LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
[Pathogenesis and treatment of idiopathic nephrotic syndrome in adults].

Idiopathic nephrotic syndrome is the most frequent glomerular disease in children and in young adults. While genetic analyses have provided new insights into disease pathogenesis through the discovery of several podocyte genes mutated in distinct forms of inherited nephrotic syndrome, the molecular bases of minimal change nephrotic syndrome and focal and segmental glomerulosclerosis with relapses remain unclear. Although immune cell disorders, which may involve both innate and adaptive immunity, appear to play a role in the pathogenesis of steroid sensitive minimal change nephrotic syndrome, the mechanisms by which they induce podocyte dysfunction remain unresolved. It was postulated that podocyte injury results from a circulating factor secreted by abnormal T cells, but the possibility that bipolarity of the disease results from a functional disorder shared by both immune cells and the podocytes is not excluded. Minimal change nephrotic syndrome relapses are associated with an expansion of T and B cell compartments and production of growth factors as well as many cytokines. Dysfunction of T cells is supported by several findings including, inhibition of a type IV hypersensitivity reaction and unclassical T helper polarization, resulting from transcriptional interference between Th1 and Th2 transcriptional factors. A low serum level of some IgG fractions is frequently observed suggesting a defect in T-B cell cooperation, which remains to be explored. In this review, we discuss recent advances in the pathogenesis and the therapy of idiopathic nephrotic syndrome.
Assessment of Patient Empowerment - A Systematic Review of Measures

BACKGROUND
Patient empowerment has gained considerable importance but uncertainty remains about the best way to define and measure it. The validity of empirical findings depends on the quality of measures used. This systematic review aims to provide an overview of studies assessing psychometric properties of questionnaires purporting to capture patient empowerment, evaluate the methodological quality of these studies and assess the psychometric properties of measures identified.


METHODS
Electronic searches in five databases were combined with reference tracking of included articles. Peer-reviewed articles reporting psychometric testing of empowerment measures for adult patients in French, German, English, Portuguese and Spanish were included. Study characteristics, constructs operationalised and psychometric properties were extracted. The quality of study design, methods and reporting was assessed using the COSMIN checklist. The quality of psychometric properties was assessed using Terwee's 2007 criteria.


FINDINGS
30 studies on 19 measures were included. Six measures are generic, while 13 were developed for a specific condition (N=4) or specialty (N=9). Most studies tested measures in English (N=17) or Swedish (N=6). Sample sizes of included studies varied from N=35 to N=8261. A range of patient empowerment constructs was operationalised in included measures. These were classified into four domains: patient states, experiences and capacities; patient actions and behaviours; patient self-determination within the healthcare relationship and patient skills development. Quality assessment revealed several flaws in methodological study quality with COSMIN scores mainly fair or poor. The overall quality of psychometric properties of included measures was intermediate to positive. Certain psychometric properties were not tested for most measures.


DISCUSSION
Findings provide a basis from which to develop consensus on a core set of patient empowerment constructs and for further work to develop a (set of) appropriately validated measure(s) to capture this. The methodological quality of psychometric studies could be improved by adhering to published quality criteria.
Phenotype and genotype in 52 patients with Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome caused by EP300 mutations.

Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome (RSTS) is a developmental disorder characterized by a typical face and distal limbs abnormalities, intellectual disability, and a vast number of other features. Two genes are known to cause RSTS, CREBBP in 60% and EP300 in 8-10% of clinically diagnosed cases. Both paralogs act in chromatin remodeling and encode for transcriptional co-activators interacting with >400 proteins. Up to now 26 individuals with an EP300 mutation have been published. Here, we describe the phenotype and genotype of 42 unpublished RSTS patients carrying EP300 mutations and intragenic deletions and offer an update on another 10 patients. We compare the data to 308 individuals with CREBBP mutations. We demonstrate that EP300 mutations cause a phenotype that typically resembles the classical RSTS phenotype due to CREBBP mutations to a great extent, although most facial signs are less marked with the exception of a low-hanging columella. The limb anomalies are more similar to those in CREBBP mutated individuals except for angulation of thumbs and halluces which is very uncommon in EP300 mutated individuals. The intellectual disability is variable but typically less marked whereas the microcephaly is more common. All types of mutations occur but truncating mutations and small rearrangements are most common (86%). Missense mutations in the HAT domain are associated with a classical RSTS phenotype but otherwise no genotype-phenotype correlation is detected. Pre-eclampsia occurs in 12/52 mothers of EP300 mutated individuals versus in 2/59 mothers of CREBBP mutated individuals, making pregnancy with an EP300 mutated fetus the strongest known predictor for pre-eclampsia. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
PAPILLON: designing curved display surfaces with printed optics

