LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Hormonal replacement therapy does not affect self-estimated pain or experimental pain responses in post-menopausal women suffering from fibromyalgia: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES
FM is a condition that preferentially affects women. Sex hormones, and in particular oestrogens, have been shown to affect pain processing and pain sensitivity, and oestrogen deficit has been considered a potentially promoting factor for FM. However, the effects of oestrogen treatment in patients suffering from FM have not been studied. Here, we examined the effect of transdermal oestrogen substitution treatment on experimental as well as self-estimated pain in women suffering from FM.


METHODS
Twenty-nine post-menopausal women were randomized to either 8 weeks of treatment with transdermal 17β-oestradiol (50 µg/day) or placebo according to a double-blind protocol. A self-estimation of pain, a set of quantitative sensory tests measuring thresholds to temperature, thermal pain, cold pain and pressure pain, and a cold pressor test were performed on three occasions: before treatment, after 8 weeks of treatment and 20 weeks after cessation of treatment.


RESULTS
Hormonal replacement treatment significantly increased serum oestradiol levels as expected (P < 0.01). However, no differences in self-estimated pain were seen between treatment and placebo groups, nor were there any differences between the two groups regarding the results of the quantitative sensory tests or the cold pressor test at any of the examined time points.


CONCLUSION
Eight weeks of transdermal oestradiol treatment does not influence perceived pain, pain thresholds or pain tolerance as compared with placebo treatment in post-menopausal women suffering from FM.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov Registration; http://www.clinicaltrials.gov; NCT01087593.
Increased serum uric acid levels are associated with digital ulcers in patients with systemic sclerosis

Endothelial injury/dysfunction is thought to be one of the earliest events in the development of vascular diseases in systemic sclerosis (SSc). Although hyperuricemia is also known to induce endothelial dysfunction and vascular inflammation, the effect of uric acid on the microvascular involvement in SSc has not been well established. We investigated whether increased serum uric acid (SUA) levels are associated with digital ulcers (DUs) in SSc. In this cross-sectional study, we consecutively recruited 71 women with SSc and 349 age- and sex-matched healthy subjects, and SUA levels were measured in all study subjects. SSc patients had significantly higher mean SUA levels than healthy subjects (4.5 ± 1 mg/dL vs 4.2 ± 0.9 mg/dL, p = 0.017), although a significantly lower body mass index (BMI) was observed in SSc patients than in controls. Among 71 SSc patients, 22 (31%) had DUs ever (active DUs, 8; healed DUs, 14). SSc patients presenting with DUs ever showed significantly higher SUA levels than those without this feature (median, 5.2 mg/dL vs 4.1 mg/dL, p = 0.009). In multivariable logistic regression models adjusted for confounders such as BMI and estimated glomerular filtration rate, increased SUA levels were associated with a significantly higher risk for the presence of DUs ever (OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.16–4.57, p = 0.018). Our data revealed that elevated SUA levels are independently associated with the presence of DUs in SSc patients, thereby suggesting the potential role of hyperuricemia in the pathogenesis of SSc vasculopathy.
Hypofractionated concomitant intensity-modulated radiotherapy boost for high-risk prostate cancer: late toxicity.

PURPOSE
To report the acute and late toxicities of patients with high-risk localized prostate cancer treated using a concomitant hypofractionated, intensity-modulated radiotherapy boost combined with long-term androgen deprivation therapy.


METHODS AND MATERIALS
A prospective Phase I-II study of patients with any of the following: clinical Stage T3 disease, prostate-specific antigen level ≥ 20 ng/mL, or Gleason score 8-10. A dose of 45 Gy (1.8 Gy/fraction) was delivered to the pelvic lymph nodes with a concomitant 22.5 Gy prostate intensity-modulated radiotherapy boost, to a total of 67.5 Gy (2.7 Gy/fraction) in 25 fractions within 5 weeks. Image guidance was performed using three gold seed fiducials. The National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events, version 3.0, and Radiation Therapy Oncology Group late morbidity scores were used to assess the acute and late toxicities, respectively. Biochemical failure was determined using the Phoenix definition.


