LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
A randomized, open-label trial of iron isomaltoside 1000 (Monofer®) compared with iron sucrose (Venofer®) as maintenance therapy in haemodialysis patients

BACKGROUND
Iron deficiency anaemia is common in patients with chronic kidney disease, and intravenous iron is the preferred treatment for those on haemodialysis. The aim of this trial was to compare the efficacy and safety of iron isomaltoside 1000 (Monofer®) with iron sucrose (Venofer®) in haemodialysis patients.


METHODS
This was an open-label, randomized, multicentre, non-inferiority trial conducted in 351 haemodialysis subjects randomized 2:1 to either iron isomaltoside 1000 (Group A) or iron sucrose (Group B). Subjects in Group A were equally divided into A1 (500 mg single bolus injection) and A2 (500 mg split dose). Group B were also treated with 500 mg split dose. The primary end point was the proportion of subjects with haemoglobin (Hb) in the target range 9.5-12.5 g/dL at 6 weeks. Secondary outcome measures included haematology parameters and safety parameters.


RESULTS
A total of 351 subjects were enrolled. Both treatments showed similar efficacy with >82% of subjects with Hb in the target range (non-inferiority, P = 0.01). Similar results were found when comparing subgroups A1 and A2 with Group B. No statistical significant change in Hb concentration was found between any of the groups. There was a significant increase in ferritin from baseline to Weeks 1, 2 and 4 in Group A compared with Group B (Weeks 1 and 2: P < 0.001; Week 4: P = 0.002). There was a significant higher increase in reticulocyte count in Group A compared with Group B at Week 1 (P < 0.001). The frequency, type and severity of adverse events were similar.


CONCLUSIONS
Iron isomaltoside 1000 and iron sucrose have comparative efficacy in maintaining Hb concentrations in haemodialysis subjects and both preparations were well tolerated with a similar short-term safety profile.
On finding multi-constrained paths

New emerging distributed multimedia applications provide guaranteed end-to-end quality of service (QoS) and have stringent constraints on delay, delay-jitter, cost, etc. The task of QoS routing is to find a route in the network which has sufficient resources to satisfy the constraints. The delaycost-constrained routing problem is NP-complete. We propose a heuristic algorithm for this problem. The idea is to first reduce the NP-complete problem to a simpler one which can be solved in polynomial time, and then solve the new problem by either an extended Dijkstra’s algorithm or an extended Bellman-Ford algorithm. We prove the correctness of our algorithm by showing that a solution for the simpler problem must also be a solution for the original problem. The performance of the algorithm is studied by both theoretical analysis and simulation.
Automated and Portable Native Code Isolation

The coexistence of programs written in a safe language with user-supplied unsafe (native) code is convenient (it enables direct access to hardware and operating system resources and can improve application performance), but at the same time it is problematic (it leads to undesirable interference with the language runtime, decreases overall reliability, and lowers debuggability). This work aims at retaining most of the benefits of interfacing a safe language with native code while addressing its problems. It is carried out in the context of the JavaTM Native Interface (JNI). Our approach is to execute the native code in an operating system process different from that of the safe language application. A technique presented in this paper accomplishes this transparently, automatically, and without sacrificing any of the JNI functionality. No changes to the Java virtual machine (JVMTM) or its runtime are necessary. The resulting prototype does not depend on a particular implementation of the JVM, and is highly portable across hardware architectures and operating systems. This approach can readily be used to improve reliability of applications consisting of a mix of safe and native code; to enable the execution of user-supplied native code in multitasking systems based on safe languages and in embedded virtual machines; and to facilitate mixed-mode debugging, without the need to re-implement any of the components of the language runtime. The design and implementation of a prototype system, performance implications, and the potential of this architecture are discussed in the paper.
Adult N orills for the Box and Block Test of Manual Dexterity ( hand evaluation , hand , motor skills , occupational therapy , tests )

The Box and Block Test, a test of manual dexterity, has been used by occupational therapists and others to evaluate physically handicapped individuals. Because the test lacked normative data for adults, the results of the test have been interpreted subjectively. The purpose of this study was to develop normative data for adults. Test subjects were 628 Normal adults (310 males and 318 females)from the seven-county Milwaukee area. Data on males and females 20 to 94 years old were divided into 12 age groups. Means, standard deviations, standard error, and low and high scores are reported for each five-year age group. These data will enable clinicians to objectively compare a patient's score to a normal population parameter. Occupational therapists are frequently involved with increasing the manual dexterity of their patients. Often, these patients are unable to perform tests offine manual or finger dexterity, such as the Purdue Pegboard Test or the Crawford Small Parts Dexterity Test. Tests of manual dexterity, such as the Minnesota Rate of Manipulation Test, have limited clinical application because a) they require lengthy administration time, b) a standardized standing position must be used for testing, and c) the tests use normative samples that poorly represent the wide range of clinical patients. Because of the limitations of such standardized tests, therapists often evaluate dexterity subjectively. The Box and Block Test has been suggested as a measure of gross manual dexterity (1) and as a prevocational test for handicapped people (2). Norms have been collected on adults with neuromuscular involvement (2) and on normal children (7, 8, and 9 years old) (3). Standardized instructions along with reliability and validity data, are reported in the literature (2,3), but there are no norms for the normal adult population. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to collect normative data for adults. Methods
The rediscovery of the Villa Gamberaia in images and projects of the early 1900s

