LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Cardiovascular disease and musculoskeletal disorder labels in family practice acted as markers of physical health severity.

OBJECTIVE
Family practitioner diagnostic labels applied in consultation provide a signpost for treatment and management. Yet, it is unknown whether each label reflects the health of the respective patient group.


STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING
Consultation records of 7,799 patients aged 50 years and older from six family practices were linked to a cross-sectional baseline health survey. Associations between six mutually exclusive cardiovascular disease and nine mutually exclusive musculoskeletal disorder categories, and physical health severity as measured by the Short Form-12 questionnaire were examined.


RESULTS
There were 2,447 (31.4%) cardiovascular disease and 3,321 (42.6%) musculoskeletal disorder consulters. The mean physical health scores ranged from 38.38 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 37.8-39.0) for hypertension to the poorest score of health 28.98 (95% CI: 27.5-30.5) for consulters with heart failure, whereas in the musculoskeletal disorder group, scores ranged from 44.85 (95% CI: 42.2-47.5) for soft tissue disorder to 28.79 (95% CI: 26.8-30.8) for consulters with inflammatory polyarthropathy (trend P<0.001). This trend in the association between diagnostic categories and physical health severity within both spectrums remained after adjustment for confounders.


CONCLUSION
Specific diagnostic labels for selected chronic illness indicate the severity of physical health for the corresponding consulting population.
An overview of low voltage DC distribution systems for residential applications

The concept of a microgrid has drawn the interest of research community in recent years. The most interesting aspects are the integration of renewable energy sources and energy storage systems at the consumption level, aiming to increase power quality, reliability and efficiency. On top of this, the increasing of DC-based loads has re-open the discussion of DC vs AC distribution systems. As a consequence a lot of research has been done on DC distribution systems and its potential for residential applications. This paper presents an overview of the LVDC distribution systems used in residential applications. Several publications that study the potential energy savings and overall advantages of the LVDC distribution systems are analysed. Different power architectures and topologies are discussed. The existing demonstration facilities where LVDC distribution systems have been implemented are also shown.
Number of roles for female MDs mushrooming as century draws to close.

In one short century, Canada's female doctors have gone from fighting for admission to medical school to caring for the country's astronauts. This remarkable progress was celebrated recently by the Federation of Medical Women of Canada (FMWC) as it marked its 75th anniversary during its annual
Cryopreservation of ovarian tissue in breast cancer patients: 10 years of experience.

AIM
To present a decade of experience with ovarian tissue cryopreservation in breast cancer patients.


MATERIALS & METHODS
The safety of the procedure was histologically evaluated before and after freezing in 94 patients. Out of 94 patients, 48 prechemotherapy patients were randomly selected to determine stroma and follicle preservation and follicular density.


RESULTS
The ovarian tissue from 94 patients did not identify any micrometastases. After cryopreservation, morphology of the ovarian tissue and density of healthy follicles were similar in fresh and frozen tissue. Follicular density decreased with the increasing age of patients in both fresh and frozen tissue (p < 0.0001). A variation in follicular density was observed between fresh and frozen tissue (p < 0.05).


CONCLUSION
These results suggest that ovarian tissue cryopreservation is highly feasible for preserving the fertility of young breast cancer patients.
Male circumcision and common sexually transmissible diseases in a developed nation setting.

OBJECTIVE
To determine whether the circumcision status of men affected their likelihood of acquiring sexually transmissible diseases (STDs).


DESIGN
A cross-sectional study employing an anonymous questionnaire, clinical examination and type specific serology for herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2).


SETTING
A public STD clinic in Sydney, Australia.


SUBJECTS
300 consecutive heterosexual male patients.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Associations between circumcision status and past or present diagnoses of STDs including HSV-2 serology and clinical pattern of genital herpes.


