LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Diffusion-weighted imaging versus superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO)-enhanced MRI: exclusive and combined values in the assessment of hepatic metastases.

PURPOSE
The purpose was to validate diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in the assessment of hepatic metastases compared with superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO)-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
For 21 consecutive patients with 160 metastases from extrahepatic malignancy and 25 benign focal lesions, two radiologists evaluated four separate review sessions (I, SPIO-enhanced T2-weighted images; II, precontrast DWI; III, SPIO-enhanced T2-weighted images and precontrast DWI; IV, SPIO-enhanced T2-weighted images plus precontrast and SPIO-enhanced DWI) and assigned confidence levels using a five-grade scale for each hepatic lesion.


RESULTS
The A(z) values after receiver operating characteristic curve analysis for Reader 1 and Reader 2 were 0.80 and 0.75 on session I, 0.91 and 0.91 on session II, 0.97 and 0.96 on session III and 0.96 and 0.96 on session IV, respectively. The A(z) value of session II was significantly higher than that of session I (Reader 1, P=.004; Reader 2, P<.001), and that of session III was significantly higher than that of session I (P<.001 for each reader) or session II (Reader 1, P=.004; Reader 2, P=.003). Although there was no significant difference of A(z) value between session III and session IV (Reader 1, P=.231; Reader 2, P=.878), the sensitivity improved for session IV compared with that for session III (Reader 1, P=.031; Reader 2, P=.039).


CONCLUSION
In the assessment of hepatic metastases, DWI can provide more accurate information than can SPIO-enhanced images. Diagnostic accuracy can be increased even more through the combination of both techniques.
Sequentially allocated clinical trial of rhythmic stabilization exercises and TENS in women with chronic low back pain.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the effectiveness of rhythmic stabilization exercises and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) and their combination in treating women with chronic low back pain.


DESIGN
Sequentially allocated, single-blinded and controlled study, with a two-month follow-up.


SETTING
The data were collected in a patient rehabilitation setting.


SUBJECTS
A total of 92 women (34-46 years old) with chronic low back pain were studied.


INTERVENTIONS
Sequential allocation was undertaken into four groups: ;rhythmic stabilization' (n=23), ;rhythmic stabilization - TENS' (n=23), TENS (n=23), and a placebo group (n = 23). Each programme lasted for four weeks. All outcome measures were assessed prior to, immediately after, four weeks and eight weeks post intervention.


MAIN MEASURES
Data were obtained on functional disability, pain intensity, trunk extension range of motion, dynamic endurance of trunk flexion and static endurance of trunk extension.


RESULTS
A total of 88 patients provided two-month follow-up data. The ;rhythmic stabilization' and the ;rhythmic stabilization - TENS' groups displayed statistically significant (P<0.05) improvements in functional disability and pain intensity (ranging from 21.2 to 42.8%), trunk extension range of motion (ranging from 6.5 to 25.5%), dynamic endurance of trunk flexion and static endurance of trunk extension (ranging from 13.5 to 74.3%) compared with the remaining groups.


CONCLUSIONS
The rhythmic stabilization programmes resulted in more gains in women with chronic low back pain regarding the present outcome variables compared with the other groups; therefore, its application in female chronic low back pain patients aged 34-46 years is recommended.
Risk Factors for Kala-Azar in Bangladesh

Since 1990, South Asia has experienced a resurgence of kala-azar (visceral leishmaniasis). To determine risk factors for kala-azar, we performed cross-sectional surveys over a 3-year period in a Bangladeshi community. By history, active case detection, and serologic screening, 155 of 2,356 residents had kala-azar with onset from 2000 to 2003. Risk was highest for persons 3-45 years of age, and no significant difference by sex was seen. In age-adjusted multivariable models, 3 factors were identified: proximity to a previous kala-azar patient (odds ratio [OR] 25.4, 95% confidence interval [CI] 15-44 within household; OR 3.2 95% CI 1.7-6.1 within 50 m), bed net use in summer (OR 0.7, 95% CI 0.53-0.93), and cattle per 1,000 m2 (OR 0.8, 95% CI 0.70-0.94]). No difference was seen by income, education, or occupation; land ownership or other assets; housing materials and condition; or keeping goats or chickens inside bedrooms. Our data confirm strong clustering and suggest that insecticide-treated nets could be effective in preventing kala-azar.
Big Data computing and clouds: Trends and future directions

This paper discusses approaches and environments for carrying out analytics on Clouds for Big Data applications. It revolves around four important areas of analytics and Big Data, namely (i) data management and supporting architectures; (ii) model development and scoring; (iii) visualisation and user interaction; and (iv) business models. Through a detailed survey, we identify possible gaps in technology and provide recommendations for the research community on future directions on Cloud-supported Big Data computing and analytics solutions. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Affective interaction: How emotional agents affect users

Embodied agents have received large amounts of interest in recent years. They are often equipped with the ability to express emotion, but without understanding the impact this can have on the user. Given the amount of research studies that are utilising agent technology with affective capabilities, now is an important time to review the influence of synthetic agent emotion on user attitudes, perceptions and behaviour. We therefore present a structured overview of the research into emotional simulation in agents, providing a summary of the main studies, re-formulating appropriate results in terms of the emotional effects demonstrated, and an in-depth analysis illustrating the similarities and inconsistencies between different experiments across a variety of different domains. We highlight important lessons, future areas for research, and provide a set of guidelines for conducting further research. r 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Gender discrimination and nursing: α literature review.

