LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
The value of episodic, intensive blood glucose monitoring in non-insulin treated persons with type 2 diabetes: Design of the Structured Testing Program (STeP) Study, a cluster-randomised, clinical trial [NCT00674986]

BACKGROUND
The value and utility of self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) in non-insulin treated T2DM has yet to be clearly determined. Findings from studies in this population have been inconsistent, due mainly to design differences and limitations, including the prescribed frequency and timing of SMBG, role of the patient and physician in responding to SMBG results, inclusion criteria that may contribute to untoward floor effects, subject compliance, and cross-arm contamination. We have designed an SMBG intervention study that attempts to address these issues.


METHODS/DESIGN
The Structured Testing Program (STeP) study is a 12-month, cluster-randomised, multi-centre clinical trial to evaluate whether poorly controlled (HbA1c >or= 7.5%), non-insulin treated T2DM patients will benefit from a comprehensive, integrated physician/patient intervention using structured SMBG in US primary care practices. Thirty-four practices will be recruited and randomly assigned to an active control group (ACG) that receives enhanced usual care or to an enhanced usual care group plus structured SMBG (STG). A total of 504 patients will be enrolled; eligible patients at each site will be randomly selected using a defined protocol. Anticipated attrition of 20% will yield a sample size of at least 204 per arm, which will provide a 90% power to detect a difference of at least 0.5% in change from baseline in HbA1c values, assuming a common standard deviation of 1.5%. Differences in timing and degree of treatment intensification, cost effectiveness, and changes in patient self-management behaviours, mood, and quality of life (QOL) over time will also be assessed. Analysis of change in HbA1c and other dependent variables over time will be performed using both intent-to-treat and per protocol analyses. Trial results will be available in 2010.


DISCUSSION
The intervention and trial design builds upon previous research by emphasizing appropriate and collaborative use of SMBG by both patients and physicians. Utilization of per protocol and intent-to-treat analyses facilitates a comprehensive assessment of the intervention. Use of practice site cluster-randomisation reduces the potential for intervention contamination, and inclusion criteria (HbA1c >or= 7.5%) reduces the possibility of floor effects. Inclusion of multiple dependent variables allows us to assess the broader impact of the intervention, including changes in patient and physician attitudes and behaviours.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
Current Controlled Trials NCT00674986.
Zur Evolution der organismischen Autonomie. Teil 1: Begriffsbestimmung und das Beispiel der Entstehung der Metazoen

Zusammenfassung Es wird eine Theorie vorgestellt, nach der die Entstehung der mehrzelligen Tiere in der frühen Evolution zu einer Emanzipation von der Umwelt und zu einer Zunahme organismischer Autonomie geführt hat. Zunehmende Autonomie wird definiert als evolutive Verschiebung der individuellen Organismus-Umwelt-Relation, sodass die direkten Einflüsse der Umwelt graduell reduziert werden und eine Stabilisierung sowie Flexibilisierung der intrinsischen Funktionen erfolgt. Dies wird als eine relative Autonomie beschrieben, da gleichzeitig vielfältige Interdependenzen und Abhängigkeiten von der Umwelt bestehen. Elemente einer zunehmenden Autonomie sind räumliche Abgrenzungen, Zunahme homöostatischer Funktionen, Internalisationen und Zunahme physiologischer Flexibilität und Verhaltensflexibilität. Teil eins dieses Beitrags enthält zunächst einen kurzen Überblick über das Konzept der Autonomie in der Literatur. Anschließend wird eine neue Definition des Begriffs der organismischen Autonomie vorgestellt. Als ein Beispiel werden die dabei charakterisierten Prinzipien dann für den Übergang von Einzellern zu Metazoen beschrieben. Teil zwei, der im nächsten Elemente-Heft erscheinen wird, enthält eine detaillierte Diskussion der heutigen ursprünglichen Metazoen in Bezug auf die Evolution von Autonomie. Zum Abschluss werden die Theorie und einige ihrer Konsequenzen diskutiert.
Examining the Effects of School Composition on North Carolina Student Achievement over Time

