LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Preventive midline laparotomy closure with a new bioabsorbable mesh: an experimental study.

BACKGROUND
Incisional hernia formation is one of the most frequent complications of midline laparotomies requiring reoperation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of prophylactically placing a biodegradable mesh within the incision site at closure in a rat model.


METHODS
A 4-cm full-thick midline laparotomy was made in Sprague-Dawley rats along the linea alba and closed by inserting a commercially available web of synthetic polymers (polyglycolic acid-trimethylene carbonate) that are slowly degraded by the body. Host tissue reaction was evaluated ex vivo and compared with that obtained in suture-only-treated rats. Specimens were harvested at 1, 3, and 6mo after surgery and divided for histologic and zymographic analyses and uniaxial material testing. A group of intact nonoperated animals were included to serve as a reference.


RESULTS
The excised tissue explants revealed that the performance of the synthetic device was good and resulted in enhanced fibroproliferation, gelatinolytic activity, and angiogenesis within the repair site as compared with the suture-only procedure. Lastly, tensile strength augmented over the suture-only condition.


CONCLUSIONS
The preventive introduction of an absorbable mesh stimulates new tissue ingrowth and performance relative to suture repair without prosthesis, probably contributing to eventually reinforce the tension line. These results have a clinical potential in abdominal wall closure, especially in patients with multiple risk factors such as those treated for aortic reconstructive surgery, without the short- and long-term complications related to permanent grafts. However, data are preliminary and should be confirmed with longer follow-ups.
Challenge-based learning: a brazilian case study

Mobile application development (MAD) has became, or is considering to be a part of the academic curricula in Computer Science courses. However, training students on mobile application development inherits the challenges of teaching software engineering where the target computer is a device that has a large number of features accessible by software. Furthermore, the most related experience in teaching students reveals difficulties in developing software engineering competencies. In this paper we present results from a case study conducted in four universities in Brazil. We have investigated the adoption of Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) framework and agile practices for training students in software engineering applied in mobile application development environments.
Composition and health effects of phenolic compounds in hawthorn (Crataegus spp.) of different origins.

Epicatechin, aglycons and glycosides of B-type oligomeric procyanidins and flavonols, phenolic acids and C-glycosyl flavones are the major groups of phenolic compounds in hawthorn (Crataegus spp). The total content of phenolic compounds is higher in the leaves and flowers than in the fruits. Procyanidins dominate in the fruits, whereas flavonol glycosides and C-glycosyl flavones are most abundant in the leaves. Genotype and developmental/ripening stage have strong impacts. Procyanidin glycosides and C-glycosyl flavones may be chemotaxonomic markers differentiating species and varieties of hawthorn. Future research shall improve the separation, identification and quantification of procyanidins with degree of polymerisation (DP) ≥ 6, procyanidin glycosides, C-glycosyl flavones and some flavonol glycosides. In vitro and animal studies have shown cardioprotective, hypolipidaemic, hypotensive, antioxidant, radical-scavenging and anti-inflammatory potentials of hawthorn extracts, suggesting different phenolic compounds as the major bioactive components. However, the varying and insufficiently defined composition of the extracts investigated, as a result of different raw materials and extraction methods, makes comparison of the studies very difficult. Clinical evidence indicates that some hawthorn extracts may increase the exercise tolerance of patients with congestive heart failure. More clinical studies are needed to establish the effects of hawthorn, especially in healthy humans.
The impact of institutional ownership on corporate operating performance.

This paper examines the relationship between institutional investor involvement in and the operating performance of large firms. We confirm a significant relationship between a firm’s operating cash flow returns and both the percent of institutional stock ownership and the number of institutional stockholders. However, the positive relationship between the number of institutional investors holding stock and operating cash flow returns is found only for pressure-insensitive institutional investors (those with no business relationship with the firm). The number of pressure-sensitive institutional investors (those with an existing or potential business relationship with the firm) has no impact on performance. These results suggest that institutional investors that need to protect actual or promote potential business relationships with firms in which they invest are compromised as monitors of the firm, and lend credence to calls for greater independence of board members from firms. The Impact of Institutional Ownership on Corporate Operating Performance
Knowledge, attitudes, and practices surrounding breast cancer and screening in female teachers of buraidah, saudi arabia.

BACKGROUND
Breast cancer is by far the most frequent cancer of women. However the preventive measures for such problem are probably less than expected. The objectives of this study are to assess breast cancer knowledge and attitudes and factors associated with the practice of breast self examination (BSE) among female teachers of Saudi Arabia.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
We conducted a cross-sectional survey of teachers working in female schools in Buraidah, Saudi Arabia using a self-administered questionnaire to investigate participants' knowledge about the risk factors of breast cancer, their attitudes and screening behaviors. A sample of 376 female teachers was randomly selected. Participants lived in urban areas, and had an average age of 34.7 ±5.4 years.


