LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Efficiency of naproxen/esomeprazole in association for osteoarthrosis treatment in Spain.

OBJECTIVE
To assess, from the perspective of the National Healthcare System, the efficiency of a fixed-dose combination of naproxen and esomeprazole (naproxen/esomeprazole) in the treatment of osteoarthritis (OA) compared to other NSAID, alone or in combination with a proton pump inhibitor (PPI).


METHODS
A Markov model was used; it included different health states defined by gastrointestinal (GI) events: dyspepsia, symptomatic or complicated ulcer; or cardiovascular (CV) events: myocardial infarction, stroke or heart failure. The model is similar to the one used by NICE in its NSAID evaluation of OA published in 2008. The total costs (€, 2012), including drug and event-related costs, and the health outcomes expressed in quality-adjusted life years (QALY) were estimated in patients with increased GI risk, aged 65 or over, for a 1-year time horizon and a 6-month treatment with celecoxib (200mg/day), celecoxib+PPI, diclofenac (150mg/day)+PPI, etoricoxib (60mg/day), etoricoxib+PPI, ibuprofen (1,800mg/day)+PPI, naproxen (1,000mg/day)+PPI or naproxen/esomeprazole (naproxen 1,000mg/esomeprazole 40mg/day). The selected PPI was omeprazole (20mg/day).


RESULTS
Naproxen/esomeprazole was a dominant strategy (more effective and less costly) compared to celecoxib, etoricoxib and diclofenac+PPI. Celecoxib+PPI and etoricoxib+PPI were more effective. Considering a cost-effectiveness threshold of €30,000 per additional QALY, naproxen/esomeprazole was cost-effective compared to ibuprofen+PPI and naproxen+PPI with incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) of €15,154 and €5,202 per additional QALY, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
A fixed-dose combination of naproxen and esomeprazole is a cost-effective, and even dominant, alternative compared to other options in OA patients with increased GI risk.
A Probabilistic Interpretation of Canonical Correlation Analysis

We give a probabilistic interpretation of canonical correlation (CCA) analysis as a latent variable model for two Gaussian random vectors. Our interpretation is similar to the probabilistic interpretation of principal component analysis (Tipping and Bishop, 1999, Roweis, 1998). In addition, we cast Fisher linear discriminant analysis (LDA) within the CCA framework.
Storage-Awareness: RFID Private Authentication based on Sparse Tree

As the growing use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to enhance ubiquitous computing environments, the privacy protection problem becomes a crucial issue. The objective of private authentication for RFID systems is to allow valid readers explicitly authenticate their dominated tags without leaking tags' private information. To achieve strong privacy, recently, Lu et al. propose a Strong and lightweight RFID Private Authentication protocol (SPA), which enables dynamic key-updating mechanism for balanced tree based authentication approaches. However, due to its balanced tree structure, SPA is still susceptible to compromising attacks. In this paper, we propose a Storage-Aware Private Authentication protocol (SAPA). This scheme employs the sparse tree structure, and treats the path of each tag in the tree as an independent secret. As a result, SAPA enjoys perfect privacy and largely reduces the space for storing key sequence on the side of the tag, while keeping the key search complexity on the side of the reader still be logarithmic.
Two Decades of Recommender Systems at Amazon.com

Amazon is well-known for personalization and recommendations, which help customers discover items they might otherwise not have found. In this update to their original paper, the authors discuss some of the changes as Amazon has grown.
Self-reported depressive symptoms and stress levels in healthy young men: associations with the cortisol response to awakening.

OBJECTIVE
There is evidence that clinical depression and negative mood are associated with elevated basal cortisol levels. Recently, measuring the cortisol response during the first hour in the morning with strict reference to the time of awakening was established as a reliable marker of individual adrenocortical activity. In studies using this marker, a relationship with self-reported stress levels and psychosomatic symptoms has been found. The goal of the present study was to investigate the association of self-reported depressive symptomatology with early morning free cortisol levels and their relationship to measures of stress.


METHODS
We assessed the severity of depressive symptoms using the Hamilton Depression Inventory and chronic and acute stress perception in 40 healthy young men. Once a week, for 4 consecutive weeks, subjects provided saliva samples collected at 0, 30, and 60 minutes after awakening.


RESULTS
Higher levels of depressive symptomatology were associated with a greater cortisol response after awakening. This association seemed to be stronger when only subjects in the nonclinical range of depression were included. Furthermore, cortisol levels and depressive symptomatology were significantly positively correlated with measures of chronic and acute stress perception.


