LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Fertility potential after unilateral and bilateral orchidopexy for cryptorchidism

The aim of the study was to compare fertility potential in patients who had been operated upon in childhood because of unilateral or bilateral cryptorchidism. The study covered 68 men (age 25–30 years) with a history of unilateral (49) or bilateral orchidopexy (Mandat et al. in Eur J Pediatr Surg 4:94–97, 1994). Fertility potential was estimated with semen analysis (sperm concentration, motility and morphology), testicular volume measurement and hormonal status evaluation [follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and inhibin B levels]. Differences were analysed with the nonparametric Mann–Whitney test. The group of subjects with bilateral orchidopexy had significantly decreased sperm concentration (P = 0.047), sperm motility (P = 0.003), inhibin B level (P = 0.036) and testicular volume (P = 0.040), compared to subjects with unilateral orchidopexy. In the group with bilateral orchidopexy, there was a strong negative correlation between inhibin B and FSH levels (P < 0.001, r s = −0.772). Sperm concentration in this group correlated positively with inhibin B level (P = 0.004, r s = 0.627) and negatively with FSH level (P = 0.04, r s = −0.435). The group of subjects with unilateral orchidopexy who had been operated before the age of 8 years had significantly increased inhibin B level (P = 0.006) and testicular volume (P = 0.007) and decreased FSH level (P = 0.01), compared to subjects who had been operated at the age of 8 or later. Men who underwent bilateral orchidopexy in their childhood have appreciably poorer prognosis for fertility compared to men who underwent a unilateral procedure. Our study also confirmed that men who underwent unilateral orchidopexy in their childhood before the age of 8 years have better prognosis for fertility compared to those who were operated later.
Monetary effects on nominal oil prices

The paper presents a theory of nominal asset prices for competitively owned oil. Focusing on monetary e¤ects, with exible oil prices the US dollar oil price should follow the aggregate US price level. But with rigid nominal oil prices, the nominal oil price jumps proportionally to nominal interest rate increases. We nd evidence for structural breaks in the nominal oil price that are used to illustrate the theory of oil price jumps. The evidence also indicates strong Granger causality of the oil price by US ination as is consistent with the theory.
Topical testosterone for breast cancer patients with vaginal atrophy related to aromatase inhibitors: a phase I/II study.

PURPOSE
Controversy exists about whether vaginal estrogens interfere with the efficacy of aromatase inhibitors (AIs) in breast cancer patients. With the greater incidence of vaginal atrophy in patients on AIs, a safe and effective nonestrogen therapy is necessary. We hypothesized that vaginal testosterone cream could safely treat vaginal atrophy in women on AIs.


METHODS
Twenty-one postmenopausal breast cancer patients on AIs with symptoms of vaginal atrophy were treated with testosterone cream applied to the vaginal epithelium daily for 28 days. Ten women received a dose of 300 μg, 10 received 150 μg, and one was not evaluable. Estradiol levels, testosterone levels, symptoms of vaginal atrophy, and gynecologic examinations with pH and vaginal cytology were compared before and after therapy.


RESULTS
Estradiol levels remained suppressed after treatment to <8 pg/mL. Mean total symptom scores improved from 2.0 to 0.7 after treatment (p < .001) and remained improved 1 month thereafter (p = .003). Dyspareunia (p = .0014) and vaginal dryness (p <.001) improved. The median vaginal pH decreased from 5.5 to 5.0 (p = .028). The median maturation index rose from 20% to 40% (p < .001). Although improvement in total symptom score was similar for both doses (-1.3 for 300 μg, -0.8 for 150 μg; p = .37), only the 300-μg dose was associated with improved pH and maturation values.


