LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of osteomyelitis with teicoplanin-encapsulated biodegradable thermosensitive hydrogel nanoparticles.

Osteomyelitis characterized by an inflammatory response often leads to bone loss and the spread of bacterial infection to surrounding soft tissues. To overcome the side effects induced by the systemic antibiotic treatment for osteomyelitis, recent investigations have explored the use of antibiotic-loaded undegradable or biodegradable delivery implants at the infected bone. Here, we show a novel biodegradable thermosensitive implant composed of poly(ethylene glycol) monomethyl ether (mPEG) and poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) copolymer as a sol-gel drug delivery system for treating bone infection. The physical properties of a series of mPEG-PLGA nanocomposites, including the critical micelle concentration (CMC), particle size, polyindex (PI), sol-gel transition, viscosity and degradation rate, have been characterized in vitro. This sol-to-gel drug delivery system could provide several advantages in treating osteomyelitis, including easy preparation, 100% encapsulated rate, near-linear sustained release of drugs, injectable design and in situ gelling at the target tissue. Similar to the undegradable teicoplanin-impregnated polymethylmethacylate (PMMA) bone cements, we showed that implantation of the mPEG-PLGA hydrogel containing teicoplanin was effective for treating osteomyelitis in rabbits as detected by the histological staining and immunoblotting analyses. The use of the mPEG-PLGA-based biodegradable hydrogels may hold great promise as a therapeutic strategy for other infected diseases.
Customer Satisfaction Modeling in Hotel Industry : A Case Study of Kish Island in Iran

PurposeHotel Industry is one of the most substantial factors for Tourism Industry. It could provide the necessary substructures for Tourism. Therefore the growth in Tourism industry depends on growth in Hotel industry. Hotel industry had a major growth in recent years in Iran; therefore the purpose of this paper is to explore the customer satisfaction in hotel industry. This paper aims to identify the relation between customer satisfactions as dependent variable with other independent variables such image, customer expectation, service quality, perceived value, locality, and complaining behavior. The second goal of this study was to propose a customer satisfaction model for hotel industry in Kish Island (IRAN). Therefore, the findings of this study will contribute to both hotel management and tourism industry improvement in Iran. Design/Methodology/approachA proportional simple random sampling of Iranian visitor to Kish Island were drawn. In this study the researcher had used two different kinds of samples. The first sample was customers of three different hotels of 3 stars, 4 stars, 5 stars which are immeasurable and unlimited. The total number of hotels with the rating of 3 stars, 4 stars, and 5 stars were 22. FindingsThe correlation of image, customer expectation, service quality, perceived value, and customer loyalty are significant enough to show the correlation with customer satisfaction in hotel industry in Iran, furthermore the correlation of complaining behavior and customer was weak and negative, complaint behavior and customer satisfaction is negatively related, which means the lower complaint behavior was, the higher customer satisfaction obtained. Originality/ValueFrom a theoretical point of view the results of this study illuminate the relationship between customer satisfaction with variety of factors in Iranian hotel industry. From practical point of view, it explains why certain customer has more trust, experience, loyalty in particular hotels. It is hypothesized and demonstrated empirically that customer satisfaction.
Factors affecting the success of Open Source Software

Abstract: With the rapid rise in the use of Open Source Software (OSS) in all types of applications, it is important to know which factors can lead to OSS success. OSS projects evolve and transform over time; therefore success must be examined longitudinally over a period of time. In this research, we examine two measures of project success: project popularity and developer activity, of 283 OSS projects over a span of 3 years, in order to observe changes over time. A comprehensive research model of OSS success is developed which includes both extrinsic and intrinsic attributes. Results show that while many of the hypothesized relationships are supported, there were marked differences in some of the relationships at different points in time lending support to the notion that different factors need to be emphasized as the OSS project unfolds over time.
Security Evaluation of Support Vector Machines in Adversarial Environments

Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are among the most popular classification techniques adopted in security applications like malware detection, intrusion detection, and spam filtering. However, if SVMs are to be incorporated in real-world security systems, they must be able to cope with attack patterns that can either mislead the learning algorithm (poisoning), evade detection (evasion), or gain information about their internal parameters (privacy breaches). The main contributions of this chapter are twofold. First, we introduce a formal general framework for the empirical evaluation of the security of machine-learning systems. Second, according to our framework, we demonstrate the feasibility of evasion, poisoning and privacy attacks against SVMs in real-world security problems. For each attack technique, we evaluate its impact and discuss whether (and how) it can be countered through an adversary-aware design of SVMs. Our experiments are easily reproducible thanks to open-source code that we have made available, together with all the employed datasets, on a public repository. Battista Biggio, Igino Corona, Davide Maiorca, Giorgio Fumera, Giorgio Giacinto, and Fabio Roli Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, Piazza d’Armi 09123, Cagliari, Italy. e-mail: {battista.biggio,igino.corona,davide.maiorca}@diee.unica.it e-mail: {fumera,giacinto,roli}@diee.unica.it Blaine Nelson Institut für Informatik, Universität Potsdam, August-Bebel-Straße 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany. e-mail: blaine.nelson@gmail.com Benjamin I. P. Rubinstein IBM Research, Lvl 5 / 204 Lygon Street, Carlton, VIC 3053, Australia. e-mail: ben@bipr.net 1 ar X iv :1 40 1. 77 27 v1 [ cs .L G ] 3 0 Ja n 20 14 2 Biggio, Corona, Nelson, Rubinstein, Maiorca, Fumera, Giacinto, Roli
A Multifunctional Tactile Sensor Based on PVDF Films for Identification of Materials

A new multifunctional tactile sensor based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) films has been developed for material identification. In the sensor, the voltages induced by the electrostatic and piezoelectric effects (contact voltages) at the contact between the sensor and a sample are measured by a PVDF film. The voltage induced by the electrostatic effect is measured by the front electrode of a PVDF film when the back electrode is grounded. The voltage induced by the piezoelectric effect is measured by the back electrode of the PVDF film when the front electrode is grounded. In addition, the electrical properties (capacitance) of the sample are measured by electrodes on the front of two PVDF films. The multifunctional tactile sensor can therefore be used to simultaneously determine several parameters of a sample material. The sensor was used to identify ten material samples including acrylic, glass, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), aluminum, and three kinds of both sponge and gel. The contact voltages of the sample materials were measured, and the hardness of each sample was determined. The results suggest that the sensor shows promise for tactile sensing applications although there are still some problems that require addressing.
Detection of concealed cars in complex cargo X-ray imagery using deep learning

BACKGROUND
Non-intrusive inspection systems based on X-ray radiography techniques are routinely used at transport hubs to ensure the conformity of cargo content with the supplied shipping manifest. As trade volumes increase and regulations become more stringent, manual inspection by trained operators is less and less viable due to low throughput. Machine vision techniques can assist operators in their task by automating parts of the inspection workflow. Since cars are routinely involved in trafficking, export fraud, and tax evasion schemes, they represent an attractive target for automated detection and flagging for subsequent inspection by operators.


OBJECTIVE
Development and evaluation of a novel method for the automated detection of cars in complex X-ray cargo imagery.


METHODS
X-ray cargo images from a stream-of-commerce dataset were classified using a window-based scheme. The limited number of car images was addressed by using an oversampling scheme. Different Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures were compared with well-established bag of words approaches. In addition, robustness to concealment was evaluated by projection of objects into car images.


RESULTS
CNN approaches outperformed all other methods evaluated, achieving 100% car image classification rate for a false positive rate of 1-in-454. Cars that were partially or completely obscured by other goods, a modus operandi frequently adopted by criminals, were correctly detected.


CONCLUSIONS
We believe that this level of performance suggests that the method is suitable for deployment in the field. It is expected that the generic object detection workflow described can be extended to other object classes given the availability of suitable training data.
Time patterns of adherence and long-term virological response to non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor regimens in the Stratall ANRS 12110/ESTHER trial in Cameroon.

