LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Comparative study of combined bevacizumab/targeted photocoagulation vs bevacizumab alone for macular oedema in ischaemic branch retinal vein occlusions.

PURPOSE
To investigate whether targeted retinal photocoagulation (TRP) of peripheral non-perfused areas (NPAs) could prevent the recurrence of macular oedema (ME) due to branch retinal vein occlusion (BRVO) after intravitreal bevacizumab injection (IVB).


METHODS
Eyes received 1.25 mg IVB only (IVB group) or combined with TRP (IVB + TRP group) of NPAs, more than 5 disc areas identified by fluorescein angiography in the patients with ME secondary to BRVO. Best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and central retinal thickness (CRT) determined by optical coherence tomography were measured every month for 6 months.


RESULTS
Thirty-eight patients were enrolled and randomized to IVB group (n = 19) and IVB + TRP group (n = 19). Both groups showed similar thinning in CRT at 1 week after IVB, IVB + TRP group maintained thinner retina at 2 (p = 0.0072) and 3 (p = 0.0086) months compared with IVB group in whom turned to thickened almost back to baseline at 3 months. The number of reinjections in IVB group (1.58 ± 0.69) was significantly greater (p = 0.0025) than that in IVB + TRP group (0.83 ± 0.62). BCVA significantly improved at 6 month in IVB + TRP group (p = 0.015), but not in IVB group.


CONCLUSION
TRP of NPAs reduced the amount of ME recurrence following IVB compared to IVB alone.
Assessment of postoperative venous thromboembolism risk in plastic surgery patients using the 2005 and 2010 Caprini Risk score.

BACKGROUND
Venous thromboembolism is an important patient safety issue. The authors sought to compare the predictive capacity of the 2005 and 2010 Caprini Risk Assessment Models for perioperative venous thromboembolism risk.


METHODS
The authors performed a retrospective, observational, crossover study using an established surgical outcomes database. A total of 3334 adult plastic surgery patients were identified. Patients were risk-stratified using both the 2005 and 2010 Caprini Risk Assessment Models. Each patient served as his or her own control, resulting in precise matching for identified and unidentified confounders. The outcome of interest was 60-day, symptomatic venous thromboembolism. The predictive capacities of the 2005 and 2010 Caprini risk scores were compared.


RESULTS
Use of the 2010 Caprini Risk Assessment Model resulted in a systematic increase in the aggregate risk score. The median 2010 Caprini score was significantly higher than the median 2005 Caprini score (6 versus 5, p<0.001). When compared with the 2010 model, the 2005 Caprini Risk Assessment Model was able to better separate the lowest and highest risk patients from one another. Patients classified as "super-high" risk (Caprini score>8) using the 2005 Caprini Risk Assessment Model were significantly more likely to have a 60-day venous thromboembolism event when compared with patients classified as super-high risk using the 2010 guidelines (5.85 percent versus 2.52 percent, p=0.021).


CONCLUSIONS
When compared with the 2010 Caprini Risk Assessment Model, the 2005 Caprini Risk Assessment Model provides superior risk stratification. The 2005 Caprini Risk Assessment Model is the more appropriate method to risk-stratify plastic surgery patients for perioperative venous thromboembolism risk.


CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
Risk, II.
Economic evaluation of telephone self-management interventions for blood pressure control.

BACKGROUND
Half of patients with hypertension have poor blood pressure (BP) control. Recent models for treating hypertension have integrated disease monitoring and telephone-based interventions delivered in patients' homes. This study evaluated the costs of the Hypertension Intervention Nurse Telemedicine Study (HINTS), aimed to improve BP control in veterans.


METHODS
Eligible veterans were randomized to either usual care or 1 of 3 telephone-based intervention groups using home BP telemonitoring: (1) behavioral management, (2) medication management, or (3) combined. Intervention costs were derived from information collected during the trial. Direct medical costs (inpatient, outpatient, and outpatient pharmacy, including hypertension-specific pharmacy) at 18 months by group were calculated using Veterans Affairs (VA) Decision Support System data. Bootstrapped CIs were computed to compare intervention and medical costs between intervention groups and usual care.


