LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Technical problems and complications in the removal of the less invasive stabilization system.

OBJECTIVES
This study was designed to evaluate the frequency of intraoperative problems and complications involved with Less Invasive Stabilization System (LISS) plate removal.


DESIGN
Retrospective study.


SETTING
Single academic level I trauma center.


METHODS
Medical records were reviewed for demographics, surgical technique, plate length, number and position of screws, time from internal fixation to plate removal, reason for removal, operating time for removal, and perioperative complications. Pre- and post-op radiographs were also reviewed to confirm plate and screw positions. The independent factors including age, sex, plate site, plate screws placed/available holes, union status, and time from internal fixation to removal were compared between patients in whom screw removal was complicated to those in whom screw removal proceeded without difficulty. Mann-Whitney and Fisher Exact tests were calculated with the level of significance at P < 0.05.


RESULTS
There were 33 patients (24 men and 9 women) that underwent LISS plate removal from 36 extremities (15 tibias and 21 femurs). The average time from internal fixation to removal was 13.2 months. The plates removed were 13-hole plates (16 cases), 9-hole plates (18 cases), and 5-hole plates (2 cases), which included a total of 349 screws. The specific reasons for plate removal were symptomatic implants after bone union (21 cases), nonunion requiring additional fixation (12 cases), early loss of fixation (2 cases), and a peri-implant fracture after bone union (1 case). The average operating time for plate removal was 71.3 minutes (range, 28-180 minutes). Five cases required more than 120 minutes. Difficulty with screw removal was encountered in 37 screws (10.6%) from 14 cases (38.9%). Two plates and 11 screw heads required cutting using a carbide or diamond tipped burr. Six cases required tearing the plate off bone by levering with a total of 10 screws still attached. Five screws were cut using a large bolt cutter. The other screws were stripped and removed with a stripped screw removal tap. Two patients developed a postoperative superficial wound infection that required treatment with oral antibiotics. One patient had a postoperative peroneal nerve palsy that recovered spontaneously. There were no statistical differences in predictors for patients with screw removal difficulty.


CONCLUSIONS
Difficulty with removal due to cold welding or screw head stripping is common in locking LISS plate screws. LISS plate removal can often require prolonged operating time and the use of specialized removal tools. Surgeons should anticipate the possibility of difficulties when removing these implants and be appropriately prepared.
Antimalarial and antioxidant activities of methanolic extract of Nigella sativa seeds (black cumin) in mice infected with Plasmodium yoelli nigeriensis

The antimalarial and antioxidant activities of methanolic extract of Nigella sativa seeds (MENS) were investigated against established malaria infection in vivo using Swiss albino mice. The antimalarial activity of the extract against Plasmodium yoelli nigeriensis (P. yoelli) was assessed using the Rane test procedure. Chloroquine (CQ)-treated group served as positive control. The extract, at a dose of 1.25 g/kg body weight significantly (p < 0.05) suppressed P. yoelli infection in the mice by 94%, while CQ, the reference drug, produced 86% suppression when compared to the untreated group after the fifth day of treatment. P. yoelli infection caused a significant (p < 0.05) increase in the levels of red cell and hepatic malondialdehyde (MDA), an index of lipid peroxidation (LPO) in the mice. Serum and hepatic LPO levels were increased by 71% and 113%, respectively, in the untreated infected mice. Furthermore, P. yoelli infection caused a significant (p < 0.05) decrease in the activities of superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione-S-transferase and the level of reduced glutathione in tissues of the mice. Treatment with MENS significantly (p < 0.05) attenuated the serum and hepatic MDA levels in P. yoelli-infected mice. In addition, MENS restored the activities of red cell antioxidant enzymes in the infected mice to near normal. Moreover, MENS was found to be more effective than CQ in parasite clearance and, in the restoration of altered biochemical indices by P. yoelli infection. These results suggest that N. sativa seeds have strong antioxidant property and, may be a good phytotherapeutic agent against Plasmodium infection in malaria.
Credit risk assessment with a multistage neural network ensemble learning approach

