LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Swelling and Gelatinization of Oat Starches

A comparison was made between the structure and physicochemical properties of starches extracted from five normal and one naked cultivar of oat. There was little difference in the molecular size or polydispersity of the native amylose and amylopectin determined by gel permeation chromatography (GPC), or in the unit chain distribution of isoamylasedebranched amylopectin, where three peaks were resolved at modal degree of polymerization of 15, 23, and 46. Apparent, total, and A-amylose (difference between apparent and total amylose due to lipid complexing) contents ranged from 19.7 to 22.0%, 27.5 to 29.8%, and 7.1 to 8.1, respectively, with lipid content, as fatty acid methyl esters, ranging from 0.66 to 0.75% on a dry basis and comprising the following fatty acids: 46.6% C16; 2.1% C18; 15.0% C18:1; 35.3% C18:2, and 0.7% C18:3. The naked oat starch had the lowest lipid content and A-amylose. Lintner type solubilization in 2M HCl (six days of incubation at 35 C) ranged from 56.6 to 60.0% of the original dry Cx-glucan. The 80'C swelling factor corresponding to postgelatinization swelling (determined by a
Exploring the role of quantitative feedback in inhaler technique education: a cluster-randomised, two-arm, parallel-group, repeated-measures study

Background:Feedback is a critical component of any educational intervention. When it comes to feedback associated with inhaler technique education, there is a lack of knowledge on its role or its potential to solve the major issue of poor inhaler technique.Aims:This study aims to explore the role of feedback in inhaler technique education and its impact on the inhaler technique of patients over time.Methods:A parallel-group, repeated-measures study was conducted in the community pharmacy in which the effectiveness of current best practice inhaler technique education utilising qualitative visual feedback (Group 1) was compared with a combination of qualitative and quantitative visual feedback (Group 2). The impact of these two interventions on inhaler technique maintenance was evaluated. Community pharmacists were randomly allocated to recruit people with asthma who were using a dry powder inhaler. At Visit 1 their inhaler technique was evaluated and education delivered and they were followed up at Visit 2 (1 month later).Results:Both educational interventions resulted in an increase in the proportion of patients with correct inhaler technique: from 4% to 51% in Group 1 and from 6% to 83% in Group 2 (Pearson’s Chi-Squared, P=0.03, n=49, and Pearson’s Chi-Squared, P=0.01, n=48, respectively). The magnitude of improvement was statistically significantly higher for Group 2 compared with Group 1 (n=97, P=0.02, Pearson’s Chi-Square test).Conclusions:The nature of feedback has an impact on the effectiveness of inhaler technique education with regard to correct inhaler technique maintenance over time.
Continuous monitoring of intrathoracic impedance and right ventricular pressures in patients with heart failure.

BACKGROUND
Hemodynamic monitoring using implantable devices may provide early warning of volume overload in patients with heart failure (HF). This study was designed to prospectively compare information from intrathoracic impedance monitoring and continuous right ventricular pressure measurements in patients with HF.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Sixteen patients with HF (age, 63.5+/-13.8 years; left ventricular ejection fraction, 23.2+/-11.3%; New York Heart Association, II and III) and a previous HF decompensation received both a cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator providing a daily average of intrathoracic impedance and an implantable hemodynamic monitor providing an estimate of the pulmonary artery diastolic pressure. At the end of a 6-month investigator-blinded period, baseline reference hemodynamic values were determined over 4 weeks during which the patient was clinically stable. A major HF event was defined as HF decompensation requiring hospitalization, IV diuretic treatment, or leading to death. Sixteen major HF events occurred in 10 patients. Within 30 days and 14 days before a major HF event, impedance decreased by 0.12+/-0.21 Omega/d and 0.20+/-0.20 Omega/d, respectively, whereas estimated pulmonary arterial diastolic pressure increased by 0.10+/-0.20 mm Hg/d and 0.16+/-0.15 mm Hg/d, respectively. During these periods, impedance decreased by 3.8+/-5.4 Omega (P<0.02) and 4.9+/-6.1 Omega (P<0.007), respectively, whereas estimated pulmonary arterial diastolic pressure increased by 5.8+/-5.7 mm Hg (P<0.002) and 6.8+/-6.1 mm Hg (P<0.001), respectively, compared with baseline. In all patients, impedance and estimated pulmonary arterial diastolic pressure were inversely correlated (r = -0.48+/-0.25). Within 30 days preceding a major HF event, this correlation improved to r =-0.58+/-0.24.


