LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Safety, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of remogliflozin etabonate, a novel SGLT2 inhibitor, and metformin when co-administered in subjects with type 2 diabetes mellitus

The sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) is expressed in absorptive epithelia of the renal tubules. Remogliflozin etabonate (RE) is the prodrug of remogliflozin, the active entity that inhibits SGLT2. An inhibitor of this pathway would enhance urinary glucose excretion (UGE), and potentially improve plasma glucose concentrations in diabetic patients. RE is intended for use for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) as monotherapy and in combination with existing therapies. Metformin, a dimethylbiguanide, is an effective oral antihyperglycemic agent widely used for the treatment of T2DM. This was a randomized, open-label, repeat-dose, two-sequence, cross-over study in 13 subjects with T2DM. Subjects were randomized to one of two treatment sequences in which they received either metformin alone, RE alone, or both over three, 3-day treatment periods separated by two non-treatment intervals of variable duration. On the evening before each treatment period, subjects were admitted and confined to the clinical site for the duration of the 3-day treatment period. Pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic (urine glucose and fasting plasma glucose), and safety (adverse events, vital signs, ECG, clinical laboratory parameters including lactic acid) assessments were performed at check-in and throughout the treatment periods. Pharmacokinetic sampling occurred on Day 3 of each treatment period. This study demonstrated the lack of effect of RE on steady state metformin pharmacokinetics. Metformin did not affect the AUC of RE, remogliflozin, or its active metabolite, GSK279782, although Cmax values were slightly lower for remogliflozin and its metabolite after co-administration with metformin compared with administration of RE alone. Metformin did not alter the pharmacodynamic effects (UGE) of RE. Concomitant administration of metformin and RE was well tolerated with minimal hypoglycemia, no serious adverse events, and no increase in lactic acid. Coadministration of metformin and RE was well tolerated in this study. The results support continued development of RE as a treatment for T2DM. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT00376038
Generic Drone Control Platform for Autonomous Capture of Cinema Scenes

With the development of robotics and aeronautics, drones also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are more and more integrated and easy to control, especially in non- military context. The civil market related to this field is currently experiencing a continuous growth that highlights its potential. Many applications now make use of such devices for various purposes such as surveillance, communication, video recording or even gaming. One particular domain of application has triggered our interest: with their tradition of using state-of-the-art technology for their production, the cinema industry recently started to exploit the many possibilities offered by these modern flying vehicles. Movie companies have been using drones as a new tool to produce more and more complex and aesthetic camera shots. However, the shooting process currently rely on manual control of the drones which makes it difficult and sometimes inconvenient to work with. Having a solution to autonomously pilot the drone so that it may follow a predefined (or computed in real-time) trajectory is thus definitively useful in such situations.
Network flows - theory, algorithms and applications

By Ravindra K. Ahuja, Thomas L. Magnanti, James B. Orlin : Network Flows: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications bringing together the classic and the contemporary aspects of the field this comprehensive introduction to network flows provides an integrative view of theory network flows pearson new international edition theory algorithms and applications on amazon free shipping on qualifying offers Network Flows: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications:
An operational definition of learning

An operational definition offered in this paper posits learning as a multi-dimensional and multi-phase phenomenon occurring when individuals attempt to solve what they view as a problem. To model someone’s learning accordingly to the definition, it suffices to characterize a particular sequence of that person’s disequilibrium–equilibrium phases in terms of products of a particular mental act, the characteristics of the mental act inferred from the products, and intellectual and psychological needs that instigate or result from these phases. The definition is illustrated by analysis of change occurring in three thinking-aloud interviews with one middle-school teacher. The interviews were about the same task: “Make up a word problem whose solution may be found by computing 4/5 divided by 2/3.” © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. An operational definition is a showing of something—such as a variable, term, or object—in terms of the specific process or set of validation tests used to determine its presence and quantity. Properties described in this manner must be publicly accessible so that persons other than the definer can independently measure or test for them at will. An operational definition is generally designed to model a conceptual definition (Wikipedia)
A 33-year follow-up of narcotics addicts.

BACKGROUND
This study examined longitudinal patterns of heroin use, other substance use, health, mental health, employment, criminal involvement, and mortality among heroin addicts.


METHODS
The sample was composed of 581 male heroin addicts admitted to the California Civil Addict Program (CAP) during the years 1962 through 1964; CAP was a compulsory drug treatment program for heroin-dependent criminal offenders. This 33-year follow-up study updates information previously obtained from admission records and 2 face-to-face interviews conducted in 1974-1975 and 1985-1986; in 1996-1997, at the latest follow-up, 284 were dead and 242 were interviewed.