This study explores the effects of school-level characteristics on North Carolina students’ reading and math achievement from fourth through eighth grade, focusing on the relationships between achievement and the racial and poverty composition of schools. After creating race-by-poverty cohorts of schools, I use multilevel models to examine math and reading achievement for the same students in fourth, sixth, and eighth grades. The racial and poverty composition of schools affect student achievement after factoring in student, family, and other school influences. In addition, increasing teacher quality and school resources reduces but does not eliminate the effects of school racial and poverty composition on student achievement. Policies leading to reductions in racial and poverty isolation in schools and increases in teacher quality should be pursued to guarantee equality of educational opportunities to all children in North Carolina schools.
Rapid Assessment of the Adulteration of Virgin Olive Oils by Other Seed Oils Using Pyrolysis Mass Spectrometry and Artificial Neural Networks

Curie-point pyrolysis mass spectra were obtained from a variety of extra-virgin olive oils, prepared from various cultivars using several mechanical treatments. Some of the oils were adulterated (according to a double-blind protocol) with different amounts of seed oils (50-500 ml of soya, sunflower, peanut, corn or rectified olive oils per litre of mixed oil). Canonical variates analysis indicated that the major source of variation between the pyrolysis mass spectra was due to differences between the cultivars. rather than whether the oils had been adulterated. However, artificial neural networks could be trained (using the back-propagation algorithm) successfully to distinguish virgin oils from those which had been adulterated.
Path Planning and Motion Coordination in Multiple Mobile Robot Teams

Autonomous robot An autonomous robot is a robot that can perform tasks in unstructured environments with minimal human guidance. Planned path A planned path is a pre-determined, obstacle-free, trajectory that a robot can follow to reach its goal position from its starting position. Complete path planner A complete path planner is an algorithm that is guaranteed to find a path, if one exists. Deadlocked path planning A deadlock is a situation in path planning in which a solution cannot be found, even though one exists. Typically, this is caused by robots blocking each other’s paths, and the planner being unable to find a solution in which robots move out of each other’s way.
The Impact of Inpatient Boarding on ED Efficiency: A Discrete-Event Simulation Study

In this study, a discrete-event simulation approach was used to model Emergency Department’s (ED) patient flow to investigate the effect of inpatient boarding on the ED efficiency in terms of the National Emergency Department Crowding Scale (NEDOCS) score and the rate of patients who leave without being seen (LWBS). The decision variable in this model was the boarder-released-ratio defined as the ratio of admitted patients whose boarding time is zero to all admitted patients. Our analysis shows that the Overcrowded+ (a NEDOCS score over 100) ratio decreased from 88.4% to 50.4%, and the rate of LWBS patients decreased from 10.8% to 8.4% when the boarder-released-ratio changed from 0% to 100%. These results show that inpatient boarding significantly impacts both the NEDOCS score and the rate of LWBS patient and this analysis provides a quantification of the impact of boarding on emergency department patient crowding.
Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greek Comic Drama: Figures

1. Introduction: slaves and slavery in ancient Greek comedy Rob Tordoff 2. Slaves and politics in early Aristophanic comedy S. Douglas Olson 3. Slavery, drama and the alchemy of identity in Aristophanes Susan Lape 4. Slaves in the fragments of old comedy Donald Sells 5. Aristophanes, slaves and history Ben Akrigg 6. A comedy of errors: the comic slave in Greek art Kelly Wrenhaven 7. Menander's slaves: the banality of violence David Konstan 8. Coping with punishment: the social networking of slaves in Menander Cheryl Cox 9. Sex slaves in new comedy C. W. Marshall 10. 'Phlyax' slaves: from vase to stage? Kathryn Bosher 11. Tokens of identity in Menander's Epitrepontes: slaves, citizens and in-betweens Christina Vester.
Fuzzy gain-scheduled active fault-tolerant control of a wind turbine