CONCLUSIONS
Decompensated HF develops based on hemodynamic derangements and is preceded by significant changes in intrathoracic impedance and right ventricular pressures during the month prior to a major clinical event. Impedance and pressure changes are moderately correlated. Future research may establish the complementary contribution of both parameters to guide diagnosis and management of patients with HF by implantable devices.
Income in Multiple Sclerosis Patients with Different Disease Phenotypes

BACKGROUND
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease with profound heterogeneity in clinical course.


OBJECTIVE
To analyze sources and levels of income among MS patients in relation to disease phenotype with a special focus on identifying differences/similarities between primary progressive MS (PPMS) and secondary progressive MS (SPMS).


METHODS
A total of 6890 MS patients aged 21-64 years and living in Sweden in 2010 were identified for this cross-sectional study. Descriptive statistics, logistic, truncated linear, and zero-inflated negative binomial regression models were used to estimate differences in income between SPMS, PPMS and relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) patients.


RESULTS
RRMS patients earned almost twice as much as PPMS and SPMS patients (on average SEK 204,500, SEK 114,500, and SEK 79,800 in 2010, respectively). The difference in earnings between PPMS and SPMS was not statistically significant when analyzed with multivariable regression. The estimated odds ratio for PPMS patients to have income from earnings was not significantly different from SPMS patients (95% CI 0.98 to 1.59). PPMS and RRMS patients were less likely to receive benefits when compared to SPMS patients (by 6% and 27% lower, respectively).


CONCLUSION
Our findings argue for similarities between PPMS and SPMS and highlight the socioeconomic importance of preventing RRMS patients convert to SPMS.
Highly
Chemoselective Reduction of Amides (Primary,
Secondary, Tertiary) to Alcohols using SmI2/Amine/H2O under Mild Conditions

Highly chemoselective direct reduction of primary, secondary, and tertiary amides to alcohols using SmI2/amine/H2O is reported. The reaction proceeds with C-N bond cleavage in the carbinolamine intermediate, shows excellent functional group tolerance, and delivers the alcohol products in very high yields. The expected C-O cleavage products are not formed under the reaction conditions. The observed reactivity is opposite to the electrophilicity of polar carbonyl groups resulting from the n(X) → π*(C═O) (X = O, N) conjugation. Mechanistic studies suggest that coordination of Sm to the carbonyl and then to Lewis basic nitrogen in the tetrahedral intermediate facilitate electron transfer and control the selectivity of the C-N/C-O cleavage. Notably, the method provides direct access to acyl-type radicals from unactivated amides under mild electron transfer conditions.
Feedback thermal control of real-time systems on multicore processors

Embedded real-time systems face significant challenges in thermal management. While earlier research on feedback thermal control has shown promise in dealing with the uncertainty in thermal characteristics, multicore processors introduce new challenges that cannot be handled by previous solutions designed for single-core processors. Multicore processors require the temperature and real-time performance of multiple cores be controlled simultaneously, leading to multi-input-multi-output control problems with inter-core thermal coupling. Furthermore, current Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) mechanisms only support a finite set of states, leading to discrete control variables that cannot be handled by standard linear control techniques. This paper presents Real-Time Multicore Thermal Control (RT-MTC), a novel feedback thermal control framework pecifically designed for multicore real-time systems. RT-MTC dynamically enforces both the desired temperature set point and the schedulable CPU utilization bound of a multicore processor through DVFS. RT-MTC employs a rigorously designed, efficient controller that can achieve effective thermal control with the small number of frequencies commonly supported by current processors. The robustness and advantages of RT-MTC over existing thermal control approaches are demonstrated through both experiments on an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and simulations under a wide range of uncertainties in power consumption.
Separable Common Spatio-Spectral Patterns for Motor Imagery BCI Systems