We present a technology for designing curved display surfaces that can both display information and sense two dimensions of human touch. It is based on 3D printed optics, where the surface of the display is constructed as a bundle of printed light pipes, that direct images from an arbitrary planar image source to the surface of the display. This effectively decouples the display surface and image source, allowing to iterate the design of displays without requiring changes to the complex electronics and optics of the device. In addition, the same optical elements also direct light from the surface of the display back to the image sensor allowing for touch input and proximity detection of a hand relative to the display surface. The resulting technology is effective in designing compact, efficient displays of a small size; this has been applied in the design of interactive animated eyes.
Impacts of business vision, top management support, and external expertise on ERP success

Purpose This study investigates the impact of such contingency factors as top management support, business vision, and external expertise, on the one hand, and ERP system success, on the other. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual model was developed and relevant hypotheses formulated. Surveys were conducted in two Northern European countries and a structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze the data. Originality/value It is argued that ERP systems are different from other IT implementations; as such, there is a need to provide insights as to how the aforementioned factors play out in the context of ERP system success evaluations for adopting organizations. As was predicted, the results showed that the three contingency factors positively influence ERP system success. More importantly, the relative importance of quality external expertise over the other two factors for ERP initiatives was underscored. The implications of the findings for both practitioners and researchers are discussed.
Investigation on Operational Envelops and Efficiency Maps of Electrically Excited Machines for Electrical Vehicle Applications

In this paper, the operational envelops and efficiency maps of an electrically excited (EE) machine with/without employing flux weakening control via armature current and/or with/without the field excitation regulating are obtained and comprehensively compared for electric vehicle applications. It shows that even in EE machines, only using the field excitation regulating but without the flux weakening armature current control, the maximum power at high speed is not constant but inversely proportional to the machine speed. Only by employing the flux weakening armature current control, the maximum constant power operation at high-speed region can be achieved while the operational high-speed region can be greatly extended. The maximum efficiency in this extended high-speed region can be achieved when both the field excitation and flux weakening d-axis armature current change proportionally. The main benefit of the field excitation regulating is that the efficiency in low-torque region can be significantly improved. All the analyses are validated analytically.
Lifestyle and health determinants of cardiovascular disease among Greek older adults living in Eastern Aegean Islands: An adventure within the MEDIS study.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of the present study was to evaluate lifestyle and health determinants of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk among Greek elderly residents living in Eastern Aegean islands, in both Greece and Turkey.


METHODS
Under the context of the MEDIS study, 724 older adults (aged 65 to 100 years) from 8 Eastern Aegean Sea Greek islands (n=100 living in Samothrace, 142 in Lesvos, 150 in Limnos, 76 in Ikaria, 52 in Kassos, 149 in Rhodes and Karpathos) and from Turkey (n=55older adults of Greek origin living on Gökçeada Island) were voluntarily recruited. Overall cardiometabolic risk was measured as the sum (range 0-4) of four common CVD risk factors (hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia and obesity).


RESULTS
Greek islanders had higher CVD scores compared to Greeks of Gökçeada (1.9±1.1 vs 1.4±1.0 risk factors / participant, p<0.001). Further analysis revealed that the diet of Greek islanders was similar to the traditional Mediterranean diet; however, these individuals demonstrated 2-times higher odds (95% CI, 1.04-3.87) for having hypertension, 1.53-times higher odds (95% CI, 0.66-3.54) for having diabetes, 3.29-times higher odds (95% CI, 1.58-6.81) for having hypercholesterolemia; whereas they had 0.78-times lower odds (95% CI, 0.40-1.52) for being obese, compared to elderly Greek adults living on Gökçeada.


CONCLUSIONS
Overall, CVD risk seems to be low among Eastern Aegean Islanders; certain differences in CVD risk factors exist between Greek islanders and their counterparts living in Gökçeada, and those differences may be attributed to various environmental, cultural and lifestyle factors.
Peyronie's disease-the Plymouth experience of extracorporeal shockwave treatment.

OBJECTIVE
To describe our experience of the use of extracorporeal shockwave treatment (EST) for Peyronie's disease. Patients and methods The study included 28 patients (mean age 57 years, range 34-72) with stable Peyronie's disease who were treated with 3.9 (3-5) sessions of EST to the Peyronie's plaque. The patients' erectile function, pain and penile angle were assessed before and after treatment with EST.


