LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Phonological skills in predominantly English-speaking, predominantly Spanish-speaking, and Spanish-English bilingual children.

PURPOSE
There is a paucity of information detailing the phonological skills of Spanish-English bilingual children and comparing that information to information concerning the phonological skills of predominantly English-speaking (PE) and predominantly Spanish-speaking (PS) children. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between amount of output (i.e., percentage of time each language was spoken) in each language and phonological skills in Spanish-English bilingual children and PE and PS children.


METHOD
Fifteen typically developing children, ranging in age from 5;0 (years;months) to 5;5 (mean = 5;2), participated in the study. The participants consisted of 5 PE speakers, 5 PS speakers, and 5 bilingual (Spanish-English) speakers. A single-word assessment was used to gather information on phonological skills (consonant accuracy, type and frequency of substitutions, frequency of occurrence of phonological patterns [e.g., cluster reduction], accuracy of syllable types [e.g., CV, CVC, CCV, etc.]), and type and rate of cross-linguistic effects.


RESULTS
The results indicated that there was no significant correlation between amount of output in each language and phonological skills either in the Spanish skills of PS children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers or in the English skills of PE children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers. In addition, there was no significant difference in segmental accuracy, syllabic accuracy, or percentage of occurrence of phonological patterns between either the Spanish skills of PS children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers or the English skills of PE children and Spanish-English bilingual speakers. Finally, the children showed a limited number of cross-linguistic effects.


CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
Results from this study indicate no link between parent estimates of language output and phonological skill and demonstrate that Spanish-English bilingual children will have commensurate, although not identical, phonological skills as compared to age-matched PS and PE children.
Management of rheumatoid arthritis in Spain (emAR II). Clinical characteristics of the patients.

BACKGROUND
There is a wide variability in the diagnostic and therapeutic methods in rheumatoid arthritis (AR) in Spain, according to prior studies. The quality of care could benefit from the application of appropriate clinical practice standards; we present a study on the variability of clinical practice.


METHODS
Descriptive review of clinical records (CR) of patients aged 16 or older diagnosed with RA, selected by stratified sampling of the Autonomous Communities in two stages per Hospital Center and patient. Collected analysis of sociodemographic data, evolution, follow-up, joint count, reactants, function, job history, Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) and other.


RESULTS
We obtained valid information of 1,272 RA patients. The ESR, CRP and rheumatoid factor (RF) were regularly used parameters. The percentages of missing data in tender (TJN) and swollen (SJN) joint counts were 8.2% and 9.6% respectively; regarding the VAS we found 53.6% (patient), 59.1% (pain), and 72% in the physician VAS.


CONCLUSIONS
Despite having clinical practice guidelines on RA, there still exists a significant variability in RA management in our country.
Randomized Trial of Endoscopist-Controlled vs. Assistant-Controlled Wire-Guided Cannulation of the Bile Duct

OBJECTIVES:Biliary cannulation is frequently the most difficult component of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). Techniques employed to improve safety and efficacy include wire-guided access and the use of sphincterotomes. However, a variety of options for these techniques are available and optimum strategies are not defined. We assessed whether the use of endoscopist- vs. assistant-controlled wire guidance and small vs. standard-diameter sphincterotomes improves safety and/or efficacy of bile duct cannulation.METHODS:Patients were randomized using a 2 × 2 factorial design to initial cannulation attempt with endoscopist- vs. assistant-controlled wire systems (1:1 ratio) and small (3.9Fr tip) vs. standard (4.4Fr tip) sphincterotomes (1:1 ratio). The primary efficacy outcome was successful deep bile duct cannulation within 8 attempts. Sample size of 498 was planned to demonstrate a significant increase in cannulation of 10%. Interim analysis was planned after 200 patients–with a stopping rule pre-defined for a significant difference in the composite safety end point (pancreatitis, cholangitis, bleeding, and perforation).RESULTS:The study was stopped after the interim analysis, with 216 patients randomized, due to a significant difference in the safety end point with endoscopist- vs. assistant-controlled wire guidance (3/109 (2.8%) vs. 12/107 (11.2%), P=0.016), primarily due to a lower rate of post-ERCP pancreatitis (3/109 (2.8%) vs. 10/107 (9.3%), P=0.049). The difference in successful biliary cannulation for endoscopist- vs. assistant-controlled wire guidance was −0.5% (95% CI−12.0 to 11.1%) and for small vs. standard sphincerotome −0.9% (95% CI–12.5 to 10.6%).CONCLUSIONS:Use of the endoscopist- rather than assistant-controlled wire guidance for bile duct cannulation reduces complications of ERCP such as pancreatitis.
Automatic Off-line Signature Verification Systems: A Review

