LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Lumbar disc herniation associated with separation of the posterior ring apophysis: analysis of five surgical cases and review of the literature

¶Background. Separation of the posterior ring apophysis of an adjacent vertebral body can sometimes accompany lumbar intervertebral disc herniation. The condition can be both difficult to detect in conventional radiographs and is somewhat controversial to treat. Although there is general agreement on the frequent need for surgery, there is no consensus on the choice of operation. One procedure, posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF), has never been examined for effectiveness. Method. Computed tomography (CT) either or with discography (CTD) was compared to plane radiographs and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for its ability to reveal the fragmentation. Five cases were identified and the severity of the condition evaluated using the Japanese Orthopaedic Association’s Assessment of Treatment for Low Back Pain (JOA score). The fragments were removed by impaction with a shoe shaped device and posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) was performed using autogenous iliac crest bone. A second evaluation using the JOA score was performed after a 4 to 5 year follow-up. Findings. CT identified the separation in all 5 cases while plain films showed the defect in two and MRI in none. JOA scores prior to surgery were between 5 and 19 (mean, 13) and between 25 and 29 (mean, 27.4) at follow-up. The scores represented a recovery of 80% to 100%t (mean, 89.4). Interpretation. CT and CT discography (CTD) are the diagnostic tools of choice for detecting this condition. Posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) is an effective procedure for patients who have low back pain due to lumbar disc herniation accompanied by a separation of the posterior ring apophysis.
Incidence, causes and pattern of cancellation of elective surgical operations in a university teaching hospital in the Lake Zone, Tanzania.

BACKGROUND
Cancellation of elective surgical operations is recognized as a major cause of emotional trauma to patients as well as their families. This study was carried out to assess the incidence, causes and pattern of cancellation of elective surgical operations in our setting and to find the appropriate solutions for better patient management.


METHODS
This was a prospective hospital-based study which was conducted in a teaching hospital at Bugando medical Centre from March 2009 to February 2010.


RESULTS
A total of 3,064 patients were scheduled for elective surgical operations. Of these, 644 (21.0%) patients' operations were cancelled. General surgery had the highest rate of cancellations (31.5%) followed by orthopaedic surgery in 25.5%. Lack of theatre space and theatre facilities were the most common causes of cancellations in 53.0% and 28.4% of cases respectively. The majority of these cancellations were attributable to hospital administration in 82.0 % and most of them were preventable in 93.8% of cases. The mean hospital stay was 28.46 days and it was significantly related to the number of cancellations (p < 0.001).


CONCLUSION
Cancellation of elective surgical operations is a significant problem in our hospital. To prevent unnecessary cancellations, efforts should be made to enhance cost effectiveness through careful planning and efficient utilization of the few available hospital resources.
Evaluating the effect of centralization on routing convergence on a hybrid BGP-SDN emulation framework

A lot of applications depend on reliable and stable Internet connectivity. These characteristics are crucial for missioncritical services such as telemedical applications. An important factor that can affect connection availability is the convergence time of BGP, the de-facto inter-domain routing (IDR) protocol in the Internet. After a routing change, it may take several minutes until the network converges and BGP routing becomes stable again [13]. Kotronis et al. [8,9] propose a novel Internet routing approach based on SDN principles that combines several Autonomous Systems (AS) into groups, called clusters, and introduces a logically centralized routing decision process for the cluster participants. One of the goals of this concept is to stabilize the IDR system and bring down its convergence time. However, testing whether such approaches can improve on BGP problems requires hybrid SDN and BGP experimentation tools that can emulate multiple ASes. Presently, there is a lack of an easy to use public tool for this purpose. This work fills this gap by building a suitable emulation framework and evaluating the effect that a proof-of-concept IDR controller has on IDR convergence time.
Tooth discolouration and its treatment using KTP laser-assisted tooth whitening

nent of oral health. The colour and arrangement of the teeth, and their relationship to the soft tissues and bones of the face, give the overall aesthetic value of the human face. Of these components, the shade of the teeth is the easiest to alter to gain a cosmetic improvement for the dental patient. Having said this, it must be remembered that the health of the gingival tissues can greatly affect the appearance of the smile. Thus, periodontal care is an important part of cosmetic dentistry, and should be undertaken before laser-assisted tooth whitening. DIAGNOSTIC WORK-UP OF THE PATIENT
Using a pedagogical approach to integrate evidence-based teaching in an undergraduate women's health course.