RESULTS
Of the 28 patients, 20 felt that their erection improved after the procedure; 11 patients were able to recommence sexual intercourse and the index of erectile function increased in all but one patient. Conclusion EST produces a significant improvement in pain and penile angle, with no serious complications.
A Simple, Fast Diverse Decoding Algorithm for Neural Generation

In this paper, we propose a simple, fast decoding algorithm that fosters diversity in neural generation. The algorithm modifies the standard beam search algorithm by adding an intersibling ranking penalty, favoring choosing hypotheses from diverse parents. We evaluate the proposed model on the tasks of dialogue response generation, abstractive summarization and machine translation. We find that diverse decoding helps across all tasks, especially those for which reranking is needed. We further propose a variation that is capable of automatically adjusting its diversity decoding rates for different inputs using reinforcement learning (RL). We observe a further performance boost from this RL technique.1
Development of the Japanese version of the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory™ Brain Tumor Module

BACKGROUND
The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) is a widely-used modular instrument for measuring health-related quality of life in children aged 2 to 18 years. The PedsQL Brain Tumor Module is comprised of six scales: Cognitive Problems, Pain and Hurt, Movement and Balance, Procedural Anxiety, Nausea, and Worry. In the present study, we developed the Japanese version of the PedsQL Brain Tumor Module and investigated its feasibility, reliability, and validity among Japanese children and their parents.


METHODS
Translation equivalence and content validity were verified using the standard back-translation method and cognitive debriefing tests. Participants were recruited from 6 hospitals in Japan and the Children's Cancer Association of Japan, and questionnaires were completed by 137 children with brain tumors and 166 parents. Feasibility of the questionnaire was determined based on the amount of time required to complete the form and the percentage of missing values. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach's coefficient alpha. Test-retest reliability was assessed by retesting 22 children and 27 parents. Factorial validity was verified by exploratory factor analyses. Known-groups validity was described with regard to whole brain irradiation, developmental impairment, infratentorial tumors, paresis, and concurrent chemotherapy. Convergent and discriminant validity were determined using Generic Core Scales and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for children.


RESULTS
Internal consistency was relatively high for all scales (Cronbach's coefficient alpha > 0.70) except the Pain and Hurt scale for the child-report, and sufficient test-retest reliability was demonstrated for all scales (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.45-0.95). Factorial validity was supported through exploratory factor analysis (factor-item correlation = 0.33-0.96 for children, 0.55-1.00 for parents). Evaluation of known-groups validity confirmed that the Cognitive Problems scale was sensitive for developmental impairment, the Movement and Balance scale for infratentorial tumors or paresis, and the Nausea scale for a patient currently undergoing chemotherapy. Convergent and discriminant validity with the PedsQL Generic Core Scales and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for children were acceptable.


CONCLUSIONS
The Japanese version of the PedsQL Brain Tumor Module is suitable for assessing health-related quality of life in children with brain tumors in clinical trials and research studies.
The AHP approach for selecting an automobile purchase model

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) provides a structure on decision-making processes where there are a limited numbers of choices but each has a number of attributes. This paper explores the use of AHP for deciding on car purchase. In the context of shopping, it is important to include elements that provide attributes that make consumer decision-making easier, comfortable and therefore, lead to a car purchase. As the car market becomes more competitive, there is a greater demand for innovation that provides better customer service and strategic competition in the business management. This paper presents a new methodological extension of the AHP by focusing on two issues. One combines pairwise comparison with a spreadsheet method using a 5-point rating scale. The other applies the group weight to a reciprocal consistency ratio. Three newly formed car models of midsize are used to show how the method allows choice to be prioritized and analyzed statistically. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Tooth wear against ceramic crowns in posterior region: a systematic literature review

The objective of this systematic review was to assess tooth wear against ceramic crowns in posterior region in vitro and in vivo. An electronic PubMed search was conducted to identify studies on tooth wear against ceramic crowns in posterior region. The selected studies were analyzed in regard to type of crowns, natural antagonist, measuring protocol and outcome. From a yield of 1 000 titles, 43 articles were selected for full-text analysis; finally, no in vitro and only five in vivo studies met the inclusion criteria. As there is heterogeneity in design, used measuring method, ceramics and analysis-form, a meta-analysis was not possible. Results of these studies are very controversial which makes a scientifically valid comparison impossible. This review indicated that some all-ceramic crowns are as wear friendly as metal-ceramic crowns. Up to now, it has been impossible to associate tooth wear with any specific causal agent. The role of ceramic surface treatment that might be responsible for the changing in rate of tooth wear seems undetermined as yet through clinical trials. The literature reveals that studies on this topic are subject to a substantial amount of bias. Therefore, additional clinical studies, properly designed to diminish bias, are warranted.
Dual polarization stacked microstrip patch antenna array with very low cross-polarization

This paper describes the development and performance of a wideband dual linear polarization microstrip antenna array used in the Danish high-resolution airborne multifrequency polarimetric synthetic aperture radar, EMISAR. The antenna was designed for an operating frequency of 1.25 GHz 50 MHz and was built as an array of 8 2 probe-fed stacked microstrip patches. The feeding network is constructed in microstrip and is capable of handling 6 kW of peak input-power at an altitude of 45 000 ft (unpressurized). The impedance bandwidth (return-loss better than 14 dB) of the antenna is 10%, the isolation between the horizontal and the vertical ports of the array is 50 dB and the cross-polarization suppression is 40 dB. A new design principle for simultaneously achieving very low cross-polarization and low side lobes in dual linear polarization antenna arrays has been applied.
New Clustering Algorithm for Vector Quantization using Rotation of Error Vector

