LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Inhaled hypertonic saline in infants and children younger than 6 years with cystic fibrosis: the ISIS randomized controlled trial.

CONTEXT
Inhaled hypertonic saline is recommended as therapy for patients 6 years or older with cystic fibrosis (CF), but its efficacy has never been evaluated in patients younger than 6 years with CF.


OBJECTIVE
To determine if hypertonic saline reduces the rate of protocol-defined pulmonary exacerbations in patients younger than 6 years with CF.


DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
The Infant Study of Inhaled Saline in Cystic Fibrosis (ISIS), a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted from April 2009 to October 2011 at 30 CF care centers in the United States and Canada. Participants were aged 4 to 60 months and had an established diagnosis of CF. A total of 344 patients were assessed for eligibility; 321 participants were randomized; 29 (9%) withdrew prematurely.


INTERVENTION
The active treatment group (n = 158) received 7% hypertonic saline and the control group (n = 163) received 0.9% isotonic saline, nebulized twice daily for 48 weeks. Both groups received albuterol or levalbuterol prior to each study drug dose.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Rate during the 48-week treatment period of protocol-defined pulmonary exacerbations treated with oral, inhaled, or intravenous antibiotics.


RESULTS
The mean pulmonary exacerbation rate (events per person-year) was 2.3 (95% CI, 2.0-2.5) in the active treatment group and 2.3 (95% CI, 2.1-2.6) in the control group; the adjusted rate ratio was 0.98 (95% CI, 0.84-1.15). Among participants with pulmonary exacerbations, the mean number of total antibiotic treatment days for a pulmonary exacerbation was 60 (95% CI, 49-70) in the active treatment group and 52 (95% CI, 43-61) in the control group. There was no significant difference in secondary end points including height, weight, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, cough, or respiratory symptom scores. Infant pulmonary function testing performed as an exploratory outcome in a subgroup (n = 73, with acceptable measurements at 2 visits in 45 participants) did not demonstrate significant differences between groups except for the mean change in forced expiratory volume in 0.5 seconds, which was 38 mL (95% CI, 1-76) greater in the active treatment group. Adherence determined by returned study drug ampoules was at least 75% in each group. Adverse event profiles were also similar, with the most common adverse event of moderate or severe severity in each group being cough (39% of active treatment group, 38% of control group).


CONCLUSION
Among infants and children younger than 6 years with cystic fibrosis, the use of inhaled hypertonic saline compared with isotonic saline did not reduce the rate of pulmonary exacerbations over the course of 48 weeks of treatment.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00709280.
School-age follow-up of prophylactic versus rescue surfactant trial: pulmonary, neurodevelopmental, and educational outcomes.

BACKGROUND
Exogenous surfactant replacement has improved survival and reduced pulmonary complications of prematurity. Improved early outcomes for infants of <30 weeks' gestation treated with a strategy of prophylactic versus rescue surfactant, if needed, were demonstrated in a multicenter, randomized trial conducted between 1985 and 1988. We reevaluated a subset of survivors from this trial to determine the pulmonary and neurodevelopmental outcomes at school age.


METHODS
At 4.5 to 8 years of age, all survivors from one of the three centers were located, and 96% were evaluated. The original randomization included stratification by center and followed an intention-to-treat methodology in assessing the efficacy of prophylactic versus rescue treatment with surfactant. The follow-up test battery included a health-assessment questionnaire, spirometry, 88% saturation test, neurologic examination, and the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) and the Conners' Parent Rating Scale-48. Educational achievement was determined by school class placement and teachers' reports of achievement.


