LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Surveying instructor and learner attitudes toward e-learning

The trend of using e-learning as a learning and/or teaching tool is now rapidly expanding into education. Although e-learning environments are popular, there is minimal research on instructors’ and learners’ attitudes toward these kinds of learning environments. The purpose of this study is to explore instructors’ and learners’ attitudes toward e-learning usage. Accordingly, 30 instructors and 168 college students are asked to answer two different questionnaires for investigating their perceptions. After statistical analysis, the results demonstrate that instructors have very positive perceptions toward using e-learning as a teaching assisted tool. Furthermore, behavioral intention to use e-learning is influenced by perceived usefulness and self-efficacy. Regarding to learners’ attitudes, self-paced, teacher-led, and multimedia instruction are major factors to affect learners’ attitudes toward e-learning as an effective learning tool. Based on the findings, this research proposes guidelines for developing e-learning environments. 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Die Cortisol-Aufwachreaktion bei Patienten mit akuten und chronischen Rückenschmerzen

Auffälligkeiten in der hypothalamisch-hypophysär-adrenalen Achse bei stressassoziierten Schmerzerkrankungen und der Zusammenhang mit psychologischen Faktoren werden kontrovers diskutiert. Hinsichtlich ihrer Cortisol-Aufwachreaktion wurden 31 Patienten mit lumbalen Rückenschmerzen (14 akut, 17 chronisch) und 14 Gesunde verglichen. Der Zusammenhang mit chronischem Stress und Depressivität sowie erstmals auch mit maladaptiver Schmerzverarbeitung und -bewältigung wurde geprüft. Die Cortisol-Aufwachreaktionen der Gruppen unterschieden sich nicht. Chronischer Stress, Depressivität und kognitive Schmerzverarbeitung korrelierten nicht mit den Cortisolwerten. Es zeigte sich aber ein negativer Zusammenhang mit passiv-meidender sowie ein positiver mit aktiver behavioraler Schmerzbewältigung. Zu den psychologischen Faktoren, die bei stressassoziierten Schmerzerkrankungen mit der Aktivität der hypothalamisch-hypophysär-adrenalen Achse in Zusammenhang stehen, sollten verstärkt auch behaviorale Schmerzbewältigungsstrategien gerechnet werden. Peculiarities of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity in stress-related pain-disorders and potential relations with psychological risk factors of pain chronicity have been discussed controversially. The cortisol awakening responses of 31 low back pain patients (14 acute, 17 chronic) and 14 healthy controls were compared. In addition the interrelations between awakening response and chronic stress as well as depressive mood and – for the first time – maladaptive painprocessing and -copingstrategies were investigated. The groups did not differ in their cortisol awakening responses. Chronic stress, depressive mood and maladaptive cognitive painprocessing did not correlate with the awakening response. There were, however, significant interrelations between awakening responses and the behavioral paincoping-strategies. Behavioral paincoping-strategies should be considered as a potentially important contributing psychological factor in the relation between the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and stress-related pain disorders.
The effect of static scanning and mobility training on mobility in people with hemianopia after stroke: A randomized controlled trial comparing standardized versus non-standardized treatment protocols

BACKGROUND
Visual loss following stroke impacts significantly on activities of daily living and is an independent risk factor for becoming dependent. Routinely, allied health clinicians provide training for visual field loss, mainly with eye movement based therapy. The effectiveness of the compensatory approach to rehabilitation remains inconclusive largely due to difficulty in validating functional outcome with the varied type and dosage of therapy received by an individual patient. This study aims to determine which treatment is more effective, a standardized approach or individualized therapy in patients with homonymous hemianopia post stroke.


METHODS/DESIGN
This study is a double-blind randomized controlled, multicenter trial. A standardised scanning rehabilitation program (Neuro Vision Technology (NVT) program) of 7 weeks at 3 times per week, is compared to individualized therapy recommended by clinicians.