Abstract The garden of Villa Gamberaia occupies a prominent place in the early twentieth-century historiography of Italian gardens, such that it even challenges the primacy of what Sir George Sitwell called the sacred triad of Villa d'Este, Villa Lante and the Giardino Giusti at Verona.1 As Charles Latham wrote: From the moment that you pass the gate, with its sentinel cypresses, the impression is one of such perfect loveliness that at last, by force of contrast, the mind goes back to strong Caprarola or tragic Este, only to turn once more to bathe in the perfection of the Tuscan villa.2 In this paper, I shall try to capture the secrets of this fatal attraction by drawing upon the reflections of some of the most important writers and scholars in the field in the first part of the century.
Effects of age of second-language learning on the production of English consonants

This study examined the production of English consonants by native speakers of Italian. The 240 adult native Italian speakers of English who participated had begun learning English when they emigrated to Canada between the ages of 2 and 23 years. Wordinitial, word-medial and word-final tokens of English stops and fricatives were assessed through forced-choice judgments made by native English-speaking listeners, and acoustically. The native Italian subjects' ages of learning (AOL) English exerted a systematic effect on their production of English consonants even though they had lived in Canada for an average of 32 years, and reported speaking English more than Italian. In all but two instances, one or more native Italian subgroup defined on the basis of AOL differed significantly from subjects in a native English (NE) control group. The AOL of the first native Italian subgroup to differ from the NE subjects varied across consonant and syllable position. The results are discussed in terms of hypotheses proposed in the a b Purchase Export literature concerning the basis of segmental errors in L2 speech production.
Privacy-preserving data publishing for cluster analysis

Releasing person-specific data could potentially reveal sensitive information about individuals. k-anonymization is a promising privacy protection mechanism in data publishing. Although substantial research has been conducted on k-anonymization and its extensions in recent years, only a few prior works have considered releasing data for some specific purpose of data analysis. This paper presents a practical data publishing framework for generating a masked version of data that preserves both individual privacy and information usefulness for cluster analysis. Experiments on real-life data suggest that by focusing on preserving cluster structure in the masking process, the cluster quality is significantly better than the cluster quality of the masked data without such focus. The major challenge of masking data for cluster analysis is the lack of class labels that could be used to guide the masking process. Our approach converts the problem into the counterpart problem for classification analysis, wherein class labels encode the cluster structure in the data, and presents a framework to evaluate the cluster quality on the masked data. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Incorporating Discrete Translation Lexicons into Neural Machine Translation

Neural machine translation (NMT) often makes mistakes in translating low-frequency content words that are essential to understanding the meaning of the sentence. We propose a method to alleviate this problem by augmenting NMT systems with discrete translation lexicons that efficiently encode translations of these low-frequency words. We describe a method to calculate the lexicon probability of the next word in the translation candidate by using the attention vector of the NMT model to select which source word lexical probabilities the model should focus on. We test two methods to combine this probability with the standard NMT probability: (1) using it as a bias, and (2) linear interpolation. Experiments on two corpora show an improvement of 2.0-2.3 BLEU and 0.13-0.44 NIST score, and faster convergence time. 1
Passive Investment Strategies and Efficient Markets

This paper presents the case for and the evidence in favour of passive investment strategies and examines the major criticisms of the technique. I conclude that the evidence strongly supports passive investment management in all markets—smallcapitalisation stocks as well as large-capitalisation equities, US markets as well as international markets, and bonds as well as stocks. Recent attacks on the efficient market hypothesis do not weaken the case for indexing.
Pouch of Douglas pelvic hernia: a rare entity managed laparoscopically

Pouch of Douglas hernias are uncommon forms of pelvic hernia. They are most commonly seen in multiparous, elderly women and those having undergone previous pelvic surgery (Stamatiou et al. in Am Surg 76(5):474–479, 2010). Herein, we present a case of a 77-year-old female presenting with groin pain due to a Pouch of Douglas hernia. She had no previous abdominal or pelvic surgery. This was repaired via a trans-abdominal pre-peritoneal approach and the patient’s symptoms resolved. To our knowledge, this is the first case report in the literature of an idiopathic Pouch of Douglas hernia managed laparoscopically.
Lumpectomy margins, reexcision, and local recurrence of breast cancer.