The paper presents new clustering algorithm. The proposed algorithm gives less distortion as compared to well known Linde Buzo Gray (LBG) algorithm and Kekre’s Proportionate Error (KPE) Algorithm. Constant error is added every time to split the clusters in LBG, resulting in formation of cluster in one direction which is 135 in 2-dimensional case. Because of this reason clustering is inefficient resulting in high MSE in LBG. To overcome this drawback of LBG proportionate error is added to change the cluster orientation in KPE. Though the cluster orientation in KPE is changed its variation is limited to ± 45 over 135. The proposed algorithm takes care of this problem by introducing new orientation every time to split the clusters. The proposed method reduces PSNR by 2db to 5db for codebook size 128 to 1024 with respect to LBG. Keywords-component; Vector Quantization; Codebook; Codevector; Encoding; Compression.
Optimal Investment , Growth Options , and Security Returns

As a consequence of optimal investment choices, a firm’s assets and growth options change in predictable ways. Using a dynamic model, we show that this imparts predictability to changes in a firm’s systematic risk, and its expected return. Simulations show that the model simultaneously reproduces: ~i! the time-series relation between the book-to-market ratio and asset returns; ~ii! the cross-sectional relation between book-to-market, market value, and return; ~iii! contrarian effects at short horizons; ~iv! momentum effects at longer horizons; and ~v! the inverse relation between interest rates and the market risk premium. RECENT EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN FINANCE has focused on regularities in the cross section of expected returns that appear anomalous relative to traditional models. Stock returns are related to book-to-market, and market value.1 Past returns have also been shown to predict relative performance, through the documented success of contrarian and momentum strategies.2 Existing explanations for these results are that they are due to behavioral biases or risk premia for omitted state variables.3 These competing explanations are difficult to evaluate without models that explicitly tie the characteristics of interest to risks and risk premia. For example, with respect to book-to-market, Lakonishok et al. ~1994! argue: “The point here is simple: although the returns to the B0M strategy are impressive, B0M is not a ‘clean’ variable uniquely associated with eco* Berk is at the University of California, Berkeley, and NBER; Green is at Carnegie Mellon University; and Naik is with the University of British Columbia. We acknowledge the research assistance of Robert Mitchell and Dave Peterson. We have benefited from and are grateful for comments by seminar participants at Berkeley, British Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, Duke, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Northwestern, Rochester, Utah, Washington at St. Louis, Washington, Wharton, Wisconsin, Yale, the 1996 meetings of the Western Finance Association, and the 1997 Utah Winter Finance Conference and the suggestions from an anonymous referee and from the editor, René Stulz. We also acknowledge financial support for this research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Bureau of Asset Management at University of British Columbia. The computer programs used in this paper are available on this journal’s web page: http:00www.afajof.org 1 See Fama and French ~1992! for summary evidence. 2 See Conrad and Kaul ~1998! for a recent summary of evidence on this subject. 3 See Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny ~1994! for arguments in favor of behavioral biases and Fama and French ~1993! for an interpretation in terms of state variable risks. THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE • VOL. LIV, NO. 5 • OCTOBER 1999
Self-management support from the perspective of patients with a chronic condition: a thematic synthesis of qualitative studies.

BACKGROUND
Receiving adequate support seems to be crucial to the success of self-management. Although different empirical studies separately examined patients' preferences for self-management support (SMS), an overview is lacking.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this qualitative review was to identify patients' needs with respect to SMS and to explore by whom this support is preferably provided.


SEARCH STRATEGY
Qualitative studies were identified from Embase, MEDLINE OvidSP, Web of science, PubMed publisher, Cochrane central, the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and PsycINFO.


INCLUSION CRITERIA
Articles needed to meet all of the following criteria: (i) focuses on self-management, (ii) concerns adult patients with rheumatic diseases (rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia), a variant of cancer or chronic kidney disease, (iii) explores support needs from the patients' perspective, (iv) uses qualitative methods and (v) published in English.


DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS
A thematic synthesis, developed by Thomas and Harden, was conducted of the 37 included studies.


MAIN RESULTS
Chronic patients need instrumental support, psychosocial support and relational support from health-care professionals, family/friends and fellow patients to manage the chronic condition. Relational support is at the centre of the support needs and fuels all other types of support.


DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Patients do not self-manage on their own. Patients expect health-care professionals to fulfil a comprehensive role. Support needs can be knitted together only when patients and professionals work together on the basis of collaborative partnership. Dynamics in support needs make it important to regularly assess patient needs.