DISCUSSION
The results of the trial will provide information that could potentially inform the allocation of resources in visual rehabilitation post stroke.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
Australia and New Zealand Clinical Trials Register (ANZCTR): ACTRN12610000494033.
Gender differences in the management and outcome of patients with acute coronary artery disease.

STUDY OBJECTIVE
s: To compare the clinical management and health outcomes of men and women after admission with acute coronary syndromes, after adjusting for disease severity, sociodemographic, and cardiac risk factors.


DESIGN
Prospective national survey of acute cardiac admissions followed up by mailed patient questionnaire two to three years after initial admission.


SETTING
Random sample of 94 district general hospitals in the UK.


PATIENTS
1064 patients under 70 years old recruited between April 1995 and November 1996.


MAIN RESULTS
Of the 1064 patients recruited, 126 (11.8%) died before follow up. Of the 938 survivors, 719 (76.7%) completed a follow up questionnaire. There were no gender differences in the use of cardiac investigations during the index admission or follow up period. However, male patients with hypertension were more likely to undergo rehabilitation compared with female hypertensive patients (OR 2.01, 95% CI 0.85 to 4.72). Men were also more likely to undergo coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) than women (OR 1.90, 95%CI 1.21 to 3.00), but there was no gender difference in the use of revascularisation overall (p=0.14). An indirect indication that the gender differences in CABG were not attributable to bias was provided by the lack of gender differences in health outcomes, which implies that patients received the care they needed.


CONCLUSIONS
Despite the extensive international literature referring to a gender bias in favour of men with coronary heart disease, this national survey found no gender differences in the use of investigations or in revascularisation overall. However, the criteria used for selecting percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty compared with CABG requires further investigation as does the use of rehabilitation. It is unclear whether the clinical decisions to provide these procedures are made solely on the basis of clinical need.
DASH7 alliance protocol 1.0: Low-power, mid-range sensor and actuator communication

This paper presents the DASH7 Alliance Protocol 1.0. It is an industry alliance standard for wireless sensor and actuator communication using the unlicensed sub-1 GHz bands. The paper explains its historic relation to active RFID standards ISO 18000-7 for 433 MHz communication, the basic concepts and communication paradigms of the protocol. Since the protocol is a full OSI stack specification, the paper discusses the implementation of every OSI layer.
Acyclic sets of linear orders via the Bruhat orders

We describe Abello’s acyclic sets of linear orders [1] as the permutations visited by commuting equivalence classes of maximal reduced decompositions. This allows us to strengthen Abello’s structural result: we show that acyclic sets arising from this construction are distributive sublattices of the weak Bruhat order. This, in turn, shows that Abello’s acyclic sets are, in fact, the same as Chameni-Nembua’s distributive covering sublattices (S.T.D.C’s). Fishburn’s alternating scheme is shown to be a special case of the Abello/Chameni-Nembua acyclic sets. Any acyclic set that arises in this way can be represented by an arrangement of pseudolines, and we use this representation to derive a simple closed form for the cardinality of the alternating scheme. The higher Bruhat orders prove to be a natural mathematical framework for this approach to the acyclic sets problem.
At a Crossroads: Will Aquaculture Fulfill the Promise of the Blue Revolution?