BACKGROUND
The diagnosis of breast cancer is often made by excisional biopsy without margin assessment for mammographic findings or palpable masses. Many patients treated with breast conservation undergo reexcision to obtain clear margins although the relationship between clear margins and local recurrence remains controversial.


METHODS
Patients undergoing breast conservation and adjuvant radiation therapy with complete follow-up over 5 years were studied. Factors associated with obtaining clear histopathologic margins and undergoing reexcision to obtain clear margins were studied in relation to the risk of local recurrence.


RESULTS
Clear biopsy margins were associated with diagnosis by fine-needle aspiration cytology (fine-needle aspiration 42%, spot localization 11%, excisional biopsy 10%; P <0.001). Reexcision was significantly related to diagnostic method (spot localization 63%, excisional biopsy 36%, fine-needle aspiration 10%; P <0.001), first margin status (clear 0%, close 11%, positive 46%, unknown 48%; P <0.001), patient age (54 years for reexcised patients and 58 for non-reexcised patients; P <0.001), and tumor size (mean tumor size 1. 4 cm for reexcised patients and 1.7 cm for non-reexcised patients; P = 0.003). Patients undergoing reexcision were significantly more likely to be diagnosed by spot localization, have nonnegative excisional biopsy margins, be younger, and have smaller tumors than patients not undergoing reexcision. Local recurrence was not significantly related to margin status (8% with clear margins, 7% with positive margins, 19% with close margins, and 11% with unknown margins) or reexcision (10% local recurrence rate for patients with negative final margins after reexcision and 12% with positive, close or unknown first margin without reexcision). Estrogen receptor status was the only variable related to local recurrence in Cox proportional hazards model (P = 0.009). Estrogen receptor negative patients with nonnegative margins experienced a 20% rate of local recurrence compared with 10% for estrogen receptor negative patients with negative margins and 7% for estrogen receptor positive patients regardless of margin status (P = 0.021).


CONCLUSIONS
Clear excision margins are facilitated by preoperative diagnosis by fine-needle cytology. For patients with nonnegative margins, reexcision was more commonly performed in young patients with small tumors diagnosed by spot localization biopsy. The relationship of local recurrence to margins and reexcision was not statistically significant. Estrogen receptor negative tumors with nonnegative margins had a significantly higher rate of local recurrence than estrogen receptor negative tumors with clear margins and estrogen receptor positive tumors regardless of margin status.
Novel class of medications, orexin receptor antagonists, in the treatment of insomnia – critical appraisal of suvorexant

Insomnia, a highly prevalent disorder, can be detrimental to patients' overall health and worsen existing comorbidities. Patients may have acute episodes of insomnia related to a traumatic event, but more commonly insomnia occurs chronically. While proper sleep hygiene and behavioral therapy play important roles in the nonpharmacologic management of short-term and chronic insomnia, medications may also be required. Historically, insomnia has been treated with agents such as benzodiazepines, nonbenzodiazepine receptor agonists, and melatonin agonists. Dual orexin receptor antagonists represent a new class of medications for the treatment of insomnia, which block the binding of wakefulness-promoting neuropeptides orexin A and orexin B to their respective receptor sites. Suvorexant (Belsomra) is the first dual orexin receptor antagonist to be approved in the US and Japan and has demonstrated efficacy in decreasing time to sleep onset and increasing total sleep time. Its unique mechanism of action, data to support efficacy and safety over 12 months of use, and relative lack of withdrawal effects when discontinued may represent an alternative for patients with chronic insomnia who cannot tolerate or do not receive benefit from more traditional sleep agents. Suvorexant is effective and well tolerated, but precautions exist for certain patient populations, including females, obese patients, and those with respiratory disease. Suvorexant has only been studied vs placebo, and hence it is unknown how it directly compares with other medications approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for insomnia. Suvorexant is not likely to replace benzodiazepines or nonbenzodiazepine receptor antagonists as a first-line sleep agent but does represent a novel option for the treatment of patients with chronic insomnia.
Occupational hearing loss in teachers: a probable diagnosis.

UNLABELLED
Teachers frequently report auditory symptoms and excessive noise in classrooms, but noise level measurements are not done routinely. Study model - a prospective clinical trial.


AIM
To study auditory symptoms and audiometric exams of teachers and classroom noise levels.


MATERIAL AND METHOD
Data from two groups, GI (40 teachers) and GII (40 voluntaries) were studied as follows: age, gender, working conditions, audiometric exams, and classroom noise levels.


RESULTS
In GI there were more females (86%), working in basic teaching (75%), in classes with 21-40 students (70%), with workloads between 26 and 40 hours per week (47%), and variable professional teaching time. Most teachers in GI reported excessive classroom noise (93.5%) and auditory symptoms (65%). In GI, 25% of teachers presented audiometric alterations (versus 10% of controls), with an acoustic notch predominating (11.25%; p<0.05). Noise levels close to 87dBA were recorded in classes at all teaching levels.