Objective: Feature extraction is one of the most important steps in any brain-computer interface (BCI) system. In particular, spatio-spectral feature extraction for motor-imagery BCIs (MI-BCI) has been the focus of several works in the past decade. This paper proposes a novel method, called separable common spatio-spectral patterns (SCSSP), for extraction of discriminant spatio-spectral EEG features in MI-BCIs. Methods: Assuming a binary classification problem, SCSSP uses a heteroscedastic matrix-variate Gaussian model for the multiband EEG rhythms, and seeks the spatio-spectral features whose variance is maximized for one brain task and minimized for the other task. Therefore, SCSSP can be considered as a spatio-spectral generalization of the conventional common spatial patterns (CSP) algorithm. Results: The experimental results on two-class and multiclass motor-imagery data from publicly available BCI Competition datasets demonstrate that the proposed computationally efficient method competes closely with filter-bank CSP (FBCSP), and can even outperform the FBCSP if enough training data are available. Furthermore, SCSSP provides us with a simple measure for ranking the discriminant power of extracted spatio-spectral features, which is not possible in FBCSP. Conclusion: The matrix-variate Gaussian assumption allows the SCSSP method to jointly process the EEG data in both spatial and spectral domains. As a result, compared to the similar solutions in the literature such as FBCSP, the proposed SCSSP method requires significantly lower computations. Significance: The proposed computationally efficient spatio-spectral feature extractor is particularly suitable for applications in which the computational power is limited, such as emerging wearable mobile BCI systems.
Kinematics and dynamics of a cable-like hyper-flexible manipulator

AbstmctA Hyper-Flexible Manipulator (HFM, for short) is a kind of continuum robots with a simple mechanical structure like a cable, rope and string, which are useful tools utilised everywhere in various forms. In this paper, in order to achieve dexterous and useful manipulation hy this type of robot, we discuss kinematics and dynamics of an HFM. We rigorously derive a spatial, nonlinear and continuum dynamics model with an underactuated mechanism using special kinematics based on curve geometry and t h a ory of robot manipulation.
A survey of software related academic collaborations at siemens

As an employer of more than 30,000 software engineers, Siemens has a large financial stake in their software engineering practices. The direct influence that academia has on the software practices within Siemens, however, is relatively small. This paper looks at some of the industrial factors that come into play in industrial/academic collaborations, identifies the collaborative models used, and looks at lessons learned from these efforts.
Office-based medical practices: methods and estimates from the national ambulatory medical care survey.

OBJECTIVES
The report uses a multiplicity estimator from a sample of office-based physicians to estimate the number and characteristics of medical practices in the United States. Practice estimates are presented by characteristics of the practice (solo or group, single, or multi-specialty group, size of practice, ownership, location, number of managed care contracts, use of electronic medical records, and use of computerized physician order entry systems).


METHODS
Data presented in this report were collected during physician induction interviews for the 2003-04 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS). The NAMCS is a national probability sample survey of nonfederal physicians who see patients in an office setting in the United States. Radiologists, anesthesiologists, and pathologists-as well as physicians who treat patients solely in hospital, institutional, or occupational settings-are excluded. Sample weights for physician data use information on the number of physicians in the sampled physician's practice to produce annual national estimates of medical practices.


RESULTS
During 2003-04, an average of 311,200 office-based physicians practiced in an estimated 161,200 medical practices in the United States. Medical practice characteristics differed from physician characteristics. Although 35.8 percent of office-based physicians were in solo practice, 69.2 percent of medical practices consisted of solo practitioners. The one-fifth of medical practices with three or more physicians (19.5 percent) contains about one-half of all office-based physicians (52.4 percent). About 8.4 percent of medical practices involved multiple specialties. Fifteen percent of medical practices, consisting of 19.0 percent of physicians, used electronic medical records. Similarly, 6.5 percent of medical practices, consisting of 9.2 percent of physicians, used computerized prescription order entry systems.
Fish oil supplementation improves large arterial elasticity in overweight hypertensive patients