This report and the activities of the SeaWeb Aquaculture Clearinghouse are made possible with the generous funding provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and The Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation. INTRODUCTION There is now little doubt that the world's fisheries are in crisis. Mounting scientific evidence points to dramatic declines in global catches. 1,2 Increasingly, many are making the case that farming fish offers a solution to meeting the growing demand for seafood that catching fish cannot provide. Aquaculture now accounts for roughly one-third of the world's total supply of food fish and undoubtedly the contribution of aquaculture to seafood supplies will increase in the future. Aquaculture has the potential to become a sustainable practice that can supplement capture fisheries and significantly contribute to feeding the world's growing population. However, instead of helping to ease the crisis in wild fisheries, unsustainable aquaculture development could exacerbate the problems and create new ones, damaging our important and already-stressed coastal areas. The vast majority of aquaculture takes place in Asia. In 2002, over 70% of worldwide aquaculture production was in China alone. 3 Most farmed fish and shellfish are grown in traditional small-scale systems that benefit local communities and minimize the environmental impact. Utilizing simple culture technologies and minimal inputs, these systems have been used for centuries. The net contribution of these traditional aquaculture systems can be great as they offer many benefits, including food security in developing nations. However, as happened with the " green revolution " of agriculture in the last century, the current " blue revolution " of aquaculture is becoming an industrial mode of food production. An emerging trend is toward the increased development of farming high-value carnivorous fish species using environmentally and socially damaging systems. Farming fish on an industrial scale, especially carnivorous fish is rapidly expanding; the number of different species farmed and geographic regions where they are farmed increases continually. Largely controlled by multinational corporations, industrialized farming of carnivorous fish such as salmon requires the intensive use of resources and exports problems to the surrounding environment, often resulting in environmental impacts and social conflicts. Some segments of the aquaculture industry are long overdue for reform. What is required is a paradigm shift in how we think about aquaculture, particularly its interaction with natural and social systems. This new paradigm should be based on sustainable development— " the management and conservation of the natural resource base, and …
Experience with ICD-10/DSM-IV substance use disorders.

'Substance Use Disorders' represents a diagnostic subgroup in which ICD-10 and DSM-IV agree in most generalities and many particulars. Both systems' use disorders are based on the 'dependence syndrome' construct by Edwards and Gross and include a large and overlapping set of substance-induced syndromes. Differences at the category level are limited to DSM-IV 'abuse' vs. ICD-10 'harmful use', elimination of 'pathological alcohol intoxication' from DSM-IV and inclusion of substance-induced 'sexual dysfunctions and sleep disorders' in DSM-IV, but not in ICD-10. Cross-system reconciliation would entail few conceptual compromises but many criterion changes. Before embarking on a reconciliation process, the benefits of a common, world-wide nomenclature must be weighed against the many costs of changing either system. Even small changes can yield large differences in rates, reduce comparability across data gathered with different systems and incur considerable costs related to clinician retraining, changes in record keeping and changes in diagnostic interview schedules. Moreover, empirical data can have limited impact on the choices between the two systems because findings are either absent or equivocal, particularly for differences at the criterion level. Nevertheless, more research is needed particularly to examine the comparative reliability and validity of abuse and harmful use diagnoses.
Acute renal failure in critically ill patients: a multinational, multicenter study.

CONTEXT
Although acute renal failure (ARF) is believed to be common in the setting of critical illness and is associated with a high risk of death, little is known about its epidemiology and outcome or how these vary in different regions of the world.


OBJECTIVES
To determine the period prevalence of ARF in intensive care unit (ICU) patients in multiple countries; to characterize differences in etiology, illness severity, and clinical practice; and to determine the impact of these differences on patient outcomes.


DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS
Prospective observational study of ICU patients who either were treated with renal replacement therapy (RRT) or fulfilled at least 1 of the predefined criteria for ARF from September 2000 to December 2001 at 54 hospitals in 23 countries.


MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Occurrence of ARF, factors contributing to etiology, illness severity, treatment, need for renal support after hospital discharge, and hospital mortality.


RESULTS
Of 29 269 critically ill patients admitted during the study period, 1738 (5.7%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 5.5%-6.0%) had ARF during their ICU stay, including 1260 who were treated with RRT. The most common contributing factor to ARF was septic shock (47.5%; 95% CI, 45.2%-49.5%). Approximately 30% of patients had preadmission renal dysfunction. Overall hospital mortality was 60.3% (95% CI, 58.0%-62.6%). Dialysis dependence at hospital discharge was 13.8% (95% CI, 11.2%-16.3%) for survivors. Independent risk factors for hospital mortality included use of vasopressors (odds ratio [OR], 1.95; 95% CI, 1.50-2.55; P<.001), mechanical ventilation (OR, 2.11; 95% CI, 1.58-2.82; P<.001), septic shock (OR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.03-1.79; P = .03), cardiogenic shock (OR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.05-1.90; P = .02), and hepatorenal syndrome (OR, 1.87; 95% CI, 1.07-3.28; P = .03).


