LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Variation in pediatric traumatic brain injury outcomes in the United States.

OBJECTIVE
To ascertain the degree of variation, by state of hospitalization, in outcomes associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a pediatric population.


DESIGN
A retrospective cohort study of pediatric patients admitted to a hospital with a TBI.


SETTING
Hospitals from states in the United States that voluntarily participate in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project.


PARTICIPANTS
Pediatric (age ≤ 19 y) patients hospitalized for TBI (N=71,476) in the United States during 2001, 2004, 2007, and 2010.


INTERVENTIONS
None.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Primary outcome was proportion of patients discharged to rehabilitation after an acute care hospitalization among alive discharges. The secondary outcome was inpatient mortality.


RESULTS
The relative risk of discharge to inpatient rehabilitation varied by as much as 3-fold among the states, and the relative risk of inpatient mortality varied by as much as nearly 2-fold. In the United States, approximately 1981 patients could be discharged to inpatient rehabilitation care if the observed variation in outcomes was eliminated.


CONCLUSIONS
There was significant variation between states in both rehabilitation discharge and inpatient mortality after adjusting for variables known to affect each outcome. Future efforts should be focused on identifying the cause of this state-to-state variation, its relationship to patient outcome, and standardizing treatment across the United States.
How can we maximize nursing students' learning about research evidence and utilization in undergraduate, preregistration programmes? A discussion paper.

AIM
This article presents a discussion on how to maximize nursing students' learning about research for evidence-based practice in undergraduate, preregistration programmes.


BACKGROUND
Evidence-based practice may use information from many sources, including research. Research utilization concerns the translation of research findings into practice. Thus, while evidence-base practice may not be solely research-based and hence more than research utilization, research remains an important ingredient in ensuring quality and cost-effective care and an academic requirement for nursing students undertaking a science degree-level qualification. Nevertheless, how educators can best support research-related learning and application remains uncertain and requires discussion.


DATA SOURCES
MEDLINE, CINAHL, Social Science Citation Index, British Nursing Index, and Intute were searched for papers published 1980-2011 using the following search terms: research, research utilization, evidence-based practice, learning, teaching, education, training, nursing, health, and social care.


DISCUSSION
Nursing students need to be able to value the relevance, authority, and utility of nursing research for patient care through embedding research learning in both academic and practice-based settings. Students can be supported in learning how to access, understand, and appraise the authority of research through weaving these skills into enquiry-based learning. Furthermore, encouraging students to undertake research-based practice change projects can support research utilization and development skills.


CONCLUSION
Research should be fully embedded throughout nursing curricula beyond the confines of 'research classes', integrating learning in academic and practice-based settings. Although this requires synergistic and integrated support of student learning by nurse educators, managers, clinical practitioners, researchers and policymakers; nurse educators have a pivotal role.
Nocturnal temperature controlled laminar airflow for treating atopic asthma: a randomised controlled trial

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether environmental control using nocturnal temperature controlled laminar airflow (TLA) treatment could improve the quality of life of patients with persistent atopic asthma.


DESIGN
Randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial. Setting Nineteen European asthma clinics.


PARTICIPANTS
312 patients aged 7-70 with inadequately controlled persistent atopic asthma.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Proportion of patients with an increase of ≥0.5 points in asthma quality of life score after 1 year of treatment.


RESULTS
TLA devices were successfully installed in the bedrooms of 282 (90%) patients included in the primary efficacy analysis. There was a difference in treatment response rate between active (143 of 189, 76%) and placebo (56 of 92, 61%) groups, difference 14.8% (95% CI 3.1 to 26.5, p=0.02).3 In patients aged ≥12, on whom the study was powered, the difference in response rate was similar-active 106 of 143 (74%), placebo 42 of 70 (60%), difference 14.1% (0.6 to 27.7, p=0.059). There was a difference between groups in fractional exhaled nitric oxide change of -7.1 ppb (-13.6 to -0.7, p=0.03). Active treatment was associated with less increase in cat-specific IgE than placebo. There was no difference in adverse event rates between treatment groups.


