LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Diurnal variation on balance control in patients with symptomatic knee osteoarthritis.

OBJECTIVE
Increasing evidence supports balance control impairment in older adult patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA). However, there is limited data on diurnal variation of balance control in these patients. This study aimed to investigate postural stability in older adult patients with symptomatic knee OA during different periods in a daytime.


METHODS
Two-hundred and forty-one patients with OA knee (median age=65 ± 12 years; 82 males) were enrolled in this study. Static posturography was performed under four standing conditions: eyes open and eyes closed, without and with foam support. To assess diurnal postural variations, testing sessions were defined as follows: 8-10 am, 10-12 am, 1 pm-3 pm, 3 pm-5 pm. Influence of sex, age, height, weight, and body mass index on postural stability was evaluated. Knee pain was also assessed in these four testing sessions.


RESULTS
Postural control was in particular less efficient in the late morning than in the early afternoon (p<0.05). Diurnal variation of balance control was more noticeable in older, heavier, and male patients (p<0.05). Patients' knee pain was more pronounced in the morning than in the afternoon (p<0.001).


CONCLUSION
Balance stability of patients with OA knee was different during a daytime. Altered postural performance in the morning could be explained by joint pain. This diurnal variation should be taken into account in the daily management of knee OA.
Field effectiveness of vaccination against tick-borne encephalitis.

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a vaccine-preventable disease caused by a flavivirus (TBE virus) that is endemic in many European countries and large parts of Central and Eastern Asia. In Europe, highly purified formalin-inactivated whole virus vaccines are in widespread use, but the vaccination coverage differs significantly between countries with TBE endemicity. Austria presents an exceptional situation because 88% of the total population have a history of TBE vaccination, with 58% being regularly vaccinated within the recommended schedule. In this study, we investigated the field effectiveness of TBE vaccination in Austria for the years 2000-2006 in different age groups on the basis of the documented numbers of hospitalized cases in unvaccinated and vaccinated people and the sizes of these population groups as revealed by representative inquiries. We show that the overall effectiveness in regularly vaccinated persons is about 99% with no statistically significant difference between age groups. It is at least as high after the first two vaccinations, i.e. before the completion of the basic vaccination scheme by a third vaccination, but is significantly lower (about 95%) in those with a record of irregular vaccination. Our data confirm the excellent performance of TBE vaccine under field conditions and provide evidence that, in Austria, about 2800 cases were prevented by vaccination in the years 2000-2006.
Comparison of ulnar-shortening osteotomy with a new Trimed dynamic compression system versus the Synthes dynamic compression system: clinical study.

PURPOSE
Ulnar-shortening osteotomy has become common in the treatment of symptomatic positive ulnar variance. Our goal was to evaluate prospectively a new dynamic compression plating system in comparison with a commonly used dynamic compression system. In contrast with other systems, the new system uses a slotted hole that enables fixation of the plate to the bone prior to performing the osteotomy, a fitted compression clamp, and a lag screw. Cutting guides that attach directly to plate eliminate the need for freehand osteotomies.


METHODS
Thirty-seven patients were treated with a 3.5-mm, 6-hole dynamic compression plate with distraction device (Synthes, Paoli, PA) and compared with 17 patients treated with a new dynamic compression system manufactured by Trimed (Valencia, CA). Procedure length was recorded. The patients were evaluated for amount of shortening, pain, range of motion, grip strength, time to union, and return to work as well as with validated outcome measures.


RESULTS
Improvement was found in all measures although no difference was found between the 2 groups other than significantly shorter length of operation with the Trimed system (a mean of 2 hours with the Synthes system vs 1 hour with the Trimed system). Ten plates were removed in the Synthes group and 4 plates were removed in the Trimed group because of symptomatic prominence of the plate. There were no infections, delayed unions, or nonunions in either group.


CONCLUSIONS
The new Trimed plating system for ulnar shortening was found to be as effective as the Synthes system and with a shorter procedure time. This may be related to the different measuring periods, although years of practice with the Synthes technique preceded this study. We believe the shortened procedure time for the Trimed system is due to its technical advantages.