RESULTS
Of the 192 children originally enrolled, 154 survived. Evaluations were performed on 148 of these infants. An abnormal pulmonary history was found in 45 (30%) of the children: 16 (22%) in the prophylactic group and 29 (39%) in the rescue group. Formal pulmonary function was evaluated in 81 children; 29 (78%) in the prophylactic group and 33 (75%) in the rescue group were considered abnormal. No significant differences were found between the two groups on either cognitive or motor subscales of the MSCA, the Conners' Parent Rating Scale-48, the neurologic examination, the education services received in school, or the teacher ratings of below-average academic performance. Intelligence scores measured on the MSCA were low-normal for both groups. Some level of educational assistance was being provided to 72 (49%) of the cohort studied, and both groups had below average educational performance and increased needs for educational assistance.


CONCLUSIONS
Prophylactic surfactant administration to infants of <30 weeks' gestation was associated with fewer long-term clinical pulmonary complications than assignment to rescue administration. Formal pulmonary testing at school age did not reveal significant differences between treatment groups in those infants who could be tested. There also were no group differences found on neurologic, cognitive, behavioral, or educational assessments at school age.
Detection and avoidance of unified attacks on MANET using trusted secure AODV routing protocol

Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is decentralized network, in this network nodes can move dynamically. OSI Network layer faces several attacks. Black hole attack work on highest sequence number during Replay message, a group of black hole nodes easily employed against routing in MANET called collaborative black hole attacks. When two malicious nodes cooperatively create a tunnel thereby formed worm hole attack. The proposed work focuses on trust based computing to mitigate the effects of black hole, wormhole and collaborative black hole attacks. Trust value is computed on the basis of route request, route reply and data packets. After calculation get trust values between 0 to 1. If trust value is greater than 0.5 then marks node is reliable and allow on a network otherwise block. Network performance of proposed protocol trusted secure AODV routing protocol (TSAODV) is evaluated. The result shows performance improvement as compared to standard AODV protocol.
Information, Learning and the Stability of Fiat Money

Abstract We analyze the stability of monetary regimes in an economy where fiat money is endogenously created by the government, information about its value is imperfect, and learning is decentralized. We show that monetary stability depends crucially on the speed of information transmission in the economy. Our model generates a dynamic on the acceptability of fiat money that resembles historical accounts of the rise and eventual collapse of overissued paper money. It also provides an explanation of the fact that, despite its obvious advantages, the widespread use of fiat money is only a recent development.
Effects of chronic omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation on human atrial electrophysiology.

BACKGROUND
Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in fish oils may have antifibrillatory effects. Their mechanism of action in humans is poorly understood.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of chronic fish oil supplementation on human atrial electrophysiology (EP).


METHODS
Two groups of patients without clinical AF or structural heart disease and fish intake ≤1/week were prospectively recruited into a control group (n = 30) and a fish oil group (n = 31). The latter were prescribed 6 g/day of fish oil for ≥1 month before an EP study. The following were compared at time of EP study: serum omega-3 levels; right atrial and coronary sinus effective refractory periods (ERPs); interatrial, intra-atrial, left atrial, and coronary sinus conduction at baseline and the maximal conduction delay with the shortest propagated extrastimulus; and inducibility of AF (10 inductions/patient).


RESULTS
The following significant differences were noted favoring the fish oil group at time of EP: (1) twofold higher total omega-3 levels (P < .001); (2) lengthening of ERPs by 8%-14% at all measured sites and pacing cycle lengths (P < .05); (3) no effect on baseline interatrial, intra-atrial, left atrial, and coronary sinus conduction but a significant attenuation of maximal conduction delay (P < .05); (4) less inducible AF (AF ≥30 seconds: 24.2% vs. 7.9%; P < .001); (5) shorter mean duration of induced AF (P = .003); and (6) prolongation of induced AF cycle length (P < .001).


