LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Alcohol intake and risk of Parkinson's disease: a meta-analysis of observational studies.

BACKGROUND
The association of alcohol intake with risk of Parkinson's disease remains unclear.


METHODS
Pertinent studies were identified in PubMed and EMBASE. The fixed-effect or random-effect model was selected based on heterogeneity. The dose-response relationship was assessed by restricted cubic splines.


RESULTS
We included 32 articles, involving 677,550 subjects (9994 cases). The smoking-adjusted risk of Parkinson's disease for the highest versus lowest level of alcohol intake was relative risk (RR) 0.78 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.67-0.92) overall, 0.86 (95% CI, 0.75-0.995) in prospective studies, and 0.74 (95% CI, 0.58-0.96) in matched case-control studies. A significant association was found with beer (0.59; 95% CI, 0.39-0.90) but not with wine and liquor, and for males (0.65; 95% CI, 0.47-0.90) after a sensitivity analysis but not for females. The risk of Parkinson's disease decreased by 5% (0.95; 95% CI, 0.89-1.02) for every 1 drink/day increment in alcohol intake in a linear (Pfor nonlinearity  = 0.85) dose-response manner.


CONCLUSIONS
Alcohol intake, especially beer, might be inversely associated with risk of Parkinson's disease
Long-term safety and tolerability of rotigotine transdermal system in patients with early-stage idiopathic Parkinson's disease: a prospective, open-label extension study.

PURPOSE
This prospective, open-label extension (SP702; NCT00594165) of a 6-month double-blind, randomized study investigated the long-term safety and tolerability of rotigotine transdermal system in early Parkinson's disease (PD).


METHODS
Patients with early-stage idiopathic PD received transdermal rotigotine for up to 6 years at optimal dose (up to 16 mg/24h). Adjunctive levodopa was allowed. Primary outcomes included adverse events (AEs) and extent of rotigotine exposure. Other outcomes included time to levodopa, incidence of dyskinesias, and efficacy using the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) II+III total score.


RESULTS
Of 217 patients entering the open-label study, 47% were still in the study upon closure; 24% withdrew because of AEs and 6% because of lack of efficacy. The median exposure to rotigotine was 1910 days (≈ 5 years, 3 months; range 1-2188 days). Most common AEs were somnolence (23% per patient-year), falls (17%), peripheral edema (14%), nausea (12%), and application site reactions (ASRs; 12%). 3% withdrew because of ASRs. 26% patients did not initiate levodopa; of those who did, fewer than half started levodopa in the first year. Dyskinesias were reported by 25% patients; the majority (83%) reported their first episode after initiating levodopa. Mean UPDRS II+III total scores remained below double-blind baseline for up to 2 years of open-label treatment.


CONCLUSION
This is the longest interventional study of rotigotine conducted to date. Transdermal rotigotine was generally well tolerated for up to 6 years; AEs reported were similar to those observed in shorter studies and led to discontinuation in only 24% patients.
Handwriting segmentation of unconstrained Oriya text

Segmentation of handwritten text into lines, words and characters is one of the important steps in the handwritten recognition system. For the segmentation of unconstrained Oriya handwritten text into individual characters, a water reservoir-concept based scheme is proposed in this paper. Here, at first, the text image is segmented into lines, and then lines are segmented into individual words, and words are segmented into individual characters. For line segmentation the document is divided into vertical stripes. Analyzing the heights of the water reservoirs obtained from different components of the document, the width of a stripe is calculated. Stripe-wise horizontal histograms are then computed and the relationship of the peak-valley points of the histograms is used for line segment. Based on vertical projection profile and structural features of Oriya characters, text lines are segmented into words. For character segmentation, at first, isolated and connected (touching) characters in a word are detected. Using structural, topological and water-reservoir-concept based features touching characters of the word are then segmented.
Goal-Directed Decision Making with Spiking Neurons

UNLABELLED
Behavioral and neuroscientific data on reward-based decision making point to a fundamental distinction between habitual and goal-directed action selection. The formation of habits, which requires simple updating of cached values, has been studied in great detail, and the reward prediction error theory of dopamine function has enjoyed prominent success in accounting for its neural bases. In contrast, the neural circuit mechanisms of goal-directed decision making, requiring extended iterative computations to estimate values online, are still unknown. Here we present a spiking neural network that provably solves the difficult online value estimation problem underlying goal-directed decision making in a near-optimal way and reproduces behavioral as well as neurophysiological experimental data on tasks ranging from simple binary choice to sequential decision making. Our model uses local plasticity rules to learn the synaptic weights of a simple neural network to achieve optimal performance and solves one-step decision-making tasks, commonly considered in neuroeconomics, as well as more challenging sequential decision-making tasks within 1 s. These decision times, and their parametric dependence on task parameters, as well as the final choice probabilities match behavioral data, whereas the evolution of neural activities in the network closely mimics neural responses recorded in frontal cortices during the execution of such tasks. Our theory provides a principled framework to understand the neural underpinning of goal-directed decision making and makes novel predictions for sequential decision-making tasks with multiple rewards.


SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT
Goal-directed actions requiring prospective planning pervade decision making, but their circuit-level mechanisms remain elusive. We show how a model circuit of biologically realistic spiking neurons can solve this computationally challenging problem in a novel way. The synaptic weights of our network can be learned using local plasticity rules such that its dynamics devise a near-optimal plan of action. By systematically comparing our model results to experimental data, we show that it reproduces behavioral decision times and choice probabilities as well as neural responses in a rich set of tasks. Our results thus offer the first biologically realistic account for complex goal-directed decision making at a computational, algorithmic, and implementational level.
Acute respiratory health effects of air pollution on children with asthma in US inner cities.

BACKGROUND
Children with asthma in inner-city communities may be particularly vulnerable to adverse effects of air pollution because of their airways disease and exposure to relatively high levels of motor vehicle emissions.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the association between fluctuations in outdoor air pollution and asthma morbidity among inner-city children with asthma.


METHODS
We analyzed data from 861 children with persistent asthma in 7 US urban communities who performed 2-week periods of twice-daily pulmonary function testing every 6 months for 2 years. Asthma symptom data were collected every 2 months. Daily pollution measurements were obtained from the Aerometric Information Retrieval System. The relationship of lung function and symptoms to fluctuations in pollutant concentrations was examined by using mixed models.


RESULTS
Almost all pollutant concentrations measured were below the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. In single-pollutant models, higher 5-day average concentrations of NO2, sulfur dioxide, and particles smaller than 2.5 microm were associated with significantly lower pulmonary function. Higher pollutant levels were independently associated with reduced lung function in a 3-pollutant model. Higher concentrations of NO2 and particles smaller than 2.5 microm were associated with asthma-related missed school days, and higher NO2 concentrations were associated with asthma symptoms.


CONCLUSION
Among inner-city children with asthma, short-term increases in air pollutant concentrations below the National Ambient Air Quality Standards were associated with adverse respiratory health effects. The associations with NO2 suggest that motor vehicle emissions may be causing excess morbidity in this population.
Surface from Scattered Points A Brief Survey of Recent Developments

The paper delivers a brief overview of recent developments in the field of surface reconstruction from scattered point data. The focus is on computational geometry methods, implicit surface interpolation techniques, and shape learning approaches.
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Seismic risk mapping for Germany

The aim of this study is to assess and map the seismic risk for Germany, restricted to the expected losses of damage to residential buildings. There are several earthquake prone regions in the country which have produced Mw magnitudes above 6 and up to 6.7 corresponding to observed ground shaking intensity up to VIII–IX (EMS-98). Combined with the fact that some of the earthquake prone areas are densely populated and highly industrialized and where therefore the hazard coincides with high concentration of exposed assets, the damaging implications from earthquakes must be taken seriously. In this study a methodology is presented and pursued to calculate the seismic risk from (1) intensity based probabilistic seismic hazard, (2) vulnerability composition models, which are based on the distribution of residential buildings of various structural types in representative communities and (3) the distribution of assets in terms of replacement costs for residential buildings. The estimates of the risk are treated as primary economic losses due to structural damage to residential buildings. The obtained results are presented as maps of the damage and risk distributions. For a probability level of 90% non-exceedence in 50 years (corresponding to a mean return period of 475 years) the mean damage ratio is up to 20% and the risk up to hundreds of millions of euro in the most endangered communities. The developed models have been calibrated with observed data from several damaging earthquakes in Germany and the nearby area in the past 30 years.
Mean value coordinates

Equation (1.1) expresses v0 as a convex combination of the neighbouring points v1, . . . , vk. In the simplest case k = 3, the weights λ1, λ2, λ3 are uniquely determined by (1.1) and (1.2) alone; they are the barycentric coordinates of v0 with respect to the triangle [v1, v2, v3], and they are positive. This motivates calling any set of non-negative weights satisfying (1.1–1.2) for general k, a set of coordinates for v0 with respect to v1, . . . , vk. There has long been an interest in generalizing barycentric coordinates to k-sided polygons with a view to possible multisided extensions of Bézier surfaces; see for example [8 ]. In this setting, one would normally be free to choose v1, . . . , vk to form a convex polygon but would need to allow v0 to be any point inside the polygon or on the polygon, i.e. on an edge or equal to a vertex. More recently, the need for such coordinates arose in methods for parameterization [2 ] and morphing [5 ], [6 ] of triangulations. Here the points v0, v1, . . . , vk will be vertices of a (planar) triangulation and so the point v0 will never lie on an edge of the polygon formed by v1, . . . , vk. If we require no particular properties of the coordinates, the problem is easily solved. Because v0 lies in the convex hull of v1, . . . , vk, there must exist at least one triangle T = [vi1 , vi2 , vi3 ] which contains v0, and so we can take λi1 , λi2 , λi3 to be the three barycentric coordinates of v0 with respect to T , and make the remaining coordinates zero. However, these coordinates depend randomly on the choice of triangle. An improvement is to take an average of such coordinates over certain covering triangles, as proposed in [2 ]. The resulting coordinates depend continuously on v0, v1, . . . , vk, yet still not smoothly. The
An Introduction to MCMC for Machine Learning