In this study, a multistage neural network ensemble learning model is proposed to evaluate credit risk at the measurement level. The proposed model consists of six stages. In the first stage, a bagging sampling approach is used to generate different training data subsets especially for data shortage. In the second stage, the different neural network models are created with different training subsets obtained from the previous stage. In the third stage, the generated neural network models are trained with different training datasets and accordingly the classification score and reliability value of neural classifier can be obtained. In the fourth stage, a decorrelation maximization algorithm is used to select the appropriate ensemble members. In the fifth stage, the reliability values of the selected neural network models (i.e., ensemble members) are scaled into a unit interval by logistic transformation. In the final stage, the selected neural network ensemble members are fused to obtain final classification result by means of reliability measurement. For illustration, two publicly available credit datasets are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed multistage neural network ensemble model. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A novel electromechanical autoinjector, AutoTouch™, for self-injection of etanercept: real-world use and benefits.

OBJECTIVES
We assessed the ability of patients with autoimmune inflammatory diseases to successfully use the investigational AutoTouch™ reusable autoinjector as well as patient preference for AutoTouch™ versus the currently marketed single-use prefilled etanercept SureClick® autoinjector.


METHODS
Two multicenter studies were performed: a Home Use Study and a Patient Preference Study. In the Home Use Study, 77 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or psoriatic arthritis self-administered etanercept once weekly for 5 weeks. The primary end point was successful self-injection of etanercept via AutoTouch™. The Patient Preference Study was an open-label, randomized, 8-week crossover trial (4 weeks for each device) in 216 patients with RA or psoriasis (PsO). The primary end point was preference for AutoTouch™ versus SureClick®.


RESULTS
In the Home Use Study, the proportion of successful self-injections with AutoTouch™ during weeks 1 through 5 was 97.8% (95% CI, 96.3‒99.3). In the Patient Preference Study, patients had a preference rate for AutoTouch™ of 41.7% (95% CI, 34.9-48.4) overall, 43.5% (95% CI, 35.5‒51.6) for patients with RA, and 36.8% (95% CI, 24.3‒49.4) for patients with PsO. Needle apprehension was not different at initiation of the autoinjectors, nor was there a difference between the injectors after 4 weeks. Overall, patients preferred AutoTouch™ for ease of self-injecting, ease of pressing the start button, ease of following injection progress, and certainty of knowing when the injection was completed. SureClick® was preferred for fewer steps and experiencing less injection site discomfort or pain.


CONCLUSION
The introduction of the AutoTouch™ will give patients a choice between two different autoinjectors for self-administration of etanercept.
Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.
Evaluation of the efficacy and safety of ramelteon in subjects with chronic insomnia.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate efficacy and safety of ramelteon (MT1/MT2-receptor [corrected] agonist) in subjects with chronic primary insomnia.


METHODS
Randomized, multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of nightly ramelteon treatment (8 mg or 16 mg) in adults (N=405) with primary chronic insomnia (DSM-IV-TR). Latency to persistent sleep (LPS), TST, sleep efficiency, wake time after sleep onset, and number of awakenings were measured by polysomnography. Subject-reported measures were also assessed.


RESULTS
LPS at Week 1 (primary measure) was significantly shorter with ramelteon 8 mg (32.2 min) or 16 mg (28.9 min) vs placebo (47.9 min; p <0.001). Significant improvements in LPS were maintained at Weeks 3 and 5. TST was significantly longer with both doses of ramelteon at Week 1 (p <0.001) vs placebo. Subject-reported sleep latency was significantly shorter with ramelteon 8 mg at Weeks 1, 3, and 5 (p <0.001) and ramelteon 16 mg at Weeks 1 and 3 (p < or =0.050) vs placebo. Wake time after sleep onset and number of awakenings were not significantly different with ramelteon 8 mg or 16 mg treatment vs placebo. Subjective TST was significantly longer with ramelteon 8 mg at Weeks 1, 3, and 5 (p < or =0.050) and ramelteon 16 mg at Week 1 (p = 0.003) vs placebo. Ramelteon had no clinically meaningful effect on sleep architecture, next-morning psychomotor tasks, alertness, or ability to concentrate. No withdrawal or rebound effects were observed.