RESULTS
In 1996-1997, the mean age of the 242 interviewed subjects was 57.4 years. Age, disability, years since first heroin use, and heavy alcohol use were significant correlates of mortality. Of the 242 interviewed subjects, 20.7% tested positive for heroin (with additional 9.5% urine refusal and 14.0% incarceration, for whom urinalyses were unavailable), 66.9% reported tobacco use, 22.1% were daily alcohol drinkers, and many reported illicit drug use (eg, past-year heroin use was 40.5%; marijuana, 35.5%; cocaine, 19.4%; crack, 10.3%; amphetamine, 11.6%). The group also reported high rates of health problems, mental health problems, and criminal justice system involvement. Long-term heroin abstinence was associated with less criminality, morbidity, psychological distress, and higher employment.


CONCLUSIONS
While the number of deaths increased steadily over time, heroin use patterns were remarkably stable for the group as a whole. For some, heroin addiction has been a lifelong condition associated with severe health and social consequences.
Building community and public health nursing capacity: a synthesis report of the National Community Health Nursing Study.

OBJECTIVES
1) To describe the community health nursing workforce in Canada; 2) To compare, across political jurisdictions and community health sectors, what helps and hinders community nurses to work effectively; 3) To identify organizational attributes that support one community subsector--public health nurses--to practise the full scope of their competencies.


METHODS
Our study included an analysis of the Canadian Institute for Health Information nursing databases (1996-2007), a survey of over 13,000 community health nurses across Canada and 23 focus groups of public health policy-makers and front-line public health nurses.


RESULTS
Over 53,000 registered and licensed practical nurses worked in community health in Canada in 2007, about 16% of the nursing workforce. Community nurses were older on average than the rest of their profession. Typical practice settings for community nurses included community health centres, home care and public health units/departments. To practise effectively, community nurses need professional confidence, good team relationships, supportive workplaces and community support. Most community nurses felt confident in their practice and relationships with other nurses and professionals, though less often with physicians. Their feelings about salary and job security were mixed, and most community nurses would like more learning opportunities, policy and practice information and chances to debrief about work. They needed their communities to do more to address social determinants of health and provide good quality resources. Public health nursing needs a combination of factors to succeed: sound government policy, supportive organizational culture and good management practices. Organizational attributes identified as supports for optimal practice include: flexibility in funding, program design and job descriptions; clear organizational vision driven by shared values and community needs; coordinated public health planning across jurisdictions; and strong leadership that openly promotes public health, values their staff's work and invests in education and training.


CONCLUSION
The interchangeable and inconsistent use of titles used by community nurses and their employers makes it difficult to discern differences within this sector such as home care, public health, etc. Our studies also revealed that community nurses: thrive in workplaces where they share the vision and goals of their organization and work collaboratively in an atmosphere that supports creative, autonomous practice; work well together, but need time, flexible funding and management support to develop relationships with the community and their clients, and to build teams with other professionals; could sustain their competencies and confidence in their professional abilities with more access to continuing education, policies, evidence and debriefing sessions.
[Influence of hospital type on treatment and prognosis in patients with non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome].

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES
Clinical practice guidelines on non-ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndrome (NSTEACS) do not take either hospital infrastructure or the availability of a catheterization laboratory into account. The aim of this study was to determine the influence of hospital type, either with or without a catheterization laboratory, on treatment and medium-term prognosis in patients with NSTEACS.


METHODS
The GYSCA multicenter study (covering 15 hospitals) investigated the implementation of clinical practice guidelines in patients with NSTEACS at six hospitals with catheterization laboratories (i.e. tertiary-care hospitals; THs) and nine without (i.e. secondary-care hospitals; SHs). Patients were assessed clinically at hospital discharge and after 3 and 12 months.


RESULTS
In total, 1133 consecutive patients were recruited: 599 (52.9%) in THs and 534 (47.1%) in SHs. The use of specific class-I interventions (i.e. aspirin, clopidogrel, beta-blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and statins) was more common in THs (P< .01) and more patients in THs underwent revascularization while in hospital (43% vs. 30%; P< .01). The number of SH patients who were readmitted for NSTEACS at 1 year was 5-fold greater than the number of TH patients (12.8% vs. 2.3%; P< .01), and hospital type was a predictor of an adverse event.