RESULTS
Patients receiving behavior or medication management showed significant gains in BP control at 12 months; there were no differences in BP control at 18 months. In subgroup analysis, patients with poor baseline BP control receiving combined intervention significantly improved BP at 12 and 18 months. In overall and subgroup samples, average intervention costs were similar in the 3 study arms, and at 18 months, there were no statistically significant differences in direct VA medical costs or total VA costs between treatment arms and usual care.


CONCLUSIONS
To optimize investment in telephone-based home interventions such as the HINTS, it is important to identify groups of patients who are most likely to benefit from more intensive home BP management.
Rate of return to pitching and performance after Tommy John surgery in Major League Baseball pitchers.

BACKGROUND
Medial ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction is a common procedure performed on Major League Baseball (MLB) pitchers in the United States.


PURPOSE
To determine (1) the rate of return to pitching (RTP) in the MLB after UCL reconstruction, (2) the RTP rate in either the MLB and minor league combined, (3) performance after RTP, and (4) the difference in the RTP rate and performance between pitchers who underwent UCL reconstruction and matched controls without UCL injuries.


STUDY DESIGN
Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3.


METHODS
Major League Baseball pitchers with symptomatic medial UCL deficiency who underwent UCL reconstruction were evaluated. All player, elbow, and surgical demographic data were analyzed. Controls matched by age, body mass index, position, handedness, and MLB experience and performance were selected from the MLB during the same years as those undergoing UCL reconstruction. An "index year" was designated for controls, analogous to the UCL reconstruction year in cases. Return to pitching and performance measures in the MLB were compared between cases and controls. Student t tests were performed for analysis of within-group and between-group variables, respectively.


RESULTS
A total of 179 pitchers with UCL tears who underwent reconstruction met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed. Of these, 148 pitchers (83%) were able to RTP in the MLB, and 174 pitchers were able to RTP in the MLB and minor league combined (97.2%), while only 5 pitchers (2.8%) were never able to RTP in either the MLB or minor league. Pitchers returned to the MLB at a mean 20.5 ± 9.72 months after UCL reconstruction. The length of career in the MLB after UCL reconstruction was 3.9 ± 2.84 years, although 56 of these patients were still currently actively pitching in the MLB at the start of the 2013 season. The revision rate was 3.9%. In the year before UCL reconstruction, pitching performance declined significantly in the cases versus controls in the number of innings pitched, games played, and wins and the winning percentage (P < .05). After surgery, pitchers showed significantly improved performance versus before surgery (fewer losses, a lower losing percentage, lower earned run average [ERA], threw fewer walks, and allowed fewer hits, runs, and home runs) (P < .05). Comparisons between cases and controls for the time frame after UCL reconstruction (cases) or the index year (controls) demonstrated that cases had significantly (P < .05) fewer losses per season and a lower losing percentage. In addition, cases had a significantly lower ERA and allowed fewer walks and hits per inning pitched.


CONCLUSION
There is a high rate of RTP in professional baseball after UCL reconstruction. Performance declined before surgery and improved after surgery. When compared with demographic-matched controls, patients who underwent UCL reconstruction had better results in multiple performance measures. Reconstruction of the UCL allows for a predictable and successful return to the MLB.
Ezetimibe improves postprandial hyperlipemia and its induced endothelial dysfunction.

OBJECTIVE
Postprandial hyperlipemia has been shown to impair endothelial function and contribute to the development of atherosclerosis. We investigated the association between postprandial lipid profiles and endothelial function, and we examined the effects of ezetimibe on postprandial hyperlipemia and lipemia-induced endothelial dysfunction.


