LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Short term efficacy of ibuprofen phonophoresis versus continuous ultrasound therapy in knee osteoarthritis.

AIM OF STUDY
To compare the effectiveness of ibuprofen phonophoresis (PH) with conventional ultrasound (US) therapy in knee osteoarthritis.


METHOD
Sixty patients with a mean age of 59.8 +/- 9.0 years were randomly assigned to PH or US groups. Continuous ultrasonic waves of 1 MHz frequency and 1 watt/cm2 power were applied for 5 minutes to the target knee joint. Acoustic gel without any active pharmacological agent was applied in the US group, whereas cream containing 5% ibuprofen was applied in the PH group for a total treatment period of 10 sessions. The Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) scores, pain on passive and active motion, 20 metres walking time, knee range of motion (ROM), and global assessments of disease activity and treatment efficacy by the investigator and by the patients were evaluated before and after therapy. Primary outcome measure of the study was 30% improvement in total WOMAC scores at the end of the study with respective scores at baseline.


RESULTS
At the end of two weeks, 30% improvement in total WOMAC score was observed in 12 (40%) and 14 (46.6%) of patients in the PH and US groups respectively, indicating no significant difference in improvement rates. Pain scores, knee ROM degrees, 20 metres walking time measurements and all global assessment scores also improved significantly in both groups, yet these variables showed no significant differences between the two groups. When treatment efficacy was assessed as satisfaction rates, investigator satisfaction rates were 96.7% and 90%, while patient satisfaction rates were 93.3% and 83.3% in the PH and US groups respectively, suggesting similar satisfaction rates for both treatment methods.


CONCLUSIONS
Both therapeutic modalities were found to be effective and generally well tolerated after 10 therapy sessions. Ibuprofen PH was not superior to conventional ultrasound in patients with knee osteoarthritis.
DACS State-ofthe-Art / Practice Report Agile Software Development

Acknowledgements: We would like to recognize our expert contributors who participated in the first eWorkshop on Agile Methods and thereby contributed to the section on State-of-the-Practice: We also would like to thank our collogues who helped arrange the eWorkshop and co-authored that same section:
Bioremediation techniques–classification based on site of application: principles, advantages, limitations and prospects

Environmental pollution has been on the rise in the past few decades owing to increased human activities on energy reservoirs, unsafe agricultural practices and rapid industrialization. Amongst the pollutants that are of environmental and public health concerns due to their toxicities are: heavy metals, nuclear wastes, pesticides, green house gases, and hydrocarbons. Remediation of polluted sites using microbial process (bioremediation) has proven effective and reliable due to its eco-friendly features. Bioremediation can either be carried out ex situ or in situ, depending on several factors, which include but not limited to cost, site characteristics, type and concentration of pollutants. Generally, ex situ techniques apparently are more expensive compared to in situ techniques as a result of additional cost attributable to excavation. However, cost of on-site installation of equipment, and inability to effectively visualize and control the subsurface of polluted sites are of major concerns when carrying out in situ bioremediation. Therefore, choosing appropriate bioremediation technique, which will effectively reduce pollutant concentrations to an innocuous state, is crucial for a successful bioremediation project. Furthermore, the two major approaches to enhance bioremediation are biostimulation and bioaugmentation provided that environmental factors, which determine the success of bioremediation, are maintained at optimal range. This review provides more insight into the two major bioremediation techniques, their principles, advantages, limitations and prospects.
An Improved Equation for TBS and ADD: Establishing a Reliable Postmortem Interval Framework for Casework and Experimental Studies.

