LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Replication and validation of higher order models demonstrated that a summary score for the EORTC QLQ-C30 is robust.

OBJECTIVE
To further evaluate the higher order measurement structure of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (QLQ-C30), with the aim of generating a summary score.


STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING
Using pretreatment QLQ-C30 data (N = 3,282), we conducted confirmatory factor analyses to test seven previously evaluated higher order models. We compared the summary score(s) derived from the best performing higher order model with the original QLQ-C30 scale scores, using tumor stage, performance status, and change over time (N = 244) as grouping variables.


RESULTS
Although all models showed acceptable fit, we continued in the interest of parsimony with known-groups validity and responsiveness analyses using a summary score derived from the single higher order factor model. The validity and responsiveness of this QLQ-C30 summary score was equal to, and in many cases superior to the original, underlying QLQ-C30 scale scores.


CONCLUSION
Our results provide empirical support for a measurement model for the QLQ-C30 yielding a single summary score. The availability of this summary score can avoid problems with potential type I errors that arise because of multiple testing when making comparisons based on the 15 outcomes generated by this questionnaire and may reduce sample size requirements for health-related quality of life studies using the QLQ-C30 questionnaire when an overall summary score is a relevant primary outcome.
Beyond the Tragic Vision: The Quest for Identity in the Nineteenth Century

Introduction: the problems of the historian Part I. The End of Ancient Thinking Part II. The Alienated Vision Part III. The Heroic Redeemer Part IV. Illusion and Reality Part V. Style and Value Index.
A large multicenter outcome study of female genital plastic surgery.

INTRODUCTION
Female Genital Plastic Surgery, a relatively new entry in the field of Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery, has promised sexual enhancement and functional and cosmetic improvement for women. Are the vulvovaginal aesthetic procedures of Labiaplasty, Vaginoplasty/Perineoplasty ("Vaginal Rejuvenation") and Clitoral Hood Reduction effective, and do they deliver on that promise? For what reason do women seek these procedures? What complications are evident, and what effects are noted regarding sexual function for women and their partners? Who should be performing these procedures, what training should they have, and what are the ethical considerations?


AIM
This study was designed to produce objective, utilizable outcome data regarding FGPS.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
1) Reasons for considering surgery from both patient's and physician's perspective; 2) Pre-operative sexual functioning per procedure; 3) Overall patient satisfaction per procedure; 4) Effect of procedure on patient's sexual enjoyment, per procedure; 5) Patient's perception of effect on her partner's sexual enjoyment, per procedure; 6) Complications.


METHODS
This cross-sectional study, including 258 women and encompassing 341 separate procedures, comes from a group of twelve gynecologists, gynecologic urologists and plastic surgeons from ten centers in eight states nationwide. 104 labiaplasties, 24 clitoral hood reductions, 49 combined labiaplasty/clitoral hood reductions, 47 vaginoplasties and/or perineoplasties, and 34 combined labiaplasty and/or reduction of the clitoral hood plus vaginoplasty/perineoplasty procedures were studied retrospectively, analyzing both patient's and physician's perception of surgical rationale, pre-operative sexual function and several outcome criteria.


RESULTS
Combining the three groups, 91.6% of patients were satisfied with the results of their surgery after a 6-42 month follow-up. Significant subjective enhancement in sexual functioning for both women and their sexual partners was noted (p = 0.0078), especially in patients undergoing vaginal tightening/perineal support procedures. Complications were acceptable and not of major consequence.


CONCLUSIONS
While emphasizing that these female genital plastic procedures are not performed to correct "abnormalities," as there is a wide range of normality in the external and internal female genitalia, both parous and nulliparous, many women chose to modify their vulvas and vaginas. From the results of this large study pooling data from a diverse group of experienced genital plastic surgeons, outcome in both general and sexual satisfaction appear excellent.
Needs assessment of cancer survivors in Connecticut.

INTRODUCTION
There are knowledge gaps regarding the needs of cancer survivors in Connecticut and their utilization of supportive services.


METHODS
A convenience sample of cancer survivors residing in Connecticut were invited to complete a self-administered (print or online) needs assessment (English or Spanish). Participants identified commonly occurring problems and completed a modified version of the Supportive Care Needs Survey Short Form (SNCS-SF34) assessing needs across five domains (psychosocial, health systems/information, physical/daily living, patient care /support, and sexuality).


RESULTS
The majority of the 1,516 cancer survivors (76.4%) were women, 47.5% had completed high school or some college, 66.1% were diagnosed ≤5 years ago, and 87.7% were non-Hispanic white. The breast was the most common site (47.6%), followed by the prostate, colorectal, lung, and melanoma. With multivariate adjustment, need on the SCNS-SF34 was greatest among women, younger survivors, those diagnosed within the past year, those not free of cancer, and Hispanics/Latinos. We also observed some differences by insurance and education status. In addition, we assessed the prevalence of individual problems, with the most common being weight gain/loss, memory changes, paying for care, communication, and not being told about services.