CONCLUSIONS
Patients admitted for NSTEACS to a hospital without a catheterization laboratory were managed less invasively and their drug treatment was less likely to have been modified to match guideline recommendations. In addition to other well-known prognostic factors, hospital type can also have an influence on patient outcomes.
Institutional Pressure and Environmental Management Practices

Why do some firms adopt environmental management practices that go beyond regulatory compliance while other firms decide to comply to regulations? This paper leverages institutional theory by proposing that firms respond to the pressure of institutional actors such as politicians, regulators, customers, competitors, and local communities. However, the way in which plants perceive and act upon these pressures depends upon plantand parent company-specific factors, including their track record of environmental performance, the competitive position of the parent company and the organizational structure of the plant. We examine several firm characteristics that are expected to have moderating effects on the relationship between the institutional pressures and facilities’ environmental practices. For example, multinational corporations, leading companies, and firms with high brand equity are often held to higher standards for social and environmental responsibility. We also assess how companies frame stakeholder pressures by measuring the extent to which facility-level environmental management decisions are coordinated with various corporate departments. Facilities can respond to these institutional pressures by adopting different sets of environmental management practices. They can adopt practices of conformance to existing regulations or voluntary environmental management practices. As an example of voluntary management practices, they can implement varying elements of an environmental management system such as creating an environmental policy, a formal training program, and instigating routine environmental auditing. They can also choose to signal their dedication to environmental management by pursuing ISO 14001 certification or by participating in voluntary environmental programs sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency, industry associations, or nongovernmental organizations. Our approach complements institutional theory as it shows the diversity of both the institutions driving environmental pressures including external and internal pressures to the organization and the corresponding organizational responses developed within each company.
Follower developmental characteristics as predicting transformational leadership: a longitudinal field study

The leadership literature has focused on the effects of leaders whereas much less attention has been given to the followers’ role in shaping their leader’s style. Therefore, this longitudinal field study tested follower developmental characteristics as predictors of transformational leadership. The sample included 54 military units and their leaders, in which there were 90 direct followers and 724 indirect followers. Results at the group level of analysis indicated that followers’ initial developmental level, as expressed by the initial level of their self-actualization needs, internalization of the organization’s moral values, collectivistic orientation, critical-independent approach, active engagement in the task, and self-efficacy, positively predicted transformational leadership among indirect followers, whereas these relationships were negative among direct followers. The different role of followers’ initial developmental level as a predictor of transformational leadership among close versus distant followers is discussed. D 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
Using Combined Markov Chains to Predict WWW Navigation Paths

● Volume of pages makes efficient WWW navigation difficult ● Aim: To analyse users' navigation history to generate tools that increase navigational efficiency – ie. Predictive server prefetching ● Provides a mathematical foundation to several concepts
Herd-and litter-level factors associated with the incidence of diarrhea morbidity and mortality in piglets 4-14 days of age .

We used National Swine Survey data collected by the National Animal Health Monitoring System to identify litter and herd factors associated with the risk of diarrhea morbidity and mortality in 4to 14-day-old piglets.A total of 29,843 litters from 708 herds monitored for producer-observed health events were included. The rate of diarrhea among 4to 14day-old pigs was one case per day per 250 piglets. Diarrhea mortality averaged one death every 2-4 days for 250 pigs. Diarrhea increased with: herd size, sow health problems, deworming sows in the farrowing crate, and routine use of supplemental milk for piglets. Diarrhea decreased with: all-in-all-out farrowing rooms, washing sows, TGE-free herd status, and vaccinating sows against Escherichia coli. Diarrhea mortality increased with: litter size, sow health problems, fostering piglets at 4-14 days of age, and sow mange!lice treatment while in the farrowing crate. Diarrhea mortality decreased with: fostering piglets out of the litter at 1-3 days, using supplemental iron, using a hired manager in the farrowing facility,and E. coli vaccination. The factors not associated with diarrhea morbidity and mortality included: vaccinating piglets, clipping teeth, docking tails, feeding the sow antibiotics, farrowing problems, operation type, supplemental creep feed, vaccinating sows against TGE or rotavirus, treating navels, facility type, and using a consultant such as a veterinarian, nutritionist, or extension agent. We conclude that vaccinating sows for E.coli and fostering piglets off sick sows are expected to decrease preweaning losses due to diarrhea in 4to 14-day-old pigs.
Entropy on interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets and its application in multi-attribute decision making

This article proposes a new axiomatic definition of entropy on interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IVIFSs) and a method to construct different entropies on IVIFSs. Furthermore, a new multi-attribute decision making (MADM) method based on similarity measures using entropy-based attribute weights is proposed to deal with the decision making situations where the alternatives on attributes are expressed by IVIFSs and the attribute weights information is unknown. Instead of using traditional fuzzy entropy, which obtain attribute weights through the probabilistic discrimination of attributes, we utilize the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy (IVIF) entropy to assess attribute weights based on the credibility of the IVIF decision making matrix. Finally, two numerical examples are given to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the newly proposed MADM method, by comparing it with other fuzzy MADM methods.
Design of an Embedded Fingerprint Matcher System