CONCLUSION
In this multinational study, the period prevalence of ARF requiring RRT in the ICU was between 5% and 6% and was associated with a high hospital mortality rate.
An Improved Extended Kalman Filter for Localization of a Mobile Node with NLOS Anchors

Tracking a mobile node using a wireless sensor network under non-line of sight (NLOS) conditions, has been considered in this work, which is of interest to indoor positioning applications. A hybrid of time difference of arrival (TDOA) and angle of arrival (AOA) measurements, suitable for tracking asynchronous targets, is exploited. The NLOS biases of the TDOA measurements and the position and velocity of the target are included in the state vector. To track the latter, we use a modified form of the extended Kalman filter (EKF) with bound constraints on the NLOS biases, as derived from geometrical considerations. Through simulations, we show that our technique can outperform the EKF and the memoryless constrained optimization techniques. Keywords—Extended Kalman filter; localization; non-line of sight; ultra wideband.
Hotspots Detection in Photovoltaic Modules Using Infrared Thermography

An increased interest on generating power from renewable sources has led to an increase in solar photovoltaic (PV) system installations worldwide. Power generation of such systems is affected by factors that can be identified early on through efficient monitoring techniques. This study developed a non-invasive technique that can detect localized heating and quantify the area of the hotspots, a potential cause of degradation in photovoltaic systems. This is done by the use of infrared thermography, a well-accepted non-destructive evaluation technique that allows contactless, real-time inspection. In this approach, thermal images or thermograms of an operating PV module were taken using an infrared camera. These thermograms were analyzed by a Hotspot Detection algorithm implemented in MATLAB. Prior to image processing, images were converted to CIE L*a*b color space making kmeans clustering implementation computationally efficient. K-means clustering is an iterative technique that segments data into k clusters which was used to isolate hotspots. The devised algorithm detected hotspots in the modules being observed. In addition, average temperature and relative area is provided to quantify the hotspot. Various features and conditions leading to hotspots such as crack, junction box and shading were investigated in this
A comparison between electromyography-driven robot and passive motion device on wrist rehabilitation for chronic stroke.

BACKGROUND
The effect of using robots to improve motor recovery has received increased attention, even though the most effective protocol remains a topic of study.


OBJECTIVE
. The objective was to compare the training effects of treatments on the wrist joint of subjects with chronic stroke with an interactive rehabilitation robot and a robot with continuous passive motion.


METHODS
. This study was a single-blinded randomized controlled trial with a 3-month follow-up. Twenty-seven hemiplegic subjects with chronic stroke were randomly assigned to receive 20-session wrist training with a continuous electromyography (EMG)-driven robot (interactive group, n = 15) and a passive motion device (passive group, n = 12), completed within 7 consecutive weeks. Training effects were evaluated with clinical scores by pretraining and posttraining tests (Fugl-Meyer Assessment [FMA] and Modified Ashworth Score [MAS]) and with session-by-session EMG parameters (EMG activation level and co-contraction index).


RESULTS
. Significant improvements in FMA scores (shoulder/elbow and wrist/hand) were found in the interactive group (P < .05). Significant decreases in the MAS were observed in the wrist and elbow joints for the interactive group and in the wrist joint for the passive group (P < .05). These MAS changes were associated with the decrease in EMG activation level of the flexor carpi radialis and the biceps brachii for the interactive group (P < .05). The muscle coordination on wrist and elbow joints was improved in the interactive groups in the EMG co-contraction indexes across the training sessions (P < .05).


