LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Integra as a dermal replacement in a meshed composite skin graft in a rat model: a one-step operative procedure.

BACKGROUND
Current use of Integra, the collagen-based dermal analogue, requires a two-step grafting procedure to achieve wound closure with an "ultrathin" autograft.


METHODS
A one-step operative procedure of meshed composite skin graft (MCSG) using Integra as a dermal template for a meshed split thickness autograft was developed in rats. The silicon layer of Integra was removed, the resulting dermal analogue was meshed (1:1.5), expanded, and placed on excised full thickness wound and covered with a meshed (1:1.5 or 1:6) split thickness autograft. Grafted wounds were dressed with BioBrane, Vaseline gauze, silver-impregnated nylon, or silver-nylon and direct current (SNDC). At scheduled intervals up to 3 months postgrafting, wounds were examined for epithelialization, collagen deposition and fibrosis, hair growth, and contraction. The results of wound closure and healing following the one-step procedure were compared with the outcome of the two-step grafting procedure where application of meshed Integra (step one) was followed in 14 days by removal of the silicon layer and application of the meshed autograft (step two).


RESULTS
The one-step procedure applied to meshed autograft/Integra (1:1.5/1:1.5) composite graft accelerated wound closure by 6-19 days when compared with the two-step procedure. At 3 months postgrafting, the contraction of the healed wound dressed with SNDC, BioBrane, or Vaseline gauze was reduced by 13-16% following the one-step procedure compared with the two-step procedure (p < 0.05). The one-step procedure allowed the expansion of the autograft layer to 1:6 while achieving wound healing results similar to grafting with 1:1.5 meshed autograft layer using the two-step grafting procedure.


CONCLUSION
Single-step application of meshed, thin, split thickness autograft over meshed Integra-derived dermal substitute allows more rapid wound closure with less contraction and more efficient use of graft donor skin than can be obtained with the commonly used two-step grafting procedure.
Collaborative care versus screening and follow-up for patients with diabetes and depressive symptoms: results of a primary care-based comparative effectiveness trial.

OBJECTIVE
Depressive symptoms are common and, when coexisting with diabetes, worsen outcomes and increase health care costs. We evaluated a nurse case-manager-based collaborative primary care team model to improve depressive symptoms in diabetic patients.


RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
We conducted a controlled implementation trial in four nonmetropolitan primary care networks. Eligible patients had type 2 diabetes and screened positive for depressive symptoms, based on a Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) score of ≥10. Patients were allocated using an "on-off" monthly time series. Intervention consisted of case-managers working 1:1 with patients to deliver individualized care. The main outcome was improvement in PHQ scores at 12 months. A concurrent cohort of 71 comparable patients was used as nonscreened usual care control subjects.


RESULTS
Of 1,924 patients screened, 476 (25%) had a PHQ score >10. Of these, 95 were allocated to intervention and 62 to active control. There were no baseline differences between groups: mean age was 57.8 years, 55% were women, and the mean PHQ score was 14.5 (SD 3.7). Intervention patients had greater 12-month improvements in PHQ (7.3 [SD 5.6]) compared with active-control subjects (5.2 [SD 5.7], P = 0.015). Recovery of depressive symptoms (i.e., PHQ reduced by 50%) was greater among intervention patients (61% vs. 44%, P = 0.03). Compared with trial patients, nonscreened control subjects had significantly less improvement at 12 months in the PHQ score (3.2 [SD 4.9]) and lower rates of recovery (24%, P < 0.05 for both).


CONCLUSIONS
In patients with type 2 diabetes who screened positive for depressive symptoms, collaborative care improved depressive symptoms, but physician notification and follow-up was also a clinically effective initial strategy compared with usual care.
Validation of the Totaled Health Risks In Vascular Events (THRIVE) score for outcome prediction in endovascular stroke treatment.

BACKGROUND
We recently developed the Totaled Health Risks In Vascular Events (THRIVE) score to predict outcomes after endovascular stroke treatment. The THRIVE score, which incorporates age, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, and three medical comorbidities (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and atrial fibrillation), was developed using data from the Mechanical Embolus Removal in Cerebral Ischemia (MERCI) and Multi MERCI trials.


AIMS
We set out to perform external validation of the THRIVE score using data from the largest registry of endovascular stroke treatment performed to date, the Merci Registry.


