LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Endoscopic technique for sagittal synostosis

This study aimed to present a 16-year experience of treating sagittal synostosis with endoscopic-assisted techniques and postoperative cranial orthotic therapy. In 1996, we introduced the use of endoscopes for the management of sagittal synostosis in four young infants. During the subsequent years, we have treated a total of 256 patients with great success and long-term follow-up. Presented herein are the techniques and results of such clinical experience. A total of 256 patients with sagittal synostosis have been treated between May 1996 and April 2012. There were 187 males and 69 females. Mean age at time of surgery was 3.9 months. A wide-vertex craniectomy with bilateral barrel stave osteotomies of the temporal and parietal bones using small scalp incisions and endoscopic viewing techniques was performed. Instruments have been developed to assist with the operation. All patients were placed in postoperative molding cranial orthosis. Mean estimated blood loss was 27 cc. Mean transfusion rate was 7 %. Mean surgical time was 57 min. Mean length of stay was 1.1 days. Using cephalic index (CI) as an anthropometric measurement to judge head shape, our results were classified as excellent (CI > 80), good (CI 80–70), or poor (CI < 70). A total of 87 % were classified as excellent, 9 % as good, and 4 % as poor. Endoscopic-assisted management of sagittal synostosis is a safe, efficacious, and excellent option for treating this condition with long-lasting, superb results. It is associated with minimal morbidity and complications and improved results over traditional procedures.
Predictive control in irrigation canal operation

Open canal dynamics in which a constant water level is kept at the bottom end of each canal pools by the upstream control structure of the pool are characterized by a time-varying delay associated with water transport. Predictive control, based on the output prediction over a long time horizon and the minimization of a quadratic cost function is slightly sensitive to the magnitude and variation of the delay. The predictive control performance is tested on the lateral canal MW of the Maricopa Stanfield Irrigation and Drainage District. The simulation results illustrate the capacity of predictive control to improve canal operation.
Results of the assessment of the council of multidisciplinary pain.

OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to emphasize the necessity of multidisciplinary pain council by demonstrating the patient profile, treatment approaches, outcomes, and patient satisfaction levels obtained from our council.


METHODS
In this study, the age, gender, number of council evaluations, diagnoses and recommended therapies of patients were determined retrospectively. The status of the patients >1 year, outcomes of the therapies, and satisfaction levels of the patients were questioned on the phone.


RESULTS
The patients were most commonly diagnosed as chronic low back pain (35%) and vertebral tumor or metastasis (10%). 74 % of the patients were evaluated because of vertebral causes. 23% of the patients had good, 27% had moderate and 35% had poor benefit; beneficence was calculated as 85%. Patient satisfaction was found as 24%, 23%, and 32%, respectively; satisfaction was calculated as 79%.


CONCLUSION
Evaluation of complex patients by physicians from different disciplines has better diagnostic and treatment outcomes. In addition, multidisciplinary approach offer and perform different therapy options and this has positive effects on treatment efficiency and patient satisfaction. We are in the opinion that instead of standard treatment protocols, determining individualized multidisciplinary treatment protocols should be useful.
Brief Talk on Ecological Environmental Protection in Nanjianhe River

The necessity of ecological environmental protection in Nanjianhe river basin is introduced,and some useful countermeasures are pointed out also.
Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting adapted to Autism (VIPP-AUTI): A randomized controlled trial.

In a randomized controlled trial, we evaluated the early intervention program Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting adapted to Autism (VIPP-AUTI) with 78 primary caregivers and their child (16-61 months) with Autism Spectrum Disorder. VIPP-AUTI is a brief attachment-based intervention program, focusing on improving parent-child interaction and reducing the child's individual Autism Spectrum Disorder-related symptomatology in five home visits. VIPP-AUTI, as compared with usual care, demonstrated efficacy in reducing parental intrusiveness. Moreover, parents who received VIPP-AUTI showed increased feelings of self-efficacy in child rearing. No significant group differences were found on other aspects of parent-child interaction or on child play behavior. At 3-months follow-up, intervention effects were found on child-initiated joint attention skills, not mediated by intervention effects on parenting. Implementation of VIPP-AUTI in clinical practice is facilitated by the use of a detailed manual and a relatively brief training of interveners.
The Sforzesco brace and SPoRT concept: a brace to replace cast in worst curves.