The use of biometric technologies for human identity verification is growing rapidly in civilized society and showing its advancement towards the usability of biometrics for security. Off-line signature verification is considered as a behavioral characteristic based biometric trait in the field of security and the prevention of fraud. So, offline signatures are extensively used as a means of personal verification and identification. Manual signature-based authentication of a large number of documents is a very difficult and time consuming task. Consequently for many years, in the field of protected communication and financial applications, we have observed an explosive growth in biometric personal authentication systems that are closely connected with measurable physical unique characteristics (hand geometry, iris scan, finger prints or DNA).. Human signatures also provide secure means for confirmation and authorization in legal documents. So nowadays, automatic signature verification becomes an essential component. In order to convey the state-of-the-art in the field to researchers, in this paper we present a survey of off-line signature verification systems. General Terms: Systems, Forgeries, Methods, Skilled,
Sugar-sweetened soda consumption and risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis in women.

BACKGROUND
Sugar-sweetened soda consumption is consistently associated with an increased risk of several chronic inflammatory diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Whether it plays a role in the development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a common autoimmune inflammatory disease, remains unclear.


OBJECTIVE
The aim was to evaluate the association between sugar-sweetened soda consumption and risk of RA in US women.


DESIGN
We prospectively followed 79,570 women from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS; 1980-2008) and 107,330 women from the NHS II (1991-2009). Information on sugar-sweetened soda consumption (including regular cola, caffeine-free cola, and other sugar-sweetened carbonated soda) was obtained from a validated food-frequency questionnaire at baseline and approximately every 4 y during follow-up. Incident RA cases were validated by medical record review. Time-varying Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to calculate HRs after adjustment for confounders. Results from both cohorts were pooled by an inverse-variance-weighted, fixed-effects model.


RESULTS
During 3,381,268 person-years of follow-up, 857 incident cases of RA were documented in the 2 cohorts. In the multivariable pooled analyses, we found that women who consumed ≥1 serving of sugar-sweetened soda/d had a 63% (HR: 1.63; 95% CI: 1.15, 2.30; P-trend = 0.004) increased risk of developing seropositive RA compared with those who consumed no sugar-sweetened soda or who consumed <1 serving/mo. When we restricted analyses to those with later RA onset (after age 55 y) in the NHS, the association appeared to be stronger (HR: 2.64; 95% CI: 1.56, 4.46; P-trend < 0.0001). No significant association was found for sugar-sweetened soda and seronegative RA. Diet soda consumption was not significantly associated with risk of RA in the 2 cohorts.


CONCLUSION
Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened soda, but not diet soda, is associated with increased risk of seropositive RA in women, independent of other dietary and lifestyle factors.
An Update of Asymptomatic Falciparum Malaria in School Children in Muea, Southwest Cameroon

This article was originally published in a journal by OMICS Publishing Group, and the attached copy is provided by OMICS Publishing Group for the author’s benefit and for the benefit of the author’s institution, for commercial/research/educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues that you know, and providing a copy to your institution’s administrator.
Customer Knowledge Management

INtrODUctION As companies begin to develop competence in managing internal knowledge and applying it towards achieving organizational goals, they are setting their sights on new sources of knowledge that are not necessarily found within the boundaries of the firm. Customer knowledge management comprises the processes that are concerned with the identification, acquisition, and utilization of knowledge from beyond a firm's external boundary in order to create value for an organization. Companies can utilize this knowledge in many different forms of organizational improvement and change, but it is especially valuable for innovation and the new product development function. The notion of working with partners to share information was first discussed in 1966 where the possibility of transferring information between a company and its suppliers and customers was identified. Kaufman (1966) describes the advantages to a business that include reduced order costs, reduced delivery time, and increased customer " confidence and goodwill " (p. 148). Organizations have since been viewed as interpretation systems that must find ways of knowing their environment (Daft & Weick, 1984). Through this environmental learning, a firm's ability to innovate can improve by going beyond a firm's boundaries to expand the knowledge available for creating new and successful products. Some organizations conduct ongoing, active searches of the environment to seek new and vital information. Such organizations become the key innovators within an industry. Other, more passive organizations accept whatever information the environment presents and avoid the processes of testing new ideas and innovation. Marketing literature refers to this concept as market orientation (Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Slater & Narver, 1995). More recently, many organizations have realized the value of information about their customers through customer relationship management and data mining strategies, and have used this information to tailor their marketing efforts accurately manage inventory levels within the supply chain (Lin, Huang, & Lin, 2002) also reflects this notion. However, what is missing from these theories and strategies is the realization of the value of knowledge residing within customers, and not information about customers. Iansiti and Levien (2004) describe an orga-nization's environment as an ecosystem, where networked organizations rely on the strength of others for survival. Within this ecology, they identify certain " keystone organizations " that " simplify the complex task of connecting network participants to one another or by making the creation of new products by third parties more efficient " (p. 73). This increase in overall …
Finding Influential Training Samples for Gradient Boosted Decision Trees