Advanced fault detection and accommodation schemes are required for ensuring efficient and reliable operation of modern wind turbines. This paper presents a novel approach in designing a fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) and fault-tolerant control (FTC) scheme for a wind turbine using fuzzy modeling, identification and control techniques. First, an improved gain-scheduled proportional-integral (PI) control system based on fuzzy gain scheduling (FGS) technique for multi-input and multi-output wind turbine system is designed. Then, to accommodate sensor faults and based on a signal correction algorithm, an active fault-tolerant control system (AFTCS) is developed as an extension of the gain-scheduled PI control system. The AFTCS exploits the fault information from a model-based FDD scheme developed using fuzzy modeling and identification method. The proposed schemes are evaluated by a series of simulations on a well-known large off-shore wind turbine benchmark in the presence of wind turbulences, measurement noises, and different realistic fault scenarios. All results indicate high effectiveness and robustness of the designed control systems in both fault-free and faulty operations of the wind turbine. & 2013 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Patient-centered disease management (PCDM) for heart failure: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND
Chronic heart failure (HF) disease management programs have reported inconsistent results and have not included comorbid depression management or specifically focused on improving patient-reported outcomes. The Patient Centered Disease Management (PCDM) trial was designed to test the effectiveness of collaborative care disease management in improving health status (symptoms, functioning, and quality of life) in patients with HF who reported poor HF-specific health status.


METHODS/DESIGN
Patients with a HF diagnosis at four VA Medical Centers were identified through population-based sampling. Patients with a Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ, a measure of HF-specific health status) score of < 60 (heavy symptom burden and impaired quality of life) were invited to enroll in the PCDM trial. Enrolled patients were randomized to receive usual care or the PCDM intervention, which included: (1) collaborative care management by VA clinicians including a nurse, cardiologist, internist, and psychiatrist, who worked with patients and their primary care providers to provide guideline-concordant care management, (2) home telemonitoring and guided patient self-management support, and (3) screening and treatment for comorbid depression. The primary study outcome is change in overall KCCQ score. Secondary outcomes include depression, medication adherence, guideline-based care, hospitalizations, and mortality.


DISCUSSION
The PCDM trial builds on previous studies of HF disease management by prioritizing patient health status, implementing a collaborative care model of health care delivery, and addressing depression, a key barrier to optimal disease management. The study has been designed as an 'effectiveness trial' to support broader implementation in the healthcare system if it is successful.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
Unique identifier: NCT00461513.
Virtual reality and neuropsychology: upgrading the current tools.

BACKGROUND
Virtual reality (VR) is an evolving technology that has been applied in various aspects of medicine, including the treatment of phobia disorders, pain distraction interventions, surgical training, and medical education. These applications have served to demonstrate the various assets offered through the use of VR.


OBJECTIVE
To provide a background and rationale for the application of VR to neuropsychological assessment.


METHODS
A brief introduction to VR technology and a review of current ongoing neuropsychological research that integrates the use of this technology.


CONCLUSIONS
VR offers numerous assets that may enhance current neuropsychological assessment protocols and address many of the limitations faced by our traditional methods.
Optimal experiments in electrical impedance tomography

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a noninvasive imaging technique which aims to image the impedance within a body from electrical measurements made on the surface. The reconstruction of impedance images is a ill-posed problem which is both extremely sensitive to noise and highly computationally intensive. The authors define an experimental measurement in EIT and calculate optimal experiments which maximize the distinguishability between the region to be imaged and a best-estimate conductivity distribution. These optimal experiments can be derived from measurements made on the boundary. The analysis clarifies the properties of different voltage measurement schemes. A reconstruction algorithm based on the use of optimal experiments is derived. It is shown to be many times faster than standard Newton-based reconstruction algorithms, and results from synthetic data indicate that the images that it produces are comparable.
WIDEBAND MICROSTRIP-FED PRINTED BOW-TIE ANTENNA FOR PHASED-ARRAY SYSTEMS