METHODS
We compared the performance of the THRIVE score in two different data sets: the development cohort (the MERCI and Multi MERCI trials, n = 305) and a validation cohort (the Merci Registry, a prospective multicenter registry of patients undergoing endovascular stroke treatment, n = 1000). We examined the predictive utility of the THRIVE score across the range of clinical outcomes and used receiver-operator characteristics curve analysis to compare score performance in the two data sets.


RESULTS
The THRIVE score predicted good outcome, death, and the full range of the modified Rankin Scale in a similar fashion between the MERCI trials and the Merci Registry. Receiver-operator characteristics curve comparisons showed no statistically significant difference in the performance of the THRIVE score between the two data sets: for good outcome, the receiver-operator characteristics area under the curve was 0·293 for the MERCI trials and 0·266 for the Merci Registry (P = 0·47) and for death, the receiver-operator characteristics area under the curve was 0·692 for the MERCI trials and 0·717 for the Merci Registry (P = 0·48). The THRIVE score and vessel recanalization were also found to be independent and unrelated predictors of clinical outcome.


CONCLUSIONS
The THRIVE score reliably predicts outcomes after endovascular stroke treatment and may be useful as a clinical prognostic tool and to perform severity adjustments in stroke clinical research.
Cohort profile: the Quebec adipose and lifestyle investigation in youth cohort.

Département de pédiatrie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Centre de recherche du Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) Sainte-Justine, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Département de médecine sociale et préventive, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Division of Kinesiology, Faculty of Medicine, Université Laval, Québec, Canada, Département d’éducation physique, Université Laval, Québec, Canada, Département de radiologie, CHU Sainte-Justine, Montréal, Québec, Canada, School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Office of Senior Medical Advisor, First Nations Inuit Health Branch, Health Canada, Vancouver, British-Columbia, Canada, Département de kinésiologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit, INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier, Laval, Québec, Canada, Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie de Québec, Faculté de pharmacie, Université Laval, Québec, Canada, Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada, McGill University Health Center Research Institute, Montréal, Québec, Canada and Institut national de santé publique du Québec, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Business-Related Determinants of Offshoring Intensity

Some researchers view information systems (IS) offshoring as extension of onshore IS outsourcing. However, others have the opinion that IS offshoring has its unique characteristics because of which, we cannot extend research made in onshore IS outsourcing without testing its applicability to the offshore context. This tension motivates our research to examine whether determinants of IS offshoring are indeed the same as determinants of onshore IS outsourcing? We examine the role of some firm level determinants of offshoring intensity. The four business related determinants that we analyze in this study are: business size, business cost, business financial leverage, and business performance. Results indicate a significant relationship between business size and offshoring intensity, and also between business financial leverage and offshoring intensity. Based on the results, we analyze similarities and differences between traditional onshore IS outsourcing and IS offshoring. Implications and contributions arising out of this study are also discussed.
Platform-Based Design and Software Design Methodology for Embedded Systems

0740-7475/01/$10.00 © 2001 IEEE November–December 2001 THE ESSENCE OF embedded-systems design is implementing a specific set of functions while satisfying constraints on characteristics such as performance, cost, emissions, power consumption, and weight. The choice of implementation architecture determines whether designers will implement a function as a hardware component or as software running on a programmable component. In recent years, the functions demanded for embedded systems have grown so numerous and complex that development time is increasingly difficult to predict and control. This complexity, coupled with constantly evolving specifications, has forced designers to consider intrinsically flexible implementations—those they can change rapidly. For this reason, and because hardware-manufacturing cycles are more expensive and time-consuming, softwarebased implementation has become more popular. Processors’ increased computational power and correspondingly decreased size and cost let designers move increasingly more functionality to software. However, along with this move comes increasing difficulty in verifying design correctness. This verification is critical due to safety considerations in several application domains— transportation and environment monitoring, for example. In traditional, PC-like software applications, these safety issues typically don’t come up. In addition, the software world has paid little attention to hard constraints on software’s reaction speed, memory footprint, and power consumption—all crucial issues for embedded systems—because they are relatively unimportant in traditional software development. In embedded-systems design, such hard software characteristics are unavoidable. It is no wonder, then, that there is a crisis in embedded-software design. Along with the pressure on system designers to choose flexible implementations, the industry is also witnessing IC manufacturers’ growing preference for chips that will work for several designs. This lets manufacturers amortize development cost over a large number of units, as discussed in the sidebar, “Motivations for platform-based design.” This alignment of designers and manufacturers has resulted in the birth of platform-based design,1,2 in which reuse and programmability are key. We believe that addressing the embedded Platform-Based Design and Software Design Methodology for Embedded Systems
Integration of in silico and in vitro platforms for pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling.