CONCLUSIONS
Chronic fish oil supplementation in humans prolongs atrial refractoriness and reduces vulnerability to inducible AF. These EP changes may explain the antifibrillatory effect of chronic fish oil ingestion.
An Educational System that Explains the Domain-oriented-explanation of Program's Behaviors

We have developed an educational system that helps novice programming language learners. Our system can output the verbal and visual explanation that explains the behavior of a program on the domain world. When learners input their own program that has a few bugs, they can spontaneously notice that there are a few bugs in their program by referring the explanation contradictory to their expectations, and try to fix them.
The use of touch-screen tablets at home and pre-school to foster emergent literacy:

Young children living in technology-based communities are using touch screen tablets (e.g., iPads) to engage with the digital world at an early age. The intuitive touch screen interface, easily downloadable apps (applications), and mobility of tablets drive their increasing popularity with pre-schoolers. This review examines research to date on tablets, apps, and emergent literacy in young children in the home and at pre-school. Evidence is building that suggests tablets have the potential to foster emergent writing and letter knowledge. Although the impact of tablets on emergent literacy is not yet fully known, developing themes highlight potential benefits and hindrances of tablets for emergent literacy. Two important considerations are the quality of emergent literacy apps and the importance of scaffolding young children’s use of tablets at home and pre-school to support emergent literacy development. Directions for future research and recommendations for parents and teachers are discussed.
Bit Error Rate Performance Analysis on Modulation Techniques of Wideband Code Division Multiple Access

In the beginning of 21 st century there has been a dramatic shift in the market dynamics of telecommunication services. The transmission from base station to mobile or downlink transmission using M-ary Quadrature Amplitude modulation (QAM) and Quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation schemes are considered in Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) system. We have done the performance analysis of these modulation techniques when the system is subjected to Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and multipath Rayleigh fading are considered in the channel. The research has been performed by using MATLAB 7.6 for simulation and evaluation of Bit Error Rate (BER) and Signal-To-Noise Ratio (SNR) for W-CDMA system models. It is shows that the analysis of Quadrature phases shift key and 16-ary Quadrature Amplitude modulations which are being used in wideband code division multiple access system, Therefore, the system could go for more suitable modulation technique to suit the channel quality, thus we can deliver the optimum and efficient data rate to mobile terminal. Index Terms – Bit Error Rate, Code Division Multiple Access, Quadrature phase shift keying, and Quadrature Amplitude modulation
A Calculator for Prostate Cancer Risk 4 Years After an Initially Negative Screen: Findings from ERSPC Rotterdam.

BACKGROUND
Inconclusive test results often occur after prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening for prostate cancer (PCa), leading to uncertainty on whether, how, and when to repeat testing.


OBJECTIVE
To develop and validate a prediction tool for the risk of PCa 4 yr after an initially negative screen.


DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
We analyzed data from 15 791 screen-negative men aged 55-70 yr at the initial screening round of the Rotterdam section of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer.


OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Follow-up and repeat screening at 4 yr showed either no PCa, low-risk PCa, or potentially high-risk PCa (defined as clinical stage >T2b and/or biopsy Gleason score ≥ 7 and/or PSA ≥ 10.0 ng/ml). A multinomial logistic regression analysis included initial screening data on age, PSA, digital rectal examination (DRE), family history, prostate volume, and having had a previous negative biopsy. The 4-yr risk predictions were validated with additional follow-up data up to 8 yr after initial screening.


RESULTS AND LIMITATIONS
Positive family history and, especially, PSA level predicted PCa, whereas a previous negative biopsy or a large prostate volume reduced the likelihood of future PCa. The risk of having PCa 4 yr after an initially negative screen was 3.6% (interquartile range: 1.0-4.7%). Additional 8-yr follow-up data confirmed these predictions. Although data were based on sextant biopsies and a strict protocol-based biopsy indication, we suggest that men with a low predicted 4-yr risk (eg, ≤ 1.0%) could be rescreened at longer intervals or not at all, depending on competing risks, while men with an elevated 4-yr risk (eg, ≥ 5%) might benefit from immediate retesting. These findings need to be validated externally.


