LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Improved marketing decision making in a customer churn prediction context using generalized additive models

Nowadays, companies are investing in a well-considered CRM strategy. One of the cornerstones in CRM is customer churn prediction, where one tries to predict whether or not a customer will leave the company. This study focuses on how to better support marketing decision makers in identifying risky customers by using Generalized Additive Models (GAM). Compared to Logistic Regression, GAM relaxes the linearity constraint which allows for complex non-linear fits to the data. The contributions to the literature are three-fold: (i) it is shown that GAM is able to improve marketing decision making by better identifying risky customers; (ii) it is shown that GAM increases the interpretability of the churn model by visualizing the non-linear relationships with customer churn identifying a quasi-exponential, a U, an inverted U or a complex trend and (iii) marketing managers are able to significantly increase business value by applying GAM in this churn prediction context. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Modified-release calcifediol effectively controls secondary hyperparathyroidism associated with vitamin D insufficiency in chronic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND/AIMS
Vitamin D insufficiency drives secondary hyperparathyroidism (SHPT) and is associated with increased cardiovascular mortality in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). SHPT is poorly addressed by current vitamin D repletion options. The present study evaluated a novel investigational vitamin D repletion therapy: a modified-release (MR) formulation of calcifediol designed to raise serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D in a gradual manner to minimize the induction of CYP24 and, thereby, improve the SHPT control.


METHODS
This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial evaluated MR calcifediol in CKD subjects (n = 78) with plasma intact parathyroid hormone (iPTH) >70 pg/ml and serum total 25-hydroxyvitamin D <30 ng/ml. Subjects received daily treatment for six weeks with oral MR calcifediol (30, 60 or 90 µg) or a placebo.


RESULTS
More than 90% of subjects treated with MR calcifediol achieved serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels ≥30 ng/ml versus 3% of subjects treated with placebo (p < 0.0001). Mean plasma iPTH decreased from baseline (140.3 pg/ml) by 20.9 ± 6.2% (SE), 32.8 ± 5.7 and 39.3 ± 4.3% in the 30, 60 and 90 µg dose groups, respectively, and increased 17.2 ± 7.8% in the pooled placebo group (p < 0.005). No clinically significant safety concerns arose during MR calcifediol treatment.


CONCLUSION
Oral MR calcifediol appears safe and highly effective in treating SHPT associated with vitamin D insufficiency in CKD.
MahNMF: Manhattan Non-negative Matrix Factorization

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) approximates a non-negative matrix X by a product of two non-negative low-rank factor matrices W and H . NMF and its extensions minimize either the Kullback-Leibler divergence or the Euclidean distance between X and WH to model the Poisson noise or the Gaussian noise. In practice, when the noise distribution is heavy tailed, they cannot perform well. This paper presents Manhattan NMF (MahNMF) which minimizes the Manhattan distance between X and WH for modeling the heavy tailed Laplacian noise. Similar to sparse and low-rank matrix decompositions, e.g. robust principal component analysis (RPCA) and GoDec, MahNMF robustly estimates the low-rank part and the sparse part of a non-negative matrix and thus performs effectively when data are contaminated by outliers. We extend MahNMF for various practical applications by developing box-constrained MahNMF, manifold regularized MahNMF, group sparse MahNMF, elastic net inducing MahNMF, and symmetric MahNMF. The major contribution of this paper lies in two fast optimization algorithms for MahNMF and its extensions: the rank-one residual iteration (RRI) method and Nesterov’s smoothing method. In particular, by approximating the residual matrix by the outer product of one row of W and one row ofH in MahNMF, we develop an RRI method to iteratively update each variable of W and H in a closed form solution. Although RRI is efficient for small scale MahNMF and some of its extensions, it is neither scalable to large scale matrices nor flexible enough to optimize all MahNMF extensions. Since the objective functions of MahNMF and its extensions are neither convex nor smooth, we apply Nesterov’s smoothing c ©2012 N. Guan, D. Tao, Z. Luo, and J. Shawe-Taylor. N. Guan, D. Tao, Z. Luo, and J. Shawe-Taylor method to recursively optimize one factor matrix with another matrix fixed. By setting the smoothing parameter inversely proportional to the iteration number, we improve the approximation accuracy iteratively for both MahNMF and its extensions. We conduct experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets, such as face images, natural scene images, surveillance videos and multi-model datasets, to show the efficiency of the proposed Nesterov’s smoothing method-based algorithm for solving MahNMF and its variants, and the effectiveness of MahNMF and its variants, by comparing them with traditional NMF, RPCA, and GoDec.
How valid is the clinical diagnosis of Parkinson's disease in the community?