METHODS
A randomized prospective trial in which 10 mg/day of ezetimibe was administered to 10 subjects for 4 weeks and not administered to 10 subjects (control group) was performed. Lipid profiles and endothelial function, assessed by brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD) during a fasting state and at 2, 4, 6 and 8 h after an oral cookie loading test, were determined before and after treatment for 4 weeks.


RESULTS
In all subjects before treatment, the maximum reduction in postprandial %FMD was significantly correlated with the maximum increases in postprandial triglyceride (TG) (r=-0.499, P<0.05) and apolipoprotein B-48 (apoB-48) concentrations (r=-0.551, P<0.05). Ezetimibe treatment for 4 weeks significantly suppressed postprandial elevation in TG (area under the incremental curve, from 1419±594 to 968±32 1 mg h/dl, P<0.05), remnant lipoprotein cholesterol (from 66.9±27.6 to 38.9±15.4 mg h/dl, P<0.01) and apoB-48 (from 58.8±27.5 to 36.2±17.0 μg h/ml, P<0.05) concentrations, and postprandial endothelial dysfunction assessed by %FMD (maximum reduction in %FMD, from -2.6±1.1% to -1.2±0.8%, P<0.05), whereas no significant changes were observed in the control group.


CONCLUSION
Postprandial hyperlipemia is closely correlated with transient endothelial dysfunction. Ezetimibe improves postprandial hyperlipemia and its induced endothelial dysfunction.
Back-to-Front Down Under? Part-Time/Full-Time Wage Differentials in Australia: Wage Differentials Down Under

Back-to-front Down-under? Part-time/Full-time Wage Differentials in Australia In 2003, part-time employment in Australia accounted for over 42% of the Australian female workforce, nearly 17% of the male workforce, and represented 28% of total employment. Of the OECD countries, only the Netherlands has a higher proportion of working women employed part-time and Australia tops the OECD league in terms of its proportion of working men who are part-time. In this paper we investigate part-time full-time hourly wage gaps using important new panel data from the first four waves of the new Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. We find that, once unobserved individual heterogeneity has been taken into account, part-time men and women typically earn an hourly pay premium. This premium varies with casual employment status, but is always positive, a result that survives our robustness checks. We advance some hypotheses as to why there is a part-time pay advantage in Australia. JEL Classification: J16, J22, J31
A New Nonparametric Levene Test for Equal Variances

Tests of the equality of variances are sometimes used on their own to compare variability across groups of experimental or non-experimental conditions but they are most often used alongside other methods to support assumptions made about variances. A new nonparametric test of equality of variances is described and compared to current ‘gold standard’ method, the median-based Levene test, in a computer simulation study. The simulation results show that when sampling from either symmetric or skewed population distributions both the median based and nonparametric Levene tests maintain their nominal Type I error rate; however, when one is sampling from skewed population distributions the nonparametric test has more statistical power.
New considerations in the cause of spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the demographic and radiographic features of patients with spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea and to determine whether they display similar characteristics to patients with idiopathic intracranial hypertension.


STUDY DESIGN
Retrospective case review.


SETTING
Academic, tertiary referral center.


PATIENTS
All individuals presenting with spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea, diagnosed between 2000 and 2009, undergoing primary surgical repair.


INTERVENTIONS
All patients underwent surgical repair via a transmastoid, middle fossa, or combined transmastoid-middle fossa approach.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Patient demographics such as age, race, sex, height, weight, and body mass index, the presence of a radiographically empty or partially empty sella, and preoperative radiographic and intraoperative surgical findings of the temporal bone.


RESULTS
Twenty-three patients underwent primary surgical repair for spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea. Fifteen patients underwent preoperative magnetic resonance imaging of the head with 12 (80%) demonstrating the presence of an empty or partially empty sella. Mean body mass index of those patients with an empty or partially empty sella was 38.0 kg/m2 compared with 28.5 kg/m2 for those without an empty sella.