TYPE OF STUDY/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
Therapeutic III.
Thehumanamygdala insocial judgment

giving a statistic image for each contrast. P values for activations in the amygdala were corrected for the volume of brain analysed (specified as a sphere with radius 8 mm) 29. Anatomical localization for the group mean-condition-specific activations are reported in standard space 28. In all cases, the localization of the group mean activations was confirmed by registration with the subject's own MRIs. In an initial conditioning phase immediately before scanning, subjects viewed a sequence of greyscale images of four faces taken from a standard set of pictures of facial affect 30. Images of a single face were presented on a computer monitor screen for 75 ms at intervals of 15–25 s (mean 20 s). Each of the four faces was shown six times in a pseudorandom order. Two of the faces had angry expressions (A1 and A2), the other two being neutral (N1 and N2). One of the angry faces (CS+) was always followed by a 1-s 100-dB burst of white noise. In half of the subjects A1 was the CS+ face; in the other half, A2 was used. None of the other faces was ever paired with the noise. Before each of the 12 scanning windows, which occurred at 8-min intervals, a shortened conditioning sequence was played consisting of three repetitions of the four faces. During the 90-s scanning window, which seamlessly followed the conditioning phase, 12 pairs of faces, consisting of a target and mask, were shown at 5-s intervals. The target face was presented for 30 ms and was immediately followed by the masking face for 45 ms (Fig. 1). These stimulus parameters remained constant throughout all scans and effectively prevented any reportable awareness of the target face (which might be a neutral face or an angry face). There were four different conditions (Fig. 1), masked conditioned, non-masked conditioned, masked unconditioned, and non-masked unconditioned. Throughout the experiment, subjects performed the same explicit task, which was to detect any occurrence, however fleeting, of the angry faces. Immediately before the first conditioning sequence, subjects were shown the two angry faces and were instructed, for each stimulus presentation, to press a response button with the index finger of the right hand if one the angry faces appeared, or another button with the middle finger of the right hand if they did not see either of the angry faces. Throughout the acquisition and extinction phases, subjects' SCRs were monitored to …
Selected papers from the 16th international conference on the history of cartography: Theoretical aspects of the history of cartography: Toward a cultural history of cartography

Abstract Theory is not a goal in itself but a means of enriching the history of cartography by stimulating new research questions and objectives. In this paper the concept of ‘transparent maps’ (carriers of an image of the external reality of the world) and ‘opaque maps’ is introduced. The notion is approached structurally (standards of graphical representation, drawing, geometry, text); through the sociology of the map (map makers, institutions, the public); and through seeing maps in their cultural and historical context (an approach which raises issues of the definitional boundaries of the history of cartography and which is arguably one of the most stimulating perspectives today as fostered by, in particular, contributors to the History of Cartography). Finally, attention is drawn to three important topics for the research agenda: the links between maps and culture; maps as a language of communication and as instruments of power; and the links between perception, logic and mnemonics.
The roles of psychological climate, information management capabilities, and IT support on knowledge-sharing: an MOA perspective

Received: 02 March 2012 Revised: 08 May 2012 2nd Revision: 17 February 2013 3rd Revision: 08 May 2013 4th Revision: 17 June 2013 Accepted: 25 June 2013 Abstract Leveraging the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) theoretical framework and past research on psychological climate, this study analyzes three antecedent factors driving an individual’s knowledge-sharing (KS) within organizations: knowledge-sharing psychological climate as motivation, information management capability as ability, and organizational information technology support as opportunity. An empirical examination reveals that a motivating psychological climate has a primary impact on KS behavior, and the impact of perceived information management capability on sharing is mediated by the psychological climate. Perceived organizational use of information technology to support knowledge work bears strong influence on information management capabilities but not on sharing, suggesting that investment in IT does have indirect payoffs. The study is the first to position the opportunity→ability→motivation causal network in an individual’s KS behavior. The findings suggest that managers need to consider the pre-requisite roles of IT-enabled opportunities and workers’ information management abilities when building an all-important motivating climate to share. European Journal of Information Systems (2015) 24(1), 59–75. doi:10.1057/ejis.2013.25; published online 8 October 2013
Quasi-Local Energy Conservation Law Derived From The Einstein's Equations

The quasi-local energy conservation law is derived from the vacuum Einstein's equations on the timelike boundary surface in the canonical (2,2)-formalism of general relativity. The quasi-local energy and energy flux integral agree with the standard results in the asymptotically flat limit and in spherically symmetric spacetimes.
Software Industry Business Models

Software companies can leverage successful firms' business and revenue models to create a competitive advantage.
Chosen aspects of physics in martial arts