PURPOSE
Bracing still remains the most important conservative treatment for scoliosis; approaches to bracing are really many and diverse. The aim of this paper of this paper, is the presentation of the brace we recently developed (the Sforzesco brace and SPoRT concept) to face worst scoliosis, in the past treated through casting.


METHODS
The SPoRT concept was born while we were looking for a new brace; it means Symmetric, Patient oriented, Rigid, Three-dimensional and Active. Details of construction and the biomechanical principle of its corrective action are reported. This brace has been used widely in the last 3 years.


RESULTS
The Sforzesco brace showed to be more effective than the Lyon brace and as effective as the Risser cast on different clinical and radiological outcome measures in 2 different prospective study of best clinical practice.


CONCLUSION
When compared to the other braces, the Sforzesco can find its place in the most important curves, in which there are no alternatives to try avoiding surgery. The SPoRT Concept appear a useful tool to interpret what happens with this brace, even if in the future could be overcome by new theories according to new (and awaited) results in the literature.
Influence of age and gender on the clinical expression of acute intermittent porphyria based on molecular study of porphobilinogen deaminase gene among Swiss patients.

BACKGROUND
Acute intermittent porphyria (AIP) is an inherited disorder in the heme biosynthetic pathway caused by a partial deficiency of porphobilinogen (PBG) deaminase. Clinically, AIP is characterized as acute neurovisceral attacks that are often precipitated by exogenous factors such as drugs, hormones, and alcohol. An early detection of mutation carriers is essential for prevention of acute attacks by avoiding precipitating factors. This study was aimed at analyzing genetic defects causing AIP among Swiss families to further investigate aspects concerning the clinical expression of the disease.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
The PBGD gene of index patients from 21 Swiss AIP families was systematically analyzed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplified DNA fragments and direct sequencing.


RESULTS
Five new mutations insA503, del L170, T190I, P241S, and R321H, as well as three known mutations (R26H, R173Q and W283X) were detected. Twelve of the 21 index patients (57%) carried the prevalent mutation W283X previously found among the Swiss AIP population. Family-specific mutations were then screened among relatives of the index patients. Among the 107 studied individuals, 58 carried a PBGD gene mutation--30 were overt AIP patients and 28 were asymptomatic carriers. The apparent rate of overt disease in the study cohort was 52%, which is significantly higher than the previously reported penetrance of 10-20%. To further examine the clinical expression of AIP, the cumulative life-time risk was calculated among 58 mutation-positive individuals after stratifying for age. The result shows a linear increase of the percentage of the symptomatic patients with age, reaching up to 75% among carriers aged over 60. Moreover, statistical analysis of the gender distribution among patients and asymptomatic carriers indicated that the disease was more frequently expressed among females than males (Fisher's exact test two sided, p= (0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
This comprehensive search for genetic defects in the PBGD gene confirmed the existence of a prevalent mutation W283X among Swiss AIP patients, as well as a number of family-private mutations. Genetic analysis laid a groundwork for further studies such as the effects of gender and age on the clinical expression of AIP.
PUF-based authentication

In the context of hardware systems, authentication refers to the process of confirming the identity and authenticity of chip, board and system components such as RFID tags, smart cards and remote sensors. The ability of physical unclonable functions (PUF) to provide bitstrings unique to each component can be leveraged as an authentication mechanism to detect tamper, impersonation and substitution of such components. However, authentication requires a strong PUF, i.e., one capable of producing a large, unique set of bits per device, and, unlike secret key generation for encryption, has additional challenges that relate to machine learning attacks, protocol attacks and constraints on device resources. In this paper, we describe the requirements for PUF-based authentication, and present a PUF primitive and protocol designed for authentication in resource constrained devices. Our experimental results are derived from a 28 nm Xilinx FPGA.1
Spin-wave excitation and Mössbauer spectrometry of amorphous interface in Tb/Fe multilayer