Objectives:To observe the effect of fish oil supplementation on arterial elasticity and blood pressure (BP) in overweight hypertensive patients.Subjects and methods:This was a double-blind, randomized and placebo-controlled clinical study, in which 52 overweight hypertensive patients from a community were selected and randomly allocated to two groups (26 in the fish oil group (3 g day−1, fish oil capsules) and 26 in the placebo group (only capsules). All the subjects were follow-up for 8 weeks. The arterial elasticity was determined by CVProfilor DO-2020 and expressed as elasticity indexes (C1-large artery and C2-small artery). During the follow-up, totally nine cases were dropped out (three cases from the fish oil group and six cases from the placebo group).Results:After 8 weeks follow-up, the large artery elasticity in the fish oil group, compared with its baseline, was significantly improved (C1: 15.5±1.5 vs 12.8±3.7 ml mm Hg−1 × 10), whereas no effects were found in the placebo group (C1: 13.0±3.4 vs 13.4±3.8 ml mm Hg−1 × 10), P=0.027, RM-ANOVA across the two groups. The small artery elasticity (C2), BP and pulse pressure were not found any changes, either in the fish oil group or in the placebo group. At same time, the serum soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1(sVCAM-1) and leptin levels, the lipid profile and insulin sensitivity index (ISI) as well, did not show significant differences between two groups.Conclusions:Fish oil supplementation certainly would improve large arterial elasticity but no effect on BP in overweight hypertensive patients. Further study is needed to confirm the benefits of fish oil supplementation on age-related increases in arterial stiffness.
Repeat medication errors in nursing homes: Contributing factors and their association with patient harm.

BACKGROUND
Medication errors are highly prevalent in long-term care facilities and are responsible for preventable injury. Repeat medication errors, or identical events occurring multiple times in the same patient, may be particularly preventable.


OBJECTIVES
This study assessed the factors that contribute to repeat medication errors and the association between repeat medication errors and patient harm.


METHODS
In this cross-sectional analysis, medication error reports submitted by licensed nursing homes to North Carolina's Medication Error Quality Initiative-Individual Error Web-based incident reporting system were analyzed for fiscal years 2006-2008. When reporting errors, the sites were asked whether the event was identically repeated within the same patient. Repeat medication errors were defined as identical events in terms of patient characteristics, drug involved, error type, potential cause, phase of the medication care process, and personnel involved. Repeat errors were compared with nonrepeat errors. Multivariate logistic regression was used to explore whether certain patient or error characteristics were related to a higher likelihood of repeat errors, and a similar analysis was used to explore whether repeat errors were related to patient harm.


RESULTS
Of the total 15,037 errors reported by 294 unique nursing homes, 5615 (37.3%) were repeated one or more times. Among the repeat errors, the associated event within each error was repeated a mean (SD) of 10.7 (14.3) times. Wrong dosage (65.1% [3654/5615]) and wrong administration (10.2% [571/5615]) were the most frequent repeated events. In multivariate analysis, repeat errors occurred less frequently among younger residents (aged <75 years) than among older residents (aged >or=75 years) (odds ratio [OR] = 0.85; 95% CI, 0.79-0.93) and among residents able to direct their own care compared with cognitively impaired residents (OR = 0.87; 95% CI, 0.81-0.95). Patient harm was reported in only 1.2% (68/5615) of repeat errors and 0.6% (55/9422) of non-repeat errors. A multivariate analysis of patient harm found that repeat errors were more likely to be harmful than were nonrepeat errors (OR = 2.11; 95% CI, 1.43-3.11).