BACKGROUND
Many patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease are later found to have an erroneous diagnosis, often only when they come to necropsy; conversely, many patients with Parkinson's disease in the community remain undiagnosed.


OBJECTIVE
To assess the validity of a clinical diagnosis of parkinsonism in the general population according to strict published criteria.


METHODS
As part of a population based study on the prevalence of Parkinson's disease in London, all patients were identified with a diagnosis of parkinsonism, tremor with onset over age 50 years, or who had ever received antiparkinsonian drugs. All patients who agreed to participate were diagnosed according to strict clinical diagnostic criteria, after a detailed neurological interview and examination and discussion of the findings with examination of their video recordings. Follow up information was obtained over a period of at least one year, and atypical cases were reviewed at the end of the study.


RESULTS
A diagnosis of probable Parkinson's disease was confirmed in 83% of patients with this diagnosis, including three (2%) in whom atypical features were found that were insufficient to discard a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. Two additional patients (2%) were found to have possible Parkinson's disease. However, in 15% of patients the diagnosis was unequivocally rejected. Conversely, 13 patients who had previously not been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (19%) were found to have this disorder.


CONCLUSIONS
At least 15% of patients with a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease in the population do not fulfil strict clinical criteria for the disease, and approximately 20% of patients with Parkinson's disease who have already come to medical attention have not been diagnosed as such.
Dysregulation of FGFR Signaling in Human Malignancies

The fibroblast growth factor signaling pathway (FGFR signaling) is an evolutionary conserved signaling cascade that regulates several basic biologic processes, including tissue development, angiogenesis, and tissue regeneration. Substantial evidence indicates that aberrant FGFR signaling is involved in the pathogenesis of cancer. Recent developments of deep sequencing technologies have allowed the discovery of frequent molecular alterations in components of FGFR signaling among several solid tumor types. Moreover, compelling preclinical models have demonstrated the oncogenic potential of these aberrations in driving tumor growth, promoting angiogenesis, and conferring resistance mechanisms to anticancer therapies. Recently, the field of FGFR targeting has exponentially progressed thanks to the development of novel agents inhibiting FGFs or FGFRs, which had manageable safety profiles in early-phase trials. Promising treatment efficacy has been observed in different types of malignancies, particularly in tumors harboring aberrant FGFR signaling, thus offering novel therapeutic opportunities in the era of precision medicine. The most exciting challenges now focus on selecting patients who are most likely to benefit from these agents, increasing the efficacy of therapies with the development of novel potent compounds and combination strategies, and overcoming toxicities associatedwith FGFR inhibitors. After examination of the basic and translational research studies that validated the oncogenic potential of aberrant FGFR signaling, this review focuses on recent data from clinical trials evaluating FGFR targeting therapies and discusses the challenges and perspectives for the development of these agents. Clin Cancer Res; 21(12); 2684–94. 2015 AACR. Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest F. Andr e is a consultant/advisory board member for Novartis. J.-C. Soria is a consultant/advisory board member for AstraZeneca, Clovis Oncology, EOS, Johnson & Johnson, and Servier. No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed by the other authors. Editor's Disclosures The following editor(s) reported relevant financial relationships: S.E. Bates reports receiving a commercial research grant from Celgene
Genetic engineering of drought-resistant tobacco plants by introducing the trehalose phosphorylase (TP) gene from Pleurotus sajor-caju

