening tests, in order that the findings of a study can be applied with confidence to clinical practice. These standards need to be considered at both the study design stage and the reporting stage (see Table 1). Standards 1 and 2 are closely related, since they are both concerned with the way in which the sensitivity and specificity of a test may vary depending on the clinical and demographic characteristics of a population (for example, disease stage, age, sex). These standards allow clinicians wishing to use a test to judge whether the sensitivity/ specificity reported by the evaluation can be applied to their own population of patients. Standard 3 also relates to a study’s population, being concerned with the bias which can arise if only a proportion of the total number of subjects included in an evaluation are referred to receive “gold standard” verification. The extent of compliance with these standards in evaluations of ophthalmic tests has been reported elsewhere. The purpose of this perspective article is to discuss in more detail the importance of the study population when evaluating a screening test. The results from three studies, which have independently evaluated tonometry as a screening test, are discussed in order to illustrate how the selection of the population in a study can make a considerable diVerence to the findings. The aim is to highlight the need to consider carefully the choice of the populations in an evaluation of diagnostic/screening accuracy and the implications of the chosen populations on the applicability of the findings to clinical practice.
FA ] 2 N ov 2 00 3 An iterative thresholding algorithm for linear inverse problems with a sparsity constraint

We consider linear inverse problems where the solution is assumed to have a sparse expansion on an arbitrary preassigned orthonormal basis. We prove that replacing the usual quadratic regularizing penalties by weighted ppenalties on the coefficients of such expansions, with 1 ≤ p ≤ 2, still regularizes the problem. Use of such p-penalized problems with p < 2 is often advocated when one expects the underlying ideal noiseless solution to have a sparse expansion with respect to the basis under consideration. To compute the corresponding regularized solutions, we analyze an iterative algorithm that amounts to a Landweber iteration with thresholding (or nonlinear shrinkage) applied at each iteration step. We prove that this algorithm converges in norm. c © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Tensor completion using total variation and low-rank matrix factorization

In this paper, we study the problem of recovering a tensor with missing data. We propose a new model combining the total variation regularization and low-rank matrix factorization. A block coordinate decent (BCD) algorithm is developed to efficiently solve the proposed optimization model. We theoretically show that under some mild conditions, the algorithm converges to the coordinatewise minimizers. Experimental results are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the efficiency of the numerical scheme. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.