CONCLUSIONS
Repeat medication errors in nursing homes are a common occurrence and have greater odds of being associated with harm than do nonrepeat errors. Future patient-safety research should focus on factors related to repeat errors.
Information Extraction

Information Extraction (IE) is the name given to any process which selectively structures and combines data which is found, explicitly stated or implied, in one or more texts. The final output of the extraction process varies; in every case, however, it can be transformed so as to populate some type of database. Information analysts working long term on specific tasks already carry out information extraction manually with the express goal of database creation.
Review of offshore wind turbine failures and fault prognostic methods

Wind electricity is a highly promoted energy source all around the world. The number of offshore wind farms, increases gradually because of the high capability of power generation. However, the cost of manufacturing, logistics, installation, grid control and maintenance of offshore wind turbine is high. According to the Condition Monitoring of Offshore Wind Turbine (CONMOW) report of Energy Research Centre in the Netherlands, the investment costs for future offshore wind farms built of larger units are expected to be 1.4 to 2.0 k€/kW. The Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs 30 to 50 €/kW per year. To enhance a cost effective maintenance strategy and higher quality design, Prognostics and System Health Management (PHM) is applied. In this paper, major failures of wind turbine will be discussed and possible prognostic methods for the failures will be introduced.
Can common-type atrial flutter be a sign of an arrhythmogenic substrate in paroxysmal atrial fibrillation? Clinical and ablative consequences in patients with coexistent paroxysmal atrial fibrillation/atrial flutter.

BACKGROUND
The coexistence of atrial fibrillation (AF) and atrial flutter (AFL) is well recognized. AF precedes the onset of AFL in almost all instances. We evaluated the effect of 2 ablation strategies in patients with paroxysmal AF (PAF) and AFL.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Ninety-eight patients with PAF/AFL were prospectively recruited to undergo pulmonary vein cryoisolation (PVI). Those with at least 1 episode of sustained common-type AFL were assigned to cavotricuspid isthmus cryoablation followed by a 6-week monitoring period and a subsequent PVI (n=36; group I). Patients with PAF only underwent PVI (n=62; group II). The study included 76 men with a mean age of 50+/-10 years. Most patients (76 [78%]) had no structural heart disease. When the 2 groups were compared, residual AF after a blanking period of 3 months after PVI occurred in 24 patients (67%) in group I versus 7 (11%) in group II (P<0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
In patients with PAF and no documented common-type AFL, PVI alone prevented the occurrence of AF in 82%, whereas in patients with AFL/PAF, cavotricuspid isthmus cryoablation and PVI were used successfully to treat sustained common-type AFL but appeared to be insufficient to prevent recurrences of AF. In this population, AFL can be a sign that non-pulmonary vein triggers are the culprit behind AF or that sufficient electrical remodeling has already occurred in both atria, and thus a strategy that includes substrate modification may be required.
Regional and hemispheric impacts of anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions on summertime CO and O3 in the North Atlantic lower free troposphere

[1] We report summertime measurements of CO and O3 obtained during 2001–2003 at the PICO-NARE mountaintop station in the Azores. Frequent events of elevated CO mixing ratios were observed. On the basis of backward trajectories arriving in the free troposphere and global simulations of biomass burning plumes, we attribute nearly all these events to North American pollution outflow and long-range transport of biomass burning emissions. There was a high degree of interannual variability in CO levels: median [CO] ranged from 65 ppbv in 2001 to 104 ppbv in 2003. The highest concentrations were associated with transport of Siberian fire emissions during summer 2003, when Siberian fire activity was unusually high. Ozone mixing ratios also increased (by up to 30 ppbv) during the fire events. These findings demonstrate the significant hemispheric scale impact that biomass burning events have on background CO and O3 levels. O3 enhancements of similar magnitude were also observed in North American pollution outflow. O3 and CO were correlated during North American outflow events, with a slope averaging 1.0 (d[O3]/d[CO], ppbv/ppbv) when no fire impact was present. This slope is more than 80% larger than early 1990s observations made in the eastern United States and nearshore outflow region, even after accounting for declining U.S. CO emissions and for CO loss during transport to the Azores, and is not consistent with simple dilution of U.S. outflow with marine background air. We conclude that a significantly larger amount of O3 production occurred in the air sampled during this study, and we suggest several potential reasons for this, each of which could imply potentially significant shortcomings in current estimates of the hemispheric impact of North American emissions on tropospheric ozone and should be evaluated in future studies.