CONCLUSION
Inhalant exposure reduction with TLA improves quality of life, airway inflammation and systemic allergy in patients with persistent atopic asthma. TLA may be a treatment option for patients with inadequately controlled persistent atopic asthma. Trial registration number Clinical Trials NCT00986323.
Working Locally Thinking Globally - Part II: Stability and Algorithms for Convolutional Sparse Coding

Abstract—The convolutional sparse model has recently gained increasing attention in the signal and image processing communities, and several methods have been proposed for solving the pursuit problem emerging from it – in particular its convex relaxation, Basis Pursuit. In the first of this two-part work, we have provided a theoretical back-bone for this model, providing guarantees for the uniqueness of the sparsest solution and for the success of pursuit algorithms by introducing the notion of stripe sparsity and other related measures. Herein, we extend the analysis to a noisy regime, thereby considering signal perturbations and model deviations. We address questions of stability of the sparsest solutions and the success of pursuit algorithms, both greedy and convex. Classical definitions such as the RIP are generalized to the convolutional model, and existing notions such as the ERC are connected to our setting. On the algorithmic side, we demonstrate how to solve the global pursuit problem by using simple local processing, thus offering a first of its kind bridge between global modeling of signals and their patch-based local treatment.
Visual Lisp/CLOS programming in OpenMusic

OpenMusic (OM) is a visual programming language developed on top of Common Lisp and CLOS, in which most of the functional and object-oriented programming concepts can be implemented and carried out graphically. Although this visual language was designed for musical applications, the focus in this paper is to describe and study OM as a complete general-purpose programming environment.
Techniques for the Computation of Galois Groups

Galois theory stands at the cradle of modern algebra and interacts with many areas of mathematics. The problem of determining Galois groups therefore is of interest not only from the point of view of number theory (for example see the article [39] in this volume), but leads to many questions in other areas of mathematics. An example is its application in computer algebra when simplifying radical expressions [32].
Vitamin D and cardiovascular disease prevention

Vitamin D is a precursor of the steroid hormone calcitriol that is crucial for bone and mineral metabolism. Both the high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the general population and the identification of the vitamin D receptor in the heart and blood vessels raised interest in the potential cardiovascular effects of vitamin D. Experimental studies have demonstrated various cardiovascular protective actions of vitamin D, but vitamin D intoxication in animals is known to induce vascular calcification. In meta-analyses of epidemiological studies, vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increased cardiovascular risk. Findings from Mendelian randomization studies and randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) do not indicate significant effects of a general vitamin D supplementation on cardiovascular outcomes. Previous RCTs, however, were not adequately designed to address extraskeletal events, and did not focus on vitamin D-deficient individuals. Therefore, currently available evidence does not support cardiovascular benefits or harms of vitamin D supplementation with the commonly used doses, and whether vitamin D has cardiovascular effects in individuals with overt vitamin D deficiency remains to be evaluated. Here, we provide an update on clinical studies on vitamin D and cardiovascular risk, discuss ongoing vitamin D research, and consider the management of vitamin D deficiency from a cardiovascular health perspective.
Effectiveness and scaling trends of leakage control techniques for sub-130nm CMOS technologies

This paper compares the effectiveness of different leakage control techniques in deep submicron (DSM) bulk CMOS technologies. Simulations show that the 3-5x increase in IOFF/mm per generation is offsetting the savings in switching energy obtained from technology scaling. We compare both the transistor IOFF reduction and ION degradation due to each technique for the 130nm-70nm technologies. Our results indicate that the effectiveness of leakage control techniques and the associated energy vs. delay tradeoffs depend on the ratio of switching to leakage energies for a given technology. We use our findings to design a 70nm low power word line driver scheme for a 256 entry, 64-bit register file (RF). As a result, the leakage (total) energy of the word line drivers is reduced by 3x(2.5x) and for the RF by up to 35%(25%) respectively.
Comparison of two different injection rates of gadoxetic acid for arterial phase MRI of the liver.

PURPOSE
To compare two different injection rates for gadoxetic acid-enhanced hepatic arterial phase images on hepatic dynamic MRI.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Hepatic arterial phase images were obtained after an intravenous bolus injection of gadoxetic acid at a rate of 1 mL/second in 62 patients and 2 mL/second in 64 patients on a 3 Tesla MR scanner using a test-bolus injection method. The signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) of the liver, portal vein, hepatic vein, aorta, spleen and pancreas were measured. The contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of hypervascular hepatic tumors was calculated. Two radiologists independently scored items to evaluate image quality of hepatic arterial phase and detected hypervascular hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).


RESULTS
The SNR of the aorta on the arterial phase images was significantly higher in the 1 mL/second group (235.43 +/- 82.59) than in the 2 mL/second group (190.94 +/- 96.90, P < 0.05). The SNRs of the liver, spleen and pancreas, the CNRs of hypervascular hepatic tumors, the detection rate of hypervascular HCC and subjective ratings for the optimal arterial enhancement were comparable between the two groups.