RESULTS
185 (62%) of the men were circumcised and they reported similar ages, education levels and lifetime partner numbers as men who were uncircumcised. There were no significant associations between the presence or absence of the male prepuce and the number diagnosed with genital herpes, genital warts and non-gonococcal urethritis. Men who were uncircumcised were no more likely to be seropositive for HSV-2 and reported symptomatic genital herpes outbreaks of the same frequency and severity as men who were circumcised. Gonorrhoea, syphilis and acute hepatitis B were reported too infrequently to reliably exclude any association with circumcision status. Human immunodeficiency virus infection (rare among heterosexual men in the clinic) was an exclusion criterion.


CONCLUSIONS
From the findings of this study, circumcision of men has no significant effect on the incidence of common STDs in this developed nation setting. However, these findings may not necessarily extend to other setting where hygiene is poorer and the spectrum of common STDs is different.
Improved Sliding Mode Nonlinear Extended State Observer based Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Uncertain Systems with Unknown Total Disturbance

This paper presents a new strategy for the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) of a general uncertain system with unknown bounded disturbance based on a nonlinear sliding mode extended state observer (SMESO). Firstly, a nonlinear extended state observer is synthesized using sliding mode technique for a general uncertain system assuming asymptotic stability. Then the convergence characteristics of the estimation error are analyzed by Lyapunov strategy. It revealed that the proposed SMESO is asymptotically stable and accurately estimates the states of the system in addition to estimating the total disturbance. Then, an ADRC is implemented by using a nonlinear state error feedback (NLSEF) controller; that is suggested by J. Han and the proposed SMESO to control and actively reject the total disturbance of a permanent magnet DC (PMDC) motor. These disturbances caused by the unknown exogenous disturbances and the matched uncertainties of the controlled model. The proposed SMESO is compared with the linear extended state observer (LESO). Through digital simulations using MATLAB / SIMULINK, the chattering phenomenon has been reduced dramatically on the control input channel compared to LESO. Finally, the closed-loop system exhibits a high immunity to torque disturbance and quite robustness to matched uncertainties in the system. Keywords—extended state observer; sliding mode; rejection control; tracking differentiator; DC motor; nonlinear state feedback
Board Recommendation in Pinterest

In this paper we describe preliminary approaches for contentbased recommendation of Pinterest boards to users. We describe our representation and features for Pinterest boards and users, together with a supervised recommendation model. We observe that features based on latent topics lead to better performance than features based on userassigned Pinterest categories. We also find that using social signals (repins, likes, etc.) can improve recommendation quality.
Closed Loop Identification of the Physical Parameters of an Industrial Robot

This paper discusses experimental identification of a flexible robot under strong feedback. Black-box models are compared with physically parameterized models. The parameters in the physical models and the black box models are identified from the input-output data using prediction error methods. We also investigate the importance of noise models when performing identification under strong feedback. The robot that we use is a commercial ABB robot, IRB 1400.
A High-Temperature Engineering Ceramic (Si3N4) by Powder Metallurgical Methods

Abstract : Silicon nitride has become a major structural ceramic material in the past decade. One form of this material, referred to as reaction-bonded silicon nitride, is of particular interest because it permits the production of ceramic components requiring little or not machining. The review discusses the application of powder metallurgical techniques to the fabrication of reaction- bonded silicon nitride, the nitridation process, and resultant properties.
A Neural Organist improvising baroque-style melodic variations

We present a multi-scale neural network system producing melodic variations in a style directly learned from music pieces of composers like Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Pachelbel. Given any melody, the system first invents a four-part chorale harmonization and then improvises a variation of any chorale voice. Unlike earlier approaches to the learning of melodic structure, the system is able to learn and reproduce high-order structure like harmonic, motif and phrase structure in melodic sequences. This is achieved by using mutually interacting neural networks operating at different time scales, in combination with an unsupervised learning mechanism to classify and recognize musical structure. The results are complete music pieces, e.g. in the style of chorale partitas written by J. Pachelbel. Their quality has been judged by experts to be comparable to improvisations invented by an experienced human organist.
Instance-Level Segmentation with Deep Densely Connected MRFs

