LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Relationship between electrocardiographic characteristics of left bundle branch block and echocardiographic findings.

BACKGROUND
Complete left bundle branch block (CLBBB) is an electrocardiographic (ECG) dromotropic disorder seen in patients with various structural heart diseases and sometimes is associated with poor prognosis. Its presence confounds the application of standard ECG criteria for the diagnosis of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), myocardial infarction (MI) in the chronic phase, and pathologies that produce changes on ST-T segment. The aim of this investigation was to establish the relationship between CLBBB and cardiac structural abnormalities assessed by echocardiography.


METHODS
This observational, cross-sectional study included ECG with CLBBB from 101 patients who also had transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) performed within 6 months.


RESULTS
The prevalence of structural heart disease on TTE was 90%. No ECG criterion was useful to diagnose LVH since no relationship was observed between 9 different ECG signs and increased left ventricular mass index. QRS duration (p = 0.16) and left axis deviation (p = 0.09) were unrelated to reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Eight ECG signs proposed for the diagnosis of the chronic phase of MI demonstrated similar effectiveness, with high specificity and reduced sensitivity.


CONCLUSIONS
CLBBB is associated with elevated prevalence of cardiac structural disease and hinders the application of common ECG criteria for the diagnosis of LVH, reduced LVEF, or chronic phase of MI. No ECG finding distinguished patients with structural heart disease from those with normal hearts. Electrocardiographic criteria for the diagnosis of MI in the chronic phase are useful when present, but when absent cannot rule it out.
First clinical evaluation of a new percutaneous optical fiber glucose sensor for continuous glucose monitoring in diabetes.

BACKGROUND
This article describes a new fiber-coupled, percutaneous fluorescent continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system that has shown 14 days of functionality in a human clinical trial.


METHOD
The new optical CGM system (FiberSense) consists of a transdermal polymer optical fiber containing a biochemical glucose sensor and a small fluorescence photometer optically coupled to the fiber. The glucose-sensitive optical fiber was implanted in abdominal and upper-arm subcutaneous tissue of six diabetes patients and remained there for up to 14 days. The performance of the system was monitored during six visits to the study center during the trial. Blood glucose changes were induced by oral carbohydrate intake and insulin injections, and capillary blood glucose samples were obtained from the finger tip. The data were analyzed using linear regression and the consensus error grid analysis.


RESULTS
The FiberSense worn at the upper arm exhibited excellent results during 14 wearing days, with an overall mean absolute relative difference (MARD) of 8.3% and 94.6% of the data in zone A of the consensus error grid. At the abdominal application site, FiberSense resulted in a MARD of 11.4 %, with 93.8% of the data in zone A.


CONCLUSIONS
The FiberSense CGM system provided consistent, reliable measurements of subcutaneous glucose levels in human clinical trial patients with diabetes for up to 14 days.
A Serious Game for Clinical Assessment of Cognitive Status: Validation Study

BACKGROUND
We propose the use of serious games to screen for abnormal cognitive status in situations where it may be too costly or impractical to use standard cognitive assessments (eg, emergency departments). If validated, serious games in health care could enable broader availability of efficient and engaging cognitive screening.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of this work is to demonstrate the feasibility of a game-based cognitive assessment delivered on tablet technology to a clinical sample and to conduct preliminary validation against standard mental status tools commonly used in elderly populations.


METHODS
We carried out a feasibility study in a hospital emergency department to evaluate the use of a serious game by elderly adults (N=146; age: mean 80.59, SD 6.00, range 70-94 years). We correlated game performance against a number of standard assessments, including the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and the Confusion Assessment Method (CAM).


RESULTS
After a series of modifications, the game could be used by a wide range of elderly patients in the emergency department demonstrating its feasibility for use with these users. Of 146 patients, 141 (96.6%) consented to participate and played our serious game. Refusals to play the game were typically due to concerns of family members rather than unwillingness of the patient to play the game. Performance on the serious game correlated significantly with the MoCA (r=-.339, P <.001) and MMSE (r=-.558, P <.001), and correlated (point-biserial correlation) with the CAM (r=.565, P <.001) and with other cognitive assessments.