CONCLUSION
Patients with spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea are often middle-aged and obese, with females being affected nearly twice as often as males. Empty or partially empty sella was observed in 80% of patients with spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea as demonstrated by preoperative magnetic resonance imaging. Patients with spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid otorrhea who display these demographic and radiographic features should be further evaluated for the presence of idiopathic intracranial hypertension.
Virtual learning environment for medical education based on VRML and VTK

Virtual reality (VR) is being applied to a wide range of medical areas, including medical education/training, surgery and diagnostics assistance. In the medical education field, VR opens new realms in the teaching of medicine and creates new effective learning procedures for the students. In contrast with the expensive immersive virtual reality learning environment (VRLE) such as CAVE, ImmersaDesk, virtual reality modeling language (VRML) technology provides a cheap and simple way to create such an environment and can be easily deployed in the classroom. In this paper, we describe some traditional application of VR in medical education and design a prototype of VRLE system based on VRML and visualization toolkit (VTK). The system architecture and module design are described in detail and some results are presented. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Spatial Databases: With Application to GIS

Introduction This book presents methods for spatial data modeling, algorithms, access methods, and query processing. The main focus is on extending DBMS technology to accommodate spatial data. The book also includes spatial methods used in Geographic Information Systems (GISs). Historically, GISs developed separately from Database systems. GISs are specialized in all aspects of spatial data handling including spatial editing, re-projecting coordinate systems, and map display. However, their query abilities generally are limited or require low-level programming. Contrary to GIS software is the approach to include spatial data in DBMSs using ADTs and extensibility.
Automatic cinematography and multilingual NLG for generating video documentaries

Automatically constructing a complete documentary or educational film from scattered pieces of images and knowledge is a significant challenge. Even when this information is provided in an annotated format, the problems of ordering, structuring and animating sequences of images, and producing natural language descriptions that correspond to those images within multiple constraints, are each individually difficult tasks. This paper describes an approach for tackling these problems through a combination of rhetorical structures with narrative and film theory to produce movie-like visual animations from still images along with natural language generation techniques needed to produce text descriptions of what is being seen in the animations. The use of rhetorical structures from NLG is used to integrate separate components for video creation and script generation. We further describe an implementation, named GLAMOUR, that produces actual, short video documentaries, focusing on a cultural heritage domain, and that have been evaluated by professional filmmakers.  2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Higher serum creatinine concentrations in black patients with chronic kidney disease: beyond nutritional status and body composition.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Serum creatinine concentrations tend to be higher in black than white individuals and people of other races or ethnicities. These differences have been assumed to be largely related to race-related differences in body composition, especially muscle mass.


DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS
In a diverse population of hemodialysis patients, we compared mean serum creatinine concentrations in black versus nonblack patients, adjusting for case mix (age, gender, diabetes, and dialysis vintage), body size (height, weight), laboratory parameters of nutritional status (albumin, predialysis blood urea nitrogen, transferrin, phosphorus, glucose), dialysis dosage (urea reduction ratio), and parameters of bioelectrical impedance (resistance and reactance), proxies for body composition.


RESULTS
Adjusted mean serum creatinine concentrations were significantly higher in black versus nonblack patients (11.7 versus 10.0 mg/dl; P < 0.0001). Black patients were roughly four-fold more likely to have a serum creatinine concentration >10 mg/dl and six-fold more likely to have a serum creatinine concentration >15 mg/dl. Higher serum creatinine concentrations were associated with a lower relative risk for death (0.93; 95% confidence interval 0.88 to 0.98 per mg/dl); the association was slightly more pronounced among nonblack patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Serum creatinine concentrations are significantly higher in black compared with nonblack hemodialysis patients; these differences are not readily explained by differences in nutritional status or body composition.
Incidence and risk factors of biliary fistulation from a hepatic hydatid cyst in clinically asymptomatic patients.