RESULTS
A total of 97 patients were treated and followed up for a median of 39 months, with 88% having a minimum of 24 months of follow-up. The maximal toxicity scores were recorded. The grade of acute gastrointestinal toxicity was Grade 0 in 4%, 1 in 59%, and 2 in 37%. The grade of acute urinary toxicity was Grade 0 in 8%, 1 in 50%, 2 in 39%, and 3 in 4%. The grade of late gastrointestinal toxicity was Grade 0 in 54%, 1 in 40%, and 2 in 7%. No Grade 3 or greater late gastrointestinal toxicities developed. The grade of late urinary toxicity was Grade 0 in 82%, 1 in 9%, 2 in 5%, 3 in 3%, and 4 in 1% (1 patient). All severe toxicities (Grade 3 or greater) had resolved at the last follow-up visit. The 4-year biochemical disease-free survival rate was 90.5%.


CONCLUSIONS
A hypofractionated intensity-modulated radiotherapy boost delivering 67.5 Gy in 25 fractions within 5 weeks combined with pelvic nodal radiotherapy and long-term androgen deprivation therapy was well tolerated, with low rates of severe toxicity. The biochemical control rate at early follow-up has been promising. Additional follow-up is needed to determine the long-term biochemical control and prostate biopsy results.
The Effects of Chronic Treatment with Octreotide versus Octreotide plus Midodrine on Systemic Hemodynamics and Renal Hemodynamics and Function in Nonazotemic Cirrhotic Patients with Ascites

OBJECTIVES:The adrenergic agonist midodrine improved circulatory and renal dysfunction when acutely administered in nonazotemic cirrhotic patients with ascites while its combination with octreotide has recently been proposed as an effective treatment of type 1 hepatorenal syndrome (HRS). However, the effects of octreotide on systemic hemodynamics and renal function in cirrhotic patients are controversial. This study evaluated the effects of chronic treatment with octreotide versus octreotide plus midodrine on systemic hemodynamics and renal hemodynamics, and function in nonazotemic cirrhotic patients with ascites.METHODS:Twenty-five patients were studied at baseline and 11 days after administration of subcutaneous octreotide 300 μg, b.i.d. alone (n = 12) or together with oral midodrine 7.5 mg, t.i.d. (n = 13).RESULTS:Octreotide did not improve systemic hemodynamics whereas the addition of midodrine significantly decreased cardiac index (CI) and heart rate (HR), and increased mean arterial pressure (MAP) and systemic vascular resistance (SVR). Octreotide caused a decrease in renal vascular resistance (RVR) and increased renal blood flow (RBF) but significantly reduced glomerular filtration rate. The association of midodrine to octreotide did not modify renal hemodynamics and function as compared to baseline while it caused an almost significant minor increase in RVR and a significant minor decrease in RBF as compared to octreotide alone. Consequently, a significant minor increase in glomerular filtration rate was demonstrated. The plasma values of active renin, aldosterone, and glucagon were significantly reduced in either group.CONCLUSIONS:Octreotide does not improve systemic hemodynamics in nonazotemic cirrhotic patients with ascites while it impairs renal function. On the other hand, the addition of midodrine can ameliorate the hyperdynamic circulation without inducing renal dysfunction in these patients.
Patient-activated controlled expansion for breast reconstruction using controlled carbon dioxide inflation: confirmation of a feasibility study.

BACKGROUND
Women with breast cancer or those at high risk of developing breast cancer because of familial history of the disease or genetic mutations are frequently indicated for therapeutic or prophylactic mastectomy. Prosthetic reconstruction of the breast with placement of tissue expanders followed by implants offers favorable aesthetic and psychological results while adding only minimal additional surgical intervention. This study describes the confirmatory phase of an earlier feasibility trial that involved seven women who successfully underwent patient-activated controlled expansion for breast reconstruction with 10 AeroForm patient-controlled tissue expanders.