Background: All activities performed by a human being depend on physical phenomena. A human body is a biomechanism which is affected by different forces. The body as well as its parts can move with various velocities and can obtain different energies. That is why practicing martial arts, punches, kicks, jumps or doing other exercises to achieve strength follow the same rules. Material/Metods: The aim of the research was to analyse a simple punch forward (in the Taekwon-do terminology: Ap Joomuk Jirugi). Research on kinematics and kinetics of some chosen movements in Taekwon-do ITF was made with the BTS Smart Morion Capture system used for three dimensional movement analysis. A 17-year-old competitor measuring 175 cm and weighing 70 kg was analysed in the laboratory of Motoric Diagnostics in the Academy of Physical Education of Katowice. Results: Up to 20% of the cycle the fist speed is a little higher than 0. Between 20–50% have negative speed. After going beyond 50%, the speed is rapidly rising to reach the maximum power of 86%. The maximum speed 6.184±0.534 m/s. Afterwards rapid decrease in speed is observed. Conclusions: Minimal theoretical time of a person’s reaction to an attack is about 0.2 sec and practically it is 0.4 sec. The time for the punch to reach its goal is 0.1 sec. This fact can suggest that it is not possible to defend against a punch. On the other hand we know that people can defend themselves against an attack. Apparently it appears that it is not worth doing anything because we have no chances, but it is an argument to practice martial arts and self-defence. The trainings give a person faith in his or her own strength, they teach how to recognize the opponent’s abilities, how to stand to decrease the body part susceptible to attack and how to make the distance longer (which also increases the time of a potential attack). They also teach how to concentrate the attention and energy as well as how to predict the opponent’s movement and how to surprise him or her.
Sequences, sequence clusters and bacterial species

Whatever else they should share, strains of bacteria assigned to the same species should have house-keeping genes that are similar in sequence. Single gene sequences (or rRNA gene sequences) have very few informative sites to resolve the strains of closely related species, and relationships among similar species may be confounded by interspecies recombination. A more promising approach (multilocus sequence analysis, MLSA) is to concatenate the sequences of multiple house-keeping loci and to observe the patterns of clustering among large populations of strains of closely related named bacterial species. Recent studies have shown that large populations can be resolved into non-overlapping sequence clusters that agree well with species assigned by the standard microbiological methods. The use of clustering patterns to inform the division of closely related populations into species has many advantages for poorly studied bacteria (or to re-evaluate well-studied species), as it provides a way of recognizing natural discontinuities in the distribution of similar genotypes. Clustering patterns can be used by expert groups as the basis of a pragmatic approach to assigning species, taking into account whatever additional data are available (e.g. similarities in ecology, phenotype and gene content). The development of large MLSA Internet databases provides the ability to assign new strains to previously defined species clusters and an electronic taxonomy. The advantages and problems in using sequence clusters as the basis of species assignments are discussed.
Evolution of Nervous Systems and Brains

C.G. Galizia, P.-M. Lledo (eds.), Neurosciences From Molecule to Behavior: A University Textbook, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-10769-6_2, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 The modern theory of biological evolution, as established by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the middle of the nineteenth century, is based on three interrelated facts: (i) phylogeny – the common history of organisms on earth stretching back over 3.5 billion years, (ii) evolution in a narrow sense – modi fi cations of organisms during phylogeny and underlying mechanisms, and (iii) speciation – the process by which new species arise during phylogeny. Regarding the phylogeny, it is now commonly accepted that all organisms on Earth are derived from a common ancestor or an ancestral gene pool, while controversies have remained since the time of Darwin and Wallace about the major mechanisms underlying the observed modi fi cations during phylogeny (cf . [ 1 ] ). The prevalent view of neodarwinism (or better “new” or “modern evolutionary synthesis”) is characterized by the assumption that evolutionary changes are caused by a combination of two major processes, (i) heritable variation of individual genomes within a population by mutation and recombination, and (ii) natural selection, i.e., selective environmental or genomic forces leading to better adaptation of those bearing the mutation and as a consequence to their greater differential reproductive success. The modern synthesis holds that evolutionary changes are gradual in the sense that larger, macro-evolutionary, changes are the sum of smaller, micro-evolutionary, changes. Other experts argue that such a gradualistic view of evolution (including “sexual selection” and “genetic drift”) is incomplete; they point to a number of other and perhaps equally important mechanisms such as (i) neutral gene evolution without natural selection, (ii) mass extinctions wiping out up to 90 % of existing species (such as the Cambrian, Devonian, Permian, and Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinctions) and (iii) genetic and epigenetic-developmental (“ evo devo ”) self-canalization of evolutionary processes [ 2 ] . It remains uncertain as to which of these possible processes principally drive the evolution of nervous systems and brains.
Constrained Coalition Formation

The conventional model of coalition formation considers every possible subset of agents as a potential coalition. However, in many real-world applications, there are inherent constraints on feasible coalitions: for instance, certain agents may be prohibited from being in the same coalition, or the coalition structure may be required to consist of coalitions of the same size. In this paper, we present the first systematic study of constrained coalition formation (CCF). We propose a general framework for this problem, and identify an important class of CCF settings, where the constraints specify which groups of agents should/should not work together. We describe a procedure that transforms such constraints into a structured input that allows coalition formation algorithms to identify, without any redundant computations, all the feasible coalitions. We then use this procedure to develop an algorithm for generating an optimal (welfare-maximizing) constrained coalition structure, and show that it outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches by several orders of magnitude.
Driving simulator validation with hazard perception

