LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Ground‐layer disturbance and initial conditions influence gap partitioning of understorey vegetation

1. Differential species responses to canopy gap formation may dominate organization of understorey plant community composition in many forests. Gap creation may enhance heterogeneity in understorey plant communities and could influence biodiversity patterns in young managed forests. 2. Our objective was to determine whether understorey plant communities exhibit patterns indicative of gap partitioning and to quantify environmental variables related to these patterns. 3. Patterns in understorey vegetation were studied on transects across harvested canopy gaps in four young, Douglas-fir ( Psuedotsuga menziesii ) dominated forest stands in western Oregon. Variation in ground-layer disturbance and resource gradients in relation to patterns in understorey plant community composition was also assessed. 4. Understorey plant community composition differed significantly by location relative to gap in 0.4-ha gaps, but not 0.1-ha gaps, supporting the gap-size partitioning hypothesis. 5. The concurrent effects of ground-layer disturbance, gap size-related differences in resource gradient intensity, and pre-gap community composition and vegetation structure interact to influence the existence of gap partitioning in understorey plant communities. 6. Gap creation can influence small-scale heterogeneity in understorey plant communities and thus could be an important management tool in efforts to increase heterogeneity and biodiversity in stands and landscapes dominated by young, second growth forests.
Road-to-Vehicle Communications With Time-Dependent Anonymity: A Lightweight Construction and Its Experimental Results

This paper describes techniques that enable vehicles to collect local information (such as road conditions and traffic information) and report it via road-to-vehicle communications. To exclude malicious data, the collected information is signed by each vehicle. In this communication system, the location privacy of vehicles must be maintained. However, simultaneously linkable information (such as travel routes) is also important. That is, no such linkable information can be collected when full anonymity is guaranteed using cryptographic tools such as group signatures. Similarly, continuous linkability (via pseudonyms, for example) may also cause problem from the viewpoint of privacy. In this paper, we propose a road-to-vehicle communication system with relaxed anonymity via group signatures with time-token dependent linking (GS-TDL). Briefly, a vehicle is unlinkable unless it generates multiple signatures in the same time period. We provide our experimental results (using the RELIC library on a cheap and constrained computational power device, Raspberry Pi) and simulate our system by using a traffic simulator (PTV), a radio wave propagation analysis tool (RapLab), and a network simulator (QualNet). Though a similar functionality of time-token-dependent linking was proposed by Wu et al. (“Balanced trustworthiness, safety, and privacy in vehicle-to-vehicle communications,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 59, 2010), we can show an attack against the scheme where anyone can forge a valid group signature without using a secret key. In contrast, our GS-TDL scheme is provably secure. In addition to the time-dependent linking property, our GS-TDL scheme supports verifier-local revocation, where a signer (vehicle) is not involved in the revocation procedure. It is particularly worth noting that no secret key or certificate of a signer (vehicle) must be updated, whereas the security credential management system must update certificates frequently for vehicle privacy. Moreover, our technique maintains constant signing and verification costs by using the linkable part of signatures. This might be of independent interest.
Parallel defect control

How can small-scale parallelism best be exploited in the solution of nonstiffinitial value problems? It is generally accepted that only modest gains in efficiency are possible, and it is often the case that "fast" parallel algorithms have quite crude error control and stepsize selection components. In this paper we consider the possibility of using parallelism to improve reliability and functionality rather than efficiency. We present an algorithm that can be used with any explicit Runge-Kutta formula. The basic idea is to take several smaller substeps in parallel with the main step. The substeps provide an interpolation facility that is essentially free, and the error control strategy can then be based on a defect (residual) sample. If the number of processors exceeds (p 1)/2, where p is the order of the Runge-Kutta formula, then the interpolant and the error control scheme satisfy very strong reliability conditions. Further, for a given order p, the asymptotically optimal values for the substep lengths are independent of the problem and formula and hence can be computed a priori. Theoretical comparisons between the parallel algorithm and optimal sequential algorithms at various orders are given. We also report on numerical tests of the reliability and efficiency of the new algorithm, and give some parallel timing statistics from a 4-processor machine. AMS(MOS) Subject classification: 65L05.
Fixed lumbar apical vertebral rotation predicts spinal decompensation in lenke type 3c adolescent idiopathic scoliosis after selective posterior thoracic correction and fusion