CONCLUSIONS
A 4-week course of vaginal testosterone was associated with improved signs and symptoms of vaginal atrophy related to AI therapy without increasing estradiol or testosterone levels. Longer-term trials are warranted.
Capital Flows and the Risk-Taking Channel of Monetary Policy

This paper examines the relationship between low interests maintained by advanced economy central banks and credit booms in emerging economies. In a model with crossborder banking, low funding rates increase credit supply, but the initial shock is amplified through the “risk-taking channel” of monetary policy where greater risk-taking interact with dampened measured risks that are driven by currency appreciation to create a feedback loop. In an empirical investigation using VAR analysis, we find that expectations of lower short-term rates dampens measured risks and stimulate cross-border banking sector capital flows. JEL Codes: F32, F33, F34
An extended Akers graphical method with a biased random-key genetic algorithm for job-shop scheduling

This paper presents a local search, based on a new neighborhood for the job-shop scheduling problem, and its application within a biased random-key genetic algorithm. Schedules are constructed by decoding the chromosome supplied by the genetic algorithm with a procedure that generates active schedules. After an initial schedule is obtained, a local search heuristic, based on an extension of the graphical method of Akers (1956), is applied to improve the solution. The new heuristic is tested on a set of 205 standard instances taken from the job-shop scheduling literature and compared with results obtained by other approaches. The new algorithm improved the best known solution values for 57 instances.
A Low-Power High-Data-Rate ASK IF Receiver With a Digital-Control AGC Loop

A low-power high-data-rate ASK IF receiver is proposed. It consists of one digital-control automatic-gain-control (AGC) loop and an ASK detector. By utilizing the scrambler concept in the digital communication systems, the gain of the programmable-gain amplifier (PGA) in the AGC loop is discretely adjusted by a gain-control block to eliminate the multidigit analog-to-digital converter. Due to the high sensitivity of the ASK detector, a large controllable input range can be obtained in the AGC loop. The ASK IF receiver has been implemented in 0.18-μm CMOS, and the overall current consumption is 1.21 mA with a supply voltage of 1.8 V. The ASK receiver achieves a 2-Mb/s data rate with an IF carrier frequency of 10 MHz, and an input signal amplitude ranges from 180 μV to 900 mV.
Mothers' knowledge of young child development in a developing country.

BACKGROUND
Although interventions on child development target supporting mothers' relationships with their children, little is known about maternal knowledge of child development in developing countries. The purpose of this study was to determine maternal knowledge about child development in Turkey.


METHODS
The Caregiver Knowledge of Child Development Inventory (CKCDI) developed for this study consisted of questions on when children begin to demonstrate developmental skills and when caregivers should provide opportunities for developmental stimulation.


RESULTS
In total, 1200 mothers of children aged <or=3 years chosen by random population-based sampling were administered the CKCDI in their homes. Of the 1055 mothers with complete data (88%), 64% had at most secondary school education and 11% were employed. The median CKCDI questionnaire score was 19 (highest possible score 40). Mothers believed that most developmental skills and activities should occur at later than normative ages and most mothers did not know that sight (52%), vocalization (79%), social smiling (59%) and overall brain development (68%) begins in the early months of life. In a linear regression model with CKCDI score as the dependent and age of child, number of children, maternal and paternal age and education as the independent variables, higher maternal education and lower number of children were found to be independent predictors of higher CKCDI scores (P < 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
These results illustrate the degree to which caregivers from Turkey may be lacking information on early childhood development and that caregiver knowledge needs to be further investigated so that culture-specific and effective interventions can be planned.
Statistical Methods for Automatic diacritization of Arabic text

In this paper, the issue of adding diacritics Tashkeel to undiacritized Arabic text using statistical methods for language modeling is addressed. The approach requires a large corpus of fully diacritized text for extracting the language monograms, bigrams, and trigrams for words and letters. Search algorithms are then used o find the best probable sequence of diacritized words of a given undiacritized word sequence. The word sequence of undiacritized Arabic text is considered an observation sequence from a hidden Markov Model, where the hidden states are the possible diacritized expressions of the words. The optimal sequence of diacritized words (or states) is then efficiently obtained using Viterbi Algorithm. We present an evaluation of the basic algorithm using the Qur’an’s text, and discuss various ramifications for improving the performance of this approach.
Reordered gossip schemes