We address the problem of finding influential training samples for a particular case of tree ensemble-based models, e.g., Random Forest (RF) or Gradient Boosted Decision Trees (GBDT). A natural way of formalizing this problem is studying how the model’s predictions change upon leave-one-out retraining, leaving out each individual training sample. Recent work has shown that, for parametric models, this analysis can be conducted in a computationally efficient way. We propose several ways of extending this framework to non-parametric GBDT ensembles under the assumption that tree structures remain fixed. Furthermore, we introduce a general scheme of obtaining further approximations to our method that balance the trade-off between performance and computational complexity. We evaluate our approaches on various experimental setups and use-case scenarios and demonstrate both the quality of our approach to finding influential training samples in comparison to the baselines and its computational efficiency.1
Impact of surface type, wheelchair weight, and axle position on wheelchair propulsion by novice older adults.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the impact of surface type, wheelchair weight, and rear axle position on older adult propulsion biomechanics.


DESIGN
Crossover trial.


SETTING
Biomechanics laboratory.


PARTICIPANTS
Convenience sample of 53 ambulatory older adults with minimal wheelchair experience (65-87y); men, n=20; women, n=33.


INTERVENTION
Participants propelled 4 different wheelchair configurations over 4 surfaces: tile, low carpet, high carpet, and an 8% grade ramp (surface, chair order randomized). Chair configurations included (1) unweighted chair with an anterior axle position, (2) 9.05 kg weighted chair with an anterior axle position, (3) unweighted chair with a posterior axle position (Delta0.08 m), and (4) 9.05 kg weighted chair with a posterior axle position (Delta0.08 m). Weight was added to a titanium folding chair, simulating the weight difference between very light and depot wheelchairs. Instrumented wheels measured propulsion kinetics.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Average self-selected velocity, push frequency, stroke length, peak resultant and tangential force.


RESULTS
Velocity decreased as surface rolling resistance or chair weight increased. Peak resultant and tangential forces increased as chair weight increased, as surface resistance increased, and with a posterior axle position. The effect of a posterior axle position was greater on high carpet and the ramp. The effect of weight was constant, but was more easily observed on high carpet and ramp. The effects of axle position and weight were independent of one another.


CONCLUSION
Increased surface resistance decreases self-selected velocity and increases peak forces. Increased weight decreases self-selected velocity and increases forces. Anterior axle positions decrease forces, more so on high carpet. The effects of weight and axle position are independent. The greatest reductions in peak forces occur in lighter chairs with anterior axle positions.
Pattern-oriented associative rule-based patent classification

This paper proposes an innovative pattern-oriented associative rule-based approach to construct automatic TRIZ-based patent classification system. Derived from associative rule-based text categorization, the new approach does not only discover the semantic relationship among features in a document by their co-occurrence, but also captures the syntactic information by manually generalized patterns. We choose 7 classes which address 20 of the 40 TRIZ Principles and perform experiments upon the binary set for each class. Compared with three currently popular classification algorithms (SVM, C4.5 and NB), the new approach shows some improvement. More importantly, this new approach has its own advantages, which were discussed in this paper as well. Crown Copyright 2009 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
HIV care and treatment factors associated with improved survival during TB treatment in Thailand: an observational study

BACKGROUND
In Southeast Asia, HIV-infected patients frequently die during TB treatment. Many physicians are reluctant to treat HIV-infected TB patients with anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and have questions about the added value of opportunistic infection prophylaxis to ART, the optimum ART regimen, and the benefit of initiating ART early during TB treatment.


METHODS
We conducted a multi-center observational study of HIV-infected patients newly diagnosed with TB in Thailand. Clinical data was collected from the beginning to the end of TB treatment. We conducted multivariable proportional hazards analysis to identify factors associated with death.


RESULTS
Of 667 HIV-infected TB patients enrolled, 450 (68%) were smear and/or culture positive. Death during TB treatment occurred in 112 (17%). In proportional hazards analysis, factors strongly associated with reduced risk of death were ART use (Hazard Ratio [HR] 0.16; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.07-0.36), fluconazole use (HR 0.34; CI 0.18-0.64), and co-trimoxazole use (HR 0.41; CI 0.20-0.83). Among 126 patients that initiated ART after TB diagnosis, the risk of death increased the longer that ART was delayed during TB treatment. Efavirenz- and nevirapine-containing ART regimens were associated with similar rates of adverse events and death.