This article aims to examine gender stereotypes in relation to men in nursing, discuss gender discrimination cases in nursing, and explore methods used for promoting equal educational opportunities during nursing studies. The literature review was based on related databases, such as CINAHL, Science Direct, MEDLINE, and EBSCO. Legal case studies are included in order to provide a more practical example of those barriers existing for men pursuing nursing, as well as statistical data concerning gender discrimination and male attrition to nursing schools in relation to those barriers. These strengthen the validity of the manuscript. Literature review showed that gender discrimination is still prevalent within nursing profession. Nursing faculty should prepare male nursing students to interact effectively with female clients as well. Role modeling the therapeutic relationship with clients is one strategy that may help male students. In general, the faculty should provide equal learning opportunities to nursing students.
A Brazilian Investigation of the 36- and 16-Item Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scales.

OBJECTIVE
About 10 years ago, Gratz and Roemer (2004) introduced the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), a 36-item self-report instrument measuring 6 areas of emotion regulation problems. Recently, Bjureberg et al. (2015) have introduced a new, briefer version of the DERS comprising only 16 of the 36 items included in the original version. Because no studies have yet cross-validated the recently introduced 16-item DERS and the 36-item DERS has never been tested in Brazil, we sought to inspect the psychometric properties of scores from both DERS versions with a nonclinical Brazilian sample.


METHOD
Participants were 725 adult volunteers aged 18-70 years (mean = 30.54, standard deviation = 10.59), 82.3% of whom were women. All were administered the DERS along with a number of other self-report and performance-based instruments. Data analyses inspected internal consistency, factor structure, and convergent as well as divergent validity of scores from both DERS versions.


RESULTS
Results show that scores from both DERS versions possess good psychometric properties. Interestingly, both versions correlated, in the expected direction, with psychopathology and showed no significant correlations with cognitive measures. Like in other studies, however, the Awareness factor of the 36-item DERS did not produce optimal validity and reliability indexes.


CONCLUSION
Taken together, our findings indicate that the 16-item DERS may be preferred over the 36-item version and provide additional support to the differentiation between emotion regulation and cognitive tasks of emotional perception and abstract and verbal reasoning.
Cloud computing with the Azure platform

Software industry is heading towards centralized computin g. Due to this trend data and programs are being taken away from traditional desktop PCs and placed in compute clouds instead. Compute clouds are enormous server farms packed with computing power and storage space accessible through the Internet. Instead of having to manage one’s own infrastructure to run applications, server time and storage space can can be bought from an external service provider. From the customers’ point of view the benefit behind this idea is to be able to dynamically adjust computing power up or down to meet the demand for that power at a particular moment. This kind of flexibility not only ensures that no costs are incurred by excess processing capacity, but also enables hard ware infrastructure to scale up with business growth. Because of growing interest in taking advantage of cloud computing a number of service providers are working on providing cloud services. As stated in [7], Amazon, Salerforce.co m and Google are examples of firms that already have working solutions on the market. Recently also Microsoft released a preview version of its cloud platform called the Azure. Earl y adopters can test the platform and development tools free of charge.[2, 3, 4] The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on the internals of Microsoft’s Azure platform. In addition to examinin g how Azure platform works, the benefits of Azure platform are explored. The most important benefit in Microsoft’s solu tion is that it resembles existing Windows environment a lot . Developers can use the same application programming interfaces (APIs) and development tools they are already used to. The second benefit is that migrating applications to cloud is easy. This partially stems from the fact that Azure’s servic es can be exploited by an application whether it is run locally or in the cloud.
Structure--activity relationships of polymyxin antibiotics.

Tony Velkov,* Philip E. Thompson, Roger L. Nation, and Jian Li* School of Medicine, Deakin University, Pigdons Road, Geelong 3217, Victoria, Australia, Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Action and Facility for Anti-infective Drug Development and Innovation, Drug Delivery, Disposition and Dynamics, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, 381 Royal Parade, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia
Patient-specific computational hemodynamics of intracranial aneurysms from 3D rotational angiography and CT angiography: an in vivo reproducibility study.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Patient-specific simulations of the hemodynamics in intracranial aneurysms can be constructed by using image-based vascular models and CFD techniques. This work evaluates the impact of the choice of imaging technique on these simulations.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Ten aneurysms, imaged with 3DRA and CTA, were analyzed to assess the reproducibility of geometric and hemodynamic variables across the 2 modalities.