Abstract This paper presents a new theorem called the reordering theorem for the problem of gossiping by telephone. The theorem says the calls of any complete gossiping can be rearranged into a sequence such that at most two calls cause each participant to become fully informed, and such that the reverse of this sequence has the same property. This theorem has broad consequences. Several results from the literature are easy corollaries, including the four-cycle theorem and structure theorem of Burosch et al. (1988) for label-connected graphs. The reordering theorem also provides a solution to the problem of gossiping with minimum cost, which has been unsolved in the literature for more than fifteen years.
Time-work tradeoffs for parallel algorithms

Some parallel algorithms have the property that, as they are allowed to take more time, the total work that they do is reduced. This paper describes several algorithms with this property. These algorithms solve important problems on directed graphs, including breadth-first search, topological sort, strong connectivity, and and the single source shorest path problem. All of the algorithms run on the EREW PRAM model of parallel computer, except the algorithm for strong connectivity, which runs on the probabilistic EREW PRAM.
IsoRankN: spectral methods for global alignment of multiple protein networks

MOTIVATION
With the increasing availability of large protein-protein interaction networks, the question of protein network alignment is becoming central to systems biology. Network alignment is further delineated into two sub-problems: local alignment, to find small conserved motifs across networks, and global alignment, which attempts to find a best mapping between all nodes of the two networks. In this article, our aim is to improve upon existing global alignment results. Better network alignment will enable, among other things, more accurate identification of functional orthologs across species.


RESULTS
We introduce IsoRankN (IsoRank-Nibble) a global multiple-network alignment tool based on spectral clustering on the induced graph of pairwise alignment scores. IsoRankN outperforms existing algorithms for global network alignment in coverage and consistency on multiple alignments of the five available eukaryotic networks. Being based on spectral methods, IsoRankN is both error tolerant and computationally efficient.


AVAILABILITY
Our software is available freely for non-commercial purposes on request from: http://isorank.csail.mit.edu/.
An Essay on King Lear : Frontmatter

Introduction 1. The opening terms 2. Sight, 'vision', and action 3. The minor characters 4. Lear and 'true need' 5. Answering and questioning 6. Speaking what we can.
A pilot study of external qigong therapy for patients with fibromyalgia.

OBJECTIVES
Although qigong is an important part of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) based on a philosophy similar to acupuncture, few studies of qigong exist in the Western medicine literature. To evaluate qigong therapy as a modality in treating chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), we report a pilot trial of 10 women with severe FMS who experienced significant improvement after external qigong therapy (EQT).


DESIGN
Ten patients with FMS completed five to seven sessions of EQT over 3 weeks with pre- and posttreatment assessment and a 3-month follow-up. Each treatment lasted approximately 40 minutes.


OUTCOME MEASURES
Tender point count (TPC) and Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ) were the primary measures. McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), anxiety, and self-efficacy were the secondary outcomes.


RESULTS
Subjects demonstrated improvement in functioning, pain, and other symptoms. The mean TPC was reduced from 136.6 to 59.5 after EQT treatment; mean MPQ decreased from 27.0 to 7.2; mean FIQ from 70.1 to 37.3; and mean BDI from 24.3 to 8.3 (all p < 0.01). Many subjects reported reductions in other FMS symptoms, and two reported they were completely symptom-free. Results from the 3-month follow-up indicated some slight rebound from the post-treatment measures, but still much better than those observed at baseline.