CONCLUSIONS
This research demonstrates the feasibility of using serious games in a clinical setting. Further research is required to demonstrate the validity and reliability of game-based assessments for clinical decision making.
The Potential Impact of Vouchers

This article provides an updated review of recent empirical research on the potential impact of private school vouchers. It addresses 3 questions: (a) do students that use vouchers to attend a private school obtain better outcomes than would be obtained in a public school? (b) Do vouchers encourage student sorting and how does sorting affect student outcomes? (c) Does the offer of vouchers promote competition, improving outcomes of students who remain in public schools? Conclusions are that African American students who are offered vouchers experience small achievement gains. The results are highly sensitive to analytical assumptions and are not evident for other racial or ethnic groups. The evidence further indicates that large-scale voucher plans encourage sorting that could lower the achievement of public school students. There is no compelling evidence that such losses are outweighed by competitive gains in public schools. The conclusions on sorting and competition are most applicable to unrestricted choice plans in which flat-rate vouchers are offered to a large number of students with few eligibility restrictions. Some emerging evidence indicates that alternate approaches to policy design could yield more promising results.
Early hCG addition to rFSH for ovarian stimulation in IVF provides better results and the cDNA copies of the hCG receptor may be an indicator of successful stimulation

A simple, safe and cost-effective treatment protocol in ovarian stimulation is of great importance in IVF practice, especially in the case of previous unsuccessful attempts. hCG has been used as a substitute of LH because of the degree of homology between the two hormones. The main aim of this prospective randomized study was to determine, for the first time, whether low dose hCG added to rFSH for ovarian stimulation could produce better results compared to the addition of rLH in women entering IVF-ET, especially in those women that had previous IVF failures. An additional aim was to find an indicator that would allow us to follow-up ovarian stimulation and, possibly, modify it in order to achieve a better IVF outcome; and that indicator may be the cDNA copies of the LH/hCG receptor. Group A patients (n = 58) were administered hCG and Group B rLH (n = 56) in addition to rFSH in the first days of ovarian stimulation. The number of follicles and oocytes and, most importantly, implantation and pregnancy rates were shown to be statistically significantly higher in the hCG group. This study has also determined, for the first time to our best knowledge, m-RNA for LH/hCG receptors in the lymphocytes of peripheral blood 40 h before ovum pick-up. cDNA levels of the hCG receptor after ovarian stimulation were significantly higher among women receiving hCG compared to those receiving LH. In addition, higher levels were encountered among women with pregnancy compared to those without, although this was not statistically significant due to the small number of pregnancies. It seems that hCG permits a highly effective and more stable occupancy of rLH/hCG receptors and gives more follicles and more oocytes. The determination of cDNA copies could be, in the future, a marker during ovulation induction protocols and of course a predictor for the outcome of ART in the special subgroup of patients with previous failures.
Channel Estimation for LTE Uplink in High Doppler Spread

Long term evolution (LTE) systems are expected to use single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) for the uplink. Being very similar to the OFDMA technology, SC-FDMA is sensitive to frequency offsets, which leads to inter-carrier interference (ICI). In this paper, we propose an interpolation algorithm based on adaptive order polynomial fitting for LTE uplink channel estimation to mitigate ICI in high Doppler spread. Simulation results show that the proposed method has better performance compared to the conventional schemes.
Quality of life and treatment satisfaction in adults with Type 1 diabetes: a comparison between continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion and multiple daily injections.

AIMS
The aim of this case-control study was to compare quality of life (QoL) and treatment satisfaction in adults with Type 1 diabetes (T1DM) treated with either continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) or multiple daily injections (MDI).


METHODS
Consecutive patients aged between 18 and 55 years, and attending diabetes clinics for a routine visit, completed the Diabetes-Specific Quality-of-Life Scale (DSQOLS), the Diabetes Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire (DTSQ) and the SF-36 Health Survey (SF-36). Case (CSII) and control subjects (MDI) were recruited in a 1 : 2 ratio.


RESULTS
Overall, 1341 individuals were enrolled by 62 diabetes clinics; 481 were cases and 860 control subjects. Cases had a longer diabetes duration and were more likely to have eye and renal complications. Age, school education, occupation and HbA(1c) were similar. Of control subjects, 90% followed glargine-based MDI regimens and 10% used NPH-based MDI regimens. On multivariate analysis, after adjusting for socioeconomic and clinical characteristics, scores in the following areas of the DSQOLS were higher in cases than control subjects: diet restrictions (beta = 5.96; P < 0.0001), daily hassles (beta = 3.57; P = 0.01) and fears about hypoglycaemia (beta = 3.88; P = 0.006). Treatment with CSII was also associated with a markedly higher DTSQ score (beta = 4.13; P < 0.0001) compared with MDI. Results were similar when CSII was compared separately with glargine- or NPH-based MDI regimens.