This purpose of this introductory paper is threefold. First, it introduces the Monte Carlo method with emphasis on probabilistic machine learning. Second, it reviews the main building blocks of modern Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation, thereby providing and introduction to the remaining papers of this special issue. Lastly, it discusses new interesting research horizons.
Pruning in Logic Programming

The logic programming community has a love{hate relationship with operators for pruning the search space of logic programs such as cut, commit, once, conditionals and variations on these. Pruning operators typically are not declarative, result in incom-pleteness and/or unsoundness, decrease readability and exibility of code and make program analysis and transformation more diicult. Despite this, nearly all non-trivial Prolog programs contain cuts, nearly all more recent logic programming languages have similar pruning operators and many languages insist on pruning operators in every clause. In practice, logic programming is less logical than functional programming. Why it this so? Do we really need pruning operators? Can we have suuciently powerful pruning operators which do not destroy the declarative semantics of programs? How are pruning operators related to logic, modes, functions and lazy evaluation? This paper attempts to answer some of these questions.
Collaborative writing: the effects of metacognitive prompting and structured peer interaction.

BACKGROUND
The structured system for peer assisted learning in writing named Paired Writing (Topping, 1995) incorporates both metacognitive prompting and scaffolding for the interactive process.


AIM
This study sought to evaluate the relative contribution of these two components to student gain in quality of writing and attitudes to writing, while controlling for amount of writing practice and teacher effects.


SAMPLE
Participants were 28 ten- and eleven-year-old students forming a problematic mixed ability class.


METHODS
All received training in Paired Writing and its inherent metacognitive prompting. Students matched by gender and pre-test writing scores were assigned randomly to Interaction or No Interaction conditions. In the Interaction condition, the more able writers became 'tutors' for the less able. In the No Interaction condition, the more able writers acted as controls for the tutors and the less able as controls for the tutees. Over six weeks, the paired writers produced five pieces of personal writing collaboratively, while children in the No Interaction condition did so alone.


RESULTS
On pre- and post-project analyses of the quality of individual writing, all groups showed statistically significant improvements in writing. However, the pre-post gains of the children who wrote interactively were significantly greater than those of the lone writers. There was some evidence that the paired writers also had more positive self-esteem as writers.


CONCLUSION
The operation and durability of the Paired Writing system are discussed.
Paradoxical hypertrichosis and terminal hair change after intense pulsed light hair removal therapy.

BACKGROUND
Although complications such as blister formation, erosion, and post-inflammatory hypo- and hyperpigmentation are well-known side effects of intense pulsed light (IPL) photoepilation, little is known about the paradoxical hypertrichosis after therapy.


OBJECTIVE
To report the paradoxically increased hair density and coarseness after IPL photoepilation.


METHODS
Within a period of 23 months, a total of 991 hirsute female patients were treated with IPL for photoepilation. The IPL system used was the Vasculight-SR, a multifunctional laser and IPL system (Lumenis Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA). The cut-off filters frequently used were 695, 755 and 645 nm.


RESULTS
Paradoxical hypertrichosis and terminal hair change were detected after a few sessions of IPL therapy among 51 out of 991 patients. Our serial digital photographs, schematic diagrams, and hair counts before and after treatment confirmed the patients' claims. The other more commonly seen complications were epidermal burning with blisters, erosion, and crust formation followed by post-inflammatory hypo- and/or hyperpigmentation.


CONCLUSION
Paradoxical hypertrichosis and terminal hair change is a common complication of IPL photoepilation.
A decentralized algorithm for spectral analysis