This study generated transgenic tobacco plants expressing trehalose phosphorylase of Pleurotus sajor-caju (PsTP) constitutively under the control of the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S promoter. Sixteen transgenic lines were selected by genomic Southern blot analysis for further study. Unlike yeast TPS1-transformed or Escherichia coli TPS1-transformed tobacco or potato, all of the PsTP transgenic tobacco lines showed normal growth phenotypes both in the culture tubes and soil mixture. The study measured the trehalose contents of PsTP-transformed tobacco plants as well as the wild type and empty vector-transformed control plants. Results showed that the PsTP transformant contained 6.3 μmol g−1 of plant tissues, while the wild type and the control plants had only minimal levels of trehalose. Because this study detected a significant amount of trehalose in PsTP transgenic tobacco plants, it decided to carry out a bioanalysis of the PsTP transgenic tobacco plants by drought treatment by not watering the plants for over 10 days. A significant difference in drought resistance was observed from the second nonwatering day between the transgenic and the control tobacco plants. The transgenic tobacco plants had normal growth and did not wither, while the wild type and the only empty vector-transformed control plants withered severely. Among all the transgenic lines, line 10-4 showed the strongest resistance to drought stress. It did not wither even after 10 days without watering. In addition, when the drought resistance of PsTP transgenic tobacco plants was tested using detached leaves, most transgenic plants, except one line, showed better capacity to retain water than the empty vector-transformed transgenic plant.
Comments on a recent solution to Wightman's axioms

A class of exact Wightman functionals satisfying all fundamental physical requirements in an arbitrary number of space-time dimensions, which bear the appearance of describing interacting fields, was recently constructed by C. Read [1]. It is shown here, that the construction can be considerably generalized, and that even the enlarged class belongs to the Borchers class of a system of generalized free fields.
Networks versus markets in international trade

I propose a network/search view of international trade in differentiated products. I present evidence that supports the view that proximity and common language/colonial ties are more important for differentiated products than for products traded on organized exchanges in matching international buyers and sellers, and that search barriers to trade are higher for differentiated than for homogeneous products. I also discuss alternative explanations for the findings.
Screening of patients with tuberculosis for diabetes mellitus in China.

OBJECTIVE
There is a high burden of both diabetes (DM) and tuberculosis (TB) in China, and this study aimed to assess feasibility and results of screening patients with TB for DM within the routine healthcare setting of six health facilities.


METHOD
Agreement on how to screen, monitor and record was reached in May 2011 at a stakeholders' meeting, and training was carried out for staff in the six facilities in July 2011. Implementation started in September 2011, and we report on 7 months of activities up to 31 March 2012.


RESULTS
There were 8886 registered patients with TB. They were first asked whether they had DM. If the answer was no, they were screened with a random blood glucose (RBG) followed by fasting blood glucose (FBG) in those with RBG ≥ 6.1 mm (one facility) or with an initial FBG (five facilities). Those with FBG ≥ 7.0 mm were referred to DM clinics for diagnostic confirmation with a second FBG. Altogether, 1090 (12.4%) patients with DM were identified, of whom 863 (9.7%) had a known diagnosis of DM. Of 8023 patients who needed screening for DM, 7947 (99%) were screened. This resulted in a new diagnosis of DM in 227 patients (2.9% of screened patients), and of these, 226 were enrolled to DM care. In addition, 575 (7.8%) persons had impaired fasting glucose (FBG 6.1 to <7.0 mm). Prevalence of DM was significantly higher in patients in health facilities serving urban populations (14.0%) than rural populations (10.6%) and higher in hospital patients (13.5%) than those attending TB clinics (8.5%).


CONCLUSION
This pilot project shows that it is feasible to screen patients with TB for DM in the routine setting, resulting in a high yield of patients with known and newly diagnosed disease. Free blood tests for glucose measurement and integration of TB and DM services may improve the diagnosis and management of dually affected patients.
An international review of head and spinal cord injuries in alpine skiing and snowboarding.