CONCLUSIONS
Overall and domain specific needs in this population of cancer survivors were relatively low, although participants reported a wide range of problems. Greater need was identified among cancer survivors who were female, younger, Hispanic/Latino, and recently diagnosed.


IMPLICATIONS FOR CANCER SURVIVORS
These findings can be utilized to target interventions and promote access to available resources for Connecticut cancer survivors.
Privacy Loss in Apple's Implementation of Differential Privacy on MacOS 10.12

In June 2016, Apple made a bold announcement that it will deploy local differential privacy for some of their user data collection in order to ensure privacy of user data, even from Apple [21, 23]. The details of Apple’s approach remained sparse. Although several patents [17–19] have since appeared hinting at the algorithms that may be used to achieve differential privacy, they did not include a precise explanation of the approach taken to privacy parameter choice. Such choice and the overall approach to privacy budget use and management are key questions for understanding the privacy protections provided by any deployment of differential privacy. In this work, through a combination of experiments, static and dynamic code analysis of macOS Sierra (Version 10.12) implementation, we shed light on the choices Apple made for privacy budget management. We discover and describe Apple’s set-up for differentially private data processing, including the overall data pipeline, the parameters used for differentially private perturbation of each piece of data, and the frequency with which such data is sent to Apple’s servers. We find that although Apple’s deployment ensures that the (differential) privacy loss per each datum submitted to its servers is 1 or 2, the overall privacy loss permitted by the system is significantly higher, as high as 16 per day for the four initially announced applications of Emojis, New words, Deeplinks and Lookup Hints [21]. Furthermore, Apple renews the privacy budget available every day, which leads to a possible privacy loss of 16 times the number of days since user opt-in to differentially private data collection for those four applications. We applaud Apple’s deployment of differential privacy for its bold demonstration of feasibility of innovation while guaranteeing rigorous privacy. However, we argue that in order to claim the full benefits of differentially private data collection, Apple must give full transparency of its implementation and privacy loss choices, enable user choice in areas related to privacy loss, and set meaningful defaults on the daily and device lifetime privacy loss permitted. ACM Reference Format: Jun Tang, Aleksandra Korolova, Xiaolong Bai, XueqiangWang, and Xiaofeng Wang. 2017. Privacy Loss in Apple’s Implementation of Differential Privacy
Maximum Power Extraction From a Partially Shaded PV Array Using Shunt-Series Compensation

Under partially shaded conditions, the current through a photovoltaic (PV) string is limited to the current produced by its most shaded module, reducing the overall PV array output power. A current compensation-based distributed maximum power point tracking (DMPPT) scheme may typically be used to maximize power output under these conditions. However, because of nonuniform irradiation during partial shading, different modules across a given string, as well as across the various strings, experience different conditions. Yet, the module voltages in all the strings should add up to the same voltage because all strings are connected in parallel. This causes the individual modules in a string to readjust their voltages and operate away from their actual MPP. In other words, the DMPPT scheme using shunt current compensation alone is not effective. This paper describes a novel method comprising shunt (current) and series (voltage) compensation of modules and strings, respectively. Per this technique, a current-compensating converter is connected in shunt with each module, and a voltage-compensating converter is connected in series with each string. This facilitates each PV module to operate at its exact MPP and deliver maximum power. All the analytical, simulation, and experimental results of this study are included.
User interface development environment based on components: assets for mobility

In this paper we present our UI development environment based on components. The UI is considered as a technical service of a business component just like security or persistence. The dialog between UI and business components is managed by an interaction/coordination service that allows the reconfiguration of components without modifying them. A UI component merging service handles dynamic assembly of corresponding UI components.
The anatomy of the medial part of the knee.

BACKGROUND
While the anatomy of the medial part of the knee has been described qualitatively, quantitative descriptions of the attachment sites of the main medial knee structures have not been reported. The purpose of the present study was to verify the qualitative anatomy of medial knee structures and to perform a quantitative evaluation of their anatomic attachment sites as well as their relationships to pertinent osseous landmarks.


METHODS
Dissections were performed and measurements were made for eight nonpaired fresh-frozen cadaveric knees with use of an electromagnetic three-dimensional tracking sensor system.