RESULTS
Compared with 3DRA models, we found that CTA models often had larger aneurysm necks (P = .05) and that most of the smallest vessels (between 0.7 and 1.0 mm in diameter) could not be reconstructed successfully with CTA. With respect to the values measured in the 3DRA models, the flow rate differed by 14.1 ± 2.8% (mean ± SE) just proximal to the aneurysm and 33.9 ± 7.6% at the aneurysm neck. The mean WSS on the aneurysm differed by 44.2 ± 6.0%. Even when normalized to the parent vessel WSS, a difference of 31.4 ± 9.9% remained, with the normalized WSS in most cases being larger in the CTA model (P = .04). Despite these substantial differences, excellent agreement (κ ≥ 0.9) was found for qualitative variables that describe the flow field, such as the structure of the flow pattern and the flow complexity.


CONCLUSIONS
Although relatively large differences were found for all evaluated quantitative hemodynamic variables, the main flow characteristics were reproduced across imaging modalities.
Finite-Control-Set Model Predictive Control With Improved Steady-State Performance

Finite-control-set model predictive control (FCS-MPC) is a novel and promising control scheme for power converters and drives. Many practical and theoretical issues have been presented in the literature, showing good performance of this technique. The present work deals with one of the most relevant aspects of any controller, namely, the steady-state operation. As will be shown, basic FCS-MPC formulations can be enhanced to achieve a reduced average steady-state error. As an illustrative example, we apply our proposal to a simple H-Bridge power converter. Experimental results were carried out to verify the performance obtained by the proposed predictive strategies.
DVFS based task scheduling in a harvesting WSN for Structural Health Monitoring

The task scheduler of an energy harvesting wireless sensor node (WSN) must adapt the task complexity and maximize the accuracy of the tasks within the constraint of limited energy reserves. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) represents a great example of such an application comprising of both steady state operations and sporadic externally triggered events. To this end, we propose a task scheduler based on a Linear Regression Model embedded with Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) functionality. Our results show an improvement in the average accuracy of a SHM measurement, setting it at 80% of the maximum achievable accuracy. There is also an increase of 50% in the number of SHM measurements.
Effect of supplementation of indigenous browse tree pods on weight gain and carcass parameters of Abergelle rams

The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of supplementation of indigenous browse tree pods on nutrient intake, digestibility, weight gain, and carcass parameters of local Abergelle rams fed grass hay as a basal diet. This experiment was conducted at the Abergelle Agricultural Research Center farm in Tigray region, northern Ethiopia. Experimental rams were grouped according to their initial body weight (17.4 ± 0.95 kg) in a randomized complete block design into three treatments and six replications. Treatments consisted of feeding grass hay free of choice supplemented with pods of either Acacia tortilis (T1), Faidherbia albida (T2), or Dichrostachys cinerea (T3) fed at the rate of 10 g kg−1 body weight daily. The crude protein (CP) contents of the supplemental feeds in T1, T2, and T3 were 167, 156, and 135 g kg−1 dry matter (DM), respectively. The CP intake was significantly higher (P < 0.05) in T1 and T2 than that in T3. No statistical difference (P > 0.05) was observed in the digestibilities of DM and CP. Final body weight, average daily gain, slaughter weight (SW), hot carcass weight, and ribeye area were not significantly different (P > 0.05) among the treatments. However, dressing percentage based on SW in T1 and T2 was significantly higher (P < 0.05) than that in T3. Therefore, from this research, it can be concluded that though the weight gains and carcass weights of experimental rams were not as such remarkable among the treatments, efficient utilization of locally available and cheap browse tree pods as alternative protein supplements to Abergelle sheep during the dry season could be important to small holder farmers.
Clinical and laboratory significance of defective P2Y(12) pathway function in patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND
Patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) have an increased risk for thrombosis and bleeding and show a defect in adenosine diphosphate (ADP)-induced platelet aggregation. This risk of thrombosis is further increased in MPN patients bearing the JAK2V617F mutation. Two ADP receptors, P2Y1 and P2Y12, are present on platelets. Although the pattern of defective ADP-induced platelet aggregation in MPN suggests an abnormality in the P2Y12 pathway, no previous studies have specifically evaluated P2Y12 function in MPN or the relationship between P2Y12 function and the JAK2V617F mutation.