IMPORTANCE OF THE FIELD
Pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) modeling enables quantitative prediction of the dose-response relationship. Recent advances in microscale technology enabled researchers to create in vitro systems that mimic biological systems more closely. Combination of mathematical modeling and microscale technology offers the possibility of faster, cheaper and more accurate prediction of the drug's effect with a reduced need for animal or human subjects.


AREAS COVERED IN THIS REVIEW
This article discusses combining in vitro microscale systems and PK-PD models for improved prediction of drug's efficacy and toxicity. First, we describe the concept of PK-PD modeling and its applications. Different classes of PK-PD models are described. Microscale technology offers an opportunity for building physical systems that mimic PK-PD models. Recent progress in this approach during the last decade is summarized.


WHAT THE READER WILL GAIN
This article is intended to review how microscale technology combined with cell cultures, also known as 'cells-on-a-chip', can confer a novel aspect to current PK-PD modeling. Readers will gain a comprehensive knowledge of PK-PD modeling and 'cells-on-a-chip' technology, with the prospect of how they may be combined for synergistic effect.


TAKE HOME MESSAGE
The combination of microscale technology and PK-PD modeling should contribute to the development of a novel in vitro/in silico platform for more physiologically-realistic drug screening.
Persistent back pain--why do physical therapy clinicians continue treatment? A mixed methods study of chiropractors, osteopaths and physiotherapists.

AIMS
(a) To investigate how widespread is the use of long term treatment without improvement amongst clinicians treating individuals with low back pain. (b) To study the beliefs behind the reasons why chiropractors, osteopaths and physiotherapists continue to treat people whose low back pain appears not to be improving.


METHODS
A mixed methods study, including a questionnaire survey and qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews. Questionnaire survey; 354/600 (59%) clinicians equally distributed between chiropractic, osteopathy and physiotherapy professions. Interview study; a purposive sample of fourteen clinicians from each profession identified from the survey responses. Methodological techniques ranged from grounded theory analysis to sorting of categories by both the research team and the subjects themselves.


RESULTS
At least 10% of each of the professions reported that they continued to treat patients with low back pain who showed almost no improvement for over three months. There is some indication that this is an underestimate. reasons for continuing unsuccessful management of low back pain were not found to be primarily monetary in nature; rather it appears to have much more to do with the scope of care that extends beyond issues addressed in the current physical therapy guidelines. The interview data showed that clinicians viewed their role as including health education and counselling rather than a 'cure or refer' approach. Additionally, participants raised concerns that discharging patients from their care meant sending them to into a therapeutic void.


CONCLUSION
Long-term treatment of patients with low back pain without objective signs of improvement is an established practice in a minority of clinicians studied. This approach contrasts with clinical guidelines that encourage self-management, reassurance, re-activation, and involvement of multidisciplinary teams for patients who do not recover. Some of the rationale provided makes a strong case for ongoing contact. However, the practice is also maintained through poor communication with other professions and mistrust of the healthcare system.
A Hardware Random Number Generator

MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.
SC-FEGAN: Face Editing Generative Adversarial Network with User's Sketch and Color

We present a novel image editing system that generates images as the user provides free-form mask, sketch and color as an input. Our system consist of a end-to-end trainable convolutional network. Contrary to the existing methods, our system wholly utilizes free-form user input with color and shape. This allows the system to respond to the user’s sketch and color input, using it as a guideline to generate an image. In our particular work, we trained network with additional style loss [3] which made it possible to generate realistic results, despite large portions of the image being removed. Our proposed network architecture SC-FEGAN is well suited to generate high quality synthetic image using intuitive user inputs.
On the Definition of 'Ontology'

In ‘What Is an Ontology?’ Guarino, Oberle and Staab offer a widely cited analysis of the term ‘ontology’ [5]. According to them an ontology is, roughly speaking, a logical theory, which models approximate, as best as possible, the intended models according to a given ontological commitment (which is based on a conceptualization). In this paper we offer six arguments against their proposed analysis of ‘ontology’. It has technical flaws that lead to absurd consequences. Further, the analysis is based on implausible assumptions about the nature of conceptualizations.
What is the source of chronic low back pain and does age play a role?