Our aim is to provide a pixel-level object instance labeling of a monocular image. We build on recent work [27] that trained a convolutional neural net to predict instance labeling in local image patches, extracted exhaustively in a stride from an image. A simple Markov random field model using several heuristics was then proposed in [27] to derive a globally consistent instance labeling of the image. In this paper, we formulate the global labeling problem with a novel densely connected Markov random field and show how to encode various intuitive potentials in a way that is amenable to efficient mean field inference [13]. Our potentials encode the compatibility between the global labeling and the patch-level predictions, contrast-sensitive smoothness as well as the fact that separate regions form different instances. Our experiments on the challenging KITTI benchmark [8] demonstrate that our method achieves a significant performance boost over the baseline [27].
Association between Facebook Dependence and Poor Sleep Quality: A Study in a Sample of Undergraduate Students in Peru

OBJECTIVES
Internet can accelerate information exchange. Social networks are the most accessed especially Facebook. This kind of networks might create dependency with several negative consequences in people's life. The aim of this study was to assess potential association between Facebook dependence and poor sleep quality.


METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS
A cross sectional study was performed enrolling undergraduate students of the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Lima, Peru. The Internet Addiction Questionnaire, adapted to the Facebook case, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, were used. A global score of 6 or greater was defined as the cutoff to determine poor sleep quality. Generalized linear model were used to determine prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). A total of 418 students were analyzed; of them, 322 (77.0%) were women, with a mean age of 20.1 (SD: 2.5) years. Facebook dependence was found in 8.6% (95% CI: 5.9%-11.3%), whereas poor sleep quality was present in 55.0% (95% CI: 50.2%-59.8%). A significant association between Facebook dependence and poor sleep quality mainly explained by daytime dysfunction was found (PR = 1.31; IC95%: 1.04-1.67) after adjusting for age, sex and years in the faculty.


CONCLUSIONS
There is a relationship between Facebook dependence and poor quality of sleep. More than half of students reported poor sleep quality. Strategies to moderate the use of this social network and to improve sleep quality in this population are needed.
Intracoronary bone marrow-derived progenitor cells in acute myocardial infarction.

BACKGROUND
Pilot trials suggest that the intracoronary administration of autologous progenitor cells may improve left ventricular function after acute myocardial infarction.


METHODS
In a multicenter trial, we randomly assigned 204 patients with acute myocardial infarction to receive an intracoronary infusion of progenitor cells derived from bone marrow (BMC) or placebo medium into the infarct artery 3 to 7 days after successful reperfusion therapy.


RESULTS
At 4 months, the absolute improvement in the global left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was significantly greater in the BMC group than in the placebo group (mean [+/-SD] increase, 5.5+/-7.3% vs. 3.0+/-6.5%; P=0.01). Patients with a baseline LVEF at or below the median value of 48.9% derived the most benefit (absolute improvement in LVEF, 5.0%; 95% confidence interval, 2.0 to 8.1). At 1 year, intracoronary infusion of BMC was associated with a reduction in the prespecified combined clinical end point of death, recurrence of myocardial infarction, and any revascularization procedure (P=0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
Intracoronary administration of BMC is associated with improved recovery of left ventricular contractile function in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Large-scale studies are warranted to examine the potential effects of progenitor-cell administration on morbidity and mortality.
Cannabidiol (CBD) as an Adjunctive Therapy in Schizophrenia: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial.

OBJECTIVE
Research in both animals and humans indicates that cannabidiol (CBD) has antipsychotic properties. The authors assessed the safety and effectiveness of CBD in patients with schizophrenia.


METHOD
In an exploratory double-blind parallel-group trial, patients with schizophrenia were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive CBD (1000 mg/day; N=43) or placebo (N=45) alongside their existing antipsychotic medication. Participants were assessed before and after treatment using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS), the Global Assessment of Functioning scale (GAF), and the improvement and severity scales of the Clinical Global Impressions Scale (CGI-I and CGI-S).