CONCLUSIONS
Treatment with EQT resulting in complete recovery for some FMS patients suggests that TCM may be very effective for treating pain and the multiplicity of symptoms associated with FMS. Larger controlled trials of this promising intervention are urgently needed.
Fast, flexible, cycle-accurate energy estimation

Designing energy eÆcient hardware and software systems demands di erent tools at various levels in the design hierarchy. There is however a dearth of tools to enable investigation and implementation of energy eÆcient software and hardware architectures. Presented is a fast, exible, cycleaccurate architectural simulator, Myrmigki, that models a commercial microcontroller and microprocessor family, and enables cycle-accurate power dissipation analyses through a combination of instruction level power analysis and circuit activity estimation. Myrmigki is intended to be used to study the e ect of microarchitectural features on the energy eÆciency of hardware and software systems. It provides facilities for dynamic voltage scaling, clock speed setting and per-cycle architecture recon guration, and is easily extended to add new microarchitectural features and model new instruction set architectures. The simulator provides over an order of magnitude speedup over a contemporary state-of-the-art power estimating simulator, while providing estimates within 10% of measurements from prototype hardware that it models.
Exploiting Sum of Submodular Structure for Inference in Very High Order MRF-MAP Problems

Several tasks in computer vision and machine learning can be modeled as MRF-MAP inference problems. Using higher order potentials to model complex dependencies can significantly improve the performance. The problem can often be modeled as minimizing a sum of submodular (SoS) functions. Since sum of submodular functions is also submodular, existing submodular function minimization (SFM) techniques can be employed for optimal inference in polynomial time [1], [2]. These techniques, though oblivious to the clique sizes, have limited scalability in the number of pixels. On the other hand, state of the art algorithms in computer vision [3], [47] can handle problems with a large number of pixels but fail to scale to large clique sizes. In this paper, we adapt two SFM algorithms [1], [5], to exploit the sum of submodular structure, thereby helping them scale to large number of pixels while maintaining scalability with large clique sizes. Our ideas are general enough and can be extended to adapt other existing SFM algorithms as well. Our experiments on computer vision problems demonstrate that our approach can easily scale up to clique sizes of 300, thereby unlocking the usage of really large sized cliques for MRF-MAP inference problems.
An object-based infrastructure for program monitoring and steering

Program monit,oring and steering systems can provide invaluable insight into the behavior of complex parallel and distril)uted applications. But the traditional event-streambased approach to program monitoring does not scale well with increasing complexity. This paper introduces the Mirror Object Model, a new approach for program monitoring and steering systems. This approach provides a higher-level object-based abstraction that links the producer and the consumer of data and provides a seamless model which integrates monitoring and steering computation. We also introduce thr Mirror Object Steering System (MOSS), an implementation of the Mirror Object Model based on CORBAstyle objects. This paper demonstrates the advantages of MOSS over traditional event-stream-based monitoring systems in handling complex situations. Additionally, we show that t.hr additional functionality of MOSS can be achieved without, significant, performance penalty. approach for program monitoring and steering systems. This approach provides a higher-level object-based abstraction that links the producer and the consumer of data and provides a seamless model that integrates monitoring and steering computation. We also introduce the Mirror Object Steering System (MOSS), an implementation of the Mirror Object Model based on CORBA-style objects. The paper demonstrates the advantages of MOSS over traditional eventstream-based monitoring systems in handling situations that arise in complex interactivity systems. Additionally, we show that the added functionality of MOSS can be achieved without incurring significant performance penalty. 2 Influences and Goals tions. As an ill&.trativekxample of the type of application The design of the Mirror Object Model was influenced by the Distributed Laboratories Project[l3] at Georgia Tech targeted by Distributed Labs, consider a long-running scienand its goals of supporting complex and collaborative intertific simulation. such as a elobal climate mode1 described in action with long-running distributed and parallel applica-
Model-Based Attack Detection and Mitigation for Automatic Generation Control