Megyesi et al.'s (J Forensic Sci, 2005, 50, 618) paper was important to forensic anthropology as it introduced a quantitative framework for estimating time since death in human cadavers, based upon physical appearance by way of scoring on a novel scale. However, errors concerning rounding, temperature scale, and incorrect use of a statistical regression model render their predictive formula unusable. Based upon only their more reliable data, a more appropriate regression model to predict accumulated degree days (ADD) from total body score (TBS) is presented. The new model is also a superior fit (r(2)  = 0.91) and produces markedly narrower confidence intervals than the original, which also allowed impossible, negative ADD values. Explanations of the shortcomings in the original analysis and calculations are presented, which it is hoped will help forensic scientists avoid making similar mistakes.
Sleep spindles and rapid eye movement sleep as predictors of next morning cognitive performance in healthy middle-aged and older participants.

Spindles and slow waves are hallmarks of non-rapid eye movement sleep. Both these oscillations are markers of neuronal plasticity, and play a role in memory and cognition. Normal ageing is associated with spindle and slow wave decline and cognitive changes. The present study aimed to assess whether spindle and slow wave characteristics during a baseline night predict cognitive performance in healthy older adults the next morning. Specifically, we examined performance on tasks measuring selective and sustained visual attention, declarative verbal memory, working memory and verbal fluency. Fifty-eight healthy middle-aged and older adults (aged 50-91 years) without sleep disorders underwent baseline polysomnographic sleep recording followed by neuropsychological assessment the next morning. Spindles and slow waves were detected automatically on artefact-free non-rapid eye movement sleep electroencephalogram. All-night stage N2 spindle density (no./min) and mean frequency (Hz) and all-night non-rapid eye movement sleep slow wave density (no./min) and mean slope (μV/s) were analysed. Pearson's correlations were performed between spindles, slow waves, polysomnography and cognitive performance. Higher spindle density predicted better performance on verbal learning, visual attention and verbal fluency, whereas spindle frequency and slow wave density or slope predicted fewer cognitive performance variables. In addition, rapid eye movement sleep duration was associated with better verbal learning potential. These results suggest that spindle density is a marker of cognitive functioning in older adults and may reflect neuroanatomic integrity. Rapid eye movement sleep may be a marker of age-related changes in acetylcholine transmission, which plays a role in new information encoding.
Innovation in Ghana : Insight of Students ’ Adoption and Diffusion

This study seeks to determine a set of attributes that influence the adoption mobile banking innovation among university students in Ghana since most banks have started reaching their customers directly via mobile phones. A quantitative approach was used to obtain data collect from cohort of 550 undergraduate students who are frequent users of mobile phone devices. Data was analysed with SPSS software which measured factors such as relative advantage, compatibility, observability, complexity, perceived risk, trialability and service satisfaction as critical factors influencing the adoption of mobile banking in Ghana. Further, the study revealed that mobile banking was compatible with their life styles. This research adds value to existing studies on mobile banking especially in Sub Saharan African where adoption of mobile phone innovation JIBC December 2013, Vol. 18, No. 3 2 has become the lifestyle of people hence commercial banks are using it to promote their services. Mobile banking projects Ghana as an emerging innovation adopter and a catalyst for Africa’s socioeconomic development. Finally, it provides opportunity for marketers at strategic positions in telecommunication and banking sectors to focus on student cohort as essential target market for rapid growth.
Application of Stereo Vision on Determination of End-Effector Position and Orientation of Manipulators

the main idea of this paper is to present application of stereo vision approach to determine position and orientation of end-effector of mechanical manipulators. Stereo vision is a technique based on inferring depth of an object from two cameras. A stereo vision test set up that is made of two parallel CMOS cameras is provided and USB port is used to transmit image data to the computer. Experimental tests are exerted for 6R mechanical manipulator where the end-effector moves on circular trajectory and Scout mobile robot to move a predefined optimal trajectory. The image processing algorithm, matching algorithm and triangulation calculations are optimized to decrease time required for matching procedure. The results illustrate that the measurement error is less than 1 mm. Because of rapid image processing algorithm; proposed method can be used to detect end-effector in dynamic trajectories. This stereo vision set up can be applied easily as measuring unit in a closed loop control system. Keywords-Manipulators; End-Effector; Positioning; Orientation; Stereo Vision
Sexual stigma and sexual prejudice in the United States: a conceptual framework.