A microstrip-fed printed bow-tie antenna is presented in order to achieve wide bandwidth, high gain, and size reduction. A comparison between the bow-tie and the quasi-Yagi (dipole and director) antennas shows that the bow-tie antenna has a wider bandwidth, higher gain, lower front-to-back ratio, lower cross-polarization level, and smaller size. Two-element arrays are designed and their characteristics are compared. The bow-tie antenna yields lower coupling for the same distance between elements. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 43: 123–126, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.20396
Physics in the multiverse: an introductory review

This brief note, written for non-specialists, aims at drawing an introductive overview of the multiverse issue.
A Hospital Healthcare Monitoring System Using Wireless Sensor Networks

Body sensor network systems can help people by providing healthcare services such as medical monitoring, memory enhancement, medical data access, and communication with the healthcare provider in emergency situations through the SMS or GPRS [1,2]. Continuous health monitoring with wearable [3] or clothing-embedded transducers [4] and implantable body sensor networks [5] will increase detection of emergency conditions in at risk patients. Not only the patient, but also their families will benefit from these. Also, these systems provide useful methods to remotely acquire and monitor the physiological signals without the need of interruption of the patient’s normal life, thus improving life quality [6,7].
Perforator patterns of the anteromedial thigh flap.

BACKGROUND
The vascular anatomy of the anteromedial thigh flap has not been well defined. The purpose of this study was to determine the perforator patterns and vascular anatomy of this flap.


METHODS
The perforators of the anteromedial thigh flaps and their origins were prospectively explored, documented, and mapped.


RESULTS
Twenty-one of 100 thighs had no anteromedial thigh perforators. For the remaining thighs, there were two sources of perforators: the rectus femoris branch of the descending branch of the lateral circumflex femoris artery, and the superficial femoral artery. Perforators from the latter were short and small and thus less useful. Anteromedial thigh flaps based on rectus femoris branch perforators shared the same vascular pedicle as the anterolateral thigh flap and were thus clinically useful. These rectus femoris branch perforators, however, were present in only 51 percent of the patients. Their surface locations follow a similar pattern as the anterolateral thigh flap, with the majority of perforators near the midpoint, but an average of 3.2 cm medial to a line connecting the anterior superior iliac spine and the superolateral patella. Forty-three thighs had a single rectus femoris branch perforator and eight had two perforators. Sixty-six percent were septocutaneous and the rest traversed a thin layer of the rectus femoris muscle.


CONCLUSIONS
The perforator patterns of the anteromedial thigh flap were examined and defined. It is best to plan the anteromedial thigh flap to complement the anterolateral thigh rather than to be the primary flap.
Brain jam: STEAM learning through neuroscience-themed game development

Improving STEM education is currently a national priority, precipitated by the urgent need to develop a STEM-literate future workforce [26]. This study presents a description of preliminary findings from the development, implementation, and examination of an after-school pilot project combining neuroscience education and the creation of playable media for underserved high school students in Hayward, California.
 The program, developed by university faculty, graduate students and the Institute for STEM Education, is an interdisciplinary and collaborative way to combine neuroscience and design thinking. Drawing on two existing university programs, the CSUEB Game Jam and Brain Bee, it offers an after-school program that is engaging, content-rich, and transdisciplinary. Combining neuroscience and design thinking into STEAM, the program also answers a call by California Next Generation Science and Engineering Standards [21] for increased integration of different disciplines in inquiry-based approaches.
 The evaluation research study of the Brain Jam project was guided by questions of how this after-school program was implemented and the consequences for student engagement. The study also looked at the growth in science literacy and practice as well as design thinking. Preliminary findings appear to support the effectiveness of this transdisciplinary, interactive, and problem-centered approach. They suggest that "folding together" game design and neuroscience was effective in supporting deeper thinking and understanding, and increased student interest in both disciplines.
Allometric scaling of the optic tectum in cartilaginous fishes.