METHODS
A prospective, open-label, single-arm, single-surgeon confirmatory study in Perth, Australia, evaluated outcomes of two-stage breast reconstruction using the investigational device. Each subject administered a preset 10-cc dose of carbon dioxide gas using a remote dosage controller, three times each day, with a 3-hour lockout between doses until full expansion was achieved.


RESULTS
Thirty-three women with breast cancer, family history, or predisposition because of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation underwent pedicled latissimus dorsi flap procedures with placement of 61 carbon dioxide-based tissue expanders. The mean number of days for subjects to achieve desired expansion was 17 ± 5. Operating the dosage controller was described by the surgeon as very easy in 94 percent of the cases and by 97 percent of the subjects. No serious adverse events were reported.


CONCLUSION
This study confirms that the AeroForm breast tissue expander has demonstrated the ability to provide, relative to saline expanders, a needle-free, patient-controlled, convenient, and time-saving method of tissue expansion.


CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
Therapeutic, IV.
Detecting Overlapping Community Structures in Networks

Community structure has been recognized as an important statistical feature of networked systems over the past decade. A lot of work has been done to discover isolated communities from a network, and the focus was on developing of algorithms with high quality and good performance. However, there is less work done on the discovery of overlapping community structure, even though it could better capture the nature of network in some real-world applications. For example, people are always provided with varying characteristics and interests, and are able to join very different communities in their social network. In this context, we present a novel overlapping community structures detecting algorithm which first finds the seed sets by the spectral partition and then extends them with a special random walks technique. At every expansion step, the modularity function Q is chosen to measure the expansion structures. The function has become one of the popular standards in community detecting and is defined in Newman and Girvan (Phys. Rev. 69:026113, 2004). We also give a theoretic analysis to the whole expansion process and prove that our algorithm gets the best community structures greedily. Extensive experiments are conducted in real-world networks with various sizes. The results show that overlapping is important to find the complete community structures and our method outperforms the C-means in quality.
Control theory: History, mathematical achievements and perspectives *

These notes are devoted to present some of the mathematical milestones of Control Theory. To do that, we first overview its origins and some of the main mathematical achievements. Then, we discuss the main domains of Sciences and Technologies where Control Theory arises and applies. This forces us to address modelling issues and to distinguish between the two main control theoretical approaches, controllability and optimal control, discussing the advantages and drawbacks of each of them. In order to give adequate formulations of the main questions, we have introduced some of the most elementary mathematical material, avoiding unnecessary technical difficulties and trying to make the paper accessible to a large class of readers. The subjects we address range from the basic concepts related to the dynamical systems approach to (linear and nonlinear) Mathematical Programming and Calculus of Variations. We also present a simplified version of the outstanding results by Kalman on the controllability of linear finite dimensional dynamical systems, Pontryaguin’s maximum principle and the principle of dynamical programming. Some aspects related to the complexity of modern control systems, the discrete versus continuous modelling, the numerical approximation of control problems and its control theoretical consequences are also discussed. Finally, we describe some of the major challenging applications in Control Theory for the XXI Century. They will probably influence strongly the development of this discipline in the near future. ∗The authors have been partially financed by D.G.E.S.-España, respectively Grants BFM2000-1317 and BFM2002-03345. Fecha de recepción: 30 de abril de 2003
Interleaved Array Antennas for FMCW Radar Applications

An effective and robust strategy for concurrently designing the transmit and receive antennas of a frequency-modulated, continuos-wave radar is discussed. The aperture architecture is based on the use of non-periodic, interleaved sub-arrays. Deterministic element placement is employed for ensuring design efficiency. The procedure yields controllable sub-array radiation patterns and two-way side-lobe levels below - 30 dB, that are also stable over a wide frequency range.
Secure file system versioning at the block level