CONCLUSION
Among HIV-infected patients living in Thailand, the single most important determinant of survival during TB treatment was use of ART. Controlled clinical trials are needed to confirm our findings that early ART initiation improves survival and that the choice of non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor does not.
Structure, function and management of semi-natural habitats for conservation biological control: a review of European studies.

Different semi-natural habitats occur on farmland, and it is the vegetation's traits and structure that subsequently determine their ability to support natural enemies and their associated contribution to conservation biocontrol. New habitats can be created and existing ones improved with agri-environment scheme funding in all EU member states. Understanding the contribution of each habitat type can aid the development of conservation control strategies. Here we review the extent to which the predominant habitat types in Europe support natural enemies, whether this results in enhanced natural enemy densities in the adjacent crop and whether this leads to reduced pest densities. Considerable variation exists in the available information for the different habitat types and trophic levels. Natural enemies within each habitat were the most studied, with less information on whether they were enhanced in adjacent fields, while their impact on pests was rarely investigated. Most information was available for woody and herbaceous linear habitats, yet not for woodland which can be the most common semi-natural habitat in many regions. While the management and design of habitats offer potential to stimulate conservation biocontrol, we also identified knowledge gaps. A better understanding of the relationship between resource availability and arthropod communities across habitat types, the spatiotemporal distribution of resources in the landscape and interactions with other factors that play a role in pest regulation could contribute to an informed management of semi-natural habitats for biocontrol. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.
A deficiency of manganese ions in the presence of high sugar concentrations is the critical parameter for achieving high yields of itaconic acid by Aspergillus terreus

Itaconic acid (IA), an unsaturated dicarboxylic acid with a high potential as a platform for chemicals derived from sugars, is industrially produced by large-scale submerged fermentation by Aspergillus terreus. Although the biochemical pathway and the physiology leading to IA is almost the same as that leading to citric acid production in Aspergillus niger, published data for the volumetric (g L−1) and the specific yield (mol/mol carbon source) of IA are significantly lower than for citric acid. Citric acid is known to accumulate to high levels only when a number of nutritional parameters are carefully adjusted, of which the concentration of the carbon source and that of manganese ions in the medium are particularly important. We have therefore investigated whether a variation in these two parameters may enhance IA production and yield by A. terreus. We show that manganese ion concentrations < 3 ppb are necessary to obtain highest yields. Highest yields were also dependent on the concentration of the carbon source (d-glucose), and highest yields (0.9) were only obtained at concentrations of 12–20 % (w/v), thus allowing the accumulation of up to 130 g L−1 IA. These findings perfectly mirror those obtained when these parameters are varied in citric acid production by A. niger, thus showing that the physiology of both processes is widely identical. Consequently, applying the fermentation technology established for citric acid production by A. niger citric acid production to A. terreus should lead to high yields of IA, too.
Guideline adaptation and implementation planning: a prospective observational study

BACKGROUND
Adaptation of high-quality practice guidelines for local use has been advanced as an efficient means to improve acceptability and applicability of evidence-informed care. In a pan-Canadian study, we examined how cancer care groups adapted pre-existing guidelines to their unique context and began implementation planning.


METHODS
Using a mixed-methods, case-study design, five cases were purposefully sampled from self-identified groups and followed as they used a structured method and resources for guideline adaptation. Cases received the ADAPTE Collaboration toolkit, facilitation, methodological and logistical support, resources and assistance as required. Documentary and primary data collection methods captured individual case experience, including monthly summaries of meeting and field notes, email/telephone correspondence, and project records. Site visits, process audits, interviews, and a final evaluation forum with all cases contributed to a comprehensive account of participant experience.


RESULTS
Study cases took 12 to >24 months to complete guideline adaptation. Although participants appreciated the structure, most found the ADAPTE method complex and lacking practical aspects. They needed assistance establishing individual guideline mandate and infrastructure, articulating health questions, executing search strategies, appraising evidence, and achieving consensus. Facilitation was described as a multi-faceted process, a team effort, and an essential ingredient for guideline adaptation. While front-line care providers implicitly identified implementation issues during adaptation, they identified a need to add an explicit implementation planning component.


CONCLUSIONS
Guideline adaptation is a positive initial step toward evidence-informed care, but adaptation (vs. 'de novo' development) did not meet expectations for reducing time or resource commitments. Undertaking adaptation is as much about the process (engagement and capacity building) as it is about the product (adapted guideline). To adequately address local concerns, cases found it necessary to also search and appraise primary studies, resulting in hybrid (adaptation plus de novo) guideline development strategies that required advanced methodological skills.Adaptation was found to be an action element in the knowledge translation continuum that required integration of an implementation perspective. Accordingly, the adaptation methodology and resources were reformulated and substantially augmented to provide practical assistance to groups not supported by a dedicated guideline panel and to provide more implementation planning support. The resulting framework is called CAN-IMPLEMENT.