CONCLUSIONS
This 4-yr future risk calculator, based on age, PSA, DRE, family history, prostate volume, and previous biopsy status, may be a promising tool for reducing uncertainty, unnecessary testing, and overdiagnosis of PCa.
Proposal of low cost energy quality disturbance monitoring system

This article presents a low-cost prototype hardware proposal to monitor harmonic distortion in low voltage distribution networks. The data, previously conditioned, were acquired by Arduinos and sent to a central data monitoring and storage (CDMS), through a Power Line Communicator (PLC), connected to a local network. A Raspberry Pi is used as a CDMS. The system was tested using a simple circuit, consisting of non-linear fluorescent lamps, which introduced distortions in the waveform of the electric signal. The Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) factor was calculated off line and compared to the IEC 6000 - 3 - 2 standard limits. The prototype showed to be able to collect data accurately and calculate the off-line THD. However, after analyzing the results, it was concluded that the same system can be used to remotely calculate this parameter online.
Use of a C1 Inhibitor Concentrate in Adults ≥65 Years of Age with Hereditary Angioedema: Findings from the International Berinert® (C1-INH) Registry

BACKGROUND
Treatment of hereditary angioedema (HAE) in 'older adults' (those aged ≥65 years) has not been well studied. The international Berinert Patient Registry collected data on the use of intravenous plasma-derived, pasteurized, nanofiltered C1-inhibitor concentrate (pnfC1-INH; Berinert®/CSL Behring) in patients of any age, including many older adults.


METHODS
This observational registry, conducted from 2010 to 2014 at 30 US and seven European sites, gathered prospective (post-enrollment) and retrospective (pre-enrollment) usage and adverse event (AE) data on subjects treated with pnfC1-INH.


RESULTS
The registry documented 1701 pnfC1-INH infusions in 27 older adults. A total of 1511 HAE attacks treated with pnfC1-INH administration were reported among 25 of the 27 (92.6 %) older adults. Among the older adults, mean (standard deviation [SD]) (8.8 [4.1] IU/kg) and median (6.4 IU/kg) pnfC1-INH doses were lower than those reported for 252 'younger adults' (those aged <65 years: 12.9 [6.2], 12.5 IU/kg, respectively). A total of 19 AEs occurred in 8 of 23 (34.8 %) older adults with prospective data, for rates of 0.83 events per subject and 0.02 events per infusion, similar to corresponding rates in younger adults (0.91 and 0.03, respectively). None of the AEs were considered related to pnfC1-INH, and all but two events (prostatectomy, gastrointestinal bleeding) were mild or moderate in severity. Administration of pnfC1-INH outside of a healthcare setting was reported for 1609 infusions in 16 older adults, representing 94.6 % of all pnfC1-INH infusions in this age group. There were no recorded instances of difficulty with self-administration of intravenous pnfC1-INH.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest a high degree of safety with intravenous pnfC1-INH use in older adults with HAE, regardless of administration setting. Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01108848.
A decade of fragment-based drug design: strategic advances and lessons learned

Since the early 1990s, several technological and scientific advances — such as combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening and the sequencing of the human genome — have been heralded as remedies to the problems facing the pharmaceutical industry. The use of these technologies in some form is now well established at most pharmaceutical companies; however, the return on investment in terms of marketed products has not met expectations. Fragment-based drug design is another tool for drug discovery that has emerged in the past decade. Here, we describe the development and evolution of fragment-based drug design, analyse the role that this approach can have in combination with other discovery technologies and highlight the impact that fragment-based methods have made in progressing new medicines into the clinic.
Evaluating Collaborative Learning Processes

Understanding and analyzing collaborative learning processes require a fine-grained sequential analysis of the group interaction in the context of learning goals. Several researchers in the area of cooperative work take as a success criterion the quality of the group outcome. Nevertheless, recent findings are giving importance to the quality of the cooperation process itself. This paper presents a set of indicators which main objective is to evaluate the collaborative learning process. We have defined an experiment with a tool instrumented to gather data from groups working in a simple task. This data is then useful to build the cooperation indicators, which in turn allow us to estimate the quality of the work process.
Give Me More Feedback: Annotating Argument Persuasiveness and Related Attributes in Student Essays