BACKGROUND
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is promoted as a foundation for nursing practice. However, the 2005 U.S. survey of nurses revealed that they do not have requisite skills for EBP. PURPOSE AND GOALS: To evaluate a pedagogical approach aimed at (1) fostering undergraduate nursing students EBP competencies, and (2) identifying gaps in the literature to direct future women's health research.


METHODS
A secondary analysis of data abstracted from required EBP clinical journals for an undergraduate women's health course in which students (n = 198) were asked to find evidence to answer their clinical questions. Content analysis was used to identify main themes of the topics of inquiry.


RESULTS
Students identified 1,808 clinical questions and 30.3% (n = 547) of these could not be answered or supported by evidence in the literature.


CONCLUSIONS
This assignment was an important teaching and assessment tool for EBP. Questions reflected critical thinking and quest for in-depth knowledge to support nursing practice. Some students lacked skills in searching databases and a significant number of knowledge gaps were identified that can direct women's health research.
A Flexible Security System for Metacomputing Environments

A metacomputing environment is a collection of geographically distributed resources (people, computers, devices, databases) connected by one or more high-speed networks and potentially spanning multiple administrative domains. Security is an essential part of metasystem design—high-level resources and services defined by the metacomputer must be protected from one another and from possibly corrupted underlying resources, while those underlying resources must minimize their vulnerability to attacks from the metacomputer level. We present the Legion security architecture, a flexible, adaptable framework for solving the metacomputing security problem. We demonstrate that this framework is flexible enough to implement a wide range of security mechanisms and high-level policies.
Sequential Transfer in Multi-armed Bandit with Finite Set of Models

Learning from prior tasks and transferring that experience to improve future performance is critical for building lifelong learning agents. Although results in supervised and reinforcement learning show that transfer may significantly improve the learning performance, most of the literature on transfer is focused on batch learning tasks. In this paper we study the problem of sequential transfer in online learning, notably in the multi–armed bandit framework, where the objective is to minimize the total regret over a sequence of tasks by transferring knowledge from prior tasks. We introduce a novel bandit algorithm based on a method-of-moments approach for estimating the possible tasks and derive regret bounds for it.
Honeybees - bioindicators for environmental quality

ZhelyaZkova, I., 2012. honeybees – bioindicators for environmental quality. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 18:435-442 The objective of the study is to use honeybees (Apis mellifera l.) as bioindicators for environmental status in the region of Sarnena Sredna gora, county of Stara Zagora. The study comprises six villages (yagoda, Borilovo, Novo selo, Sulitsa, ostra mogila, kanchevo), located on the territory of Sarnena Sredna gora close to the military range of Zmeyovo. In each village, bee samples were taken and 56 samples of whole bees and fecal mass were prepared during the bee season of 2010. The content of copper, zinc, lead, cadmium, cobalt, nickel, manganese and iron was traced in the bee body and in excrements. The analysis was carried out in the scientific laboratory of Trakia University – Stara Zagora through atomic absorption spectrometry according to ISo 11047. The results have been statistically processed (excel software). Maximum or relatively high values for content of the studied heavy metals and metalloids in the body and fecal mass of bees from the villages included in the study have been found, which makes it possible to comment a possible anthropogenic effect in the area of Sarnena Sredna gora, Zmeyovo military range. higher content of the studied heavy metals and metalloids in excrements compared to the body of bees has been found, which accounts for the biobarrier function of the bee organism. The elements nickel, cadmium, cobalt and lead are accumulated at the highest degree in the bee fecal mass. The results obtained make it possible to assume that honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) respond to changes in their environment and in particular to increased quantities of heavy metals in soil, air, plants. That makes them a reliable indicator and allows their use in biomonitoring of the environment.
A Framework for Research in Gamified Mobile Guide Applications using Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs)