In 1972, psychologist George Weinberg’s book, Society and the Healthy Homosexual , introduced readers to a new term, homophobia , and to the then-novel idea that hostility to homosexuality, rather than homosexuality itself, posed a threat to mental health (Weinberg, 1972 ; see also Herek, 2004) . The following year, the American Psychiatric Association’s Board of Directors declared that homosexuality is not inherently associated with mental illness and voted to remove it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , or DSM (Bayer, 1987 ; Minton, 2002) . The American Psychological Association quickly endorsed the psychiatrists’ action and further urged mental health professionals “to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homosexual orientations” (Conger, 1975 , p. 633). Thus, a major cultural institution renounced its longstanding role in legitimating society’s stigmatization of homosexuality just when the psychological manifestations of such stigma were beginning to be redefined as a social problem. This historic confluence of events provides an appropriate starting point for the present chapter. The term homophobia has gained widespread usage since 1972, even as its limitations have become increasingly apparent. Chief among these is its construction of prejudice as an individual pathology. As I have explained elsewhere (Herek, 2004) , this clinically derived perspective limits our ability to understand hostility toward sexual minorities, both among individuals and in society at large. I have argued instead for the value of framing heterosexuals’ negative responses to sexual minorities in terms of sexual prejudice and of conceptualizing sexual prejudice as the internalization of societal stigma (Herek, 2000a, 2004, 2007 ; Herek, Chopp, & Strohl, 2007) . In the present chapter, I elaborate on these points and provide a more detailed framework than I have previously presented for conceptualizing both societal and individual reactions to homosexuality and sexual minorities in the United States. 1
Building a Cross-lingual Relatedness Thesaurus using a Graph Similarity Measure

The Internet is an ever growing source of information stored in ocuments of different languages. Hence, cross-lingual resources are needed for more and more NLP applications. This paper presen ts (i) a graph-based method for creating one such resource an d (ii) a resource created using the method, a cross-lingual related ness thesaurus. Given a word in one language, the thesaurus s uggests words in a second language that are semantically related. The meth od requires two monolingual corpora and a basic dictionary. Our general approach is to build two monolingual word graphs, with nodes representing words and edges representing linguistic rela tions between words. A bilingual dictionary containing basic vocabulary provides seed translations relating nodes from both graphs . We then use an inter-graph node-similarity algorithm to discover relate d words. Evaluation with three human judges revealed that 49 % of the English and 57% of the German words discovered by our method are seman tically related to the target words. We publish two resource s in conjunction with this paper. First, noun coordinations ext racted from the German and English Wikipedias. Second, the c ross-lingual relatedness thesaurus which can be used in experiments invo lving interactive cross-lingual query expansion.
Contemporary outcomes after superficial femoral artery angioplasty and stenting: the influence of TASC classification and runoff score.

OBJECTIVE
A recent randomized trial suggested nitinol self-expanding stents (SES) were associated with reduced restenosis rates compared with simple percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA). We evaluated our results with superficial femoral artery (SFA) SES to determine whether TransAtlantic InterSociety Consensus (TASC) classification, indication for intervention, patient risk factors, or Society of Vascular Surgery (SVS) runoff score correlated with patency and clinical outcome, and to evaluate if bare nitinol stents or expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) covered stent placement adversely impacts the tibial artery runoff.


METHODS
A total of 109 consecutive SFA stenting procedures (95 patients) at two university-affiliated hospitals from 2003 to 2006 were identified. Medical records, angiographic, and noninvasive studies were reviewed in detail. Patient demographics and risk factors were recorded. Procedural angiograms were classified according to TASC Criteria (I-2000 and II-2007 versions) and SVS runoff scores were determined in every patient; primary, primary-assisted, secondary patency, and limb salvage rates were calculated. Cox proportional hazard model was used to determine if indication, TASC classification, runoff score, and comorbidities affected outcome.