CONCLUSIONS
. The interactive treatment improved muscle coordination and reduced spasticity after the training for both the wrist and elbow joints, which persisted for 3 months. The passive mode training mainly reduced the spasticity in the wrist flexor.
Would Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment Adhere to and Benefit from a Structured Lifestyle Activity Intervention to Enhance Cognition?: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND
Epidemiologic evidence suggests that cognitive and physical activities are associated with better cognition in late life. The present study was conducted to examine the possible benefits of four structured lifestyle activity interventions and compare their effectiveness in optimizing cognition for older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).


METHOD AND FINDINGS
This was a 12-month cluster randomized controlled trial. 555 community-dwelling Chinese older adults with MCI (295 with multiple-domain deficits (mdMCI), 260 with single-domain deficit (sdMCI)) were recruited. Participants were randomized into physical exercise (P), cognitive activity (C), integrated cognitive and physical exercise (CP), and social activity (S, active control) groups. Interventions comprised of one-hour structured activities three times per week. Primary outcome was Clinical Dementia Rating sum of boxes (CDR-SOB) scores. Secondary outcomes included Chinese versions of Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale - Cognitive subscale (ADAS-Cog), delayed recall, Mini-Mental State Examination, Category Verbal Fluency Test (CVFT) and Disability Assessment for Dementia - Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (DAD-IADL). Percentage adherence to programs and factors affecting adherence were also examined. At 12th month, 423 (76.2%) completed final assessment. There was no change in CDR-SOB and DAD-IADL scores across time and intervention groups. Multilevel normal model and linear link function showed improvement in ADAS-Cog, delayed recall and CVFT with time (p<0.05). Post-hoc subgroup analyses showed that the CP group, compared with other intervention groups, had more significant improvements of ADAS-Cog, delayed recall and CVFT performance with sdMCI participants (p<0.05). Overall adherence rate was 73.3%. Improvements in ADAS-Cog and delayed recall scores were associated with adherence after controlling for age, education, and intervention groups (univariate analyses).


CONCLUSIONS
Structured lifestyle activity interventions were not associated with changes in everyday functioning, albeit with some improvements in cognitive scores across time. Higher adherence was associated with greater improvement in cognitive scores. Factors to enhance adherence should be specially considered in the design of psychosocial interventions for older adults with cognitive decline.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov ChiCTR-TRC-11001359.
P1B-10 Advantages of Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonics Transducers (CMUTs) for High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU)

In the past ten years, high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has become popular for minimally invasive and non-invasive therapies. Traditionally piezoelectric transducers have been used for HIFU applications, but capacitive micro- machined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) have been shown to have advantages, including ease of fabrication and efficient performance. In this paper, we show the fabrication and testing of CMUTs specifically designed for HIFU. We compare the operation of these designs with finite element models. In addition, we demonstrate that CMUTs can operate under high pressure and continuous wave (CW) conditions, with minimal self-heating, a problem that piezoelectric transducers often face. Finally, we demonstrate MR-temperature monitoring of the heating created by an unfocused HIFU CMUT.
The anuran calling repertoire in the light of social context

Frogs are immediately associated to their conspicuous vocalizations emitted during the breeding season. Therefore, many scientists were inspired to study their acoustic communication. Nowadays, many types of calls are described and we felt the need of reviewing the terminology currently and historically applied. As a result, we proposed the classification of anuran vocalization into three major categories: reproductive, aggressive, and defensive calls. These categories are subdivided according to the social context of emission mostly reflecting also acoustic differences among call types. Some call types are here proposed to be synonymies of the mostly used and inclusive terms. We also suggest terminologies for basic bioacoustical analyses, mostly applied in call descriptions. Furthermore, we present cases of complex calls, including call gradation. Finally, based on novel data (such as an unusual case of juvenile vocalizations), we discuss situations in which it is difficult to classify call types, reflecting the need of experimental studies.