CONCLUSION
Injection rates of 2 mL/second and 1 mL/second provided comparable image qualities on arterial phase images of hepatic dynamic MRI using gadoxetic acid.
Venlafaxine and bladder function.

BACKGROUND
Occasional case reports describe urinary incontinence in patients taking the selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor antidepressant venlafaxine.


OBJECTIVE
In this study the authors investigated the possible effect of venlafaxine on urinary function in a series of 9 patients with urinary retention resulting from spinal cord lesions. They primarily sought to understand whether the reported venlafaxine-induced urinary incontinence was a specific drug-induced effect and, if so, whether venlafaxine might be an effective treatment of urinary retention.


METHODS
During a 1-week baseline period, patients measured postvoiding residual volume through a catheter and recorded the number of micturitions within 24 hours. At the end of the baseline period, venlafaxine 75 mg extended-release on a once-daily evening administration schedule was added to their therapy for 1 week.


RESULTS
None of the patients reported severe/uncontrollable side effects while taking venlafaxine. Extended-release venlafaxine (75 mg/day) significantly reduced the postvoiding residual volume and increased the micturition rate; the volume diminished on the first day of treatment and remained stable over the ensuing days.


CONCLUSION
These findings suggest that venlafaxine could be useful to improve voiding in patients with spinal cord disease.
Massive Open Online Courses in Public Health

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) represent a new and potentially transformative model for providing educational opportunities to learners not enrolled in a formal educational program. The authors describe the experience of developing and offering eight MOOCs on a variety of public health topics. Existing institutional infrastructure and experience with both for-credit online education and open educational resources mitigated the institutional risk and resource requirements. Although learners are able to enroll easily and freely and do so in large numbers, there is considerable variety in the level of participation and engagement among enrollees. As a result, comprehensive and accurate assessment of meaningful learning progress remains a major challenge for evaluating the effectiveness of MOOCs for providing public health education.
Enhancing rigour in the validation of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs): bridging linguistic and psychometric testing

BACKGROUND
A strong consensus exists for a systematic approach to linguistic validation of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) and discrete methods for assessing their psychometric properties. Despite the need for robust evidence of the appropriateness of measures, transition from linguistic to psychometric validation is poorly documented or evidenced. This paper demonstrates the importance of linking linguistic and psychometric testing through a purposeful stage which bridges the gap between translation and large-scale validation.


FINDINGS
Evidence is drawn from a study to develop a Welsh language version of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and investigate its psychometric properties. The BDI-II was translated into Welsh then administered to Welsh-speaking university students (n = 115) and patients with depression (n = 37) concurrent with the English BDI-II, and alongside other established depression and quality of life measures. A Welsh version of the BDI-II was produced that, on administration, showed conceptual equivalence with the original measure; high internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.90; 0.96); item homogeneity; adequate correlation with the English BDI-II (r = 0.96; 0.94) and additional measures; and a two-factor structure with one overriding dimension. Nevertheless, in the student sample, the Welsh version showed a significantly lower overall mean than the English (p = 0.002); and significant differences in six mean item scores. This prompted a review and refinement of the translated measure.


CONCLUSIONS
Exploring potential sources of bias in translated measures represents a critical step in the translation-validation process, which until now has been largely underutilised. This paper offers important findings that inform advanced methods of cross-cultural validation of PROMs.
On clustering RSS fingerprints for improving scalability of performance prediction of indoor positioning systems

We previously developed an analytical model in [8] to predict the precision and accuracy performance of indoor positioning systems using location fingerprints. A by-product of the model is the ability to eliminate unnecessary fingerprints to reduce the number of fingerprints in a radio map for comparison without loss in performance. This model enables computation of an approximate probability distribution of location selection, by employing a proximity graph to extract neighbor and non-neighbor sets of a given fingerprint. However, employing the model 'as is' in a system with many location fingerprints requires determining a single large proximity graph derived from all location fingerprints which may involve significant computational effort. In this paper, we consider two techniques to divide location fingerprints into smaller clusters. Separate proximity graphs for each cluster are now used to predict performance and eliminate unnecessary location fingerprints. Results show that the computational effort can be reduced, creating a more scalable analytical model, while still predicting and enabling good precision performance.
The effects of a sports nutrition education intervention on nutritional status, sport nutrition knowledge, body composition, and performance in NCAA Division I baseball players

Background Maintaining energy balance by consuming the required distribution of macronutrients (nutritional status) is important to support performance and health in collegiate athletes; however, less than 10% of NCAA athletes possess adequate sports nutrition knowledge or maintain nutritional status (Torres-McGehee et al., 2012). A recent study demonstrated that a sports nutrition education intervention (SNEI) improved nutritional knowledge and nutritional status in Division I volleyball players. This study investigated the effects of an SNEI on nutritional status, knowledge, body composition, and performance in NCAA Division I baseball players.
Low Resolution Single Neural Network Based Face Recognition