In many large network settings, such as computer networks, social networks, or hyperlinked text documents, much information can be obtained from the network's spectral properties. However, traditional centralized approaches for computing eigenvectors struggle with at least two obstacles: the data may be difficult to obtain (both due to technical reasons and because of privacy concerns), and the sheer size of the networks makes the computation expensive. A decentralized, distributed algorithm addresses both of these obstacles: it utilizes the computational power of all nodes in the network and their ability to communicate, thus speeding up the computation with the network size. And as each node knows its incident edges, the data collection problem is avoided as well.Our main result is a simple decentralized algorithm for computing the top k eigenvectors of a symmetric weighted adjacency matrix, and a proof that it converges essentially in O(τMIXlog2 n) rounds of communication and computation, where τMIX is the mixing time of a random walk on the network. An additional contribution of our work is a decentralized way of actually detecting convergence, and diagnosing the current error. Our protocol scales well, in that the amount of computation performed at any node in any one round, and the sizes of messages sent, depend polynomially on k, but not on the (typically much larger) number n of nodes.
The value of personal health records for chronic disease management: what do we know?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Electronic personal health records (PHRs) allow patients access to their medical records, self-management tools, and new avenues of communication with their health care providers. They will likely become a valuable component of the primary care Patient-centered Medical Home model. Primary care physicians, who manage the majority of chronic disease, will use PHRs to help patients manage their diabetes and other chronic diseases requiring continuity of care and enhanced information flow between patient and physician. In this brief report, we explore the evidence for the value of PHRs in chronic disease management.


METHODS
We used a comprehensive review of MEDLINE articles published in English between January 2000 and September 2010 on personal health records and related search terms.


RESULTS
Few published articles have described PHR programs designed for use in chronic disease management or PHR adoption and attitudes in the context of chronic disease management. Only three prospective randomized trials have evaluated the benefit of PHR use in chronic disease management, all in diabetes care. These trials showed small improvements in some but not all diabetes care measures. All three trials involved additional interventions, making it difficult to determine the influence of patient PHR use in improved outcomes.


CONCLUSIONS
The evidence remains sparse to support the value of PHR use for chronic disease management. With the current policy focus on meaningful use of electronic and personal health records, it is crucial to investigate and learn from new PHR products so as to maximize the clinical value of this tool.
INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF MICROBIAL XYLANASES: A REVIEW

Microbial enzymes such as xylanases enable new technologies for industrial processes. Xylanases (xylanolytic enzyme) hydrolyze complex polysaccharides like xylan. Research during the past few decades has been dedicated to enhanced production, purification, and characterization of microbial xylanase. But for commercial applications detailed knowledge of regulatory mechanisms governing enzyme production and functioning should be required. Since application of xylanase in the commercial sector is widening, an understanding of its nature and properties for efficient and effective usage becomes crucial. Study of synergistic action of multiple forms and mechanism of action of xylanase makes it possible to use it for bio-bleaching of kraft pulp and for desizing and bio-scouring of fabrics. Results revealed that enzymatic treatment leads to the enhancement in various physical properties of the fabric and paper. This review will be helpful in determining the factors affecting xylanase production and its potential industrial applications in textile, paper, pulp, and other industries.
Three traditions of network research: What the public management research agenda can learn from other research communities

This article identifies and describes the development of three parallel streams of literature about network theory and research: social network analysis, policy change and political science networks, and public management networks. Noting that these traditions have sometimes been inattentive to each other’s work, the authors illustrate the similarities and differences in the underlying theoretical assumptions, types of research questions addressed, and research methods typically employed by the three traditions. The authors draw especially on the social network analysis (sociological) tradition to provide theoretical and research insights for those who focus primarily on public management networks. The article concludes with recommendations for advancing current scholarship on public management networks.
Effects of stabilization exercise using a ball on mutifidus cross-sectional area in patients with chronic low back pain.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of lumbar stabilization exercises using balls to the effects of general lumbar stabilization exercises with respect to changes in the cross section of the multifidus (MF), weight bearing, pain, and functional disorders in patients with non-specific chronic low back pain. Twelve patients participated in either a 8 week (3 days per week) stabilization exercise program using balls and control group (n = 12). The computer tomography (CT) was used to analyze MF cross-sectional areas (CSA) and Tetrax balancing scale was used to analyze left and right weight bearing differences. Both groups had significant changes in the CSA of the MF by segment after training (p < 0.05) and the experimental group showed greater increases at the L4 (F = 9.854, p = 0.005) and L5 (F = 39. 266, p = 0.000). Both groups showed significant decreases in weight bearing, from 9.25% to 5.83% in the experimental group and from 9.33% to 4.25% in the control group (p < 0.05), but did not differ significantly between the two groups. These results suggests that stabilization exercises using ball can increases in the CSA of the MF segments, improvement in weight bearing, pain relief, and recovery from functional disorders, and the increases in the CSA of the MF of the L4 and L5 segments for patients with low back pain. Key PointsCompared with the stabilization exercise using a ball and general stabilization exercise increased the CSA of the MF, weight bearing, pain, and functional ability in patients with low back pain.We verified that increases in the CSA of the MF of the L4 and L5 segments and functional ability during the stabilization exercise using a ball.The stabilization exercise using a ball was shown to be an effective exercise method for patients with low back pain in a rehabilitation program by increasing functional ability and the CSA of the MF.