BACKGROUND
Although treatment adherence is a major challenge in sub-Saharan Africa, it is still unknown which longitudinal patterns of adherence are the most detrimental to long-term virological response to non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) regimens. This analysis aimed to study the influence of different time patterns of adherence on virological failure after 24 months of treatment in Cameroon.


METHODS
Antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence data were collected using face-to-face questionnaires administered at months 1, 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24. Virological failure was defined as viral load >40 copies/ml at month 18 and/or 24. Two combined indicators of early adherence (months 1, 3 and 6) and adherence during the maintenance phase (months 12, 18 and 24) were designed to classify patients as always adherent during the early or maintenance phase, non-adherent at least once and having interrupted ART for >2 days at least once at any visit during either of these two phases.


RESULTS
Virological failure occurred in 107 (42%) of the 254 patients included in the analysis. In the early and maintenance phases, 84% and 76%, respectively, were always adherent, 5% and 5% were non-adherent and 11% and 20% experienced ≥ 1 treatment interruption. Early non-adherence was independently associated with virological failure (adjusted OR 7.2 [95% CI 1.5, 34.6]), while only treatment interruptions had a significant impact on virological failure during the maintenance phase (adjusted OR 2.1 [95% CI 1.1, 4.4]).


CONCLUSIONS
ART NNRTI-regimens used in sub-Saharan Africa seem to 'forgive' deviations from good adherence during the maintenance phase. Optimizing adherence in the early months of treatment remains crucial, especially in a setting of poor health care infrastructure and resources.
An Efficient Weather Forecasting System using Radial Basis Function Neural Network

Problem statement: Accurate weather forecasting plays a vital role fo r planning day to day activities. Neural network has been use in numerous meteorological applications including weather forecasting. Approach: A neural network model has been developed for weat her forecasting, based on various factors obtained from meteorological expert s. This study evaluates the performance of Radial Basis Function (RBF) with Back Propagation (BPN) ne ural network. The back propagation neural network and radial basis function neural network we re used to test the performance in order to investigate effective forecasting technique. Results: The prediction accuracy of RBF was 88.49%. Conclusion: The results indicate that proposed radial basis fu nction neural network is better than back propagation neural network.
The initial knowledge state of college physics students

An instrument to assess the basic knowledge state of students taking a first course in physics has been designed and validated. Measurements with the instrument show that the student's initial qualitative, common sense beliefs about motion and causes has a large effect on performance in physics, but conventional instruction induces only a small change in those beliefs.
Combination of oral antibiotics may be effective in severe pediatric ulcerative colitis: a preliminary report.

BACKGROUND
The results of previous studies on the effectiveness of antibiotics in ulcerative colitis (UC) seem more effective when used orally. In this retrospective, multicenter study, we aimed to report our experience of using a combination of 3-4 antibiotics in children with moderate-severe refractory UC and IBD-unclassified including metronidazole, amoxicillin, doxycycline, and if during hospital admission, also vancomycin (MADoV).


METHODS
All children treated during 2013 with the antibiotic cocktail for 2-3weeks in an attempt to alleviate inflammation in refractory colitis were included. Doxycycline was substituted with oral gentamycin or ciprofloxacin in children younger than 8years or when an allergy was known to one of the drugs. Children were assessed using the PUCAI and CRP weekly for 3weeks.


RESULTS
All 15 included children had moderate to severe disease with refractory disease course to multiple immunosuppressants (mean age 13.6±5.1years, median disease duration 2 (IQR 0.8-3.2) years, 11 females (73%), and 13 (87%) extensive disease; 14 (93%) were corticosteroid-dependent or resistant, and 12 (80%) refractory to anti-TNF therapy). The cocktail was definitely effective in 7 of the 15 included children (47%) who entered complete clinical remission (PUCAI<10) without additional interventions. Questionable or partial short-term response was noted in another 3 (20%), totaling 67% of patients.