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence, mean age, and association of prevalence and age of lumbar internal disc disruption (IDD), facet joint pain (FJP), sacroiliac joint pain (SIJP), spinal and pelvic insufficiency fractures, interspinous ligament injury/Baastrup's Disease, and soft tissue irritation by fusion hardware.


DESIGN
The study's design was a retrospective chart review.


SETTING
The study was set in an academic spine center.


PATIENTS
A total of 378 cases from 358 patients were reviewed of which 170 cases from 156 patients who underwent diagnostic procedures were included.


INTERVENTIONS
Discography, dual diagnostic facet joint blocks, intra-articular sacroiliac joint injections, anesthetic injections of painful interspinous ligaments/opposing spinous processes/posterior fusion hardware, or percutaneous augmentation were performed.


OUTCOME MEASURES
Prevalence and age were analyzed for each diagnosis group.


METHODS
Patients with recalcitrant low back pain underwent diagnostic procedures based on their clinical presentation until the pain source was identified.


RESULTS
The prevalence of internal disc disruption, facet joint pain and sacroiliac joint pain was 42%, 31%, and 18%, respectively. Patients with internal disc disruption were significantly younger than those with facet joint pain or sacroiliac joint pain. Increased age was associated with a decreased probability of internal disc disruption and increased probabilities of facet joint pain and sacroiliac joint pain as the source of low back pain until approximately age 70.


CONCLUSION
Our data confirm the intervertebral disc as the most common etiology of chronic low back pain in adults. Based on our sample, the younger the patient, the more likely low back pain is discogenic in origin. Facetogenic or sacroiliac joint pain is more likely in older patients.
Understanding heterogeneity in response to antidiabetes treatment: a post hoc analysis using SIDES, a subgroup identification algorithm.

BACKGROUND
Treatment response in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) varies because of different genotypic and phenotypic characteristics. Results of clinical trials are based largely on aggregated estimates of treatment effect rather than individualized outcomes. This research assessed heterogeneity and differential treatment response using the subgroup identification based on differential effect search (SIDES) algorithm with data from a large multinational study.


METHODS
This was a retrospective analysis of the DURABLE trial, a randomized, open-label, two-arm, parallel study. The trial enrolled 2091 insulin-naïve T2DM patients aged 30 to 80 years. Patients received twice-daily insulin lispro mix 75/25 (LM75/25) or once-daily insulin glargine (insulin glargine). The SIDES methodology was used to find subgroups where the treatment effect was substantially different from what was observed in the full population of the clinical trial. A subgroup identification tool implementing the SIDES algorithm was used to examine data for 1092 patients (584 LM75/25 and 508 insulin glargine), achieving at-goal 12- or 24-week glycated hemoglobin A1c (A1C) (≤7.0%).


RESULTS
The overall at-goal population treatment difference (A1C reduction) was not clinically meaningful, but a clinically meaningful difference was observed (A1C reduction 2.31% ± 0.06% LM75/25 versus 2.01% ± 0.07% insulin glargine; p = .001) in patients with a baseline fasting insulin level >11.4 μIU/ml and age ≤56 years.


CONCLUSION
The observation that younger patients with higher levels of fasting insulin may benefit from a regimen that includes short-acting insulin targeting postprandial glycemia helps explain the heterogeneity in response and warrants further investigation.
How baccalaureate nursing programs teach writing.

BACKGROUND
Written communication skills are critical for nursing practice. However, nursing faculty often find students unprepared to communicate clearly and effectively in writing. This integrative review identifies and discusses specific approaches used in baccalaureate programs to teach writing skills to prelicensure nursing students.


METHODS
Electronic databases PubMed, CINALHL, and ERIC were used. Nine articles were found describing programs that taught writing skills to prelicensure nursing students in baccalaureate programs. All articles were published since 1990 and met inclusion and exclusion criteria. Writing programs were divided into two categories: stand-alone programs and programs integrated across a nursing curriculum. Instructional strategies were analyzed to identify common elements.


FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Five common elements of such programs were identified: short writing assignments, faculty training, sequential writing assignments, giving students examples of successful writing or explaining grading rubrics, and revision after faculty or peer feedback. Across-curriculum programs appeared to include these components more often than stand-alone programs.


CONCLUSION
Writing programs implemented across a nursing curriculum may be more likely to include certain common components than are stand-alone programs. There is a critical need to measure both short- and long-term outcomes of these writing programs.