Cyber systems play a critical role in improving the efficiency and reliability of power system operation and ensuring the system remains within safe operating margins. An adversary can inflict severe damage to the underlying physical system by compromising the control and monitoring applications facilitated by the cyber layer. Protection of critical assets from electronic threats has traditionally been done through conventional cyber security measures that involve host-based and network-based security technologies. However, it has been recognized that highly skilled attacks can bypass these security mechanisms to disrupt the smooth operation of control systems. There is a growing need for cyber-attack-resilient control techniques that look beyond traditional cyber defense mechanisms to detect highly skilled attacks. In this paper, we make the following contributions. We first demonstrate the impact of data integrity attacks on Automatic Generation Control (AGC) on power system frequency and electricity market operation. We propose a general framework to the application of attack resilient control to power systems as a composition of smart attack detection and mitigation. Finally, we develop a model-based anomaly detection and attack mitigation algorithm for AGC. We evaluate the detection capability of the proposed anomaly detection algorithm through simulation studies. Our results show that the algorithm is capable of detecting scaling and ramp attacks with low false positive and negative rates. The proposed model-based mitigation algorithm is also efficient in maintaining system frequency within acceptable limits during the attack period.
Deep-Space Communications and Coding : A Marriage Made in Heaven

It is almost a quarter of a century since the launch in 1968 of NASA's Pioneer 9 spacecraft on the first mission into deep-space that relied on coding to enhance communications on the critical downlink channel. [The channel code used was a binary convolutional code that was decoded with sequential decoding--we will have much to say about this code in the sequel.] The success of this channel coding system had repercussions that extended far beyond NASA's space program. It is no exaggeration to say that the Pioneer 9 mission provided communications engineers with the first incontrovertible demonstration of the practical utility of channel coding techniques and thereby paved the way for the successful application of coding to many other channels.
Transcatheter aortic valve implantation for the treatment of severe symptomatic aortic stenosis in patients at very high or prohibitive surgical risk: acute and late outcomes of the multicenter Canadian experience.

OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was: 1) to evaluate the acute and late outcomes of a transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) program including both the transfemoral (TF) and transapical (TA) approaches; and 2) to determine the results of TAVI in patients deemed inoperable because of either porcelain aorta or frailty.


BACKGROUND
Very few data exist on the results of a comprehensive TAVI program including both TA and TF approaches for the treatment of severe aortic stenosis in patients at very high or prohibitive surgical risk.


METHODS
Consecutive patients who underwent TAVI with the Edwards valve (Edwards Lifesciences, Inc., Irvine, California) between January 2005 and June 2009 in 6 Canadian centers were included.


RESULTS
A total of 345 procedures (TF: 168, TA: 177) were performed in 339 patients. The predicted surgical mortality (Society of Thoracic Surgeons risk score) was 9.8 +/- 6.4%. The procedural success rate was 93.3%, and 30-day mortality was 10.4% (TF: 9.5%, TA: 11.3%). After a median follow-up of 8 months (25th to 75th interquartile range: 3 to 14 months) the mortality rate was 22.1%. The predictors of cumulative late mortality were peri-procedural sepsis (hazard ratio [HR]: 3.49, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.48 to 8.28) or need for hemodynamic support (HR: 2.58, 95% CI: 1.11 to 6), pulmonary hypertension (PH) (HR: 1.88, 95% CI: 1.17 to 3), chronic kidney disease (CKD) (HR: 2.30, 95% CI: 1.38 to 3.84), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (HR: 1.75, 95% CI: 1.09 to 2.83). Patients with either porcelain aorta (18%) or frailty (25%) exhibited acute outcomes similar to the rest of the study population, and porcelain aorta patients tended to have a better survival rate at 1-year follow-up.


CONCLUSIONS
A TAVI program including both TF and TA approaches was associated with comparable mortality as predicted by surgical risk calculators for the treatment of patients at very high or prohibitive surgical risk, including porcelain aorta and frail patients. Baseline (PH, COPD, CKD) and peri-procedural (hemodynamic support, sepsis) factors but not the approach determined worse outcomes.