RESULTS
More than half of the women showed a limited knowledge level. Among participants, the most frequently reported risk factors were non-breast feeding and the use of female sex hormones. The printed media was the most common source of knowledge. Logistic regression analysis revealed that high income was the most significant predictor of better knowledge level. Knowing a non-relative case with breast cancer and having a high knowledge level were identified as the significant predictors for practicing BSE.


CONCLUSIONS
The study points to the insufficient knowledge of female teachers about breast cancer and identified the negative influence of low knowledge on the practice of BSE. Accordingly, relevant educational programs to improve the knowledge level of women regarding breast cancer are needed.
German Propaganda and POW’s during World War I 155 CHAPTER SEVEN

Studies on propaganda during and after the first World War rarely address prisoners of war. The Germans captured over 2.8 million Allied PoWs and interned civilians from 29 countries. This threatened security and drained the German war economy. The Germans utilized these men as a labor supply and for propaganda purposes. Propaganda involving PoWs was an important part of Germany’s total war effort to enhance flagging morale within the empire, to influence Allied behavior through reprisal camps, to prepare for post-war policies by winning support of colonial troops and minorities in propaganda camps, and recruiting Allied soldiers for wartime military efforts.1 for the purposes of this paper, propaganda is defined as the process of negotiation which is designed to persuade states and people to behave in a certain way through methodical and planned strategies to achieve specific objectives. This approach is more aggressive than simply attempting to manipulate and persuade other agents regarding beliefs, values, and behavior, even if these agents consider these ideas to be controversial, since this process would benefit the party implementing this strategy. during World War i, the German War ministry used propaganda to negotiate with Allied soldiers to convince them to surrender or, after becoming prisoners, to fight in foreign legions to gain their national independence; with Entente governments to force these states to improve prison camp conditions for German PoW’s or alter military strategies; and with the German people to continue their support for the war effort against overwhelming odds.
Chronic cough and esomeprazole: a double-blind placebo-controlled parallel study.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Gastro-oesophageal reflux has been implicated in the pathogenesis of chronic cough. Guidelines on management suggest a therapeutic trial of anti-reflux medication. Esomeprazole is a proton pump inhibitor licensed for the long-term treatment of acid reflux in adults and we compared the effects of esomeprazole and placebo on patients with chronic cough.


METHODS
This was a prospective, single-centre, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group study conducted over 8weeks. Fifty adult non-smokers with chronic cough and normal spirometry were randomized. Patients completed cough-related quality-of-life and symptom questionnaires and subjective scores of cough frequency and severity at the beginning and end of the study. They also kept a daily diary of symptom scores. Citric acid cough challenge and laryngoscopic examination were performed at baseline and the end of the study. The primary outcome was improvement in cough score.


RESULTS
There were no differences in cough scores in the placebo and treatment arms of the study although some significant improvements were noted when compared to baseline. In the cough diary scores there was a trend towards greater improvement in the treatment arm in patients with dyspepsia.


CONCLUSIONS
Esomeprazole did not have a clinically important effect greater than placebo in patients with cough. It suggests a marked placebo effect in the treatment of cough.
New-to-Market Product Innovation and Firm Performance: Evidence from a firm-level innovation survey in Japan

This paper evaluates the economic impact of new-to-market product innovation using firm-level data obtained from the Japanese National Innovation Survey. It accounts for possible technological spillovers in innovation activities and examines the extent to which new-to-market product innovation contributes to firm performance. The paper offers several new insights on product innovation.
Studying the Implementation of the Water Framework Directive in Europe: a Meta-Analysis of 89 Journal Articles

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) is arguably the most ambitious piece of European Union (EU) legislation in the field of water. The directive defines a general framework for integrated river basin management in Europe with a view to achieving “good water status” by 2015. Institutional novelties include, among others, water management at hydrological scales, the involvement of nonstate actors in water planning, and various economic principles, as well as a common strategy to support EU member states during the implementation of the directive. More than 15 years after the adoption of the WFD, and with the passing of an important milestone, 2015, we believe it is time for an interim assessment. This article provides a systematic review of existing scholarship on WFD implementation. We identify well-documented areas of research, describe largely unchartered territories, and suggest avenues for future studies. Methodologically, we relied on a meta-analysis. Based on a codebook of more than 35 items, we analyzed 89 journal articles reporting on the implementation of the directive in EU member states. Our review is organized around three major themes. The first is “who, when, and where”; we explore publication patterns, thereby looking into authors, timelines, and target journals. The second is “what”; we analyze the object of study in our source articles with a particular focus on case study countries, policy levels, the temporal stage of WFD implementation, and if the directive was not studied in its entirety, the aspect of the WFD that received scholarly attention. The third is “how,” i.e., theoretical and methodological choices made when studying the WFD.
Impact of door-to-activation time on door-to-balloon time in primary percutaneous coronary intervention for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarctions: a report from the Activate-SF registry.