RESULTS
After 6 weeks of treatment, compared with the placebo group, the CBD group had lower levels of positive psychotic symptoms (PANSS: treatment difference=-1.4, 95% CI=-2.5, -0.2) and were more likely to have been rated as improved (CGI-I: treatment difference=-0.5, 95% CI=-0.8, -0.1) and as not severely unwell (CGI-S: treatment difference=-0.3, 95% CI=-0.5, 0.0) by the treating clinician. Patients who received CBD also showed greater improvements that fell short of statistical significance in cognitive performance (BACS: treatment difference=1.31, 95% CI=-0.10, 2.72) and in overall functioning (GAF: treatment difference=3.0, 95% CI=-0.4, 6.4). CBD was well tolerated, and rates of adverse events were similar between the CBD and placebo groups.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that CBD has beneficial effects in patients with schizophrenia. As CBD's effects do not appear to depend on dopamine receptor antagonism, this agent may represent a new class of treatment for the disorder.
Motor learning: its relevance to stroke recovery and neurorehabilitation.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW
Much of neurorehabilitation rests on the assumption that patients can improve with practice. This review will focus on arm movements and address the following questions: (i) What is motor learning? (ii) Do patients with hemiparesis have a learning deficit? (iii) Is recovery after injury a form of motor learning? (iv) Are approaches based on motor learning principles useful for rehabilitation?


RECENT FINDINGS
Motor learning can be broken into kinematic and dynamic components. Studies in healthy subjects suggest that retention of motor learning is best accomplished with variable training schedules. Animal models and functional imaging in humans show that the mature brain can undergo plastic changes during both learning and recovery. Quantitative motor control approaches allow differentiation between compensation and true recovery, although both improve with practice. Several promising new rehabilitation approaches are based on theories of motor learning. These include impairment oriented-training (IOT), constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT), electromyogram (EMG)-triggered neuromuscular stimulation, robotic interactive therapy and virtual reality (VR).


SUMMARY
Motor learning mechanisms are operative during spontaneous stroke recovery and interact with rehabilitative training. For optimal results, rehabilitation techniques should be geared towards patients' specific motor deficits and possibly combined, for example, CIMT with VR. Two critical questions that should always be asked of a rehabilitation technique are whether gains persist for a significant period after training and whether they generalize to untrained tasks.
Attributed concept maps: fuzzy integration and fuzzy matching

A concept map, typically depicted as a connected graph, is composed of a collection of propositions. Each proposition forming a semantic unit consists of a small set of concept nodes interconnected to one another with relation links. Concept maps possess a number of appealing features which make them a promising tool for teaching, learning, evaluation, and curriculum planning. We extend concept maps by associating their concept nodes and relation links with attribute values which indicate the relative significance of concepts and relationships in knowledge representation. The resulting maps are called attributed concept maps (ACM). Assessing students will be conducted by matching their ACMs with those prebuilt by experts. The associated techniques are referred to as map matching techniques. The building of an expert ACM has in the past been done by only one specialist. We integrate a number of maps developed by separate experts into a single map, called the master map (MM), which will serve as a prototypical map in map matching. Both map integration and map matching are conceptualized in terms of fuzzy set discipline. Experimental results have shown that the proposed ideas of ACM, MM, fuzzy map integration, and fuzzy map matching are well suited for students with high performances and difficult subject materials.
Comparison of Water Flosser and Interdental Brush on Plaque Removal: A Single-Use Pilot Study.

OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this randomized, single-use, single-blind, two-group, parallel pilot study was to compare the plaque removal ability of a water flosser and interdental brush when used in combination with a manual toothbrush.


