LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Ethnobiology, socio-economics and management of mangrove forests: A review

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 506 364 2323; fa E-mail address: bwalters@mta.ca (B.B. Walters). 0304-3770/$ – see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V doi:10.1016/j.aquabot.2008.02.009 There is growing research interest in the ethnobiology, socio-economics and management of mangrove forests. Coastal residents who use mangroves and their resources may have considerable botanical and ecological knowledgeable about these forests. A wide variety of forest products are harvested in mangroves, especially wood for fuel and construction, tannins and medicines. Although there are exceptions, mangrove forest products are typically harvested in a small-scale and selective manner, with harvesting efforts and impacts concentrated in stands that are closer to settlements and easiest to access (by land or by sea). Mangroves support diverse, local fisheries, and also provide critical nursery habitat and marine productivity which support wider commercial fisheries. These forests also provide valuable ecosystem services that benefit coastal communities, including coastal land stabilization and storm protection. The overlapping of marine and terrestrial resources in mangroves creates tenure ambiguities that complicate management and may induce conflict between competing interests. Mangroves have been cut and cleared extensively to make way for brackish water aquaculture and infrastructure development. More attention is now given to managing remaining forests sustainably and to restoring those degraded from past use. Recent advances in remotely sensed, geo-spatial monitoring provide opportunities for researchers and planners to better understand and improve the management of these unique forested wetlands. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Trust and distrust among Appalachian women regarding cervical cancer screening: a qualitative study.

OBJECTIVE
To explore Appalachian women's perceptions of trust and distrust of healthcare providers and the medical care system as they relate to views about cervical cancer and screening.


METHODS
Thirty-six Ohio Appalachia female residents participated in community focus groups conducted by trained facilitators. Discussion topics included factors related to cervical cancer, and the issues of trust and distrust in medical care. The tape-recorded focus groups were transcribed and analyzed to identify salient themes.


RESULTS
Five themes emerged related to trust in healthcare. Patient-centered communication and encouragement from a healthcare provider led women to trust their physicians and the medical care system. In contrast, lack of patient-centered communication by providers and perceptions of poor quality of care led to distrust. Physician gender concordance also contributed to trust as women reported trust of female physicians and distrust of male physicians; trust in male physicians was reported to be increased by the presence of a female nurse.


CONCLUSIONS
Important factors associated with trust and distrust of providers and the medical care system may impact health-seeking behaviors among underserved women.


PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS
Opportunities to improve patient-centered communication around the issues of prevention and cervical cancer screening (such as providing patient-focused information about access to appropriate screening tests) could be used to improve patient care and build patients' trust.
Practical Guidelines for Testing Statistical Software

Schloss Reisensburg. Physica-Verlag, 1994. Summary Traditional tests of the accuracy of statistical software have been based on a few limited paradigms for ordinary least squares regression. Test suites based on these criteria served the statistical computing community well when software was limited to a few simple procedures. Recent developments in statistical computing require both more and less sophisticated measures, however. We need tests for a broader variety of procedures and ones which are more likely to reveal incompetent programming. This paper summarizes these issues.
Laparoscopic antireflux surgery vs esomeprazole treatment for chronic GERD: the LOTUS randomized clinical trial.

CONTEXT
Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a chronic, relapsing disease with symptoms that have negative effects on daily life. Two treatment options are long-term medication or surgery.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate optimized esomeprazole therapy vs standardized laparoscopic antireflux surgery (LARS) in patients with GERD.


DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
The LOTUS trial, a 5-year exploratory randomized, open, parallel-group trial conducted in academic hospitals in 11 European countries between October 2001 and April 2009 among 554 patients with well-established chronic GERD who initially responded to acid suppression. A total of 372 patients (esomeprazole, n = 192; LARS, n = 180) completed 5-year follow-up. Interventions Two hundred sixty-six patients were randomly assigned to receive esomeprazole, 20 to 40 mg/d, allowing for dose adjustments; 288 were randomly assigned to undergo LARS, of whom 248 actually underwent the operation.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE
Time to treatment failure (for LARS, defined as need for acid suppressive therapy; for esomeprazole, inadequate symptom control after dose adjustment), expressed as estimated remission rates and analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method.