RESULTS
In addition to the medial epicondyle and the adductor tubercle, a third osseous prominence, the gastrocnemius tubercle, which corresponded to the attachment site of the medial gastrocnemius tendon, was identified. The average length of the superficial medial (tibial) collateral ligament was 94.8 mm. The superficial medial collateral ligament femoral attachment was 3.2 mm proximal and 4.8 mm posterior to the medial epicondyle. The superficial medial collateral ligament had two separate attachments on the tibia. The distal attachment of the superficial medial collateral ligament on the tibia was 61.2 mm distal to the knee joint. The deep medial collateral ligament consisted of meniscofemoral and meniscotibial portions. The posterior oblique ligament femoral attachment was 7.7 mm distal and 6.4 mm posterior to the adductor tubercle and 1.4 mm distal and 2.9 mm anterior to the gastrocnemius tubercle. The medial patellofemoral ligament attachment on the femur was 1.9 mm anterior and 3.8 mm distal to the adductor tubercle.


CONCLUSIONS
The medial knee ligament structures have a consistent attachment pattern.
Oral L-arginine in patients with coronary artery disease on medical management.

BACKGROUND
Vascular nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability is reduced in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). We investigated whether oral L-arginine, the substrate for NO synthesis, improves homeostatic functions of the vascular endothelium in patients maintained on appropriate medical therapy and thus might be useful as adjunctive therapy.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Thirty CAD patients (29 men; age, 67+/-8 years) on appropriate medical management were randomly assigned to L-arginine (9 g) or placebo daily for 1 month, with crossover to the alternate therapy after 1 month off therapy, in a double-blind study. Nitrogen oxides in serum (as an index of endothelial NO release), flow-mediated brachial artery dilation (as an index of vascular NO bioactivity), and serum cell adhesion molecules (as an index of NO-regulated markers of inflammation) were measured at the end of each treatment period. L-Arginine significantly increased arginine levels in plasma (130+/-53 versus 70+/-17 micromol/L, P<0.001) compared with placebo. However, there was no effect of L-arginine on nitrogen oxides (19.3+/-7.9 versus 18. 6+/-6.7 micromol/L, P=0.546), on flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery (11.9+/-6.3% versus 11.4+/-7.9%, P=0.742), or on the cell adhesion molecules E-selectin (47.8+/-15.2 versus 47.2+/-14.4 ng/mL, P=0.601), intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (250+/-57 versus 249+/-57 ng/mL, P=0.862), and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (567+/-124 versus 574+/-135 ng/mL, P=0.473).


CONCLUSIONS
Oral L-arginine therapy does not improve NO bioavailability in CAD patients on appropriate medical management and thus may not benefit this group of patients.
Temporal trends in patient-reported angina at 1 year after percutaneous coronary revascularization in the stent era: a report from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-sponsored 1997-2006 dynamic registry.

BACKGROUND
Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) has witnessed rapid technological advancements, resulting in improved safety and effectiveness over time. Little, however, is known about the temporal impact on patient-reported symptoms and quality of life after PCI.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Temporal trends in post-PCI symptoms were analyzed using 8879 consecutive patients enrolled in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-sponsored Dynamic Registry (wave 1: 1997 [bare metal stents], wave 2: 1999 [uniform use of stents], wave 3: 2001 [brachytherapy], wave 4, 5: 2004, 2006 [drug eluting stents]). Patients undergoing PCI in the recent waves were older and more often reported comorbidities. However, fewer patients across the waves reported post-PCI angina at one year (wave 1 to 5: 24%, 23%, 18%, 20%, 20%; P(trend)<0.001). The lower risk of angina in recent waves was explained by patient characteristics including use of antianginal medications at discharge (relative risk [95% CI] for waves 2, 3, 4 versus 1: 1.0 [0.9 to 1.2], 0.9 [0.7 to 1.1], 1.0 [0.8 to 1.3], 0.9 [0.7 to 1.1]). Similar trend was seen in the average quality of life scores over time (adjusted mean score for waves 1 to 5: 6.2, 6.5, 6.6 and 6.6; P(trend)=0.01). Other factors associated with angina at 1 year included younger age, female gender, prior revascularization, need for repeat PCI, and hospitalization for myocardial infarction over 1 year.


CONCLUSIONS
Favorable temporal trends are seen in patient-reported symptoms after PCI in routine clinical practice. Specific subgroups, however, remain at risk for symptoms at 1 year and thus warrant closer attention.
Update on botulinum toxin for facial aesthetics.

The use of botulinum toxin has revolutionized the treatment of facial lines with an incomparable safety record over the past 14 years. The most common used injection sites are shown in Fig. 9. With the recent FDA approval for Botox in the treatment of glabellar lines, its use will likely increase dramatically. It is essential that practitioners have a detailed and specific knowledge of the facial and neck musculature to be injected to minimize untoward side effects, especially in the early days of new users' learning curve. The specifics of the dilutions and units per amount used for the various different commercial forms of botulinum toxin types A and B need to be understood fully and standardized together with the potential for antigenicity with the higher protein load of type B. In addition, specific indications for the use of botulinum toxin as adjunctive therapy for specific facial surgical procedures (i.e., blepharoplasty, surgical brow lift, and laser resurfacing) will become better understood. [figure: see text] Finally, even though the anatomy of the facial musculature is well described, individual differences in men and women, in different population groups, and in tissue qualities, such as turgor and elasticity [87], are important factors to be considered before undertaking botulinum toxin injections. It is likely that the use of specific measuring devices, such as digital imaging, will further help define the use of botulinum toxin for different muscle groups and facial aesthetic indications.
Psychometric development of the retinopathy treatment satisfaction questionnaire (RetTSQ).