METHODS
Forty-one MPN patients were enrolled, including 24 with essential thrombocythemia (ET), 16 with polycythemia vera (PV) and 1 with primary myelofibrosis. Platelet P2Y12 function in MPN was evaluated by flow-cytometric measurement of the phosphorylation of vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP). Clinical data were collected by review of medical records. JAK2V617F mutation was detected by allele-specific polymerase chain reaction. JAK2V617F allele burden was measured by the pyrosequencing method.


RESULTS
In patients with MPN, platelet P2Y12 function determined by VASP platelet reactivity index (PRI) was inversely correlated with platelet and white blood cell (WBC) counts. In subgroup analysis, PRI was inversely correlated with platelet and WBC counts in PV. PRI was also inversely correlated with platelet counts in ET, but the correlation of PRI and WBC counts did not reach statistical significance. Eight of the 41 patients had a history of thrombosis and only 2 had a bleeding history. Neither thrombosis nor bleeding patients were found to have significantly different PRIs. JAK2V617F mutation data were available in 35 cases. PRI was not different between JAK2V617F mutation and wild-type patients but PRI had a trend towards an inverse correlation with JAK2V617F allele burden for patients with mutations.


CONCLUSIONS
The present study provides the first explicit demonstration of a defect in the P2Y12 pathway in platelets of patients with MPN. Furthermore, platelet P2Y12 function, assayed by VASP, is inversely correlated with platelet and WBC counts in patients with MPN. Platelet P2Y12 function also appears to be inversely correlated with JAK2V617F allele burden. This compromised P2Y12 function may be a novel mechanism for the bleeding tendency associated with extreme thrombocytosis in MPN.
Individual Differences in Visual Working Memory Capacity : Contributions of Attentional Control to Storage

The amount of visual information an individual can actively represent is severely limited; this limitation is known as the capacity of visual working memory (VWM). To estimate an individual’s VWM capacity, we present an observer with a memory array containing multiple visual stimuli to remember over a relatively short delay interval, after which we test their memory (Figure 1(a)). When we examine memory performance as a function of the number of stimuli to remember (i.e., set size), we find that healthy young adults can easily retain up to three simple objects (Figure 1(b)), with their performance declining thereafter as the set size increases. Further, when memory performance for a set size larger than three is transformed to an estimate of the number of stimuli retained in VWM, the average VWM capacity estimate (K) is consistently computed as around three objects across a wide range of paradigms (Cowan, 2001; Luck & Vogel, 1997; Zhang & Luck, 2008). Based on such robust findings, the average VWM capacity for healthy young adults is thought to be around three simple objects. To derive a single metric of VWM capacity, we often average the K estimate across set sizes above four guided by the logic that across these large set sizes individuals’ VWM stores are equally filled to capacity (e.g., Fukuda & Vogel, 2009; Fukuda, Vogel, Mayr, & Awh, 2010; Vogel & Machizawa, 2004). In this chapter, we call this estimate Kave for the sake of clarity.
The Cambridge Face Tracker: Accurate, Low Cost Measurement of Head Posture Using Computer Vision and Face Recognition Software

PURPOSE
We validate a video-based method of head posture measurement.


METHODS
The Cambridge Face Tracker uses neural networks (constrained local neural fields) to recognize facial features in video. The relative position of these facial features is used to calculate head posture. First, we assess the accuracy of this approach against videos in three research databases where each frame is tagged with a precisely measured head posture. Second, we compare our method to a commercially available mechanical device, the Cervical Range of Motion device: four subjects each adopted 43 distinct head postures that were measured using both methods.


RESULTS
The Cambridge Face Tracker achieved confident facial recognition in 92% of the approximately 38,000 frames of video from the three databases. The respective mean error in absolute head posture was 3.34°, 3.86°, and 2.81°, with a median error of 1.97°, 2.16°, and 1.96°. The accuracy decreased with more extreme head posture. Comparing The Cambridge Face Tracker to the Cervical Range of Motion Device gave correlation coefficients of 0.99 (P < 0.0001), 0.96 (P < 0.0001), and 0.99 (P < 0.0001) for yaw, pitch, and roll, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
The Cambridge Face Tracker performs well under real-world conditions and within the range of normally-encountered head posture. It allows useful quantification of head posture in real time or from precaptured video. Its performance is similar to that of a clinically validated mechanical device. It has significant advantages over other approaches in that subjects do not need to wear any apparatus, and it requires only low cost, easy-to-setup consumer electronics.


TRANSLATIONAL RELEVANCE
Noncontact assessment of head posture allows more complete clinical assessment of patients, and could benefit surgical planning in future.
Embedding Allen interval temporal algebra into fuzzy recursive structures

This paper shows how temporal Allen algebra relations can be embedded into a recursive structure called RATA (Recursive Allen Temporal Algebra). This structure is required in order to allow the maximal representational power of temporal relations. The question of the fuzzification of RATA is also discussed.