LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Treating peritoneal mesothelioma with cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy. A case series and review of the literature.

BACKGROUND
Encouraging results on survival of patients with malignant peritoneal mesothelioma have been shown with the use of cytoreductive surgery and perioperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy. This study explores the impact of aggressive surgical treatment on overall survival of peritoneal mesothelioma.


METHODS
This is a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected clinical data of all patients with diagnosis of malignant peritoneal mesothelioma treated in a designated referral centre in Greece. All patients were offered cytoreductive surgery and intraperitoneal chemotherapy. Patient's characteristics, operative reports, pathology reports, and discharge summaries were stored in an electronic database and later reviewed and analysed.


RESULTS
Cytoreduction for peritoneal mesothelioma was performed on 20 patients (15 men and 5 women) with a mean age of 59.4 years (SD 16.1). Mean peritoneal cancer index was 16.1 (SD 10.4) and the median completeness of cytoreduction score was 2 (range 1-2). Mean overall survival was 46.8 months (SE 4.03) with a mean of 21.4 and median of 18 months of follow-up. Disease-specific survival was 100% for the observed period. Univariate analysis showed the completeness of cytoreduction as the only possible predictor of survival. A median of 10 (range 4-14) peritonectomy procedures were performed per patient. Median hospital stay was 14 (range 10-57 days). Grade III and IV complications occurred post-operatively in 5 patients (25%). Two patients died in the post-operative period of pulmonary embolism and myocardial infarction.


CONCLUSION
Cytoreductive surgery with HIPEC has proved the most effective treatment even when taking account of the cost of significant morbidity.
Propensity to trust and the influence of source and medium cues in credibility evaluation

Credibility evaluation has become a daily task in the current world of online information that varies in quality. The way this task is performed has been a topic of research for some time now. In this study, we aim to extend this research by proposing an integrated layer model of trust. According to this model, trust in information is influenced by trust in its source. Moreover, source trust is influenced by trust in the medium, which in turn is influenced by a more general propensity to trust. We provide an initial validation of the proposed model by means of an online quasi-experiment (n = 152) in which participants rated the credibility of Wikipedia articles. Additionally, the results suggest that the participants were more likely to have too little trust in Wikipedia than too much trust.
A Model of Visual Adaptation for Realistic Image Synthesis

In this paper we develop a computational model of visual adaptation for realistic image synthesis based on psychophysical experiments. The model captures the changes in threshold visibility, color appearance, visual acuity, and sensitivity over time that are caused by the visual system’s adaptation mechanisms. We use the model to display the results of global illumination simulations illuminated at intensities ranging from daylight down to starlight. The resulting images better capture the visual characteristics of scenes viewed over a wide range of illumination levels. Because the model is based on psychophysical data it can be used to predict the visibility and appearance of scene features. This allows the model to be used as the basis of perceptually-based error metrics for limiting the precision of global illumination computations. CR
Does usage of peritonism tests in an emergency department have any benefit?

AIM
To evaluate the usage of inspiration, expiration, cough, and heel drop jarring tests that are applied for determination of peritonism in cases with acute abdominal pain.


METHODS
A prospective study based on observation of patients between 16-65 years of age and presented to the Emergency Department within a 3-month period starting from June 2007, was conducted. The patients were asked to rate their pain level between "0" and "10". Following the measurement of the vital signs, 4 tests were conducted by an emergency medicine resident. The medical records of all the patients were reviewed after 3 months. Data concerning clinical diagnosis, hospital admission and discharge processes, and surgical results, were all recorded.


RESULTS
Seventy-seven patients had peritonism tests performed. Inspiration test was positive in 29 (of 51, 56.9%) patients admitted to the hospital. However, there was no correlation between the cases admitted to the hospital and the other 3 tests (p more than 0.05). Twenty-one (of 34, 61.8%) patients which have been subjected to surgical treatment, showed positive inspiration test results. Surgical treatment was performed on nine (of 11, 81.8%) patients who showed positive results for all 4 tests.


CONCLUSION
The applied tests are helpful in determining a serious abdominal disease, particularly alongside findings of rebound, tenderness, and laboratory results.
Efficacy of zoledronic acid for chronic low back pain associated with Modic changes in magnetic resonance imaging

BACKGROUND
Modic changes (MC) are associated with low back pain (LBP), but effective treatments are lacking. The aim of this randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded trial was to evaluate the efficacy of zoledronic acid (ZA) for chronic LBP among patients with MC in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).


METHODS
Inclusion criteria were LBP lasting ≥3 months, with an intensity of ≥6 on a 10-cm VAS or an Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) of ≥30%, and MC in MRI. Patients were randomized into single intravenous infusion of ZA 5 mg (n = 20), or placebo (n = 20) groups. The primary outcome was LBP intensity, secondary outcomes leg pain intensity, ODI, health-related quality of life (RAND-36), lumbar flexibility, sick leaves and use of pain medication. The treatment differences at one month and one year were analysed using ANCOVA with adjustment for the baseline score.