In cartilaginous fishes (Chondrichthyes; sharks, skates and rays (batoids), and holocephalans), the midbrain or mesencephalon can be divided into two parts, the dorsal tectum mesencephali or optic tectum (analogous to the superior colliculus of mammals) and the ventral tegmentum mesencephali. Very little is known about interspecific variation in the relative size and organization of the components of the mesencephalon in these fishes. This study examined the relative development of the optic tectum and the tegmentum in 75 chondrichthyan species representing 32 families. This study also provided a critical assessment of attempts to quantify the size of the optic tectum in these fishes volumetrically using an idealized half-ellipsoid approach (method E), by comparing this method to measurements of the tectum from coronal cross sections (method S). Using species as independent data points and phylogenetically independent contrasts, relationships between the two midbrain structures and both brain and mesencephalon volume were assessed and the relative volume of each brain area (expressed as phylogenetically corrected residuals) was compared among species with different ecological niches (as defined by primary habitat and lifestyle). The relatively largest tecta and tegmenta were found in pelagic coastal/oceanic and oceanic sharks, benthopelagic reef sharks, and benthopelagic coastal sharks. The smallest tecta were found in all benthic sharks and batoids and the majority of bathyal (deep-sea) species. These results were consistent regardless of which method of estimating tectum volume was used. We found a highly significant correlation between optic tectum volume estimates calculated using method E and method S. Taxon-specific variation in the difference between tectum volumes calculated using the two methods appears to reflect variation in both the shape of the optic tectum relative to an idealized half-ellipsoid and the volume of the ventricular cavity. Because the optic tectum is the principal termination site for retinofugal fibers arising from the retinal ganglion cells, the relative size of this brain region has been associated with an increased reliance on vision in other vertebrate groups, including bony fishes. The neuroecological relationships between the relative size of the optic tectum and primary habitat and lifestyle we present here for cartilaginous fishes mirror those established for bony fishes; we speculate that the relative size of the optic tectum and tegmentum similarly reflects the importance of vision and sensory processing in cartilaginous fishes.
Targeting Strategies for Multifunctional Nanoparticles in Cancer Imaging and Therapy

Nanomaterials offer new opportunities for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Multifunctional nanoparticles harboring various functions including targeting, imaging, therapy, and etc have been intensively studied aiming to overcome limitations associated with conventional cancer diagnosis and therapy. Of various nanoparticles, magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles with superparamagnetic property have shown potential as multifunctional nanoparticles for clinical translation because they have been used asmagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) constrast agents in clinic and their features could be easily tailored by including targeting moieties, fluorescence dyes, or therapeutic agents. This review summarizes targeting strategies for construction of multifunctional nanoparticles including magnetic nanoparticles-based theranostic systems, and the various surface engineering strategies of nanoparticles for in vivo applications.
Follicular mucinosis associated with nonlymphoid skin conditions.

BACKGROUND
Follicular mucinosis coexisting with lymphoproliferative disorders has been thoroughly debated. However, it has been rarely reported in association with inflammatory disorders.


METHODS
Thirteen cases have been retrieved, and those with cutaneous lymphoma or alopecia mucinosa were excluded.


RESULTS
Follicular mucinosis was found in the setting of squamous cell carcinoma, seborrheic keratosis, simple prurigo, acne vulgaris, dextrometorphan-induced phototoxicity, polymorphous light eruption (2 cases), insect bite (2 cases), tick bite, discoid lupus erythematosus, drug-related vasculitis, and demodecidosis. Unexpectedly, our observations revealed a preponderating accumulation of mucin related to photo-exposed areas, sun-associated dermatoses, and histopathologic solar elastosis. The amount of mucin filling the follicles apparently correlated with the intensity of perifollicular inflammatory infiltrate, which was present in all cases. The concurrence of dermal interstitial mucin was found in 7 cases (54%).


CONCLUSIONS
The concurrence of interstitial dermal mucinosis or the potential role of both ultraviolet radiation and the perifollicular inflammatory infiltrates in its pathogenesis deserves further investigations. Precise recognition and understanding of this distinctive, reactive histological pattern may prevent our patients from unnecessary diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.