RESULTS
Seventy-one patients (65%) underwent SES for claudication and 38 patients (35%) for critical limb ischemia (CLI). Average treatment length was 15.7 cm, average runoff score was 4.6. Overall 36-month primary, primary-assisted, and secondary rates were 52%, 64%, and 59%, respectively. Limb salvage was 75% in CLI patients. No limbs were lost following interventions in claudicants (mean follow-up 16 months). In 24 patients with stent occlusion, 15 underwent endovascular revision, only five (33%) ultimately remained patent (15.8 months after reintervention). In contrast, all nine reinterventions for in-stent stenosis remained patent (17.8 months). Of 24 patients who underwent 37 endovascular revisions for either occlusion or stenosis, eight (35%) had worsening of their runoff score (4.1 to 6.4). By Cox proportional hazards analysis, hypertension (hazard ratio [HR] 0.35), TASC D lesions (HR 5.5), and runoff score > 5 (HR 2.6) significantly affected primary patency.


CONCLUSIONS
Self-expanding stents produce acceptable outcomes for treatment of SFA disease. Poorer patency rates are associated with TASC D lesions and poor initial runoff score; HTN was associated with improved patency rates. Stent occlusion and in-stent stenosis were not entirely benign; one-third of patients had deterioration of their tibial artery runoff. Future studies of SFA interventions need to stratify TASC classification and runoff score. Further evaluation of the long-term effects of SFA stenting on tibial runoff is needed.
The Relationship between Perceptions of Teaching Concerns, Teacher Efficacy, and Selected Teacher Characteristics.

This study investigated the relationship between teacher characteristics (gender, grade level taught, experience), personal and general teacher e$cacy, and the perception of teaching concerns. Participants included 292 Lebanese teachers from diverse school backgrounds with a wide range of teaching experience. They completed a standard teacher e$cacy questionnaire and another questionnaire that assessed their concerns about their professional practice. Results indicated that experience and personal e$cacy were negatively related to the perception of teaching concerns whereas gender, grade level taught, and general e$cacy were not related to the perception of any of the categories of teaching concerns. The results also revealed that beginning teachers and those with low sense of personal e$cacy were concerned about the task of teaching and the impact they make as teachers more than their highly experienced and more personally e$cacious counterparts. Implications for teacher development and suggestions for further research are discussed. ( 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Photoreceptor Adaptation in Intrinsically Photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells

A rare type of mammalian retinal ganglion cell (RGC) expresses the photopigment melanopsin and is a photoreceptor. These intrinsically photosensitive RGCs (ipRGCs) drive circadian-clock resetting, pupillary constriction, and other non-image-forming photic responses. Both the light responses of ipRGCs and the behaviors they drive are remarkably sustained, raising the possibility that, unlike rods and cones, ipRGCs do not adjust their sensitivity according to lighting conditions ("adaptation"). We found, to the contrary, that ipRGC sensitivity is plastic, strongly influenced by lighting history. When exposed to a constant, bright background, the background-evoked response decayed, and responses to superimposed flashes grew in amplitude, indicating light adaptation. After extinction of a light-adapting background, sensitivity recovered progressively in darkness, indicating dark adaptation. Because these adjustments in sensitivity persisted when synapses were blocked, they constitute "photoreceptor adaptation" rather than "network adaptation." Implications for the mechanisms generating various non-image-forming visual responses are discussed.
Diuretics shift circadian rhythm of blood pressure from nondipper to dipper in essential hypertension.

BACKGROUND
Recently, we found that sodium restriction shifted the circadian rhythm of blood pressure from nondipper to dipper in patients with the sodium-sensitive essential hypertension. This study examined whether diuretics can transform the circadian rhythm of blood pressure from nondipper to dipper.