Abstract Magnetic properties of Tb(48 A)/Fe(26 A) multilayer were studied with Mossbauer spectrometry at different temperatures before and after isothermal annealing at 673 K. For this last case, a significant perpendicular magnetic anisotropy is induced. This phenomenon is related to the existence of an amorphous and homogenous Tb–Fe alloy, located at the interfaces, which is produced by interdiffusion during the heat processing. The thermal evolution of hyperfine field deduced for interfacial Tb–Fe alloy is found to obey the Bloch law. The spin-wave stiffness constant, the distance between nearest magnetic atoms and the exchange parameter A were calculated from the experimental results.
Sonic Banana: A Novel Bend-Sensor-Based MIDI Controller

This paper describes the Sonic Banana, a bend-sensor based alternative MIDI controller.
On Business Process Redesign and Configuration: Leveraging Data Mining Classification & Outliers and Artifact-Centric Process Modeling

In today's e-business, data increasingly capture many behavioral aspects of our daily life, e.g. operational patterns in production lines, human shopping habit, medical treatment, supply-chain management. We formally define the behavior of tasks (of the business process in question) in connection with conceptually described business artifacts that are manipulated by the tasks. We relate this representation to data mining and nonfunctional requirements to better define the context for process redesign (i.e, design-time changes) and process configuration (i.e, run-time changes). Furthermore, we propose algorithms for business-process redesign and configuration based on the above context. Our research is positioned in the field of business process flexibility – a term coined by van der Aalst [1] in his thorough literature survey on business processes. We validate our framework using real-life data provided by our industrial partners.
GMM-based voice conversion applied to emotional speech synthesis

Voice conversion method is applied to synthesizing emotional speech from standard reading (neutral) speech. Pairs of neutral speech and emotional speech are used for conversion rule training. The conversion adopts GMM (Gaussian Mixture Model) with DFW (Dynamic Frequency Warping). We also adopt STRAIGHT, the high-quality speech analysis-synthesis algorithm. As conversion target emotions, (Hot) anger, (cold) sadness and (hot) happiness are used. The converted speech is evaluated objectively first using mel cepstrum distortion as a criterion. The result confirms the GMM-based voice conversion can reduce distortion between target speech and neutral speech. A subjective test is also carried out to investigate perceptual effect. From the viewpoint of influence of prosody, two kinds of prosody are used to synthesis. One is natural prosody extracted from neutral speech and the other is from emotional speech. The result shows that prosody mainly contribute to emotion and spectrum conversion can reinforce it.
Validation of the Social Networking Activity Intensity Scale among Junior Middle School Students in China

BACKGROUND
Online social networking use has been integrated into adolescents' daily life and the intensity of online social networking use may have important consequences on adolescents' well-being. However, there are few validated instruments to measure social networking use intensity. The present study aims to develop the Social Networking Activity Intensity Scale (SNAIS) and validate it among junior middle school students in China.


METHODS
A total of 910 students who were social networking users were recruited from two junior middle schools in Guangzhou, and 114 students were retested after two weeks to examine the test-retest reliability. The psychometrics of the SNAIS were estimated using appropriate statistical methods.


RESULTS
Two factors, Social Function Use Intensity (SFUI) and Entertainment Function Use Intensity (EFUI), were clearly identified by both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. No ceiling or floor effects were observed for the SNAIS and its two subscales. The SNAIS and its two subscales exhibited acceptable reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.89, 0.90 and 0.60, and test-retest Intra-class Correlation Coefficient = 0.85, 0.87 and 0.67 for Overall scale, SFUI and EFUI subscale, respectively, p<0.001). As expected, the SNAIS and its subscale scores were correlated significantly with emotional connection to social networking, social networking addiction, Internet addiction, and characteristics related to social networking use.