Retrospective radiographic review of surgically treated double major curves (Lenke type 3C) in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. To evaluate the role of selective posterior thoracic correction and fusion in double major curves with third generation instrumentation and to identify preoperative radiographic parameters that predict postoperative coronal spinal decompensation. Traditionally the surgical treatment of double major curves consists of fusion of both the thoracic and the lumbar curve. Few attempt to perform selective thoracic fusion in this curve pattern because of the potential to create spinal imbalance. Thirty-six patients with Lenke type 3C curves underwent a selective posterior thoracic correction and fusion with either Cotrel–Dubousset instrumentation or the Universal Spine System. Radiographs were evaluated to assess coronal and sagittal balance, curve flexibility, and curve correction at a minimum follow up of 2 years. Postoperative coronal spinal decompensation was investigated with respect to preoperative radiographic parameters on standing anteroposterior (AP), standing lateral radiographs, thoracic and lumbar supine side-bending radiographs. Coronal spinal decompensation was defined as plumbline deviation of C7 of more than 2 cm with respect to the centre sacral vertical line (CSVL) within 2 years of surgery. Twenty-six patients (72%) showed satisfactory frontal plane alignment patients (28%) showed coronal spinal decompensation. Significant group differences, however, were identified for lumbar apical vertebral rotation, measured according to Perdriolle (La scoliose. Son êtude tridimensionnelle. Maloine, Paris, pp 179, 1979) (A 16°, B 22°, P = 0.02), percentage correction (derotation) of lumbar apical vertebrae in lumbar supine side-bending films in comparison to standing AP radiographs (A 49%, B 27%, P = 0.002) and thoracic curve flexibility (A 43%, B 25%, P = 0.03). High correlation was noted between postoperative decompensation and derotation of lumbar apical vertebrae in pre-operative lumbar supine side-bending films with a critical value of 40% (Pearson correlation coefficient; P = 0.62, P < 0.001). Ten of 36 patients (28%) with Lenke type 3C adolescent idiopathic scoliosis showed coronal spinal decompensation of more than 2 cm after selective posterior thoracic correction and fusion. Lumbar apical vertebral derotation of less than 40% provided the radiographic prediction of postoperative coronal spinal imbalance. We advise close scrutiny of the transverse plane in the lumbar supine bending film when planning surgical strategy.
Primary care safety-net delivery sites in the United States: A comparison of community health centers, hospital outpatient departments, and physicians' offices.

CONTEXT
The US primary care safety net is composed of a loose network of community health centers, hospital outpatient departments, and physicians' offices. National data on how the mix of patients and services differ across sites are needed.


OBJECTIVE
To develop and contrast national profiles of patient and service mix for primary care.


DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS
Comparative analyses of 3 national surveys of primary care visits occurring in 1994: for data on physician's office visits, the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS); for hospital outpatient department data, the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS); and for data on community health centers, the Bureau of Primary Health Care's 1994 Survey of Visits to Community Health Centers. A time trend analysis also was conducted using the 1998 NAMCS and NHAMCS.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
National estimates of primary care visit rates, types of patient presentation, patient case-mix, disposition of patients, and management interventions in 1994, and compared with 1998 data.


RESULTS
The US population made 1.3 primary care visits per person in 1994, which accounted for 43.5% of all ambulatory visits to physicians' offices, community health centers, and hospital outpatient departments. Primary care visits per person were 20% lower for Hispanics and 33% lower for black, non-Hispanic persons compared with white, non-Hispanic persons. Visits to community health centers were more likely to be made by ethnic minorities, patients with Medicaid or no insurance, and rural dwellers than visits made to the other delivery sites. Visits at hospital outpatient departments were made by sicker populations and were characterized by less continuity than the other delivery sites. Controlling for patient mix, visits made to hospital outpatient departments were more commonly associated with imaging studies, minor surgery, and specialty referrals than those made to physicians' offices. In 1998, the US population made an estimated 3. 4 visits per person, 45.6% of which were primary care visits. National estimates of primary care visit rates and patient mix and practice pattern comparisons between hospital outpatient departments and physicians' offices were similar in 1998 and 1994.