RESULTS
The mean difference (MD) between the groups in the primary outcome, intensity of LBP, was 1.4 (95% confidence intervals (CI) 0.01 to 2.9) in favour of ZA at one month. We observed no significant between-group difference in the intensity of LBP at one year (MD 0.7; 95% CI -1.0 to 2.4) or in secondary outcomes at any time point except that 20% of patients in the ZA group used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs at one year compared to 60% in the placebo group (P = 0.022). Acute phase reactions (fever, flu-like symptoms, arthralgia) emerged in 95% of the patients in the ZA group, compared to 35% in the placebo group.


CONCLUSIONS
ZA was effective in reducing the intensity of LBP in the short term and in reducing the use of NSAIDs within the time span of one year among patients with chronic LBP and MC confirmed in MRI. Although the results seem encouraging, larger studies are required to analyse the effectiveness and safety of ZA for patients with MC.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrial.gov identifier NCT01330238.
Mass transfer with complex reversible chemical reactions—II. parallel reversible chemical reactions

An absorption model has been developed which can be used to calculate rapidly absorption rates for the phenomenon mass transfer accompanied by multiple complex parallel reversible chemical reactions. This model can be applied for the calculation of the mass transfer rates, enhancement factors and concentration profiles for a wide range of processes and conditions, for both film and penetration model. With the aid of this mass transfer model it is demonstrated that the absorption rates in systems with multiple reversible reactions can be substantially greater than the summation of the absorption rates derived for the single systems. This latter fact provides a scientific basis for the application of aqueous mixed amine solutions for industrial sour gas treating. Also it is shown that for kinetic studies by means of absorption experiments for reversible reactions the presence of small amounts of fast reacting contaminants can have an overruling effect on the outcome of the determination of the reaction kinetics. It is shown that the concepts of shuttle mechanism and homogeneous catalysis refer to asymptotic situations, for practical situations intermediate behaviour was observed which was previously not accessible for analysis. Experimentally determined absorption rates of CO, in aqueous solutions of various mixtures of alkanolamines (MMEA-MDEA, MEA-MDEA, DIPA-MDEA and MEA-DEA-MDEA) can be predicted extremely well for the several mass transfer regimes which were studied experimentally. The experiments were carried out in a stirred vessel with a flat surface over a wide range of process conditions.
A Computational Semantic Analysis of Noun Compounds in Dutch

.........................................................................................................................................1 TABLE OF CONTENTS .........................................................................................................................2 0. PREFACE.............................................................................................................................................5
Measuring user satisfaction from e-Government services: Lessons from Jordan

Available online 18 May 2013
A survey of Commit Protocols in Distributed Real Time database systems

The commit processing in a Distributed Real Time Database (DRTDBS) can significantly increase execution time of a transaction. Therefore, designing a good commit protocol is important for the DRTDBS; the main challenge is the adaptation of standard commit protocol into the real time database system and so, decreasing the number of missed transaction in the systems. In these papers we review the basic commit protocols and the other protocols depend on it, for enhancing the transaction performance in DRTDBS. We propose a new commit protocol for reducing the number of transaction that missing their deadline. Keywords— DRTDBS, Commit protocols, Commit processing, 2PC protocol, 3PC protocol, Missed Transaction, Abort Transaction.
Complex event extraction at PubMed scale

MOTIVATION
There has recently been a notable shift in biomedical information extraction (IE) from relation models toward the more expressive event model, facilitated by the maturation of basic tools for biomedical text analysis and the availability of manually annotated resources. The event model allows detailed representation of complex natural language statements and can support a number of advanced text mining applications ranging from semantic search to pathway extraction. A recent collaborative evaluation demonstrated the potential of event extraction systems, yet there have so far been no studies of the generalization ability of the systems nor the feasibility of large-scale extraction.


RESULTS
This study considers event-based IE at PubMed scale. We introduce a system combining publicly available, state-of-the-art methods for domain parsing, named entity recognition and event extraction, and test the system on a representative 1% sample of all PubMed citations. We present the first evaluation of the generalization performance of event extraction systems to this scale and show that despite its computational complexity, event extraction from the entire PubMed is feasible. We further illustrate the value of the extraction approach through a number of analyses of the extracted information.


AVAILABILITY
The event detection system and extracted data are open source licensed and available at http://bionlp.utu.fi/.
Casticin Induced Apoptosis in A375.S2 Human Melanoma Cells through the Inhibition of NF-[Formula: see text]B and Mitochondria-Dependent Pathways In Vitro and Inhibited Human Melanoma Xenografts in a Mouse Model In Vivo.