CONCLUSIONS
Ramelteon reduced LPS over 5 weeks of treatment in subjects with chronic insomnia, with no clinically meaningful sleep architecture alterations, next-morning residual pharmacologic effects, and no evidence of rebound insomnia or withdrawal. No numerical differences were observed between the 2 doses of ramelteon.
Critical Review of Receptor Modelling for 3 Particulate Matter : A Case Study of India 4 5

Publisher Rights Statement: NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Atmospheric Environment . Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Atmospheric Environment 49 (2012) 1-12 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2011.11.060
Reply to "Comment on `Properties of the massive Thirring model from the XYZ spin chain' "

We elaborate in more detail why the lattice calculation by Kolanovic et al., Phys. Rev. D 62, 025021 (2000), was done correctly and argue that increasing the number of sites is not expected to change our conclusions about the mass spectrum.
A Scheduling Technique Providing a Strict Isolation of Real-time Threads

Highly dynamic programming environments for embedded real-time systems require a strict isolation of real-time threads from each other to achieve dependable systems. We propose a new real-time scheduling technique, called guaranteed percentage (GP) scheme that assigns each thread a specific percentage of the processor power. A hardware scheduler in conjunction with a multithreaded processor guarantees the execution of instructions of each thread according to their assigned percentages within a time interval of 100 processor cycles. We compare performance and implementation overhead of GP scheduling against fixed priority preemptive (FPP), earliest deadline first (EDF), and least laxity first (LLF) scheduling using several benchmarks on our Komodo microcontroller that features a multithreaded Java processor kernel. Our evaluations show that GP scheduling reaches a speed-up similar to EDF and FPP but worse than LLF. However, its hardware implementation costs are still reasonable, whereas the LLF overhead is prohibitive. Only GP reaches the isolation goal among the examined scheduling schemes.
Intervention to prevent falls on the medical service in a teaching hospital.

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate an intervention to prevent falls at a hospital.


DESIGN
A quasi-experimental intervention with historical and contemporaneous control groups.


SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS
Nursing staff and patients in the medicine service (comprising 2 intervention floors and 2 control floors) at an academic hospital.


INTERVENTION
Nursing staff were educated regarding fall prevention during the period from April through December 2005. Data on implemented prevention strategies were collected on control and intervention floors. Mean monthly fall rates were compared over time and between intervention and control floors, using repeated-measures analysis of variance.


RESULTS
Postintervention fall knowledge test scores for the nursing staff were greater than preintervention test scores (mean postintervention test score, 91%; mean preintervention test score, 72%; P < .001). Use of prevention strategies was greater on intervention floors than it was on control floors, including patient education via pamphlets (46% vs 15%; P < .001), use of toileting schedules (36% vs 25%; P = .016), and discussion of high-risk medications (51% vs 30%; P < .001). The mean fall rate for the first 5 months of the intervention was 43% less than that for the 9-month preintervention period for intervention floors (3.81 falls per 1,000 patient-days vs 6.64 falls per 1,000 patient-days; P = .043). Comparisons of mean rates for the overall 9-month intervention period versus the 9-month preintervention period showed a 23% difference in the fall rate for intervention floors, but this did not reach statistical significance (5.09 falls per 1,000 patient-days vs 6.64 falls per 1,000 patient-days; P = .182).