This research paper deals with the implementation of face recognition using neural network (recognition classifier) on lowresolution images. The proposed system contains two parts, preprocessing and face classification. The preprocessing part converts original images into blurry image using average filter and equalizes the histogram of those image (lighting normalization). The bi-cubic interpolation function is applied onto equalized image to get resized image. The resized image is actually low-resolution image providing faster processing for training and testing. The preprocessed image becomes the input to neural network classifier, which uses backpropagation algorithm to recognize the familiar faces. The crux of proposed algorithm is its beauty to use single neural network as classifier, which produces straightforward approach towards face recognition. The single neural network consists of three layers with Log sigmoid, Hyperbolic tangent sigmoid and Linear transfer function respectively. The training function, which is incorporated in our work, is Gradient descent with momentum (adaptive learning rate) back propagation. The proposed algorithm was trained on ORL (Olivetti Research Laboratory) database with 5 training images. The empirical results provide the accuracy of 94.50%, 93.00% and 90.25% for 20, 30 and 40 subjects respectively, with time delay of 0.0934 sec per image. Keywords—Average filtering, Bicubic Interpolation, Neurons, vectorization.
Detecting Pelvic Contractions
*Honyman Gillespie Lecture, Edinburgh, 27th February 1941.


Since the time of Deventer the size and shape of the female Pelvis have been studied again and again ; on this basic knowledge much of the present-day science of obstetrics is built. The subject is old, but even now as new facts come to light and new methods of investigation become available, the knowledge can be put to ever fuller and better use. In recent years it has been somewhat fashionable to decry the ^alue of pelvic measurements?the misinterpretation of which has been responsible for so much meddlesome midwifery and to trust more and more to what has become known as the method ?f " trial-labour." I do not now intend to enter into a discussion of this topic : it is, however, not unfair to say that extensive use of trial-labour amounts to an admission of inability to foretell the probable course of events in individual cases. There is little doubt that the main cause of this uncertainty lies in the difficulty of obtaining accurate measurements, and secondly, of understanding the significance of the observed variations of pelvic size and structure.
Phytomedicines and Nutraceuticals: Alternative Therapeutics for Sickle Cell Anemia

Sickle cell anemia is a genetically inherited disease in which the "SS" individual possesses an abnormal beta globin gene. A single base substitution in the gene encoding the human β -globin subunit results in replacement of β 6 glutamic acid by valine, leading to the devastating clinical manifestations of sickle cell disease. This substitution causes drastic reduction in the solubility of sickle cell hemoglobin (HbS) when deoxygenated. Under these conditions, the HbS molecules polymerize to form long crystalline intracellular mass of fibers which are responsible for the deformation of the biconcave disc shaped erythrocyte into a sickle shape. First-line clinical management of sickle cell anemia include, use of hydroxyurea, folic acid, amino acids supplementation, penicillinprophylaxis, and antimalarial prophylaxis to manage the condition and blood transfusions to stabilize the patient's hemoglobin level. These are quite expensive and have attendant risk factors. However, a bright ray of hope involving research into antisickling properties of medicinal plants has been rewarding. This alternative therapy using phytomedicines has proven to not only reduce crisis but also reverse sickling (in vitro). The immense benefits of phytomedicines and nutraceuticals used in the management of sickle cell anemia are discussed in this paper.
Multi-task Sequence to Sequence Learning

• TranslaCon improvement with liQle parsing / capCon data. • State-of-the-art consCtuent parsing. • TranslaCon: (Luong et al., 2015) – WMT English ⇄ German: 4.5M examples. • Parsing: (Vinyals et al., 2015a) – Penn Tree Bank (PTB): 40K examples. – High Confidence (HC): 11M examples. • CapCon: (Vinyals et al., 2015b) – 600K examples. • Unsupervised: auto-encoders & skip-thought – 12.1M English and 13.8M German examples. • Setup: (Sutskever et al., 2014), a@en-on-free – 4-layer deep LSTMs: 1000-dim cells/embeddings. Can we benefit from mulit-task seq2seq learning?
Software Safety: Why, What, and How

Software safety issues become important when computers are used to control real-time, safety-critical processes. This survey attempts to explain why there is a problem, what the problem is, and what is known about how to solve it. Since this is a relatively new software research area, emphasis is placed on delineating the outstanding issues and research topics.