METHODS AND RESULTS
We studied 21 patients with essential hypertension during both a baseline period and a period of treatment with hydrochlorothiazide (25 mg daily). The periods lasted 4 weeks each. Twenty-four hour ambulatory blood pressures were measured on the same day of the week at the end of the each period. In nondippers (n=11), but not in dippers (n=10), a significant interaction existed between diuretic therapy and nocturnal fall in systolic and diastolic blood pressure, which indicated that the degree of nocturnal blood pressure fall was affected by diuretic therapy. Nocturnal fall, which was diminished in nondippers, was restored by diuretic therapy with hydrochlorothiazide, indicating that the circadian rhythm of blood pressure shifted from nondipper to dipper patterns.


CONCLUSIONS
The present study demonstrated that diuretics can restore nocturnal blood pressure decline in a manner similar to sodium restriction, which suggests that the kidneys and sodium metabolism may play important roles in the genesis of the circadian rhythm of blood pressure. Diuretic-based treatment may have an additional therapeutic advantage of reducing the risk for cardiovascular complications by transforming the circadian rhythm of blood pressure.
Analysis and Prediction of Crimes by Clustering and Classification

Crimes will somehow influence organizations and institutions when occurred frequently in a society. Thus, it seems necessary to study reasons, factors and relations between occurrence of different crimes and finding the most appropriate ways to control and avoid more crimes. The main objective of this paper is to classify clustered crimes based on occurrence frequency during different years. Data mining is used extensively in terms of analysis, investigation and discovery of patterns for occurrence of different crimes. We applied a theoretical model based on data mining techniques such as clustering and classification to real crime dataset recorded by police in England and Wales within 1990 to 2011. We assigned weights to the features in order to improve the quality of the model and remove low value of them. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used for optimizing of Outlier Detection operator parameters using RapidMiner tool. Keywords—crime; clustering; classification; genetic algorithm; weighting; rapidminer
Analysis of Password Cracking Methods & Applications

This project examines the nature of password cracking and modern applications. Several applications for different platforms are studied. Different methods of cracking are explained, including dictionary attack, brute force, and rainbow tables. Password cracking across different mediums is examined. Hashing and how it affects password cracking is discussed. An implementation of two hash-based password cracking algorithms is developed, along with experimental results of their efficiency.
Measuring Intercultural Sensitivity in Different Cultural Contexts

As a main dimension of intercultural communication competence, intercultural sensitivity has gained increasing attention in different disciplines. In the United States, Chen and Starosta have developed an instrument, comprising 5 factors with 24 items, for measuring intercultural sensitivity. In this study, we tested Chen and Starosta’s instrument in a German sample by using confirmatory factor analysis. Overall, the results showed that the instrument holds satisfactorily. Although the results also suggested that the operationalization of the concepts in the instrument can be further improved, the instrument as a whole is a valid one through which a culture-free scale for measuring intercultural sensitivity can be developed. The trend towards globalization and internationalization has increased the importance of being competent in communicating with people of different cultural backgrounds. This includes the necessity to negotiate effectively in the setting of international business transactions. The trend leads to a growing need for executives and managers to learn how to act appropriately and successfully in a culturally diverse environment. However, research shows that the demand is still not sufficiently met in the business world (Fritz & Möllenberg, 1999; Fritz, Möllenberg, & Werner, 1999). One of the reasons for this is the lack of crosscultural comparison studies by which the validity of the research results can be tested interculturally. Among studies in this line of research, Chen and Starosta's (1996) model of intercultural communication competence gains much attention. The model is comprised of three conceptual dimensions of intercultural communication competence, including intercultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and intercultural adroitness. Based on this conceptual model, Chen and Starosta
Criticism as an approach to interface aesthetics

In this paper we discuss the re-orientation of human-computer interaction as an aesthetic field. We argue that mainstream approaches lack of general openness and ability to assess experience aspects of interaction, but that this can indeed be remedied. We introduce the concept of interface criticism as a way to turn the conceptual re-orientation into handles for practical design, and we present and discuss an interface criticism guide.