CONCLUSION
The nursing staff's knowledge and use of prevention strategies increased. Fall rates decreased for 5 months after the educational intervention, but the reduction was not sustained.
An improved optically based PD detection system for continuous on-line monitoring of HV cables

An optically-based remote sensing technique using a laser source, polarization scrambler, standard single mode fibers, fiber polarizer, electro-optic (EO) modulator and optical receiver, for continuous on-line monitoring of partial discharges (PD) in high voltage cable joints is proposed. Both the fiber polarizer and EO modulator, which are placed near cable joints, are passive without any power requirements. An EO modulator with no electrical bias, which operates close to the half-intensity point, was used and proved to have much better light transmission performance and higher measurement sensitivity than the bias modulator approach investigated earlier. Various multiplexing techniques including optical switches and a fused fiber coupler have been investigated in order to implement multi-channel monitoring so that one laser source can be used to provide light to several fibers. The revised PD optical remote sensing technique has been applied to practical PD measurements on both 132 kV cable joint at the University of Southampton in the UK and 400 kV cable joints at Sudkabel GmbH in Germany. Obtained results have verified the principle and demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed technique.
tscount: An R package for analysis of count time series following generalized linear models

The R package tscount provides likelihood-based estimation methods for analysis and modeling of count time series following generalized linear models. This is a flexible class of models which can describe serial correlation in a parsimonious way. The conditional mean of the process is linked to its past values, to past observations and to potential covariate effects. The package allows for models with the identity and with the logarithmic link function. The conditional distribution can be Poisson or Negative Binomial. An important special case of this class is the so-called INGARCH model and its log-linear extension. The package includes methods for model fitting and assessment, prediction and intervention analysis. This paper summarizes the theoretical background of these methods. It gives details on the implementation of the package and provides simulation results for models which have not been studied theoretically before. The usage of the package is illustrated by two data examples. Additionally, we provide a review of R packages which can be used for count time series analysis. This includes a detailed comparison of tscount to those packages.
The Gregory Thesis Visits the Tropics

A concern about large, export-orientated projects relates to the flows of foreign exchange into the domestic economy that they produce. These flows occur both during the investment phase of the project and subsequently during its operational phase, through export earnings. Foreign exchange inflows produce direct benefits for some groups, but may also indirectly harm others, through an appreciation of the real exchange rate. These indirect outcomes, known as the ‘Gregory effect’ in Australia and as the ‘Dutch disease’ or ‘booming sector’ effect elsewhere, are studied in this paper in the context of a large infrastructure project in Laos.
Knowledge of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, cervical cancer, and HPV vaccine and its correlates among medical students in Southwest China: a multi-center cross-sectional survey.

BACKGROUND
Since cervical cancer can be prevented and controlled through human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, it is important to train health care providers and provide them with appropriate knowledge. This study aimed to understand the level of HPV related knowledge among medical students and correlates in Southwest China in order to address any potential gap in their knowledge base.


METHODS
We conducted a cross-sectional survey among medical students in six selected universities across Southwest China based on a pretested questionnaire regarding HPV infection, cervical cancer, and HPV vaccines.


RESULTS
We successfully surveyed 1, 878 medical students, of whom 32.1% were males and 67.9% were females. Their mean age was 20.8 (standard deviation: 1.3) years. 91.8% of them were ethnic Han Chinese, and 43.8% were students in clinical medicine. While 76.5% had heard of HPV only 48.8% knew that the prevention of cervical cancer was possible through HPV vaccination. Only 42.9% of the male and 49.2% of the female students correctly answered over 10 out of 22 questions on HPV related knowledge. Female students appeared to know more about HPV and HPV vaccination (OR: 1.39; 95% CI: 1.11-1.75). In addition, the student knowledge improved with the grade (p<0.001). University courses were the most selected source of knowledge about HPV vaccination (66.4%). 83.6% of males and 91.4% of females were willing to have more HPV related education by experts (p<0.001). Only 10.1% of the students acknowledged that people had asked for their advice regarding HPV vaccination.


CONCLUSIONS
Our survey indicates that medical students from Southwest China have poor knowledge of HPV and HPV vaccination, but are willing to receive more relevant information. Targeted education should be incorporated into school courses to inform these future health care providers and ensure success of programs for cervical cancer control and prevention.
Off-label use of cardiovascular medications in children hospitalized with congenital and acquired heart disease.