CONCLUSIONS
The present study extends earlier findings of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis hyperactivity in clinical depression to healthy young men with mild levels of depressive symptomatology. Measuring the cortisol response to awakening is proposed as an economical alternative to traditional approaches for determining basal hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis activity. Associations between depressive symptomatology and chronic stress, as well as implications for future studies, are discussed.
Distributed multimedia service composition with statistical QoS assurances

Service composition allows multimedia services to be automatically composed from atomic service components based on dynamic service requirements. Previous work falls short for distributed multimedia service composition in terms of scalability, flexibility and quality-of-service (QoS) management. In this paper, we present a fully decentralized service composition framework, called SpiderNet, to address the challenges. SpiderNet provides statistical multiconstrained QoS assurances and load balancing for service composition. Moreover, SpiderNet supports directed acyclic graph composition topologies and exchangeable composition orders. We have implemented a prototype of SpiderNet and conducted experiments on both wide-area networks and a simulation testbed. Our experimental results show the feasibility and efficiency of the SpiderNet service composition framework.
Astounding recovery after resection of an intradural nerve sheath tumor in an adult male from Vietnam

BACKGROUND
Spinal cord tumors can be classified as intramedullary, intradural extramedullary, or extradural. The differential diagnosis of spinal cord tumors includes meningiomas, astrocytomas, ependymomas, metastasis, nerve sheath tumors such as schwannomas or neurofibromas, and multiple sclerosis plaques. Radiology can provide clues to the type of tumor, but a pathology evaluation of a specimen is necessary to provide an accurate diagnosis. These tumors can cause a variety of neurological symptoms from spinal cord compression including pain, weakness, and paresthesia. They are treated by surgical resection, with a variety of outcomes possible depending on the severity of the preoperative symptoms, location and extent of the tumor, and efficacy of the surgery performed.


CASE DESCRIPTION
A 59-year-old male from Vietnam came to the Atlanta Medical Center for evaluation of severe ride sided hemiparesis and paresthesias. He first noticed alterations in his handwriting and quickly deteriorated to the point of being unable to walk or move his right arm. A cervical spinal mass was identified and analyzed on magnetic resonance imaging. Surgical resection was performed under a microscope in a joint operation between an orthopedic surgeon and neurosurgeon. A specimen of the tumor was sent to pathology for further evaluation.


CONCLUSION
The mass was determined to be an intradural extramedullary schwannoma. The severity of the patient's symptoms and the location and size of the tumor made full recovery unlikely and postoperative quadriplegia a real possibility. The tumor was surgically resected, which led surprisingly, however, to a full and prompt resolution of the patient's symptoms. Less than 2 weeks after surgery, the patient was able to walk and had almost fully regained use of his hands.
Understanding and classifying image tweets

Social media platforms now allow users to share images alongside their textual posts. These image tweets make up a fast-growing percentage of tweets, but have not been studied in depth unlike their text-only counterparts. We study a large corpus of image tweets in order to uncover what people post about and the correlation between the tweet's image and its text. We show that an important functional distinction is between visually-relevant and visually-irrelevant tweets, and that we can successfully build an automated classifier utilizing text, image and social context features to distinguish these two classes, obtaining a macro F1 of 70.5%.
Adaptive optimization for self: reconciling high performance with exploratory programming

iii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________________ L. Peter Deutsch I certify that I have read this dissertation and that in my opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Abstract Object-oriented programming languages confer many benefits, including abstraction, which lets the programmer hide the details of an object's implementation from the object's clients. Unfortunately, crossing abstraction boundaries often incurs a substantial run-time overhead in the form of frequent procedure calls. Thus, pervasive use of abstraction , while desirable from a design standpoint, may be impractical when it leads to inefficient programs. Aggressive compiler optimizations can reduce the overhead of abstraction. However, the long compilation times introduced by optimizing compilers delay the programming environment's responses to changes in the program. Furthermore, optimization also conflicts with source-level debugging. Thus, programmers are caught on the horns of two dilemmas: they have to choose between abstraction and efficiency, and between responsive programming environments and efficiency. This dissertation shows how to reconcile these seemingly contradictory goals by performing optimizations lazily. Four new techniques work together to achieve high performance and high responsiveness: • Type feedback achieves high performance by allowing the compiler to inline message sends based on information extracted from the runtime system. On average, programs run 1.5 times faster than the previous SELF system; compared to a commercial Smalltalk implementation, two medium-sized benchmarks run about three times faster. This level of performance is obtained with a compiler that is both simpler and faster than previous SELF compilers. • Adaptive optimization achieves high responsiveness without sacrificing performance by using a fast non-optimizing compiler to generate initial code while automatically recompiling heavily used parts of the program with an optimizing compiler. On a previous-generation workstation like the SPARCstation-2, fewer than 200 pauses exceeded 200 ms during a 50-minute interaction, and 21 pauses exceeded one second. …
Ratings of perceived exertion in braille: validity and reliability in production mode.