CONCLUSIONS
The SNAIS is an easily self-administered scale with good psychometric properties. It would facilitate more research in this field worldwide and specifically in the Chinese population.
Vitamin D, Cognition and Alzheimer’s Disease: The Therapeutic Benefit is in the D-Tails

Since its discovery during the epidemic of rickets in the early 1920s, the physiological effects of vitamin D on calcium/phosphorus homeostasis have been thoroughly studied. Along with the understanding of its actions on skeletal diseases and advances in cellular and molecular biology, this misnamed vitamin has gained attention as a potential player in a growing number of physiological processes and a variety of diseases. During the last 25 years, vitamin D has emerged as a serious candidate in nervous system development and function and a therapeutic tool in a number of neurological pathologies. More recently, experimental and pre-clinical data suggest a link between vitamin D status and cognitive function. Human studies strongly support a correlation between low levels of circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) and cognitive impairment or dementia in aging populations. In parallel, animal studies show that supplementation with vitamin D is protective against biological processes associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and enhances learning and memory performance in various animal models of aging and AD. These experimental observations support multiple mechanisms by which vitamin D can act against neurodegenerative processes. However, clinical interventional studies are disappointing and fail to associate increased 25(OH)D levels with improved cognitive outcomes. This review collects the current available data from both animal and human studies and discusses the considerations that future studies examining the effects of vitamin D status on neurocognitive function might consider.
Randomized trial of two induction chemotherapy regimens in metastatic colorectal cancer: an updated analysis.

BACKGROUND
In a randomized trial with a median follow-up of 18.4 months, 6 months of induction chemotherapy with a three-drug regimen comprising 5-fluorouracil (by continuous infusion)-leucovorin, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin (FOLFOXIRI) demonstrated statistically significant improvements in response rate, radical surgical resection of metastases, progression-free survival, and overall survival compared with 6 months of induction chemotherapy with fluorouracil-leucovorin and irinotecan (FOLFIRI).


METHODS
From November 14, 2001, to April 22, 2005, we enrolled 244 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. To evaluate if the superiority of FOLFOXIRI is maintained in the long term, we updated the overall and progression-free survival data to include events that occurred up to February 12, 2009, with a median follow-up of 60.6 months. We performed a subgroup and a risk-stratified analysis to examine whether outcomes differed in specific patient subgroups, and we analyzed the results of treatment after progression. Survival curves were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method. Multivariable Cox regression models were fit to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). All statistical tests were two-sided.


RESULTS
FOLFOXIRI demonstrated statistically significant improvements in median progression-free survival (9.8 vs 6.8 months, HR for progression = 0.59, 95% CI = 0.45 to 0.76, P < .001) and median overall survival (23.4 vs 16.7 months, HR for death = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.56 to 0.96, P = .026) with a 5-year survival rate of 15% (95% CI = 9% to 23%) vs 8% (95% CI = 4% to 14%). The improvements in progression-free survival and, to a lesser extent, in overall survival were evident even when the analysis excluded patients who received radical resection of metastases. With regard to the risk-stratified analysis, FOLFOXIRI results in longer progression-free survival and overall survival than FOLFIRI in all risk subgroups.


CONCLUSIONS
Six months of induction chemotherapy with FOLFOXIRI is associated with a clinically significant improvement in the long-term outcome compared with FOLFIRI with an absolute benefit in survival at 5 years of 7%.
Designing efficient high performance server-centric data center network architecture