BACKGROUND
Little is known about the components of door-to-balloon time among patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention. We assessed the role of time from hospital arrival to ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction diagnosis (door-to-activation time) on door-to-balloon time in contemporary practice and evaluated factors that influence door-to-activation times.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Registry data on 347 consecutive patients diagnosed with a ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction in the emergency department over 30 months at 2 urban primary percutaneous coronary intervention centers were analyzed. The primary study end point was the time from hospital arrival to catheterization laboratory activation by the emergency department physician, and we assessed factors associated with this period. Door-to-balloon time and its other components were secondary study end points. The median door-to-activation time was 19 minutes (interquartile range, 9-54). Variation in door-to-activation times explained 93% of the variation in door-to-balloon times and demonstrated the strongest correlation with door-to-balloon times (r=0.97). Achieving a door-to-activation time of ≤20 minutes resulted in an 89% chance of achieving a door-to-balloon time of ≤90 minutes compared with only 28% for patients with a door-to-activation time >20 minutes. Factors significantly associated with door-to-activation time include the following: prehospital ECG use (61% shorter, 95% confidence interval, -50 to -72%; P<0.001) and computed tomography scan use in the emergency department (245% longer, 95% confidence interval, +50 to +399%; P=0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
The interval from hospital arrival to ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction diagnosis and catheterization laboratory activation (door-to-activation time) is a strong driver of overall door-to-balloon times. Achieving a door-to-activation time ≤20 minutes was key to achieving a door-to-balloon time ≤90 minutes. Delays in door-to-activation time are not associated with delays in other aspects of the primary percutaneous coronary intervention process.
Does Ownership Structure Influence Firm Value ? Evidence from India

Corporate Governance deals with the issue of how the suppliers of finance to various corporations assure themselves of getting a return on their investment. Several Studies have examined the relationship between ownership structure and firm performance. Using different data samples from different countries, most of the studies provide evidence that ownership influence firm performance. This study examines empirically the effects of ownership structure on the firm performance for a panel of Indian corporate firms, from an ‘agency perspective’. We examine the effect of interactions between corporate, foreign, institutional, and managerial ownership on firm performance. Using panel data framework, we show that a large fraction of cross-sectional variation, in firm performance, found in several studies, can be explained by unobserved firm heterogeneity. We also provide some evidence that the shareholding by institutional investors and managers affect firm performance, after controlling for observed firm characteristics and unobserved firm heterogeneity and the effect is non-linear. JEL Classification: G32; G34.
A methodology for constructing of philosophy ontology based on philosophical texts

An ontology is a crucial factor for the success of the Semantic Web and other knowledge-based systems in terms of share and reuse of domain knowledge. However, there are a few concrete ontologies within actual knowledge domains including learning domains. In this paper, we develop an ontology which is an explicit formal specification of concepts and semantic relations among them in philosophy. We call it a philosophy ontology. Our philosophy is a formal specification of philosophical knowledge including knowledge of contents of classical texts of philosophy. We propose a methodology, which consists of detailed guidelines and templates, for constructing text-based ontology. Our methodology consists of 3 major steps and 14 minor steps. To implement the philosophy ontology, we develop an ontology management system based on Topic Maps. Our system includes a semi-automatic translator for creating Topic Map documents from the output of conceptualization steps and other tools to construct, store, retrieve ontologies based on Topic Maps. Our methodology and tools can be applied to other learning domain ontologies, such as history, literature, arts, and music. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Economists in the Next Millennium: One Voice or Many?