OBJECTIVES
(a) To assess the validity and reliability of producing and reproducing a given exercise intensity during cycle ergometry using a braille version of Borg's standard 6-20 rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scale, and (b) to determine whether the exercise responses of blind participants, at a given produced RPE, were similar to those reported in recognised guidelines for sighted subjects.


METHODS
Ten healthy registered blind volunteer participants (four women, six men; mean (SD) age 23.2 (9.0) years) performed an initial graded exercise cycle test to determine maximal heart rate (HRMAx) and maximal oxygen uptake (VO2MAX). Three trials of three exercise bouts at RPEs 9, 11, and 13 were then performed in random order on three separate days of the same week, with expired air and heart rate measured continuously. Each exercise bout was followed by 10 minutes of rest. The validity of the scale as a means of producing different exercise intensities was assessed using a two factor (RPE x trial) repeated measures analysis of variance. Intertrial reliability was assessed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and the bias +/-95% limits of agreement (95%LoA) procedure.


RESULTS
Participants reported no difficulty in using the braille RPE scale. When asked to produce exercise intensities equating to RPE 9, 11, and 13, they elicited mean %VO2MAX values of 47%, 53%, and 63% respectively. Analysis of variance showed no significant differences in either %HRMAx or %VO2MAX between trials at each of the three RPEs, but there was a significant difference (p<0.001) in both %HRMAx and %VO2MAX between the three RPE levels. All pairwise comparisons of the three different RPEs were significantly different (p<0.016). The ICC between the second and third trial for %HRMAx was significant (p <0.05) for all three RPEs. Similarly for %VO2MAX, the ICC was significant for RPE 9 and 11 but not 13. The 95%LoA decreased for both %HRMAx and %VO2MAX with each successive trial.


CONCLUSIONS
Blind participants were successful in using a braille RPE scale to differentiate exercise intensity on a cycle ergometer. In every trial at RPE 13, all participants achieved %HRMAX and %VO2MAX levels, which fell within the recommendedrange for developing cardiorespiratory fitness. Using %HRMAx as a judge of intertrial reliability, the participants were able to repeat similar exercise intensities after two trials at each of the three RPEs (9, 11,13). The same was true for RPE 9 and 11, when %VO2MAX was used as a judge, but further trials were required to achieve similar reliability at RPE 13. A braille RPE scale can be used by healthy blind people during cycle ergometry, with similar effect to the visual analogue scale recommended for use in healthy sighted people.
Partial differential equation-based approach for removal of chromatic aberration with local characteristics

bstract. We propose a chromatic aberration (CA) reduction techique that removes artifacts caused by lateral CA and longitudinal A, simultaneously. In general, most visible CA-related artifacts apear locally in the neighborhoods of strong edges. Because these rtifacts usually have local characteristics, they cannot be removed ell by regular global warping methods. Therefore, we designed a onlinear partial differential equation (PDE) in which the local charcteristics of the CA are taken into account. The proposed algorithm stimates the regions with apparent CA artifacts and the ratios of the agnitudes between the color channels. Using this information, the roposed PDE matches the gradients of the edges in the red and lue channels to the gradient in the green channel, which results in n alignment of the positions of the edges while simultaneously perorming a deblurring process on the edges. Experimental results how that the proposed method can effectively remove even signifiant CA artifacts, such as purple fringing as identified by the image ensor. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm chieves better performance than existing algorithms. © 2010 SPIE nd IS&T. DOI: 10.1117/1.3494278
Integrated ecological-economic modelling and assessment aproach for coastal ecosystem management

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Sciences and 
Technology, New University of Lisbon, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Sciences
Yield and economic return of vegetable crops under variable irrigation