CONCLUSION
The use of oral wide-spectrum antibiotic cocktail in pediatric UC seems promising in half of patients, refractory to other salvage therapy. A pediatric randomized controlled trial to assess this intervention is underway.
Inflammatory, lipid, thrombotic, and genetic markers of coronary heart disease risk in the women's health initiative trials of hormone therapy.

BACKGROUND
Clinical trials of postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT) have shown increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in the first few years after initiation of therapy and no overall benefit.


METHODS
This nested case-control study evaluates a range of inflammatory, lipid, thrombotic, and genetic markers for their association with CHD in the 4 years after randomization and assesses whether any of these markers modified or mediated the initially increased risk associated with HT in postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 years at baseline. Conjugated equine estrogens, 0.625 mg/d, or placebo was given to 10 739 hysterectomized women, and the same estrogen plus medroxyprogesterone acetate, 2.5 mg/d, was given to 16 608 women with an intact uterus.


RESULTS
In multivariate-adjusted analyses of 359 cases and 820 controls in the combined trials, baseline levels of 12 of the 23 biomarkers studied were associated with CHD events: interleukin 6, matrix metalloproteinase 9, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, total cholesterol, triglycerides, D-dimer, factor VIII, von Willebrand factor, leukocyte count, homocysteine, and fasting insulin. Biomarkers tended to be more strongly associated with CHD in the initial 2 years after randomization. The genetic polymorphism glycoprotein IIIa leu33pro was significantly associated with CHD. Baseline low-density lipoprotein cholesterol interacted significantly with HT so that women with higher levels were at higher risk for CHD when given HT (P = .03 for interaction). The levels of several biomarkers were changed by HT, but these changes did not seem to be associated with future CHD events.


CONCLUSIONS
Several thrombotic, inflammatory, and lipid biomarkers were associated with CHD events in postmenopausal women, but only low-density lipoprotein cholesterol modified the effect of HT. Further research is needed to identify the mechanisms by which HT increases the risk of CHD.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00000611.
Benefits and barriers to the consumption of a vegetarian diet in Australia.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to examine consumers' perceived benefits and barriers to the consumption of a vegetarian diet.


DESIGN
Survey (written questionnaire) that included questions on perceived benefits and barriers to the consumption of a vegetarian diet.


SETTING
South Australia.


SUBJECTS
Six hundred and one randomly selected South Australians.


RESULTS
The main perceived barriers to adopting a vegetarian diet were enjoying eating meat and an unwillingness to alter eating habits. This was the case for men, women and all age groups, although there were sex and age differences present in over half of the barrier items. For example, family food preferences were a greater problem for women than for men, while the oldest group was more likely to agree that humans are 'meant' to eat meat than the younger groups. The main benefits associated with vegetarian diets were health benefits: increased fruit and vegetable intake, decreased saturated fat intake, weight control. Animal welfare-related benefits and disease prevention were also important. Age and sex differences were apparent, although age differences were more important than sex differences.


CONCLUSIONS
The majority of respondents perceived there to be health benefits associated with the consumption of a vegetarian diet, but also, predictably, enjoyed eating meat. Given this, it is likely that interest in plant-based diets that contain some meat is higher than that in no-meat diets. An understanding of the perceived benefits and barriers of consuming a vegetarian diet will allow the implementation of strategies to influence meat and vegetarianism beliefs, dietary behaviour and, hence, public health.
Teachers' Code-Switching to the L1 in EFL Classroom

Based on the previous research and practice, the present paper conducts an investigation in three Chinese universities to find out the general situation of the switching to Chinese and attempts to test the positive role of the use of Chinese in the EFL classroom of Chinese universities. This case study focuses on revealing the attitudes of teachers and students towards the patterns, functions, factors and influence of the switching to Chinese in the EFL classroom of Chinese universities.The study integrates the qualitative and quantitative research methods to analyze teachers’ codeswitching to Chinese through the teachers and students’ questionnaires and classroom recordings. Based on the analysis of the data, this study concludes that the switching to L1 is prevalent in the EFL classrooms of some Chinese universities and that it plays a positive role in the process of teaching and learning of English language.
Matching 3D Models with Shape Distributions