Mobile Guides are mobile applications that provide players with local and locationbased services (LBS), such as navigation assistance, where and when they need them most. Advances in mobile technologies in recent years have enabled the gamification of these applications, opening up new opportunities to transfer education and culture through game play. However, adding traditional game elements such as PBLs (points, badges, and leaderboards) alone cannot ensure that the intended learning outcomes will be met, as the player’s cognitive resources are shared between the application and the surrounding environment. This distribution of resources prevents players from easily immersing themselves into the educational scenario. Adding artificial conversational characters (ECAs) that simulate the social norms found in real-life human-to-human guide scenarios has the potential to address this problem and improve the player’s experience and learning of cultural narratives [1]. Although significant progress has been made towards creating game-like mobile guides with ECAs ([2], [3]), there is still a lack of a unified framework that enables researchers and practitioners to investigate the potential effects of such applications to players and how to approach the concepts of player experience, cognitive accessibility and usability in this context. This paper presents a theoretically-well supported research framework consisted of four key components: differences in players, different features of the gamified task, aspects of how the ECA looks, sound or behaves and different mobile environments. Furthermore, it provides based on this framework a working definition of what player experience, cognitive accessibility and usability are in the context of game-like mobile guide applications. Finally, a synthesis of the results of six empirical studies conducted within this research framework is discussed and a series of design guidelines for the effective gamification of mobile guide applications using ECAs are presented. Results show that an ECA can positively affect the quality of the player’s experience, but it did not elicit better player retention of cultural narratives and navigation of routes.
BRACID: a comprehensive approach to learning rules from imbalanced data

In this paper we consider induction of rule-based classifiers from imbalanced data, where one class (a minority class) is under-represented in comparison to the remaining majority classes. The minority class is usually of primary interest. However, most rule-based classifiers are biased towards the majority classes and they have difficulties with correct recognition of the minority class. In this paper we discuss sources of these difficulties related to data characteristics or to an algorithm itself. Among the problems related to the data distribution we focus on the role of small disjuncts, overlapping of classes and presence of noisy examples. Then, we show that standard techniques for induction of rule-based classifiers, such as sequential covering, top-down induction of rules or classification strategies, were created with the assumption of balanced data distribution, and we explain why they are biased towards the majority classes. Some modifications of rule-based classifiers have been already introduced, but they usually concentrate on individual problems. Therefore, we propose a novel algorithm, BRACID, which more comprehensively addresses the issues associated with imbalanced data. Its main characteristics includes a hybrid representation of rules and single examples, bottom-up learning of rules and a local classification strategy using nearest rules. The usefulness of BRACID has been evaluated in experiments on several imbalanced datasets. The results show that BRACID significantly outperforms the well known rule-based classifiers C4.5rules, RIPPER, PART, CN2, MODLEM as well as other related classifiers as RISE or K-NN. Moreover, it is comparable or better than the studied approaches specialized for imbalanced data such as generalizations of rule algorithms or combinations of SMOTE + ENN preprocessing with PART. Finally, it improves the support of minority class rules, leading to better recognition of the minority class examples.
Effects of mindfulness training on body awareness to sexual stimuli: implications for female sexual dysfunction.

OBJECTIVES
Treatments of female sexual dysfunction have been largely unsuccessful because they do not address the psychological factors that underlie female sexuality. Negative self-evaluative processes interfere with the ability to attend and register physiological changes (interoceptive awareness). This study explores the effect of mindfulness meditation training on interoceptive awareness and the three categories of known barriers to healthy sexual functioning: attention, self-judgment, and clinical symptoms.