RESULTS
Estimated remission rates at 5 years were 92% (95% confidence interval [CI], 89%-96%) in the esomeprazole group and 85% (95% CI, 81%-90%) in the LARS group (log-rank P = .048). The difference between groups was no longer statistically significant following best-case scenario modeling of the effects of study dropout. The prevalence and severity of symptoms at 5 years in the esomeprazole and LARS groups, respectively, were 16% and 8% for heartburn (P = .14), 13% and 2% for acid regurgitation (P < .001), 5% and 11% for dysphagia (P < .001), 28% and 40% for bloating (P < .001), and 40% and 57% for flatulence (P < .001). Mortality during the study was low (4 deaths in the esomeprazole group and 1 death in the LARS group) and not attributed to treatment, and the percentages of patients reporting serious adverse events were similar in the esomeprazole group (24.1%) and in the LARS group (28.6%).


CONCLUSION
This multicenter clinical trial demonstrated that with contemporary antireflux therapy for GERD, either by drug-induced acid suppression with esomeprazole or by LARS, most patients achieve and remain in remission at 5 years.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00251927.
Intensive dose-dense compared with conventionally scheduled preoperative chemotherapy for high-risk primary breast cancer.

PURPOSE
To compare preoperative intense dose-dense (IDD) chemotherapy with conventionally scheduled preoperative chemotherapy in high-risk primary breast cancer (BC).


PATIENTS AND METHODS
In this randomized phase III trial a total of 668 eligible primary BC patients stratified for tumors > or = 3 cm (n = 567) or inflammatory BC (n = 101) were randomly assigned to receive concurrent preoperative epirubicin/paclitaxel every 3 weeks or dose-dense and dose-escalated sequential epirubicin followed by paclitaxel every 2 weeks. All patients received three cycles of cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, and fluorouracil chemotherapy after surgery.


RESULTS
IDD treatment significantly improved pathologic complete response rate (18% v 10%; odds ratio [OR] 1.89; P = .008), disease-free survival (DFS; hazard ratio [HR], 0.71; P = .011), and overall survival (OS; HR, 0.83; P = .041) compared to epirubicin/paclitaxel. Patients with inflammatory BC had a particularly poor prognosis and did not appear to benefit from IDD therapy in this trial (DFS HR, 1.10; P = .739; OS HR, 1.25; P = .544). In contrast, patients with noninflammatory BC significantly benefited from IDD treatment (DFS HR, 0.65, P = .005; OS HR, 0.77, P = .013). Treatment effects in multivariate analysis were significant for noninflammatory BC (DFS HR, 0.65, P = .015; OS HR, 0.79, P = .034), but not for all patients (DFS HR, 0.76; P = .088; OS HR, 0.82; P = .059). IDD therapy was associated with significantly more nonhematologic toxicities, anemia, and thrombocytopenia, but with similar neutropenia and infection rates.


CONCLUSION
Our results support the efficacy and short-term safety of IDD as preoperative chemotherapy. IDD was less well tolerated compared to standard treatment, but improved clinical outcomes in patients with noninflammatory high-risk primary BC.
Treating Opioid Dependence With Injectable Extended-Release Naltrexone (XR-NTX)

OBJECTIVES
Once-monthly intramuscular extended-release naltrexone (XR-NTX) has demonstrated efficacy for the prevention of relapse in opioid dependence, providing an alternative to agonist or partial agonist maintenance (ie, methadone and buprenorphine). The question remains, for whom is this unique treatment most efficacious and can patient-treatment matching factors be identified?


METHODS
A moderator analysis was conducted on a previously reported 24-week, placebo-controlled, multisite, randomized controlled trial of XR-NTX (n = 126) versus placebo (n = 124) among recently detoxified opioid-dependent adults in Russia, which showed XR-NTX superior to placebo in proportion of opioid abstinent weeks. The moderator analysis examined a dichotomous indicator of good clinical response-achieving at least 90% of weeks abstinent over the 24-week trial. A series of logistic regression models were fit for this outcome as functions of treatment (XR-NTX vs placebo), each baseline moderator variable, and their interactions. The 25 baseline variables included demographics, clinical severity (Addiction Severity Index, SF-36, and Clinical Global Impression-Severity), functioning (EQ-5D), craving, and HIV serostatus (HIV+).