In typical file systems, valuable data is vulnerable to being accidentally or maliciously deleted or overwritten. Versioning file systems protect data from accidents by transparently retaining old versions, but do less well in protecting data from malicious attack. These systems remain vulnerable to attackers who gain unauthorized access to prune old file versions, who bypass the file system to directly manipulate storage, or who exploit bugs in any part of the operating system.
 This paper presents VDisk, a secure, block-level versioning system that adds file-grain versioning to a standard, unmodified file system. VDisk consists of a set of untrusted user-mode tools and a trusted, secure kernel that is implemented within an isolated Xen virtual machine domain. The secure kernel is designed to be simple and thus trustworthy. This kernel logs file-system updates to a secure log, exports a read-only view of the log to the rest of the system and securely removes unwanted versions from the log. Secure cleaning is implemented in a two-level manner. An untrusted, user-mode cleaner selects log entries for reclamation and submits cleaning requests to the trusted VDisk kernel along with a proof that the request satisifies the device's version-retention policy. The secure kernel verifies the proof and updates the log.
Guided Bone Regeneration with Collagen Membranes and Particulate Graft Materials: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

PURPOSE
The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate different methods for guided bone regeneration using collagen membranes and particulate grafting materials in implant dentistry.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
An electronic database search and hand search were performed for all relevant articles dealing with guided bone regeneration in implant dentistry published between 1980 and 2014. Only randomized clinical trials and prospective controlled studies were included. The primary outcomes of interest were survival rates, membrane exposure rates, bone gain/defect reduction, and vertical bone loss at follow-up. A meta-analysis was performed to determine the effects of presence of membrane cross-linking, timing of implant placement, membrane fixation, and decortication.


RESULTS
Twenty studies met the inclusion criteria. Implant survival rates were similar between simultaneous and subsequent implant placement. The membrane exposure rate of cross-linked membranes was approximately 30% higher than that of non-cross-linked membranes. The use of anorganic bovine bone mineral led to sufficient newly regenerated bone and high implant survival rates. Membrane fixation was weakly associated with increased vertical bone gain, and decortication led to higher horizontal bone gain (defect depth).


CONCLUSION
Guided bone regeneration with particulate graft materials and resorbable collagen membranes is an effective technique for lateral alveolar ridge augmentation. Because implant survival rates for simultaneous and subsequent implant placement were similar, simultaneous implant placement is recommended when possible. Additional techniques like membrane fixation and decortication may represent beneficial implications for the practice.
Overview of fault diagnosis methods for Discrete Event Systems

Article history: Received 28 February 2013 Accepted 26 July 2013 Available online 11 October 2013 Fault diagnosis of Discrete Event Systems has become an active research area in recent years. The research activity in this area is driven by the needs of many different application domains such as manufacturing, process control, control systems, transportation, communication networks, software engineering, and others. The aim of this paper is to review the state-of the art of methods and techniques for fault diagnosis of Discrete Event Systems based on models that include faulty behaviour. Theoretical and practical issues related to model description tools, diagnosis processing structure, sensor selection, fault representation and inference are discussed. 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Single-Chip W-band SiGe HBT Transceivers and Receivers for Doppler Radar and Millimeter-Wave Imaging

This paper presents the first single-chip direct-conversion 77-85 GHz transceiver fabricated in SiGe HBT technology, intended for Doppler radar and millimeter-wave imaging, particularly within the automotive radar band of 77-81 GHz. A 1.3 mm times 0.9 mm 86-96 GHz receiver is also presented. The transceiver, fabricated in a 130 nm SiGe HBT technology with fT/fMAX of 230/300 GHz, consumes 780 mW, and occupies 1.3 mm times 0.9 mm of die area. Furthermore, it achieves 40 dB conversion gain in the receiver at 82 GHz, a 3 dB bandwidth extending from 77 to 85 GHz at 25degC, and covering the entire 77-81 GHz band up to 100degC, record 3.85 dB DSB noise figure measured at 82 GHz LO and 1 GHz IF, and an IP1dB of -35 dBm. The transmitter provides + 11.5 dBm of saturated output power at 77 GHz, and a divide64 static frequency divider is included on-die. Successful detection of a Doppler shift of 30 Hz at a range of 6 m is shown. The 86-96 GHz receiver achieves 31 dB conversion gain, a 3 dB bandwidth of 10 GHz, and 5.2 dB DSB noise figure at 96 GHz LO and 1 GHz IF, and -99 dBc/Hz phase noise at 1 MHz offset. System-level layout and integration techniques that address the challenges of low-voltage transceiver implementation are also discussed.
A modular 1mm3 die-stacked sensing platform with optical communication and multi-modal energy harvesting