Casticin, a polymethoxyflavone occurring in natural plants, has been shown to have anticancer activities. In the present study, we aims to investigate the anti-skin cancer activity of casticin on melanoma cells in vitro and the antitumor effect of casticin on human melanoma xenografts in nu/nu mice in vivo. A flow cytometric assay was performed to detect expression of viable cells, cell cycles, reactive oxygen species production, levels of [Formula: see text] and caspase activity. A Western blotting assay and confocal laser microscope examination were performed to detect expression of protein levels. In the in vitro studies, we found that casticin induced morphological cell changes and DNA condensation and damage, decreased the total viable cells, and induced G2/M phase arrest. Casticin promoted reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, decreased the level of [Formula: see text], and promoted caspase-3 activities in A375.S2 cells. The induced G2/M phase arrest indicated by the Western blotting assay showed that casticin promoted the expression of p53, p21 and CHK-1 proteins and inhibited the protein levels of Cdc25c, CDK-1, Cyclin A and B. The casticin-induced apoptosis indicated that casticin promoted pro-apoptotic proteins but inhibited anti-apoptotic proteins. These findings also were confirmed by the fact that casticin promoted the release of AIF and Endo G from mitochondria to cytosol. An electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) assay showed that casticin inhibited the NF-[Formula: see text]B binding DNA and that these effects were time-dependent. In the in vivo studies, results from immuno-deficient nu/nu mice bearing the A375.S2 tumor xenograft indicated that casticin significantly suppressed tumor growth based on tumor size and weight decreases. Early G2/M arrest and mitochondria-dependent signaling contributed to the apoptotic A375.S2 cell demise induced by casticin. In in vivo experiments, A375.S2 also efficaciously suppressed tumor volume in a xenotransplantation model. Therefore, casticin might be a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of skin cancer in the future.
The Style and Logic of James Brooks’s 1553 ‘Reconciliation Sermon’

In 1561, the querulous controversialist John Bale said that Queen Mary Tudor's bishop of Gloucester, James Brooks, 'had bene detected and proued a Sodomyte in Oxforde'. Bale's antagonistic caricature is unsurprising given his longstanding disdain for members of the Catholic clergy, whom he vilified extensively in his Acts of English Votaries (1546) and other works. England formally reconciled with the Church of Rome in 1554, a year after James Brooks delivered his Paul's Cross sermon. With his appeal for reconciliation, Brooks uses the story of Jairus's daughter to describe England's apostasy. The style and language of Brooks's argument concerning the authority of the church and especially the relative importance of literal versus figurative reading of the Bible echo similar claims made by Thomas More, William Tyndale, and other reformation polemicists. Keywords: Catholic clergy; James Brooks; John Bale; Paul's Cross sermon; Queen Mary; William Tyndale
On the Use of Augmented Lagrangians in the Solution of Generalized Semi-Infinite Min-Max Problems

We present an approach for the solution of a class of generalized semi-infinite optimization problems. Our approach uses augmented Lagrangians to transform generalized semi-infinite min-max problems into ordinary semi-infinite min-max problems, with the same set of local and global solutions as well as the same stationary points. Once the transformation is effected, the generalized semi-infinite min-max problems can be solved using any available semi-infinite optimization algorithm. We illustrate our approach with two numerical examples, one of which deals with structural design subject to reliability constraints.
Knowledge management initiatives in software testing: A mapping study

Context: Software testing is a knowledge intensive process, and, thus, Knowledge Management (KM) principles and techniques should be applied to manage software testing knowledge. Objective: This study conducts a survey on existing research on KM initiatives in software testing, in order to identify the state of the art in the area as well as the future research. Aspects such as purposes, types of knowledge, technologies and research type are investigated. Method: The mapping study was performed by searching seven electronic databases. We considered studies published until December 2013. The initial resulting set was comprised of 562 studies. From this set, a total of 13 studies were selected. For these 13, we performed snowballing and direct search to publications of researchers and research groups that accomplished these studies. Results: From the mapping study, we identified 15 studies addressing KM initiatives in software testing that have been reviewed in order to extract relevant information on a set of research questions. Conclusions: Although only a few studies were found that addressed KM initiatives in software testing, the mapping shows an increasing interest in the topic in the recent years. Reuse of test cases is the perspective that has received more attention. From the KM point of view, most of the studies discuss aspects related to providing automated support for managing testing knowledge by means of a KM system. Moreover, as a main conclusion, the results show that KM is pointed out as an important strategy for increasing test effectiveness, as well as for improving the selection and application of suited techniques, methods and test cases. On the other hand, inadequacy of existing KM systems appears as the most cited problem related to applying KM in software testing.
Divergent roles of autistic and alexithymic traits in utilitarian moral judgments in adults with autism