CONCLUSIONS
This large, non-randomized, case-control study suggests quality of life gains deriving from greater lifestyle flexibility, less fear of hypoglycaemia, and higher treatment satisfaction, when CSII is compared with either glargine-based or NPH-based MDI regimens.
One-handed interaction with augmented virtual objects on mobile devices

We present a one-handed approach for augmented reality and interaction on mobile devices. The proposed application considers common situations with mobile devices such as when a user's hand holds a mobile device while the other hand is free. It also supports natural augmented reality environment such as when a user interacts with augmented reality contents anytime and anywhere without special equipment such as visual markers or tags. In our approach, a virtual object is augmented on the palm of a user's free hand, as if the virtual object is just sitting on the palm, using a palm pose estimation method. The augmented virtual object reacts (e.g. moving or animation) to motions of the hand such as opening or closing the hand based on fingertip tracking. Moreover, it provides tactile interactions with the virtual object by wearing a tactile glove with vibration sensors. This paper describes how to implement the augmented reality application, and preliminary results show its potential as a new approach to mobile augmented reality interaction.
Analysis and control of a flywheel hybrid vehicular powertrain

Vehicular powertrains with an internal combustion engine, an electronic throttle valve, and a continuously variable transmission (CVT) offer much freedom in controlling the engine speed and torque. This can be used to improve fuel economy by operating the engine in fuel-optimal operating points. The main drawbacks of this approach are the low driveability and, possibly, an inverse response of the vehicle acceleration after a kick-down of the drive pedal. This paper analyzes a concept for a novel powertrain with an additional flywheel. The flywheel plays a part only in transient situations by (partly) compensating the engine inertia, making it possible to optimize fuel economy in stationary situations without loosing driveability in transients. Two control strategies are discussed. The first one focuses on the engine and combines feedback linearization with proportional control of the CVT ratio. The CVT controller has to be combined with an engine torque controller. Three possibilities for this controller are discussed. In the second strategy, focusing on control of the vehicle speed, a bifurcation occurs whenever a downshift of the CVT to the minimum ratio is demanded. Some methods to overcome this problem are introduced. All controllers are designed, using a simple model of the powertrain. They have been evaluated by simulations with an advanced model.
Advantages of traditional lactic acid bacteria fermentation of food in Africa

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are a large group of closely related bacteria that have similar properties such as lactic acid production, which is an end product of the fermentation. LAB include Lactobacillus, Lactococus, Streptococcus and Leuconostoc species. LAB fermentation is a common way of preparing food traditionally in Africa. Some of the traditionally fermented foods in Africa include maize porridge, alcoholic beverages and dairy products. Some of the main reasons for the fermentation practice using LAB is to increase food palatability and improve the quality of food by increasing the availability of proteins and vitamins. Furthermore, LAB confer preservative and detoxifying effects on food as well. When used regularly, LAB fermented foods boost the immune system and strengthen the body in the fight against pathogenic bacterial infections. Thus, LAB fermentation is not only of a major economic importance, but it also promotes human health in Africa.
Psychological treatment of patients with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures: An outcome study

INTRODUCTION
It is estimated that up to 25% of patients referred to specialised epilepsy centers suffer from psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES). The prognosis is unfavourable and there are no generally accepted treatment protocols.


METHOD
In this study, the effect of an uncontrolled, prospective inpatient treatment program for PNES patients is evaluated. The treatment is multidisciplinary and based on cognitive behavioural principles. Seizure control, general psychopathology, anxiety, depression, coping, dissociation and health related quality of life are evaluated. Twenty-two patients participated in the study of which 16 patients were followed 6 months after treatment.


RESULTS
After follow-up, 81% of patients had a seizure reduction of over 50%, and half of them became seizure-free. Measures of anxiety, depression and dissociation tended to normalize, coping was more adequate and health related quality of life was increased slightly. In the period between the end of treatment and follow-up the most positive effects are maintained and even strengthened. Patients who became seizure-free at follow-up improved more on the psychological outcome measures than patients with continuing seizures.


CONCLUSION
The outcome suggests effectiveness of the treatment. PNES patients may profit from a comprehensive, multidisciplinary treatment program following cognitive behavioural principles. Seizure cessation appears to be an important factor in the improvement of psychological functioning.
A conceptual framework for delivering cost effective business intelligence solutions as a service

Smart use of business intelligence (BI) can allow organizations to leverage the huge amounts of transactional data at their disposal and turn it into a powerful decision support mechanism that gives them competitive advantage. Despite the potential benefits of an effective BI system, the adoption and use of BI systems within the enterprise remains low, especially among smaller companies with resource constraints. This can partly be explained by the predominant deployment approach available today in which a firm needs to procure, install, configure and operate a BI system in-house. Barriers of high cost, complexity and lack of in-house expertise discourage many firms from adopting BI systems. This paper argues that adopting a cloud computing model, where BI is offered as a service over the Internet can lower these barriers and accelerate the pace of BI adoption. However, migrating BI systems from traditional on-premise environments to the cloud presents huge challenges. There are technical, economic, organizational and regulatory hurdles to overcome. Further, BI systems are multi-component (ETL, Data warehouse, data marts, OLAP, reporting, data mining etc.) and deciding which component(s) to move to the cloud, and which ones to leave on-premise needs careful consideration. In addition, the fact that cloud computing is still in its infancy means there is a general lack of conceptual and architectural frameworks to guide companies considering migrating enterprise systems to the cloud. This paper takes a closer look into traditional BI and proposes a conceptual framework that companies can use to chart an adoption path for cloud BI. The framework combines attributes of IT outsourcing, traditional BI, cloud computing as well as decision theory to present a consolidated view of cloud BI. The domain of South African Higher Education was chosen as the target in which the framework will be tested.
Research Guides: SCW 251: Pioneers and Reformers