Wireless sensor nodes have many compelling applications such as smart buildings, medical implants, and surveillance systems. However, existing devices are bulky, measuring >;1cm3, and they are hampered by short lifetimes and fail to realize the “smart dust” vision of [1]. Smart dust requires a mm3-scale, wireless sensor node with perpetual energy harvesting. Recently two application-specific implantable microsystems [2][3] demonstrated the potential of a mm3-scale system in medical applications. However, [3] is not programmable and [2] lacks a method for re-programming or re-synchronizing once encapsulated. Other practical issues remain unaddressed, such as a means to protect the battery during the time period between system assembly and deployment and the need for flexible design to enable use in multiple application domains.
An Endogenous Growth Model with Public Capital and Sustainable Government Debt

This paper presents and analyzes an endogenous growth model with public capital and public debt. It is assumed that the ratio of the primary surplus to gross domestic income is a positive linear function of the debt income ratio which assures that public debt is sustainable. The paper then derives necessary conditions for the existence of a sustainable balanced growth path for the analytical model. Further, simulations are undertaken in order to gain insight into stability properties of the model and in order to analyze growth effects of deficit financed increases in public investment. The latter is done for the model on the sustainable balanced growth path as well as for the model along the transition path. JEL: E62, H60, H54
Task, Group, and Task-Group Interactions.

It is proposed that "method" is not a relevant construct for fostering change in the second language classroom, and that concern with specific methods can divert educators' attention from important instructional issues. Teachers usually organize instruction around tasks rather than methods, and therefore it would be more useful to analyze, research, and evaluate the tasks to discover the features that promote language teaching and learning. However, it is argued that for this to be a successful approach, careful attention must be given to the judicious use of group work, to the kinds of tasks teachers and learners work on, and to optimal combinations of task type and group. (MSE) ************************* *A************************************* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ********************************************************************** TASK, GROUP, AND TASK-GROUP INTERACTIONS
Analysis of GPR UWB Half-Ellipse Antennas With Different Heights of Backed Cavity Above Ground

Ultrawideband (UWB) antenna is a critical part of the ground penetrating radar (GPR) system, and the bow-tie antenna is the most popular one in all kinds of UWB antennas. In this letter, an antenna with two half-elliptical-shape arms, which is an improvement of the bow-tie antenna, is presented with the input impedance of around 100 ¿. The voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) and radiated waveform are analyzed as the antennas with different backed cavity heights and different elevations above ground surface. The influence of the vehicle on which the half-ellipse antenna (HEA) is mounted is also given in the above three aspects.
The role of prior knowledge in international franchise partner recruitment

Purpose – To investigate the role of prior knowledge in the international franchise partner recruitment process and to evaluate how cultural distance influences the role of prior knowledge in this process.Design/methodology/approach – A single embedded case study of an international hotel firm was the focus of the enquiry. Interviews, observations and document analysis were used as the data collection techniques.Findings – Findings reveal that prior knowledge of the franchisor enables the franchisor to coordinate more efficiently with prospective partners. However, the case study firm experienced a great deal of cultural distance in different country markets. The greater the cultural distance, the more challenges the firm has to face in terms of upgrading and adapting its prior knowledge to local needs.Research limitations/implications – The findings are based on a hotel franchise chain, and may not be generalisable to other firms or industry sectors, although the literature on international management do...