How should we assess the comparability of driving on a road and ‘‘driving’’ in a simulator? If similar patterns of behaviour are observed, with similar differences between individuals, then we can conclude that driving in the simulator will deliver representative results and the advantages of simulators (controlled environments, hazardous situations) can be appreciated. To evaluate a driving simulator here we compare hazard detection while driving on roads, while watching short film clips recorded from a vehicle moving through traffic, and while driving through a simulated city in a fully instrumented fixed-base simulator with a 90 degree forward view (plus mirrors) that is under the speed/direction control of the driver. In all three situations we find increased scanning by more experienced and especially professional drivers, and earlier eye fixations on hazardous objects for experienced drivers. This comparability encourages the use of simulators in drivers training and testing. ! 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Phase I/II dose-escalation study of liarozole in patients with stage D, hormone-refractory carcinoma of the prostate

Background: Liarozole binds to the cytochrome P-450-dependent hydroxylating enzymes involved in steroid biosynthesis and retinoic acid catabolism. This phase I study investigated the clinical/endocrine toxicity profile of liarozole and determined the maximally tolerated dose (MTD) in hormone-refractory prostate cancer patients. Methods: Groups of five patients were treated with oral liarozole caplets, starting at 37.5 mg twice daily. The dose was doubled for each subsequent group until the MTD was reached, after which, an additional 18 patients were entered into the MTD-1 dose stratum. The long-term safety of liarozole was assessed based on treatment-emergent signs and symptoms and clinically significant laboratory results. Results: Thirty-eight patients were enrolled. The MTD was determined to be 300 mg twice daily. Side effects that defined the MTD included lethargy, somnolence, body rash, and paresthesias. Two deaths occurred during the trial (pneumonia and myocardial infarction). Four patients had a >50% decrease in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels (two at 150 mg, two at 300 mg). Of nine patients with measurable disease, two had partial responses. Conclusions: Liarozole was generally well tolerated with no evidence of adrenal insufficiency. Preliminary evidence of activity in this indication was observed based on dose-dependent decreases in PSA levels and improvement in soft-tissue metastasis.
Evaluating Collaborative Learning Processes using System-based Measurement

Much of the research on collaborative work focuses on the quality of the group outcome as a measure of success. There is less research on the collaboration process itself, but an understanding of the process should help to improve both the process and the outcomes of collaboration. Understanding and analyzing collaborative learning processes requires a fine-grained analysis of group interaction in the context of learning goals. Taking into account the relationships among tasks, products and collaboration this paper presents a set of measures designed to evaluate the collaborative learning process. We emphasise: direct system-based measures based on data produced by a collaborative learning system during the collaboration process, and suggest that these measures can be enhanced by also considering participants’ perceptions of the process.
Serum tryptase levels in patients with mastocytosis: correlation with mast cell burden and implication for defining the category of disease.

BACKGROUND
The serum tryptase level is used as a diagnostic marker in mastocytosis and is considered to reflect the burden of (neoplastic) mast cells (MC).


METHODS
In the present study, serum tryptase levels were measured in patients with mastocytosis by fluoroenzyme immunoassay and compared with the extent of infiltration of the bone marrow (BM) by neoplastic MC, determined by tryptase immunohistochemistry. Sixteen patients with cutaneous mastocytosis (CM) and 43 patients with systemic mastocytosis (SM) were examined.


RESULTS
In most patients with CM (defined by the absence of dense compact MC infiltrates in tryptase-stained BM sections), normal or near-normal serum tryptase levels (median 10 ng/ml, range 2-23 ng/ml) were measured. By contrast, in the vast majority of patients with SM, elevated serum tryptase levels (median 67 ng/ml) were found. In addition, there was a significant correlation between the grade of infiltration of the BM by neoplastic MC and tryptase levels in patients with SM (r = 0.8). Moreover, enzyme levels differed significantly among the groups of patients with different types of SM. The highest levels (>900 ng/ml) were detected in the patient with MC leukemia, 2 patients with slowly progressing SM and high MC burden (smoldering SM) and 1 patient with indolent SM. In contrast, in all 3 patients with isolated BM mastocytosis (no skin lesions and no signs of multiorgan involvement), serum tryptase levels were <20 ng/ml.


CONCLUSIONS
In summary, our data suggest that the measurement of serum tryptase is a reliable noninvasive diagnostic approach to estimate the burden of MC in patients with mastocytosis and to distinguish between categories of disease.