CONCLUSIONS
Expanding community health centers will likely improve access to primary care for vulnerable US populations. However, enhancing access to of physicians' offices is also needed to bolster the safety net. The greater service intensity and poorer continuity for primary care visits in hospital outpatient departments that we observed raises concern about the suitability of these clinics as primary care delivery sites. JAMA. 2000;284:2077-2083.
Multi-labeled Patent Document Classification using Technical Term Thesaurus

This paper presents a method for patent document classification by using an expanded technical term thesaurus. For classifying structural documents such as patent documents, structural information is very useful. However, if we use documents divided into several applicant tags, the number of words are limited. For example, ‘Title of invention’ tag is very important for patent document classification. However, the number of words in the tag is very few. Therefore, in order to deal with this problem, we employ two methods. One is to classify applicant tags into semantic tags, the other is word expansion using an expanded technical term thesaurus. For thesaurus expansion, our system integrates technical terms into a thesaurus using patent documents. The classification results showed the method using the expanded thesaurus was better than that without thesaurus. Although our method is very simple, it is comparable to other methods. These results suggest that thesaurus and our method to expand thesaurus can be useful for patent document classification.
Intelligent adaptation of digital game-based learning

Games for learning cannot take the same design approach as games when targeting audiences. While players of entertainment games have the luxury of choosing games that suit them, students using digital games for learning typically have a single game for them to learn from, regardless of whether or not it fits their playing style or learning needs. We contend that this problem can be addressed by creating games that identify the kind of player-learner using the game and adapts itself to best fit that individual. These adaptive games can specialize themselves according to a student's learning needs, gameplay preferences, and learning style. We present a prototype mini-game, called S.C.R.U.B., which employs this method for teaching microbiology concepts.
Treatment of advanced prostatic cancer with anti-androgens alone and a combination of anti-androgen with anti-prolactine — A pilot study

In this pilot study the treatment of advanced prostatic cancer with cyproteronacetate (AndrocurR) is compared with the treatment of a lower dose cyproteronacetate plus lisuride (DoperginR), an anti-prolactin derivative. Treatment was continued until progression and/or the appearance of serious side effects necssitated termination. The duration of the treatment with cyproteronacetate plus lisuride ranged from 2 to 38 months. Most cases showed a partial response, evaluated on the basis of lower levels of prostatic acid phosphatase, relief of bone pain and reduction of bone metastases. Serious side-effects other than impotence did not occur.
Potential Risks of Pharmacy Compounding

Pharmacy compounding involves the preparation of customized medications that are not commercially available for individual patients with specialized medical needs. Traditional pharmacy compounding is appropriate when done on a small scale by pharmacists who prepare the medication based on an individual prescription. However, the regulatory oversight of pharmacy compounding is significantly less rigorous than that required for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs; as such, compounded drugs may pose additional risks to patients. FDA-approved drugs are made and tested in accordance with good manufacturing practice regulations (GMPs), which are federal statutes that govern the production and testing of pharmaceutical products. In contrast, compounded drugs are exempt from GMPs, and testing to assess product quality is inconsistent. Unlike FDA-approved drugs, pharmacy-compounded products are not clinically evaluated for safety or efficacy. In addition, compounded preparations do not have standard product labeling or prescribing information with instructions for safe use. Compounding pharmacies are not required to report adverse events to the FDA, which is mandatory for manufacturers of FDA-regulated medications. Some pharmacies engage in activities that extend beyond the boundaries of traditional pharmacy compounding, such as large-scale production of compounded medications without individual patient prescriptions, compounding drugs that have not been approved for use in the US, and creating copies of FDA-approved drugs. Compounding drugs in the absence of GMPs increases the potential for preparation errors. When compounding is performed on a large scale, such errors may adversely affect many patients. Published reports of independent testing by the FDA, state agencies, and others consistently show that compounded drugs fail to meet specifications at a considerably higher rate than FDA-approved drugs. Compounded sterile preparations pose the additional risk of microbial contamination to patients. In the last 11 years, three separate meningitis outbreaks have been traced to purportedly 'sterile' steroid injections contaminated with fungus or bacteria, which were made by compounding pharmacies. The most recent 2012 outbreak has resulted in intense scrutiny of pharmacy compounding practices and increased recognition of the need to ensure that compounding is limited to appropriate circumstances. Patients and healthcare practitioners need to be aware that compounded drugs are not the same as generic drugs, which are approved by the FDA. The risk-benefit ratio of using traditionally compounded medicines is favorable for patients who require specialized medications that are not commercially available, as they would otherwise not have access to suitable treatment. However, if an FDA-approved drug is commercially available, the use of an unapproved compounded drug confers additional risk with no commensurate benefit.
It is time to combine the two main traditions in the research on the neural correlates of consciousness: C = L × D