RESULTS
More XR-NTX patients achieved 90% abstinence (64/126, 51%) versus placebo (39/124, 31%; P = 0.002). There were no significant interactions between baseline variables and treatment. There was a significant main effect of Clinical Global Impression-Severity score (P = 0.02), such that higher severity score was associated with a lower rate of Good Clinical Response.


CONCLUSIONS
The absence of significant baseline by treatment interactions indicates that no patient-treatment matching variables could be identified. This suggests that XR-NTX was effective in promoting abstinence from opioids across a range of demographic and severity characteristics.
Ethnomedicines used in Trinidad and Tobago for urinary problems and diabetes mellitus

BACKGROUND
This paper is based on ethnobotanical interviews conducted from 1996-2000 in Trinidad and Tobago with thirty male and female respondents.


METHODS
A non-experimental validation was conducted on the plants used for urinary problems and diabetes mellitus: This is a preliminary step to establish that the plants used are safe or effective, to help direct clinical trials, and to inform Caribbean physicians of the plants' known properties to avoid counter-prescribing.


RESULTS
The following plants are used to treat diabetes: Antigonon leptopus, Bidens alba, Bidens pilosa, Bixa orellana, Bontia daphnoides, Carica papaya, Catharanthus roseus, Cocos nucifera, Gomphrena globosa, Laportea aestuans, Momordica charantia, Morus alba, Phyllanthus urinaria and Spiranthes acaulis. Apium graviolens is used as a heart tonic and for low blood pressure. Bixa orellana, Bontia daphnoides, Cuscuta americana and Gomphrena globosa are used for jaundice. The following plants are used for hypertension: Aloe vera, Annona muricata, Artocarpus altilis, Bixa orellana, Bidens alba, Bidens pilosa, Bonta daphnoides, Carica papaya, Cecropia peltata, Citrus paradisi, Cola nitida, Crescentia cujete, Gomphrena globosa, Hibiscus sabdariffa, Kalanchoe pinnata, Morus alba, Nopalea cochinellifera, Ocimum campechianum, Passiflora quadrangularis, Persea americana and Tamarindus indicus. The plants used for kidney problems are Theobroma cacao, Chamaesyce hirta, Flemingia strobilifera, Peperomia rotundifolia, Petiveria alliacea, Nopalea cochinellifera, Apium graveolens, Cynodon dactylon, Eleusine indica, Gomphrena globosa, Pityrogramma calomelanos and Vetiveria zizanioides. Plants are also used for gall stones and for cooling.


CONCLUSION
Chamaesyce hirta, Cissus verticillata, Kalanchoe pinnata, Peperomia spp., Portulaca oleraceae, Scoparia dulcis, and Zea mays have sufficient evidence to support their traditional use for urinary problems, "cooling" and high cholesterol. Eggplant extract as a hypocholesterolemic agent has some support but needs more study. The plants used for hypertension, jaundice and diabetes that may be safe and justify more formal evaluation are Annona squamosa, Aloe vera, Apium graveolens, Bidens alba, Carica papaya, Catharanthus roseus, Cecropia peltata, Citrus paradisi, Hibsicus sabdariffa, Momordica charantia, Morus alba, Persea americana, Phyllanthus urinaria, Tamarindus indicus and Tournefortia hirsutissima. Several of the plants are used for more than one condition and further trials should take this into account.
A Proof of Correctness for Egalitarian Paxos