CONCLUSIONS
occupational hearing loss may occur in teachers. Further studies are needed to confirm this proposition.
Antisolvent membrane crystallization of pharmaceutical compounds.

This article describes a modification of the conventional membrane crystallization technique in which a membrane is used to dose the solvent/antisolvent composition to generate supersaturation and induce crystallization in a drug solution. Two operative configurations are proposed: (a) solvent/antisolvent demixing crystallization, where the solvent is removed in at higher flow rate than the antisolvent so that phase inversion promotes supersaturation and (b) antisolvent addition, in which the antisolvent is dosed into the crystallizing drug solution. In both cases, solvent/antisolvent migration occurs in vapor phase and it is controlled by the porous membrane structure, acting on the operative process parameters. This mechanism is different than that observed when forcing the liquid phases through the pores and the more finely controllable supersaturated environment would generate crystals with the desired characteristics. Two organic molecules of relevant industrial implication, like paracetamol and glycine, were used to test the new systems. Experiments demonstrated that, by using antisolvent membrane crystallization in both configurations, accurate control of solution composition at the crystallization point has been achieved with effects on crystals morphology.
Heart failure biomarkers in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy.

BACKGROUND
We set out to evaluate the utility of selected heart failure (HF) biomarkers in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).


METHODS
In a prospective, randomized study, 68 DCM patients with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) ≤ 40% treated optimally were included. They were observed for 5 years. Initial and control tests included full clinical examination, measurement of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin 6 (IL-6) and IL-10, syndecan-4, cystatin C (CysC) and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), echocardiographic examination, and the assessment of exercise capacity in 6-minute walk test (6MWT).


RESULTS
Finally, after 5-year follow-up we analyzed the data of 45 DCM patients. Concentration of syndecan-4 correlated negatively with LVEF (R=-0.36, p=0.02) and positively with LV systolic (R=0.57, p<0.001) and diastolic diameters (R=0.64, p<0.001). A positive correlation between CysC and right ventricular diastolic diameter (R=0.38, p=0.01), and negative correlations between CysC and glomerular filtration rate (R=-0.49, p<0.001), LVEF (R=-0.4, p=0.02), and 6 MWT (R=-0.46, p<0.001) were noted. Patients who had an increase in LVEF during 5 years were characterized by lower levels of CysC (p=0.01) and NT-proBNP (p<0.001). CysC≤95mg/l and NT-proBNP≤32pg/ml were the best predictors of LVEF increase in DCM patients. Multivariate regression analysis showed that 6 MWT was the only independent predictor of HF re-hospitalization (OR 0.989; p<0.001), and NT-proBNP and LV diastolic diameter were the only risk factors of increased mortality (OR 1.001; p=0.007 and OR 2.960; p=0.025, respectively) in DCM patients.


CONCLUSIONS
CysC correlates negatively with both kidney function and exercise capacity. Syndecan-4 may be a useful biomarker for predicting adverse LV remodeling in DCM patients.
Importance of early insulin secretion: comparison of nateglinide and glyburide in previously diet-treated patients with type 2 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE
This study compared the effects of nateglinide, glyburide, and placebo on postmeal glucose excursions and insulin secretion in previously diet-treated patients with type 2 diabetes.


RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled multicenter study was conducted in 152 patients who received either nateglinide (120 mg before three meals daily, n = 51), glyburide (5 mg q.d. titrated to 10 mg q.d. after 2 weeks, n = 50), or placebo (n = 51) for 8 weeks. Glucose, insulin, and C-peptide profiles during liquid meal challenges were measured at weeks 0 and 8. At weeks -1 and 7, 19-point daytime glucose and insulin profiles, comprising three solid meals, were measured.


RESULTS
During the liquid-meal challenge, nateglinide reduced the incremental glucose area under the curve (AUC) more effectively than glyburide ( = -4.94 vs. -2.71 mmol. h/l, P < 0.05), whereas glyburide reduced fasting plasma glucose more effectively than nateglinide ( = -2.9 vs. -1.0 mmol/l, respectively, P < 0.001). In contrast, C-peptide induced by glyburide was greater than that induced by nateglinide ( = +1.83 vs. +0.95 nmol. h/l, P < 0.01), and only glyburide increased fasting insulin levels. During the solid meal challenges, nateglinide and glyburide elicited similar overall glucose control ( 12-h incremental AUC = -13.2 vs. -15.3 mmol. h/l), but the insulin AUC induced by nateglinide was significantly less than that induced by glyburide ( 12-h AUC = +866 vs. +1,702 pmol. h/l, P = 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrated that nateglinide selectively enhanced early insulin release and provided better mealtime glucose control with less total insulin exposure than glyburide.