Research on neural correlates of consciousness has been conducted and carried out mostly from within two relatively autonomous paradigmatic traditions - studying the specific contents of conscious experience and their brain-process correlates and studying the level of consciousness. In the present paper we offer a theoretical integration suggesting that an emphasis has to be put on understanding the mechanisms of consciousness (and not a mere correlates) and in doing this, the two paradigmatic traditions must be combined. We argue that consciousness emerges as a result of interaction of brain mechanisms specialized for representing the specific contents of perception/cognition - the data - and mechanisms specialized for regulating the level of activity of whatever data the content-carrying specific mechanisms happen to represent. Each of these mechanisms are necessary because without the contents there is no conscious experience and without the required level of activity the processed contents remain unconscious. Together the two mechanisms, when activated up to a necessary degree each, provide conditions sufficient for conscious experience to emerge. This proposal is related to pertinent experimental evidence.
Intrinsic Plagiarism Detection using Complexity Analysis

We introduce Kolmogorov Complexity measures as a way of extracting structural information from texts for Intrinsic Plagiarism Detection. Kolmogorov complexity measures have been used as features in a variety of machine learning tasks including image recognition, radar signal classification, EEG classification, DNA analysis, speech recognition and some text classification tasks (Chi and Kong, 1998; Zhang, Hu, and Jin, 2003; Bhattacharya, 2000; Menconi, Benci, and Buiatti, 2008; Frank, Chui, and Witten, 2000; Dalkilic et al., 2006; Seaward and Saxton, 2007; Seaward, Inkpen, and Nayak, 2008). Intrinsic Plagiarism detection uses no external corpus for document comparison and thus plagiarism must be detected solely on the basis of style shifts within the text to be analyzed. Given the small amount of text to be analyzed, feature extraction is of particular importance. We give a theoretical background as to why complexity measures are meaningful and we introduce some experimental results on the PAN’09 Intrinsic Plagiarism Corpus. We show complexity features based on the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm slightly increase performance over features based on normalized counts. Furthermore we believe that more sophisticated compression algorithms which are suited to compressing the English language show great promise for feature extraction for various text classification problems.
Post hoc analysis of the efficacy and safety of desvenlafaxine 50 mg/day in a randomized, placebo-controlled study of perimenopausal and postmenopausal women with major depressive disorder.

OBJECTIVE
This post hoc analysis assessed the efficacy of desvenlafaxine 50 mg/day for treating major depressive disorder in perimenopausal versus postmenopausal women enrolled in a 10-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.


METHODS
Perimenopausal and postmenopausal women (40-70 y) diagnosed with major depressive disorder were randomly assigned to receive desvenlafaxine 50 mg/day or placebo. Changes from baseline in the primary efficacy variable (17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression [HAM-D17] score, week 8) and in other secondary efficacy variables (Sheehan Disability Scale and Menopause Rating Scale) were analyzed using analysis of covariance with treatment, region, and baseline in the model. Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement Scale was analyzed with the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test. Response and remission rates were evaluated using logistic regression with treatment, region, and baseline HAM-D17 in the model.


RESULTS
Of 426 women (desvenlafaxine, n = 216; placebo, n = 210) included in this analysis, 135 (32%) were perimenopausal and 291 (68%) were postmenopausal at baseline. In both subgroups, improvement from baseline in HAM-D17 scores was significantly greater for desvenlafaxine 50 mg/day than for placebo. Menopause status and time since menopause did not significantly affect HAM-D17 total score. The drug-placebo difference in Sheehan Disability Scale scores was significant in perimenopausal women (-9.3 vs. -5.1, P < 0.001) but not in postmenopausal women (-8.8 vs. -8.1). Menopause Rating Scale and Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement Scale scores were significantly improved with desvenlafaxine in postmenopausal women.


CONCLUSIONS
Desvenlafaxine 50 mg/day is effective in treating depression in both perimenopausal and postmenopausal women. Placebo response on measures of functional impairment is lower in perimenopausal women than in postmenopausal women, resulting in a greater apparent treatment benefit with desvenlafaxine among perimenopausal women.
Structural equivalence: Meaning and definition, computation and application☆

Abstract This paper presents a generalization of the concept of “structural equivalence”, the key concept in algebraic approaches to the study of social networks. Two points in a graph or set of relations will be called “structurally related” if they are connected in the same ways to structurally related points. It is suggested that this new definition suitably weakens Lorrain and White's categorical approach, and is more appropriate than CONCOR. Structural relatedness is compared to these approaches via several simple examples.
Python for Scientific Computing

Python is an excellent "steering" language for scientific codes written in other languages. However, with additional basic tools, Python transforms into a high-level language suited for scientific and engineering code that's often fast enough to be immediately useful but also flexible enough to be sped up with additional extensions.