 Field experiments were conducted for 2 years (1997 and 1998) on sandy loam soil in northwestern Botswana to study the effect of five levels of pan evaporation replenishment (20, 40, 60, 80 and 100%) on marketable yield, yield components, irrigation production efficiency and economic return of winter broccoli, carrot, rape and cabbage under a drip irrigation method. The highest mean marketable yield (2 years) of broccoli (19.1 t/ha), carrot (58.9 and 32.9 t/ha), rape (61.8 t/ha) and cabbage (97.2 t/ha) was recorded at 80% of pan evaporation replenishment. The irrigation production efficiency of broccoli (5.9 kg/m3), rape (14.6 kg/m3) and cabbage (23.6 kg/m3) was maximum at 80, 20 and 60% of pan evaporation replenishment respectively. Irrigation replenishment up to 80% of pan evaporation loss did not influence the irrigation production efficiency for total and root yield of carrot. The results revealed that a further increase in irrigation amount resulting from 100% of pan evaporation replenishment did not increase the marketable yield of crops but reduced the irrigation production efficiency significantly. The seasonal water applied and marketable yield of broccoli, carrot, rape and cabbage showed quadratic relationships (R 2 = 0.85–0.98), which can be used for allocating irrigation water within and between the crops. The net return increased with the increase in pan evaporation replenishment. The results revealed that the rape crop is the most remunerative, followed by cabbage, broccoli and carrot.
Comparison of two surgical methods for the treatment of CIN: classical LLETZ (large-loop excision of the transformation zone) versus isolated resection of the colposcopic apparent lesion – study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND
In compliance with national and international guidelines, non-pregnant women with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 should be treated by cervical conization. According to the definition of the large loop excision of the transformation zone (LLETZ) operation, the lesion needs to be resected, including the transformation zone. It is well known from the literature that the cone size directly correlates with the risk of preterm delivery in the course of a future pregnancy. Thus, it would be highly desirable to keep the cone dimension as small as possible while maintaining the same level of oncological safety.


METHODS/DESIGN
The aim of this study is to analyze whether resection of the lesion only, without additional excision of the transformation zone, is equally as effective as the classical LLETZ operation regarding oncological outcome. We are performing this prospective, patient-blinded multicenter trial by randomly assigning women who need to undergo a LLETZ operation for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 to either of the following two groups at a ratio of 1:1: (1) additional resection of the transformation zone or (2) resection of the lesion only. To evaluate equal oncological outcome, we are performing human papillomavirus (HPV) tests 6 and 12 months postoperatively. The study is designed to consider the lesion-only operation as oncologically not inferior if the rate of HPV high-risk test results is not higher than 5 % compared with the HPV high-risk rate of women undergoing the classical LLETZ operation.


DISCUSSION
In case that non-inferiority of the "lesion-only" method can be demonstrated, this operation should eventually become standard treatment for all women at childbearing age due to the reduction in risk of preterm delivery.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS) Identifier: DRKS00006169 . Date of registration: 30 July 2014.
Mokken Scale Analysis for Dichotomous Items Using Marginal Models

Scalability coefficients play an important role in Mokken scale analysis. For a set of items, scalability coefficients have been defined for each pair of items, for each individual item, and for the entire scale. Hypothesis testing with respect to these scalability coefficients has not been fully developed. This study introduces marginal modelling as a framework to derive the standard errors for the scaling coefficients and test hypotheses about these coefficients. Several examples demonstrate the possibilities of marginal modelling in Mokken scale analysis. These possibilities include testing whether Mokken's criteria for a scale are satisfied, testing whether scalability coefficients of different items are equal, and testing whether scalability coefficients are equal across different groups.
Efficacy of an artificial tear emulsion in patients with dry eye associated with meibomian gland dysfunction

OBJECTIVES
The aim of the study reported here was to assess the efficacy of an artificial tear emulsion for the treatment of dry eye associated with meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD).


METHODS
At five clinics, patients completed a 1-week treatment with their habitual topical therapy and then a 4-week treatment with open-label study medication: Systane® Balance Lubricant Eye Drops (Alcon, Alcon Inc, Fort Worth, TX, USA). Subjective assessments included a preference survey, the Impact of Dry Eye in Everyday Life questionnaire, and the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire. Objective assessments by unmasked investigators included visual acuity, meibomian gland expression and dropout, tear film breakup time, corneal staining, and dosing frequency.


RESULTS
At baseline, the 49 patients had mean meibomian gland expression grades and gland dropout that indicated mild to moderate MGD. Patients administered their habitual therapy 2.5 ± 1.3 times per day. After 4 weeks of study medication, the Impact of Dry Eye in Everyday Life questionnaire results indicated statistically and clinically significant improvements. Fewer than half of the participants were employed, limiting the usefulness of the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire. Visual acuity remained statistically similar, while corneal staining and tear film breakup time improved significantly (P < 0.05) but modestly. The outcomes were achieved with 1.9 ± 1.1 doses per day of study medication, a significantly lower frequency than the habitual frequency (P < 0.001). The most common medication-related adverse event was blurred vision (3/49 patients, 6.1%). At study conclusion, 27/44 (61.4%) survey respondents preferred the study medication to their habitual therapy.


CONCLUSION
The artificial tear emulsion was effective for treating the signs and symptoms of dry eye in MGD patients.