This comment is in response to Frederic L. Pryor (2000). "The Millennium Survey: How Economists View the U.S. Economy in the 21st Century."
Adaptive and Distributed CoMP Scheduling in LTE-Advanced Systems

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission and reception is one of the most promising technologies introduced in 3GPP Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-Advanced) standard. Especially targeting the User Equipments (UEs) in the celledge region, CoMP technology improves the edge throughput and reliability in two ways: Joint Transmission (JT) and Coordinated Scheduling/Beamforming (CS/CB). This paper proposes an adaptive and distributed CoMP scheduling algorithm which allocates the frequency band to each UE and could operate in either JT or CS/CB mode of CoMP. Our contributions include (a) proposing an algorithm resolving subband allocation, UE selection, and CoMP mode decision jointly; and (b) defining the message format exchanged among eNBs for cooperation. The performance of the proposed algorithm is comparatively evaluated along with that of other schemes such as non-coordination and frequency reuse schemes in terms of both average and outage throughput.
Challenging data sets for point cloud registration algorithms

The number of registration solutions in the literature has bloomed recently. The iterative closest point, for example, could be considered as the backbone of many laser-based localization and mapping systems. Although they are widely used, it is a common challenge to compare registration solutions on a fair base. The main limitation is to overcome the lack of accurate ground truth in current data sets, which usually cover environments only over a small range of organization levels. In computer vision, the Stanford 3D Scanning Repository pushed forward point cloud registration algorithms and object modeling fields by providing high-quality scanned objects with precise localization. We aim to provide similar highcaliber working material to the robotic and computer vision communities but with sceneries instead of objects. We propose eight point cloud sequences acquired in locations covering the environment diversity that modern robots are susceptible to encounter, ranging from inside an apartment to a woodland area. The core of the data sets consists of 3D laser point clouds for which supporting data (Gravity, Magnetic North and GPS) are given for each pose. A special effort has been made to ensure global positioning of the scanner within mm-range precision, independent of environmental conditions. This will allow for the development of improved registration algorithms when mapping challenging environments, such as those found in real-world situations.1
Graph kernels for chemoinformatics – a critical discussion

We analyze the use, advantages, and drawbacks of graph kernels in chemoin-formatics, including a comparison of kernel-based approaches with other methodology, as well as examples of applications. Kernel-based machine learning [1], now widely applied in chemoinformatics, delivers state-of-the-art performance [2] in tasks like classification and regression. Molecular graph kernels [3] are a recent development where kernels are defined directly on the molecular structure graph. This allows the adaptation of methods from graph theory to structure graphs and their direct use with kernel learning algorithms. The main advantage of kernel learning, the so-called “kernel trick”, allows for a systematic, computationally feasible, and often globally optimal search for non-linear patterns, as well as the direct use of non-numerical inputs such as strings and graphs. A drawback is that solutions are expressed indirectly in terms of similarity to training samples, and runtimes that are typically quadratic or cubic in the number of training samples. Graph kernels [3] are positive semidefinite functions defined directly on graphs. The most important types are based on random walks, subgraph patterns, optimal assignments, and graphlets. Molecular structure graphs have strong properties that can be exploited [4], e.g., they are undirected, have no self-loops and no multiple edges, are connected (except for salts), annotated, often planar in the graph-theoretic sense, and their vertex degree is bounded by a small constant. In many applications, they are small. Many graph kernels are generalpurpose, some are suitable for structure graphs, and a few have been explicitly designed for them. We present three exemplary applications of the iterative similarity optimal assignment kernel [5], which was designed for the comparison of small structure graphs: The discovery of novel agonists of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor g [6] (ligand-based virtual screening), the estimation of acid dissociation constants [7] (quantitative structure-property relationships), and molecular de novo design [8].
Exploring the performance of the National Early Warning Score (NEWS) in a European emergency department.

BACKGROUND
Several triage systems have been developed for use in the emergency department (ED), however they are not designed to detect deterioration in patients. Deteriorating patients may be at risk of going undetected during their ED stay and are therefore vulnerable to develop serious adverse events (SAEs). The national early warning score (NEWS) has a good ability to discriminate ward patients at risk of SAEs. The utility of NEWS had not yet been studied in an ED.


OBJECTIVE
To explore the performance of the NEWS in an ED with regard to predicting adverse outcomes.


DESIGN
A prospective observational study. Patients Eligible patients were those presenting to the ED during the 6 week study period with an Emergency Severity Index (ESI) of 2 and 3 not triaged to the resuscitation room.


INTERVENTION
NEWS was documented at three time points: on arrival (T0), hour after arrival (T1) and at transfer to the general ward/ICU (T2). The outcomes of interest were: hospital admission, ICU admission, length of stay and 30 day mortality.


RESULTS
A total of 300 patients were assessed for eligibility. Complete data was able to be collected for 274 patients on arrival at the ED. NEWS was significantly correlated with patient outcomes, including 30 day mortality, hospital admission, and length of stay at all-time points.


CONCLUSION
The NEWS measured at different time points was a good predictor of patient outcomes and can be of additional value in the ED to longitudinally monitor patients throughout their stay in the ED and in the hospital.