Biliary fistulation from a hepatic hydatid cyst is its most frequent complication. If unrecognised, this may cause difficulties during and after surgical intervention. Our study looked into its incidence and also the possible risk factors in a retrospective investigation of 60 patients (34 women) who had undergone surgery or percutaneous treatment. Demographics and anatomical characteristics, such as cyst type, location, number, diameter and laboratory findings were examined. A full 50% had biliary fistulation, with increased risk if the cyst diameter was ≥8.8 cm.
Using inferred tag ratings to improve user-based collaborative filtering

User-based collaborative filtering is one of the most widely-used recommender methods. It recommends items to a user according to her similar users' opinions. The key point of user-based collaborative filtering is to compute users' similarities. In traditional user-based collaborative filtering, the similarity between two users is determined by their ratings to co-rated items. In some cases, two users rate few common items, such that the similarity between them may be inaccurate and it results in misleading recommendations.
 With the rapid development of social tagging systems, social tagging data poses new opportunities for recommender systems. Many researchers have proposed different methods to exploit tagging data to improve the performance of recommender systems. In this paper, we propose a new approach to compute users' similarities using the inferred tag ratings. A user's preference for a tag t can be inferred based on her ratings of items tagged with t. A user rates too few such items, then her inferred rating to t may be inaccurate. Hence the relationships among tags are used to infer her preference for t based on all her item ratings, such that the preference of user could be accurate. Experiments were done on the MovieLens data set to evaluate the performance of our approach. The results show that our approach outperform traditional user-based collaborative filtering.
A Stock Selection Model Based on Fundamental and Technical Analysis Variables by Using Artificial Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines

The basic aim of this article is to provide a model to explain stock performance utmost level. To reach this purpose, at the initial step, the model results composed of fundamental and technical analysis variables considered separately; in the second step, building the model composed of fundamental and technical analysis parameters which has best explaining ability was the focal point of this study. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an approach that has been widely used for financial classification problems for a long time. In addition, promising results of a novel machine learning method known as the Support Vector Machines (SVM) have been presented in several studies compared to the ANN. The stock performance results relying on fundamental analysis have shown more successful classification rates than the models based on technical analysis. Moreover, it was also experienced that the models constructed by using SVM method in the both type of analyses have shown more prominent results. JEL Classifications: G10, G11, C10
Identifying and categorising patient safety hazards in cardiovascular operating rooms using an interdisciplinary approach: a multisite study.

BACKGROUND
Cardiac surgery is a complex, high-risk procedure with potential vulnerabilities for patient safety. The evidence base describing safety hazards in the cardiovascular operating room is underdeveloped but is essential to guide future safety improvement efforts.


OBJECTIVE
To identify and categorise hazards (anything that has the potential to cause a preventable adverse patient safety event) in the cardiovascular operating room.


METHODS
An interdisciplinary team of researchers used prospective methods, including direct observations, contextual inquiry and photographs to collect hazard data pertaining to the cardiac surgery perioperative period, which started immediately before the patient was transferred to the operating room and ended immediately after patient handoff to the post-anaesthesia/intensive care unit. Data were collected between February and September 2008 in five hospitals. An interdisciplinary approach that included a human factors and systems engineering framework was used to guide the study.


RESULTS
Twenty cardiac surgeries including the corresponding handoff processes from operating room to post-anaesthesia/intensive care unit were observed. A total of 58 categories of hazards related to care providers (eg, practice variations), tasks (eg, high workload), tools and technologies (eg, poor usability), physical environment (eg, cluttered workspace), organisation (eg, hierarchical culture) and processes (eg, non-compliance with guidelines) were identified.


DISCUSSION
Hazards in cardiac surgery services are ubiquitous, indicating numerous opportunities to improve safety. Future efforts should focus on creating a stronger culture of safety in the cardiovascular operating room, increasing compliance with evidence-based infection control practices, improving communication and teamwork, and developing a partnership among all stakeholders to improve the design of tools and technologies.