BACKGROUND
Many barriers exist to conducting pediatric cardiovascular (CV) trials, and the majority of therapies used are not evidence based. Recent legislation has aimed to stimulate pediatric research and improve drug labeling. This study describes off-label use of CV medications in children hospitalized with congenital and acquired CV disease.


METHODS AND RESULTS
The 2005 Pediatric Health Information System database was queried for patients with CV International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision codes who received CV medications. Off-label use (patient younger than US Food and Drug Administration-approved age) was described. Multivariate analysis used Poisson regression to model the number of CV drugs received off-label. There were 31,432 patients included (median age, 10.4 months; interquartile range, 30 days to 6.8 years). Congenital heart disease (67%) was the most common diagnosis. Other diagnoses included hypertension, arrhythmia, myocarditis/cardiomyopathy, pulmonary hypertension, rheumatic fever/endocarditis, and heart transplant. Seventy-eight percent received > or = 1 CV medication off-label, and 31% received > or = 3 CV medications off-label. The most commonly used CV medications were furosemide, epinephrine, dopamine, lidocaine, and milrinone. The latter 3 (prescribed in 69% of patients) were used off-label in all cases. Medications studied under recent federal initiatives were prescribed in only 20% of patients, and were still used off-label 62% of the time. In multivariate analysis, heart transplant recipients (odds ratio 1.7; 95% CI 1.5 to 1.9) were most likely to receive a greater number of off-label CV medications.


CONCLUSIONS
Despite recent legislation, off-label use of CV medications in the pediatric population is common. These data highlight the need for further study to determine which treatments should be used more frequently and which are unsafe or ineffective in children hospitalized with CV disease.
Fully Polynomial-Time Parameterized Computations for Graphs and Matrices of Low Treewidth

We investigate the complexity of several fundamental polynomial-time solvable problems on graphs and on matrices, when the given instance has low treewidth; in the case of matrices, we consider the treewidth of the graph formed by non-zero entries. In each of the considered cases, the best known algorithms working on general graphs run in polynomial time; however, the exponent of the polynomial is large. Therefore, our main goal is to construct algorithms with running time of the form poly(<i>k</i>)ṡ <i>n</i> or poly(<i>k</i>)ṡ <i>n</i>log <i>n</i>, where <i>k</i> is the width of the tree decomposition given on the input. Such procedures would outperform the best known algorithms for the considered problems already for moderate values of the treewidth, like <i>O</i>(<i>n</i><sup>1/<i>c</i></sup>) for a constant <i>c</i>.
 Our results include the following:
 — an algorithm for computing the determinant and the rank of an <i>n</i>×<i>n</i> matrix using <i>O</i>(<i>k</i><sup>3</sup>ṡ<i>n</i>) time and arithmetic operations;
 —an algorithm for solving a system of linear equations using <i>O</i>(<i>k</i><sup>3</sup>ṡ<i>n</i>) time and arithmetic operations;
 —an <i>O</i>(<i>k</i><sup>3</sup>ṡ<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>)-time randomized algorithm for finding the cardinality of a maximum matching in a graph;
 —an <i>O</i>(<i>k</i><sup>4</sup>ṡ<i>n</i> log<sup>2</sup> <i>n</i>)-time randomized algorithm for constructing a maximum matching in a graph;
 —an <i>O</i>(<i>k</i><sup>2</sup>ṡ<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>)-time algorithm for finding a maximum vertex flow in a directed graph.
 Moreover, we give an approximation algorithm for treewidth with time complexity suited to the running times as above. Namely, the algorithm, when given a graph <i>G</i> and integer <i>k</i>, runs in time <i>O</i>(<i>k</i><sup>7</sup>ṡ<i>n</i> log <i>n</i>) and either correctly reports that the treewidth of <i>G</i> is larger than <i>k</i>, or constructs a tree decomposition of <i>G</i> of width <i>O</i>(<i>k</i><sup>2</sup>).
 The above results stand in contrast with the recent work of Abboud et al. (SODA 2016), which shows that the existence of algorithms with similar running times is unlikely for the problems of finding the diameter and the radius of a graph of low treewidth.