BACKGROUND
Alpine skiing and snowboarding are popular winter activities worldwide, enjoyed by participants of all ages and skill levels. There is some evidence that the incidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and spinal cord injury (SCI) in these activities may be increasing. These injuries can cause death or severe debilitation, both physically and emotionally, and also result in enormous financial burden to society. Indeed, TBI is the leading cause of death and catastrophic injury in the skiing and snowboarding population. Furthermore, there are severe limitations to therapeutic interventions to restore neurological function after TBI and SCI, and thus the emphasis must be on prevention.


OBJECTIVES
(1) To examine the worldwide epidemiology of TBI and SCI in skiing and snowboarding; (2) to describe and examine the effectiveness of prevention strategies to reduce the incidence of TBI and SCI in skiing and snowboarding.


SEARCH STRATEGY
Searches were performed on a variety of databases to identify articles relevant to catastrophic central nervous system injury in skiing and snowboarding. The databases included PubMed, Medline, EMBASE, CDSR, ACP Journal Club, DARE, CCTR, SportDiscus, CINAHL, and Advanced Google searches. SELECTION CRITERIA AND DATA COLLECTION: After initial prescreening, articles included in the review required epidemiological data on SCI, TBI, or both. Articles had to be directly associated with the topic of skiing and/or snowboarding and published between January 1990 and December 2004.


RESULTS
24 relevant articles, from 10 different countries, were identified. They indicate that the incidence of TBI and SCI in skiing and snowboarding is increasing. The increases coincide with the development and acceptance of acrobatic and high-speed activities on the mountains. There is evidence that helmets reduce the risk of head injury by 22-60%. Head injuries are the most common cause of death among skiers and snowboarders, and young male snowboarders are especially at risk of death from head injury.


CONCLUSIONS
There should be enhanced promotion of injury prevention that includes the use of helmets and emphasizes the skier's and snowboarder's responsibility code.
The Impact of Cardiac Diseases during Pregnancy on Severe Maternal Morbidity and Mortality in Brazil.

BACKGROUND
To evaluate maternal heart disease as a cause or complicating factor for severe morbidity in the setting of the Brazilian Network for Surveillance of Severe Maternal Morbidity.


METHODS AND FINDINGS
Secondary data analysis of this multicenter cross-sectional study was implemented in 27 referral obstetric units in Brazil. From July 2009 to June 2010, a prospective surveillance was conducted among all delivery hospitalizations to identify cases of severe maternal morbidity (SMM), including Potentially Life-Threatening Conditions (PLTC) and Maternal Near Miss (MNM), using the new criteria established by the WHO. The variables studied included: sociodemographic characteristics, clinical and obstetric history of the women; perinatal outcome and the occurrence of maternal outcomes (PLTC, MNM, MD) between groups of cardiac and non-cardiac patients. Only heart conditions with hemodynamic impact characterizing severity of maternal morbidity were considered. 9555 women were included in the Network with severe pregnancy-related complications: 770 maternal near miss cases and 140 maternal death cases. A total of 293 (3.6%) cases were related to heart disease and the condition was known before pregnancy in 82.6% of cases. Maternal near miss occurred in 15% of cardiac disease patients (most due to clinical-surgical causes, p<0.001) and 7.7% of non-cardiac patients (hemorrhagic and hypertensive causes, p<0.001). Maternal death occurred in 4.8% of cardiac patients and in 1.2% of non-cardiac patients, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
In this study, heart disease was significantly associated with a higher occurrence of severe maternal outcomes, including maternal death and maternal near miss, among women presenting with any severe maternal morbidity.
Learning to improve case adaptation