The current technological age is demanding reliable and cost-effective personal authentication systems for a wide range of daily use applications such as access control, electronic commerce, ID verification... where security and confidentiality performance of the information is needed. Biometrics-based authentication techniques (e.g. face, iris, fingerprint recognition...) in conjunction with embedded systems technologies bring a challenging solution to this need. This paper describes the hardware-software co-design of a computational platform responsible for matching two fingerprint minutiae sets. A novel system concept is suggested by making use of reconfigurable architectures
Random Forests for multiclass classification: Random MultiNomial Logit

Several supervised learning algorithms are suited to classify instances into a multiclass value space. MultiNomial Logit (MNL) is recognized as a robust classifier and is commonly applied within the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) domain. Unfortunately, to date, it is unable to handle huge feature spaces typical of CRM applications. Hence, the analyst is forced to immerse himself into feature selection. Surprisingly, in sharp contrast with binary logit, current software packages lack any feature selection algorithm for MultiNomial Logit. Conversely, Random Forests, another algorithm learning multi class problems, is ju st like MNL robust but unlike MNL it easily handles high-dimensional feature spaces. This paper investigates the potential of applying the Random Forests principles to the MNL framework. We propose the Random MultiNomial Logit (RMNL), i.e. a random forest of MNLs, and compare its predictive performance to that of a) MNL with expert feature selection, b) Random Forests of classification trees. We illustrate the Random MultiNomial Logit on a cross-sell CRM problem within the home -appliances industry. The results indicate a substantial increase in model accuracy of the RMNL model to that of the MNL model with expert feature selection. Keywords—multiclass classifier design and evaluation, feature evaluation and selection, data mining methods and algorithms, customer relationship management (CRM)
Assessment of genetic fidelity of micropropagated date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) plants by RAPD and ISSR markers assay

RAPD (Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA) and ISSR (Inter-Simple Sequence Repeats) markers assay were employed to validate the genetic stability of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) plants multiplied through somatic embryogenesis with upto forty two in vitro subcultures. Out of the 160 RAPD and 21 ISSR primers screened, 30 RAPD and 12 ISSR primers produced a total of 347 (246 RAPDs + 101 ISSRs) clear, distinct and reproducible amplicons, which were monomorphic across all micropropagated plants (27) studied. Thus, a total 8592 bands (number of plants analysed x number of amplicons with all the primers) were generated which exhibited homogeneous banding patterns with both RAPD and ISSR markers. These results indicate that the micropropagation protocol developed by us for rapid in vitro multiplication is appropriate and suitable for clonal propagation of date palm and corroborated the fact that somatic embryogenesis can also be used as one of the safest modes for production of true-to-type plants.
Heap Taichi: exploiting memory allocation granularity in heap-spraying attacks

Heap spraying is an attack technique commonly used in hijacking browsers to download and execute malicious code. In this attack, attackers first fill a large portion of the victim process's heap with malicious code. Then they exploit a vulnerability to redirect the victim process's control to attackers' code on the heap. Because the location of the injected code is not exactly predictable, traditional heap-spraying attacks need to inject a huge amount of executable code to increase the chance of success. Injected executable code usually includes lots of NOP-like instructions leading to attackers' shellcode. Targeting this attack characteristic, previous solutions detect heap-spraying attacks by searching for the existence of such large amount of NOP sled and other shellcode.
 In this paper, we analyze the implication of modern operating systems' memory allocation granularity and present Heap Taichi, a new heap spraying technique exploiting the weakness in memory alignment. We describe four new heap object structures that can evade existing detection tools, as well as proof-of-concept heap-spraying code implementing our technique. Our research reveals that a large amount of NOP sleds is not necessary for a reliable heap-spraying attack. In our experiments, we showed that our heap-spraying attacks are a realistic threat by evading existing detection mechanisms. To detect and prevent the new heap-spraying attacks, we propose enhancement to existing approaches and propose to use finer memory allocation granularity at memory managers of all levels. We also studied the impact of our solution on system performance.
Metric-Based Quality Evaluations for Iterative Software Development Approaches Like Agile

Presents a collection of slides covering the following topics: software reliability engineering; process structure; metrics re-evaluation; integration testing; project profile; quality metrics; code stability; quality control chart; and fault convergence.