Data center network (DCN) architecture is regarded as one of the most important determinants of network performance. As the most typical representatives of DCN architecture designs, the server-centric scheme stands out due to its good performance in various aspects. In this paper, we firstly present the design, implementation and evaluation of SprintNet, a novel server-centric network architecture for data centers. SprintNet achieves high performance in network capacity, fault tolerance, and network latency. SprintNet is also a scalable, yet low-diameter network architecture where the maximum shortest distance between any pair of servers can be limited by no more than four and is independent of the number of layers. The specially designed routing schemes for SprintNet strengthen its merits. However, all of these kind of server-centric architectures still suffer from some critical shortcomings owing to the server’s responsibility of forwarding packets. With regard to these issues, in this paper, we then propose a hardware based approach, named ‘‘Forwarding Unit’’ to provide an effective solution to these drawbacks and improve the efficiency of server-centric architectures. Both theoretical analysis and simulations are conducted to evaluate the overall performance of SprintNet and the Forwarding Unit approach with respect to cost-effectiveness, fault-tolerance, system latency, packet loss ratio, aggregate bottleneck throughput, and average path length. The evaluation results convince the feasibility and good performance of both SprintNet and Forwarding Unit. 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The activation of endothelin-1 pathway during methionine-induced homocysteinemia mediates endothelial dysfunction in hypertensive individuals.

OBJECTIVES
Endothelin-1 (ET-1) is a key regulator of arterial blood pressure in humans, and homocysteinemia is associated with increased oxidative stress. It is still unclear whether homocysteine-induced oxidative stress is implicated in the regulation of ET-1 expression. We examined the impact of acute homocysteinemia on endothelial function in hypertensive patients and healthy individuals, and the potential role of ET-1.


METHODS
In this double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 39 hypertensive and 49 healthy individuals were randomized to receive high-dose vitamins (2 g vitamin C and 800IU vitamin E) or placebo followed by methionine loading 100 mg/kg body weight. Endothelium-dependent dilation (EDD) and endothelium-independent dilation (EID) of the brachial artery were evaluated by plethysmography, at baseline and 4 h postloading (4 h PML). ET-1 was measured by ELISA, whereas total lipid hydroperoxides (per-ox) levels were measured by a commercially available photometric technique.


RESULTS
Acute, methionine-induced homocysteinemia decreased EDD in all study groups (P < 0.001 for all), whereas vitamins pretreatment failed to prevent this effect, despite the vitamins-induced reduction of peroxidation in the hypertensives group (P < 0.05). On the contrary, methionine loading significantly increased plasma ET-1 levels only in hypertensives (P < 0.05), an effect which was not prevented by antioxidant vitamins (P < 0.05). EID remained unchanged after methionine loading, in all study groups (P = NS for all groups).


CONCLUSION
Experimental homocysteinemia rapidly blunts endothelial function in both hypertensive individuals and healthy individuals. The rapid elevation of ET-1 levels observed only in hypertensives, suggests that ET-1 may be the key mediator of homocysteine-induced endothelial dysfunction, independently of oxidative stress.
Weight gain in children and adolescents during 45 weeks treatment with clozapine, olanzapine and risperidone

The aim of this study was to evaluate long-term weight gain associated with clozapine, olanzapine, and risperidone treatment and its clinical risk factors in children and adolescents. At four child and adolescent psychiatric departments, the weight and body mass index of initially hospitalized patients (aged 9.0–21.3 years) treated with clozapine (n = 15), olanzapine (n = 8), and risperidone (n = 10) were prospectively monitored for 45 weeks. Clinical risk factors (age, gender, baseline weight, dosage, drug-naivety) were tested for their association with weight gain in the three groups. All three groups experienced significant weight gain between baseline and endpoint. The absolute and percentage average weight gains were significantly higher for the olanzapine group (16.2 ± 8.8 kg; 30.1 ± 18.9%) than for the clozapine (9.5 ± 10.4 kg; 14.8 ± 15.8%) and the risperidone (7.2 ± 5.3 kg; 11.5 ± 6.0%) groups. Olanzapine is associated with extreme long-term weight gain in children and adolescents that, in addition, is much higher than that expected in adults. Clozapine and risperidone are associated with a less marked weight gain in children and adolescents but also much higher than that expected in adults. These differences may affect compliance with medication and health risk.