METHODS
Forty-four college students (30 women) participated in either a 12-week course containing a "meditation laboratory" or an active control course with similar content or laboratory format. Interoceptive awareness was measured by reaction time in rating physiological response to sexual stimuli. Psychological barriers were assessed with self-reported measures of mindfulness and psychological well-being.


RESULTS
Women who participated in the meditation training became significantly faster at registering their physiological responses (interoceptive awareness) to sexual stimuli compared with active controls (F(1,28) = 5.45, p = .03, η(p)(2) = 0.15). Female meditators also improved their scores on attention (t = 4.42, df = 11, p = .001), self-judgment, (t = 3.1, df = 11, p = .01), and symptoms of anxiety (t = -3.17, df = 11, p = .009) and depression (t = -2.13, df = 11, p < .05). Improvements in interoceptive awareness were correlated with improvements in the psychological barriers to healthy sexual functioning (r = -0.44 for attention, r = -0.42 for self-judgment, and r = 0.49 for anxiety; all p < .05).


CONCLUSIONS
Mindfulness-based improvements in interoceptive awareness highlight the potential of mindfulness training as a treatment of female sexual dysfunction.
Antimicrobial activities of silver dressings: an in vitro comparison.

A range of silver-coated or -impregnated dressings are now commercially available for use but comparative data on their antimicrobial efficacies are limited. The antibacterial activities of five commercially available silver-coated/impregnated dressings were compared against nine common burn-wound pathogens, namely methicillin-sensitive and -resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Enterococcus faecalis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Enterobacter cloacae, Proteus vulgaris, Acinetobacter baumannii and a multi-drug-efflux-positive Acinetobacter baumannii (BM4454), using a broth culture method. The rapidity and extent of killing of these pathogens under in vitro conditions were evaluated. All five silver-impregnated dressings investigated exerted bactericidal activity, particularly against Gram-negative bacteria, including Enterobacter species, Proteus species and E. coli. The spectrum and rapidity of action, however, ranged widely for different dressings. Acticoat and Contreet had a broad spectrum of bactericidal activities against both Gram-positive and -negative bacteria. Contreet was characterized by a very rapid bactericidal action and achieved a reduction of > or =10,000 c.f.u. ml(-1) in the first 30 min for Enterobacter cloacae, Proteus vulgaris, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumanii. Other dressings demonstrated a narrower range of bactericidal activities. Understanding the characteristics of these dressings may enable them to be targeted more appropriately according to the specific requirements for use of a particular dressing, as in for prophylaxis in skin grafting or for an infected wound with MRSA.
Modelling of free air ball for copper wire bonding

Copper wire ball bonding has gained considerable attention due to its economic advantage, strong resistance to sweeping and superior electrical performance. In order to have a good first bond, consistent free air-ball formation for copper bonding are even more crucial than they are in the gold wire process. To create a free air ball (FAB), the wire bonder uses an electronic flame-off (EFO) unit, where high voltage is connected. During operation, the EFO gap is breached by a high current, creating a high voltage spark, which melt the tail of the copper wire in a glow discharge to form a spherical ball. Unlike gold wire, copper wire oxidizes readily. Hence, during the formation of the FAB, the copper wire must be enclosed in an inert gas environment in order to prevent oxidisation of the FAB. In this study, an empirical methodology was developed to model a consistent FAB for copper wire diameters ranging from 0.8mil to 2.0mil. Cherry pit bonds were created to study the FAB. Numerous tests were run on an automatic ball bonder in which current and time were varied and the resulting ball size measured. These data points were then used as inputs for the empirical model. This methodology uses the EFO current and time as measurable energy inputs and the FAB size as the measurable energy output. It is simple to use and has the advantage of avoiding complex computation of phenomena analysis, which involves the phase change during FAB melting and formation. It is also able to predict copper wire FAB to provide consistent FAB size.
Risk factors for stomach cancer in Brazil (II): a case-control study among Japanese Brazilians in São Paulo.