Social Work 251 Information and links to resources to learn more about pioneers and reformers in the field of social work.
Robust biometrics-based multi-server authentication with key agreement scheme for smart cards on elliptic curve cryptosystem

Conventional single-server authentication schemes suffer a significant shortcoming. If a remote user wishes to use numerous network services, he/she must register his/her identity and password at these servers. It is extremely tedious for users to register numerous servers. In order to resolve this problem, various multi-server authentication schemes recently have been proposed. However, these schemes are insecure against some cryptographic attacks or inefficiently designed because of high computation costs. Moreover, these schemes do not provide strong key agreement function which can provide perfect forward secrecy. Based on these motivations, this paper proposes a new efficient and secure biometrics-based multi-server authentication with key agreement scheme for smart cards on elliptic curve cryptosystem (ECC) without verification table to minimize the complexity of hash operation among all users and fit multi-server communication environments. By adopting the biometrics technique, the proposed scheme can provide more strong user authentication function. By adopting the ECC technique, the proposed scheme can provide strong key agreement function with the property of perfect forward secrecy to reduce the computation loads for smart cards. As a result, compared with related multi-serve authentication schemes, the proposed scheme has strong security and enhanced computational efficiency. Thus, the proposed scheme is extremely suitable for use in distributed multi-server network environments such as the Internet and in limited computations and communication resource environments to access remote information systems since it provides security, reliability, and efficiency.
Taming slug flow in pipelines

55 ultiphase pipelines connecting remote wellhead platforms and subsea wells are a common feature of offshore oil production in the North Sea, and the signs are that even more of them will be laid in the coming decades. In addition, the proven feasibility of using long-distance tie-back pipelines to connect subsea processing units directly to on-shore processing plants makes it likely that these will also be deployed in the future. Such developments are turning the spotlight on one of the biggest challenges involved in operating offshore processing facilities and subsea separation units: control of the disturbances in the feed to the separation process, ie smoothening or avoidance of flow variation at the outlet of the multi-phase pipelines connecting wells and remote installations to the processing unit. One common form of flow variation is slug flow, in which the liquid flows intermittently along the pipes in a concentrated mass, called a slug. The unstable behavior of slug flow in multiphase pipelines has a negative impact on the operation of offshore production facilities. Severe slugging can even cause platform trips and plant shutdown. More frequently, the large and rapid variation in flow causes unwanted flaring and reduces the operating capacity of the separation and compression units. This reduction is due to the need for Taming slug flow in pipelines
[Clinical randomized study of bee-sting therapy for rheumatoid arthritis].

OBJECTIVE
To observe the clinical effect of bee-sting (venom) therapy in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).


METHODS
One hundred RA patients were randomly divided into medication (control) group and bee-venom group, with 50 cases in each. Patients of control group were treated with oral administration of Methotrexate (MTX, 7.5 mg/w), Sulfasalazine (0.5 g,t. i.d.), Meloxicam (Mobic,7. 5 mg, b. i. d.); and those of bee-venom group treated with Bee-sting of Ashi-points and the above-mentioned Western medicines. Ashi-points were selected according to the position of RA and used as the main acupoints, supplemented with other acupoints according to syndrome differentiation. The treatment was given once every other day and all the treatments lasted for 3 months.


RESULTS
Compared with pre-treatment, scores of joint swelling degree, joint activity, pain, and pressing pain, joint-swelling number, grasp force, 15 m-walking duration, morning stiff duration in bee-venom group and medication group were improved significantly (P<0.05, 0.01). Comparison between two groups showed that after the therapy, scores of joint swelling, pain and pressing pain, joint-swelling number and morning stiff duration, and the doses of the administered MTX and Mobic in bee-venom group were all significantly lower than those in medication group (P<0.05, 0.01); whereas the grasp force in been-venom group was markedly higher than that in medication group (P<0.05). In addition, the relapse rate of bee-venom group was obviously lower than that of medication group (P<0.05; 12% vs 32%).


CONCLUSION
Combined application of bee-venom therapy and medication is superior to simple use of medication in relieving RA, and when bee-sting therapy used, the commonly-taken doses of western medicines may be reduced, and the relapse rate gets lower.