Case-based reasoning (CBR) solves new problems by retrieving records of similar past problem solving episodes and adapting the prior solutions to t the current situation. While the retrieval phase of CBR has been explored with success by past models, developing e ective algorithms for automated adaptation remains an open problem. The central hypothesis of this research is that e ective case adaptation knowledge can be learned and reapplied automatically by applying CBR to the adaptation process. In this model, adaptation knowledge is learned by storing the results of successful adaptations to be reused in solving similar future problems. If there is no relevant adaptation knowledge to reuse, general rule-based methods of adaptation are used to build the adaptation case base. These methods model the search for needed information as a planful process whose strategies can be captured and reused by case-based reasoning when similar situations are encountered in the future. In addition, as adaptation knowledge is acquired, methods for evaluating the similarity of past cases are re ned to re ect the adaptability of a prior case to the new situation. This model is implemented in the DIAL system, a case-based planner in the domain of disaster response planning. DIAL analyzes new disaster situations and proposes response plans to address the problems arising from the disaster. In this research, two criteria are used to evaluate adaptation learning in the DIAL system: the eÆciency of the solution process and the usefulness of its results. The eÆciency of the solution process is examined through statistical evaluation of empirical results. Usefulness is de ned as the system's ability to generate acceptable solutions. Through analysis of the results, the utility of this approach is measured and the contribution of the model is judged.
Pulsation-limited oxygen diffusion in the tumour microenvironment

Hypoxia is central to tumour evolution, growth, invasion and metastasis. Mathematical models of hypoxia based on reaction-diffusion equations provide seemingly incomplete descriptions as they fail to predict the measured oxygen concentrations in the tumour microenvironment. In an attempt to explain the discrepancies, we consider both the inhomogeneous distribution of oxygen-consuming cells in solid tumours and the dynamics of blood flow in the tumour microcirculation. We find that the low-frequency oscillations play an important role in the establishment of tumour hypoxia. The oscillations interact with consumption to inhibit oxygen diffusion in the microenvironment. This suggests that alpha-blockers-a class of drugs used to treat hypertension and stress disorders, and known to lower or even abolish low-frequency oscillations of arterial blood flow -may act as adjuvant drugs in the radiotherapy of solid tumours by enhancing the oxygen effect.
ATHLETE: A cargo and habitat transporter for the moon

As part of the NASA Exploration Technology Development Program, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing a vehicle called ATHLETE: the All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer. The vehicle concept is based on six wheels at the ends of six multi-degree-of-freedom limbs. Because each limb has enough degrees of freedom for use as a general-purpose leg, the wheels can be locked and used as feet to walk out of excessively soft or other extreme terrain. Since the vehicle has this alternative mode of traversing through (or at least out of) extreme terrain, the wheels and wheel actuators can be sized only for nominal terrain. There are substantial mass savings in the wheels and wheel actuators associated with designing for nominal instead of extreme terrain. These mass savings are comparable-to or larger-than the extra mass associated with the articulated limbs. As a result, the entire mobility system, including wheels and limbs, can be about 25% lighter than a conventional mobility chassis for planetary exploration. A side benefit of this approach is that each limb has sufficient degrees-of-freedom for use as a general-purpose manipulator (hence the name “limb” instead of “leg”). Our prototype ATHLETE vehicles have quick-disconnect tool adapters on the limbs that allow tools to be drawn out of a “tool belt” and maneuvered by the limb. A rotating power-take-off from the wheel actuates the tools, so that they can take advantage of the 1+ horsepower motor in each wheel to enable drilling, gripping or other power-tool functions.
Internal structure and ice content of Reichenkar rock glacier (Stubai Alps, Austria) assessed by geophysical investigations

The Reichenkar rock glacier (Tyrol, Austria) is a typical tongue-shaped, 1400m long, ice-cored active rock glacier, which connects to a debris-free cirque glacier. Aerial photographs from 1954 and 1990 indicate its mean surface velocity to be 0.6m/a while a photograph from 2003 and annual global positioning system (GPS) measurements since 1998 show that velocities in the past decade have increased to 3m/a. Integration of ground-penetrating radar (GPR), seismic and gravimetric data reveals that the Reichenkar rock glacier consists of four layers. The uppermost debris layer has an average thickness of about 5m and is underlain by ice-rich permafrost with an average thickness of about 25m. A prominent reflector detected by GPR is identified as the top of an unfrozen till layer located a few metres above the bedrock. Seismic refraction data clearly indicate the boundary between till and bedrock. The geophysical interpretation shows that the ice-rich permafrost of the rock glacier has an ice content of 45–60%, depending on assumptions concerning the air content of the ice. Creep velocities calculated from the geophysical model, ice contents and an extension of Glen’s flow law are in good accordance with observed surface velocities. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.