This paper presents a proof of correctness for Egalitarian Paxos (EPaxos), a new distributed consensus algorithm based on Paxos. EPaxos achieves three goals: (1) availability without interruption as long as a simple majority of replicas are reachable—its availability is not interrupted when replicas crash or fail to respond; (2) uniform load balancing across all replicas—no replicas experience higher load because they have special roles; and (3) optimal commit latency in the wide-area when tolerating one and two failures, under realistic conditions. Egalitarian Paxos is to our knowledge the first distributed consensus protocol to achieve all of these goals efficiently: requiring only a simple majority of replicas to be non-faulty, using a number of messages linear in the number of replicas to choose a command, and committing commands after just one communication round (one round trip) in the common case or after at most two rounds in any case. Acknowledgements: This work was supported by Intel Science & Technology Center for Cloud Computing, Google, and the National Science Foundation under award CCF-0964474. We would like to thank the members and companies of the PDL Consortium (including Actifio, American Power Conversion, EMC Corporation, Emulex, Facebook, Fusion-io, Google, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Hitachi, Huawei Technologies Co., Intel Corporation, Microsoft Research, NEC Laboratories, NetApp, Inc., Oracle Corporation, Panasas, Riverbed, Samsung Information Systems America, Seagate Technology, STEC, Inc., Symantec Corporation, VMware, Inc., and Western Digital) for their interest, insights, feedback, and support.
The sympathetic control of blood pressure

Hypertension — the chronic elevation of blood pressure — is a major human health problem. In most cases, the root cause of the disease remains unknown, but there is mounting evidence that many forms of hypertension are initiated and maintained by an elevated sympathetic tone. This review examines how the sympathetic tone to cardiovascular organs is generated, and discusses how elevated sympathetic tone can contribute to hypertension.
Green supply chain management and environmental performance among tea processing firms in Kericho County-Kenya

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) on Environmental Performance among tea processing firms in Kericho County. The study adopted a correlation study design. Data was collected from all the 32 tea processing firms in the County and analyzed using SPSS. Multiple regression model was developed and used to establish the effect of GSCM on Environmental Performance. ANOVA test was used to determine the statistical significance of the relationship between the variables. The results were presented using tables. The study established that GSCM has positive effect on environmental performance. The study therefore recommends that managements of tea processing firms and other manufacturing firms adopt GSCM practices in their supply chain operations. The study suggests that further studies should be conducted in processing firms other than tea processing firms. Further studies should also be conducted to relate GSCM with individual aspects of performance such as Economic, Environmental and Social Performance.
Adult-onset mastocytosis in the skin is highly suggestive of systemic mastocytosis

Adult-onset urticaria pigmentosa/mastocytosis in the skin almost always persists throughout life. The prevalence of systemic mastocytosis in such patients is not precisely known. Bone marrow biopsies from 59 patients with mastocytosis in the skin and all available skin biopsies (n=27) were subjected to a meticulous cytological, histological, immunohistochemical, and molecular analysis for the presence of WHO-defined diagnostic criteria for systemic mastocytosis: compact mast cell infiltrates (major criterion); atypical mast cell morphology, KIT D816V, abnormal expression of CD25 by mast cells, and serum tryptase levels >20 ng/ml (minor criteria). Systemic mastocytosis is diagnosed when the major diagnostic criterion plus one minor criterion or at least three minor criteria are fulfilled. Systemic mastocytosis was confirmed in 57 patients (97%) by the diagnosis of compact mast cell infiltrates plus at least one minor diagnostic criterion (n=42, 71%) or at least three minor diagnostic criteria (n=15, 25%). In two patients, only two minor diagnostic criteria were detectable, insufficient for the diagnosis of systemic mastocytosis. By the use of highly sensitive molecular methods, including the analysis of microdissected mast cells, KIT D816V was found in all 58 bone marrow biopsies investigated for it but only in 74% (20/27) of the skin biopsies. It is important to state that even in cases with insufficient diagnostic criteria for systemic mastocytosis, KIT D816V-positive mast cells were detected in the bone marrow. This study demonstrates, for the first time, that almost all patients with adult-onset mastocytosis in the skin, in fact, have systemic mastocytosis with cutaneous involvement.
A retrospective, pooled data analysis of the safety of pegaptanib sodium in the treatment of age-related macular degeneration in subjects with or without diabetes mellitus

BACKGROUND
To evaluate the safety of pegaptanib sodium 0.3 mg intravitreal injection in the treatment of neovascular age-related macular degeneration in subjects with or without diabetes mellitus.