This study investigated hypothetical moral choices in adults with high-functioning autism and the role of empathy and alexithymia in such choices. We used a highly emotionally salient moral dilemma task to investigate autistics' hypothetical moral evaluations about personally carrying out harmful utilitarian behaviours aimed at maximizing welfare. Results showed that they exhibited a normal pattern of moral judgments despite the deficits in social cognition and emotional processing. Further analyses revealed that this was due to mutually conflicting biases associated with autistic and alexithymic traits after accounting for shared variance: (a) autistic traits were associated with reduced utilitarian bias due to elevated personal distress of demanding social situations, while (b) alexithymic traits were associated with increased utilitarian bias on account of reduced empathic concern for the victim. Additionally, autistics relied on their non-verbal reasoning skills to rigidly abide by harm-norms. Thus, utilitarian moral judgments in autism were spared due to opposite influences of autistic and alexithymic traits and compensatory intellectual strategies. These findings demonstrate the importance of empathy and alexithymia in autistic moral cognition and have methodological implications for studying moral judgments in several other clinical populations.
Understanding why patients delay seeking care for acute coronary syndromes.

BACKGROUND
Better insight into the psychosocial factors associated with prehospital delays in seeking care for acute coronary syndromes is needed to inform the design of future interventions. Delay in presenting for care after the onset of symptoms is common, limits the potential benefit of acute reperfusion, and has not been reduced by interventions tested thus far.


METHODS AND RESULTS
Seven hundred ninety-six patients with suspected ischemic heart disease scheduled for clinically indicated imaging stress tests completed questionnaires concerning psychological distress and attachment styles (worthiness to receive care, trustworthiness of others to provide care). The primary dependent variable for this study was response to a question from the rapid early action for coronary treatment trial concerning intention to "wait until very sure" before seeking care for a possible "heart attack." Responses to this question were strongly associated with actual emergency department-reported and self-reported care delay in the rapid early action for coronary treatment trial. In multivariable ordinal regression models, a more negative view of the trustworthiness of others, greater physical limitations from angina, and no previous revascularization were independently associated with increased intention to wait to seek care for a myocardial infarction. Intention to wait was not associated with inducible ischemia or self-perceived risk of myocardial infarction.


CONCLUSIONS
Intention to delay seeking care for acute coronary syndromes is associated with a patient's view of the trustworthiness of others, previous experience with revascularization, and functional limitations, even after adjustment for objective and perceived acute coronary syndromes risk. These findings provide insight into novel factors contributing to longer delay times and may inform future interventions to reduce delay time.
High-dose cytarabine in induction treatment improves the outcome of adult patients younger than age 46 years with acute myeloid leukemia: results of the EORTC-GIMEMA AML-12 trial.

PURPOSE
Cytarabine plays a pivotal role in the treatment of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Most centers use 7 to 10 days of cytarabine at a daily dose of 100 to 200 mg/m(2) for remission induction. Consensus has not been reached on the benefit of higher dosages of cytarabine.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) and Gruppo Italiano Malattie Ematologiche dell' Adulto (GIMEMA) Leukemia Groups conducted a randomized trial (AML-12; Combination Chemotherapy, Stem Cell Transplant and Interleukin-2 in Treating Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia) in 1,942 newly diagnosed patients with AML, age 15 to 60 years, comparing remission induction treatment containing daunorubicin, etoposide, and either standard-dose (SD) cytarabine (100 mg/m(2) per day by continuous infusion for 10 days) or high-dose (HD) cytarabine (3,000 mg/m(2) every 12 hours by 3-hour infusion on days 1, 3, 5, and 7). Patients in complete remission (CR) received a single consolidation cycle containing daunorubicin and intermediate-dose cytarabine (500 mg/m(2) every 12 hours for 6 days). Subsequently, a stem-cell transplantation was planned. The primary end point was survival.


RESULTS
At a median follow-up of 6 years, overall survival was 38.7% for patients randomly assigned to SD cytarabine and 42.5% for those randomly assigned to HD cytarabine (log-rank test P = .06; multivariable analysis P = .009). For patients younger than age 46 years, survival was 43.3% and 51.9%, respectively (P = .009; multivariable analysis P = .003), and for patients age 46 to 60 years, survival was 33.9% and 32.9%, respectively (P = .91). CR rates were 72.0% and 78.7%, respectively (P < .001) and were 75.6% and 82.4% for patients younger than age 46 years (P = .01) and 68.3% and 74.8% for patients age 46 years and older (P = .03). Patients of all ages with very-bad-risk cytogenetic abnormalities and/or FLT3-ITD (internal tandem duplication) mutation, or with secondary AML benefitted from HD cytarabine.


CONCLUSION
HD cytarabine produces higher remission and survival rates than SD cytarabine, especially in patients younger than age 46 years.