Measuring the similarity between 3D shapes is a fundamental problem, with applications in computer vision, molecular biology, computer graphics, and a variety of other fields. A challenging aspect of this problem is to find a suitable shape signature that can be constructed and compared quickly, while still discriminating between similar and dissimilar shapes. In this paper, we propose and analyze a method for computing shape signatures for arbitrary (possibly degenerate) 3D polygonal models. The key idea is to represent the signature of an object as ashape distributionsampled from a shape functionmeasuring global geometric properties of an object. The primary motivation for this approach is to reduce the shape matching problem to the comparison of probability distributions, which is simpler than traditional shape matching methods that require pose registration, feature correspondence, or model fitting. We find that the dissimilarities between sampled distributions of simple shape functions (e.g., the distance between two random points on a surface) provide a robust method for discriminating between classes of objects (e.g., cars versus airplanes) in a moderately sized database, despite the presence of arbitrary translations, rotations, scales, mirrors, tessellations, simplifications, and model degeneracies. They can be evaluated quickly, and thus the proposed method could be applied as a pre-classifier in an object recognition system or in an interactive content-based retrieval application.
Nutritional adaptation in man : general introduction and concepts 1 ’ 2

The aim ofthis paper is to clarify thinking on the subject of nutritional adaptation. A series of concepts and questions are proposed with, as examples, same of the responses that occur to low intakes of energy and protein. The main conclusions are first, that in dealing with human beings valuejudgments cannot be avoided, but to avoid sterile discussion they must be separated from objective descriptions of adaptive responses. Second, the way ahead lies in examining the shape of the responses of different functions to different degrees and kinds of stress. Objective studies of this kind do not require use of the ward adaptation. Am J C/in Nuir 1 990;5 1:259-63.
Lipoprotein profile in men with peripheral vascular disease. Role of intermediate density lipoproteins and apoprotein E phenotypes.

BACKGROUND
The role of lipoprotein disturbances in the development of peripheral vascular disease (PVD) has not been sufficiently clarified.


METHODS AND RESULTS
The relations among concentrations of intermediate density lipoproteins (IDL), apoprotein (apo) B, apo E, and other lipoproteins were studied in 102 men with PVD and 100 healthy men who formed the control group. Patients with PVD had significantly higher levels of serum triglycerides, very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) cholesterol, VLDL triglycerides, VLDL proteins, IDL cholesterol, and IDL triglycerides and lower levels of high density lipoproteins (HDL) than controls. Serum cholesterol and triglycerides were normal in 30 patients (cholesterol, less than 5.2 mmol/l; triglycerides, less than 2.3 mmol/l), who had significant increases in IDL triglycerides and significant decreases in HDL cholesterol compared with the 47 controls, who had normal cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Patients with more severe distal involvement showed higher cholesterol and triglycerides carried by IDL and a greater reduction in HDL cholesterol. Smoking patients with PVD showed increased VLDL cholesterol and VLDL triglycerides and lower HDL concentrations. Apo E polymorphism in our study population does not differ from that reported for other European populations. Alleles epsilon 2 and epsilon 4 had a major impact on serum triglycerides and VLDL lipids in our patients with PVD.


CONCLUSIONS
Lipoprotein disturbances are a major risk factor for PVD. IDL abnormalities play an important role in the development and severity of PVD and should also be considered a vascular risk factor in normocholesterolemic and normotriglyceridemic patients.
PERFECTOID SPACES

We introduce a certain class of so-called perfectoid rings and spaces, which give a natural framework for Faltings’ almost purity theorem, and for which there is a natural tilting operation which exchanges characteristic 0 and characteristic p. We deduce the weight-monodromy conjecture in certain cases by reduction to equal characteristic.