BACKGROUND
Although stomach cancer is the most frequent cancer among Japanese Brazilians, the risk factor of this cancer has not been investigated among them.


METHODS
A case-control study was conducted among Japanese residents in the city of São Paulo. Ninety-six consecutive cases of histologically confirmed stomach cancer were matched to 192 controls admitted for non-neoplastic diseases or healthy volunteer (n = 80) by age (+/-5 years) and gender. The socio-demographic characteristics, personal and family medical history, lifetime history of tobacco use and dietary habits were probed using a structured questionnaire.


RESULTS
Frequent consumption of beef was associated with increased risk: odds ratio (OR) = 4.0 and 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.9-8.4 for daily consumption, OR = 2.1 and 95% CI = 1.0-4.3 for 3-4 days/week) when compared with the category of lower consumption (<3 days/week) after adjustment for country of birth (Japan or Brazil), showing a dose-response pattern (P for trend = 0.001). These ORs became higher after further adjusted for fruit consumption: OR = 4.4, 95% CI = 2.1-9.4 and OR = 2.4 and 95% CI = 1.1-5.0, respectively. Daily consumption of fruit was associated with a reduction in risk (OR = 0.5, 95% CI = 0.3-1.0) after adjustment for country of birth and became statistically significant further adjusted for beef consumption (OR = 0.4, 95% CI = 0.2-0.9). There were no statistically significant associations with smoking or any other factors tested. Although some attenuation was observed in beef consumption, the observed associations were similar after excluding volunteer controls.


CONCLUSIONS
The introduction of the habit of daily beef consumption among Japanese immigrants and their descendants may be associated with stomach cancer risk. The protective effect of fruit consumption was confirmed in this population.
On the Usability of Lombardi Graph Drawings

A recent line of work in graph drawing studies Lombardi drawings, i.e., drawings with circular-arc edges and perfect angular resolution at vertices. Little is known about the effects of curved edges versus straight edges in typical graph reading tasks. In this paper we present the first user evaluation that empirically measures the readability of three different layout algorithms (traditional spring embedder and two recent near-Lombardi force-based algorithms) for three different tasks (shortest path, common neighbor, vertex degree). The results indicate that, while users prefer the Lombardi drawings, the performance data do not present such a positive picture.
Predictors of acceptance of offered care management intervention services in a quality improvement trial for dementia.

OBJECTIVE
Care management approaches have been proven to improve outcomes for patients with dementia and their family caregivers (dyads). However, acceptance of services in these programs is incomplete, impacting effectiveness. Acceptance may be related to dyad as well as healthcare system characteristics, but knowledge about factors associated with program acceptance is lacking. This study investigates patient, caregiver, and healthcare system characteristics associated with acceptance of offered care management services.


METHODS
This study analyzed data from the intervention arm of a cluster randomized controlled trial of a comprehensive dementia care management intervention. There were 408 patient-caregiver dyads enrolled in the study, of which 238 dyads were randomized to the intervention. Caregiver, patient, and health system factors associated with participation in offered care management services were assessed through bivariate and multivariate regression analyses.


RESULTS
Out of the 238 dyads, 9 were ineligible for this analysis, leaving data of 229 dyads in this sample. Of these, 185 dyads accepted offered care management services, and 44 dyads did not. Multivariate analyses showed that higher likelihood of acceptance of care management services was uniquely associated with cohabitation of caregiver and patient (p < 0.001), lesser severity of dementia (p = 0.03), and higher patient comorbidity (p = 0.03); it also varied across healthcare organization sites.


CONCLUSIONS
Understanding factors that influence care management participation could result in increased adoption of successful programs to improve quality of care. Using these factors to revise both program design as well as program promotion may also benefit external validity of future quality improvement research trials.