Objectives were to evaluate the psychometric properties and to determine optimal scoring of the retinopathy treatment satisfaction questionnaire (RetTSQ) in a cross-sectional study of 207 German patients with diabetic retinopathy and a wide range of treatment experience. Forty patients (19%) also had clinically significant macular oedema. Principal components analysis was used to identify factor structures and Cronbach's alpha to assess internal consistency reliabilities. Two highly reliable subscales represented negative versus positive aspects of treatment (both alpha = 0.85). A highly reliable total score can be calculated (alpha = 0.90). Construct validity was examined by testing expected relationships of RetTSQ scores with visual impairment, stage of diabetic retinopathy, additional impact of macular oedema, SF-12 scores and scores of the RetDQoL measure of quality of life in diabetic retinopathy. Worse impairment, worse diabetic retinopathy and macular oedema were associated with less treatment satisfaction. RetTSQ scores correlated moderately with SF-12 scores (r: 0.33-0.53, p < 0.001) and RetDQoL scores (r: 0.43-0.51, p < 0.001). Answers to an open-ended question indicated no need for additional items. Repeating the analyses in a subsample with experience of more intense treatment showed very similar results. It can be concluded that the RetTSQ is valid and reliable for people with diabetic retinopathy with or without macular oedema who have experienced different treatments.
Changes in connective tissue in patients with pelvic organ prolapse—a review of the current literature

Little is known about the pathophysiology of pelvic organ prolapse (POP). In 1996, Jackson presented a hypothesis on pelvic floor connective tissue that tried to explain the development of POP on a molecular level. The objective of this review is to test the hypothesis against recent literature. The method used was a review of literature. The association between POP and connective tissue metabolism is well established. However, the causality of this association is unclear. The characteristics of the pelvic floor connective tissue of POP patients relate to tissue repair. To resolve the question of cause and effect, the role of fibroblasts in producing the extracellular matrix should be clarified. With these data, the use of autologous or allogenic stem cells in the treatment of POP may come in sight. Recent literature supports the hypothesis of Jackson but does not resolve long-standing questions on the aetiology of POP.
Masquerade Detection Using Enriched Command Lines

A masquerade attack, in which one user impersonates another, is among the most serious forms of computer abuse, largely because such attacks are often mounted by insiders, and can be very difficult to detect. Automatic discovery of masqueraders is sometimes undertaken by detecting significant departures from normal user behavior, as represented by user profiles based on users’ command histories. A series of experiments performed by Schonlau et al. [12] achieved moderate success in masquerade detection based on a data set comprised of truncated command lines, i.e., single commands, stripped of any accompanying flags, arguments or elements of shell grammar such as pipes or semi-colons. Using the same data, Maxion and Townsend [8] improved on the Schonlau et al. results by 56%, raising the detection rate from 39.4% to 61.5% at false-alarm rates near 1%. The present paper extends this work by testing the hypothesis that a limitation of these approaches is the use of truncated command-line data, as opposed to command lines enriched with flags, shell grammar, arguments and information about aliases. Enriched command lines were found to facilitate correct detection at the 82% level, far exceeding previous results, with a corresponding 30% reduction in the overall cost of errors, and only a small increase in false alarms. Descriptions of pathological cases illustrate strengths and limitations of both the data and the detection algorithm.
On the Order Fill Rate in a Multi-Item, Base-Stock Inventory System

A customer order to a multi-item inventory system typically consists of several different items in different amounts. The probability of satisfying an arbitrary demand within a prespecified time window, termed the order fill rate, is an important measure of customer satisfaction in industry. This measure, however, has received little attention in the inventory literature, partly because its evaluation is considered a hard problem. In this paper, we study this performance measure for a base-stock system in which the demand process forms a multivariate compound Poisson process and the replenishment leadtimes are constant. We show that the order fill rate can be computed through a series of convolutions of one-dimensional compound Poisson distributions and the batch-size distributions. This procedure makes the exact calculation faster and much more tractable. We also develop simpler bounds to estimate the order fill rate. These bounds require only partial order-based information or merely the item-based information. Finally, we investigate the impact of the standard independent demand assumption when the demand is actually correlated across items.