METHODS
A pooled, retrospective, analysis was conducted of data from 9 sponsor-administered, randomized, open-label trials. Subjects who received pegaptanib by randomization or change in dose assignment, crossover design, or protocol amendment, were included. Reports of endophthalmitis, increased intraocular pressure, retinal injury, intraocular hemorrhage, traumatic cataract, hypersensitivity reactions, stroke, myocardial infarction, and other arterial thromboembolic events defined by the Antiplatelet Trialists' Collaboration were identified by Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities preferred terms. Adverse events were summarized from the first injection to 42 days after the last injection. The incidence of adverse events was stratified by the presence/absence of diabetes.


RESULTS
Of 1,586 subjects enrolled, 165 (10.4%) had a history of diabetes mellitus and 1,421 (89.6%) did not. The 2 populations were similar at baseline. Based on the comparison of prespecified ocular, hypersensitivity, and Antiplatelet Trialists' Collaboration event terms, the safety review did not identify any notable differences between the 2 populations.


CONCLUSIONS
This retrospective analysis found no increased safety risk resulting from treatment with pegaptanib 0.3 mg in individuals with neovascular age-related macular degeneration and concomitant diabetes mellitus.
A Single-Blind randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effect of extended counseling on uptake of pre-antiretroviral care in eastern uganda

BACKGROUND
Many newly screened people living with HIV (PLHIV) in Sub-Saharan Africa do not understand the importance of regular pre-antiretroviral (ARV) care because most of them have been counseled by staff who lack basic counseling skills. This results in low uptake of pre-ARV care and late treatment initiation in resource-poor settings. The effect of providing post-test counseling by staff equipped with basic counseling skills, combined with home visits by community support agents on uptake of pre-ARV care for newly diagnosed PLHIV was evaluated through a randomized intervention trial in Uganda.


METHODS
An intervention trial was performed consisting of post-test counseling by trained counselors, combined with monthly home visits by community support agents for continued counseling to newly screened PLHIV in Iganga district, Uganda between July 2009 and June 2010, Participants (N = 400) from three public recruitment centres were randomized to receive either the intervention, or the standard care (the existing post-test counseling by ARV clinic staff who lack basic training in counseling skills), the control arm. The outcome measure was the proportion of newly screened and counseled PLHIV in either arm who had been to their nearest health center for clinical check-up in the subsequent three months +2 months. Treatment was randomly assigned using computer-generated random numbers. The statistical significance of differences between the two study arms was assessed using chi-square and t-tests for categorical and quantitative data respectively. Risk ratios and 95% confidence intervals were used to assess the effect of the intervention.


RESULTS
Participants in the intervention arm were 80% more likely to accept (take up) pre-ARV care compared to those in the control arm (RR 1.8, 95% CI 1.4-2.1). No adverse events were reported.


CONCLUSIONS
Provision of post-test counseling by staff trained in basic counseling skills, combined with home visits by community support agents had a significant effect on uptake of pre-ARV care and appears to be a cost-effective way to increase the prerequisites for timely ARV initiation.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
The trial was registered by Current Controlled Trials Ltd C/OBioMed Central Ltd as ISRCTN94133652 and received financial support from Sida and logistical support from the European Commission.
Remote controlling of technical systems using mobile devices

Mobile devices, like cell phones or smart phones, can nowadays be used to monitor and control remote devices like technical systems. While monitoring systems do not have high requirements on the transmission time of the displayed data, navigating a mobile robot from remote requires more real time data transfers. Therefore not only the possibilities of using mobile devices where researched, but also the supported data transmission channels like UMTS, GSM, wireless LAN and Bluetooth where examined and benchmarked. As a result of this research a proof of concept application where implemented. A mobile robot running a server program on its on board computer, connected to the faculties wireless LAN, can be controlled through a small client written in JavaMe and runnable on most mobile devices.
Hierarchical attribute-based encryption with continuous auxiliary inputs leakage

The continuous auxiliary inputs leakage is more strong side-channel attacks. In this article, we first propose a continuous auxiliary inputs leakage model for the hierarchical attribute-based encryption scheme. Under the security model, an adversary has ability to gain partial updated master keys and updated secret keys continually by certain leakage attacks. Moreover, a resilient-leakage hierarchical attribute-based encryption scheme is constructed. The security proof for this scheme is provided under the standard model. Furthermore, we give the performance comparison between our scheme and relevant scheme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.