• Oracle experiment: to understand how well these attributes, when used together, can explain persuasiveness, we train 3 linear SVM regressors, one for each component type, to score an arguments persuasiveness using gold attribute’s as features • Two human annotators who were both native speakers of English were first familiarized with the rubrics and definitions and then trained on five essays • 30 essays were doubly annotated for computing inter-annotator agreement • Each of the remaining essays was annotated by one of the annotators • Score/Class distributions by component type: Give me More Feedback: Annotating Argument Persusiveness and Related Attributes in Student Essays
A Comparison of HMMs and Dynamic Bayesian Networks for Recognizing Office Activities

We present a comparative analysis of a layered architecture of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs) for identifying human activites from multimodal sensor information. We use the two representations to diagnose users’ activities in S-SEER, a multimodal system for recognizing office activity from realtime streams of evidence from video, audio and computer (keyboard and mouse) interactions. As the computation required for sensing and processing perceptual information can impose significant burdens on personal computers, the system is designed to perform selective perception using expected-value-of-information (EVI) to limit sensing and analysis. We discuss the relative performance of HMMs and DBNs in the context of diagnosis and EVI computation.
Surface-enhanced copper bonding wire for LSI and its bond reliability under humid environment

There is growing interest in Cu wire bonding for LSI interconnection due to cost savings and better electrical and mechanical properties. Cu bonding wires, in general, are severely limited in their use compared to Au wires; such as wire oxidation, lower bondability, forming gas of N2+5%H2, and lower reliability. It is difficult for conventional bare Cu wires to achieve the target of LSI application. A surface-enhanced Cu wire (EX1) has been developed. It is a Pd-coated Cu wire and has many advantages compared to bare Cu wires. Stitch strength was much better under fresh conditions and maintained without any deterioration after being stored in air for a prolonged period of time. EX1 had a lifetime of over 90 days in air, although it was 7days for the bare Cu wire. Spherical balls were formed with pure N2 (hydrogen-free), whereas the bare Cu produced offcenter balls. Cost-effective and secure gas, pure N2 was only available for EX1. The reliability for Cu wire bonding under humid environment was investigated in pressure cooker test (PCT). The lifetime for EX1 and the bare Cu was over 800h and 250h, respectively. Humidity reliability was significantly greater for EX1. Continuous cracking was formed at the bond interface for the bare Cu wire. Corrosion-induced deterioration would be the root cause of failure for bare Cu wires in PCT. EX1 improves the bond reliability by controlling diffusion at the bond interface. The excellent performance of Pd-coated Cu wire, EX1 is comparable with Au wires and suitable for LSI packaging.
Performance analysis of MapReduce programs on Hadoop cluster

This paper discusses various MapReduce applications like pi, wordcount, grep, Terasort. We have shown experimental results of these applications on a Hadoop cluster. In this paper, performance of above application has been shown with respect to execution time and number of nodes. We find that as the number of nodes increases the execution time decreases. This paper is basically a research study of above MapReduce applications.
Exhaust emissions from a Diesel engine fueled with transesterified waste olive oil q

The exhaust emissions of a Diesel direct injection Perkins engine fueled with waste olive oil methyl ester were studied at several steadystate operating conditions. Emissions were characterized with neat biodiesel from used olive oil and conventional Diesel fuel. Results revealed that the use of biodiesel resulted in lower emissions of CO (up to 58.9%), CO2 (up to 8.6%, excepting a case which presented a 7.4% increase), NO (up to 37.5%), and SO2 (up to 57.7%), with increase in emissions of NO2 (up to 81%, excepting a case which presented a slight reduction). Biodiesel also presented a slight increase in brake-specific fuel consumption (lower than 8.5%) that may be tolerated due to the exhaust emission benefits. Combustion efficiency remained constant using either biodiesel or Diesel fuel. The proposed alternative for Diesel fuel could significantly decrease the enormous amount of waste frying oil, furthermore becoming less dependent on fossil oil imports and decreasing environmental pollution. q 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.