METHODS
Twenty-eight (28) subjects completed the study. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two groups: Waterpik®Water Flosser (WF) plus manual tooth brushing or interdental brushes (IDB) plus manual tooth brushing. Pre-cleaning plaque scores were obtained using the Rustogi Modification of the Navy Plaque Index (RMNPI). Subjects were instructed on the use of their interdental product. Post-cleaning scores were obtained after a supervised brushing and use of the interdental device. Scores were recorded for whole mouth, marginal, approximal, facial, and lingual regions for each subject.


RESULTS
There were no differences between the groups for pre-cleaning plaque scores for whole mouth, marginal, approximal, facial, or lingual regions. Both groups showed significant reductions in plaque from baseline for all areas measured (p < 0.001). The WF group was significantly more effective than the IDB group for removing plaque from all areas measured. Specifically, the WF was 18% more effective for whole mouth and marginal areas, 20% for approximal areas, 11% for facial areas, and 29% for lingual areas.


CONCLUSIONS
The Waterpik Water Flosser and manual toothbrush removes significantly more plaque from tooth surfaces (whole mouth, marginal, approximal, facial, and lingual) than interdental brushes and a manual toothbrush after a single use.
Urethral prolapse in a paediatric patient with urogenital bleeding: diagnosis by imaging

A girl of 4 years and 5 months of age was admitted as an outpatient to perform ultrasound because of painless vaginal bleeding for 2–3 days. First, on transabdominal US, the kidneys, bladder, and uterus appeared normal. A translabial perineal approach revealed a hyperaemic mass (Fig. 1a, b). One day after, MRI was performed to exclude a possible aggressive lesion. MRI revealed the mass to be in apparent continuity with the urethra (Fig. 1c). Inspection under anaesthesia revealed a prolapsed urethra (Fig. 2): a doughnut of red and purple tissue surrounded the urethra, obscuring the hymeneal orifice. The patient was treated by undergoing a resection of the prolapsed mucosa and reocclusion of the mucous membrane around a Foley catheter. Three months later we saw: normal external genitalia, normal external urethral meatus, and no mucosal ectropion. We did not see any pathological secretions.
A prospective comparison of the two main indications of efavirenz in 2001 highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) regimens: first-line versus salvage use.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the efficacy of efavirenz introduction in first-line HAART compared with salvage multidrug regimens.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
Prospective 15 month comparison of 107 consecutive HIV-infected patients starting efavirenz, according to laboratory and clinical outcome of first-line versus rescue drug use, therapeutic history and association of selected antimicrobial agents: naive patients were compared with nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI)-experienced patients in the first group, and patients in the second group who had one or more NRTI changed when starting a rescue treatment containing one or more novel protease inhibitors (PIs) were compared with those who did not.


RESULTS
Efavirenz was administered with one or more novel NRTIs to 55 patients (27 antiretroviral-naive and 28 patients experienced with NRTIs only), compared with 52 patients who needed a multidrug salvage regimen after two or more failures of a 15-40 month PI-containing regimen. In an intention-to-treat analysis, con-sidering early interruption or an unsatisfactory virological course as a failure, only one patient on salvage therapy completed a favourable 15 month follow-up, compared with 31 patients experiencing first-line efavirenz-based HAART (P < 0.0001). The immunological response was less affected in both intensity and duration in patients undergoing rescue therapy. While no significant outcome difference was detected in the first group between naive and NRTI-experienced patients, among the salvage subjects the change of one or more NRTIs seemed to significantly improve virological and immunological outcome. Viral genotyping detected at least the K103N mutation in 41% of the 78 evaluable patients, despite lack of exposure to efavirenz and related compounds. Salvage patients had a significantly greater frequency of non-nucleoside RTI (NNRTI) resistance compared with the first-line group (P < 0.0001), in proportion to the extent of mutations affecting other drug classes (P < 0.0001).


CONCLUSION
An efavirenz-based initial triple drug HAART proved significantly more effective than efavirenz adjunct to a rescue treatment performed after repeated failures of PI-based regimens. The unsatisfactory response of the salvage group was probably due to diffuse cross-resistance descending from previous therapy, even when NNRTIs were never administered.