LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Adherence and persistence with oral adjuvant chemotherapy in older women with early-stage breast cancer in CALGB 49907: adherence companion study 60104.

PURPOSE
Patient adherence is critical in evaluating the effectiveness of an oral therapy. We sought to measure adherence among women randomly assigned to capecitabine in a preplanned substudy of a multicenter clinical trial.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
Cancer and Leukemia Group B study CALGB 49907 was a randomly assigned trial comparing standard chemotherapy versus oral chemotherapy with capecitabine in patients age 65 years or older with early-stage breast cancer. We used microelectronic monitoring system (MEMS) caps on participants' capecitabine bottles to record pill bottle openings. Capecitabine was given in two divided daily doses for 14 consecutive days of a 21-day cycle for six cycles. Adherence was calculated as the number of doses taken divided by doses expected, taking into account toxicity-related dosing changes. A participant was defined as adherent if 80% or more of expected doses were recorded by MEMS.


RESULTS
Overall, 161 patients were enrolled. Median age was 71 years (range, 65 to 89 years); 124 patients (83%) persisted with capecitabine to completion of planned protocol therapy. Adherence was 78% across all cycles, and adherence did not vary by cycle (P = .32). Twenty-five percent of participants took fewer than 80% of expected doses and were nonadherent. In a logistic regression model, participants with node-negative disease (P = .01) and mastectomy (P = .01) were more likely to be nonadherent. Adherence was not related to age, tumor stage, or hormone receptor status. Adherence was not significantly associated with relapse-free survival or grade 3 or 4 toxicity.


CONCLUSION
Most older women with early-stage breast cancer were adherent to short-term oral chemotherapy in a randomized clinical trial. Age was not associated with adherence.
Treatment results and long-term stability of anterior open bite malocclusion.

OBJECTIVES
To evaluate treatment results and long-term stability of anterior open bite malocclusion and to identify predictive factors for both treatment results and their stability.


DESIGN
Retrospective study.


SETTING AND SAMPLE POPULATION
The Department of Orthodontics and Oral Biology at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, The Netherlands. Fifty-two patients with an anterior open bite.


METHODS
Lateral cephalograms and dental casts were analysed at: start of treatment (Ts), end of treatment (T0), 2 and at least 5 years after the end of treatment (T2 and T5, respectively). A standard cephalometric analysis was performed, while the Peer Assessment Rating (PAR) index was used to evaluate the occlusion.


RESULTS
The mean PAR reduction at T0 was 74%, but decreased to 56% at T5. The mean overbite (OB) increased from -3.2 mm (+/- 1.9) at Ts to 0.4 mm (+/- 1.1) at T0, 0.1 mm (+/- 1.6) at T2 and 0.2 mm (+/- 1.8) at T5. Thirty-seven patients (71%) had a positive OB at T0, but the bite opened again in 10 of these patients (27%) from T0 to T5. Forty-four per cent of our patients had an open bite at T5. No pre-treatment variables could predict these changes.


CONCLUSION
Treatment response and long-term stability of the anterior open bite was found to be rather poor. This has to be taken into consideration when planning treatment of open bite patients. Prediction of open bite closure at the end of active treatment or at the follow-up was not possible.
Mobile phone intervention for increasing adherence to treatment for type 2 diabetes in an urban area of Bangladesh: protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND
Mobile phone technologies including SMS (short message service) have been used to improve the delivery of health services in many countries. However, data on the effects of mobile health technology on patient outcomes in resource-limited settings are limited. The aim of this study therefore is to measure the impact of a mobile phone SMS service on treatment success of newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes in an urban area of Bangladesh.


METHODS/DESIGN
This is a single-centred randomized controlled intervention trial (prospective) comparing standard-of-care with standard-of-care plus a mobile phone-based SMS intervention for 6 months. A total of 216 participants with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes will be recruited. Data will be collected at the outpatient department of Bangladesh Institute of Health Science (BIHS) hospital at baseline and after 6 months. The primary outcome measure will be change in HbA1c between baseline and 6 months. The secondary outcome measures are self-reported medication adherence, clinic attendance, self-reported adoption of healthy behaviours, diabetes knowledge, quality of life and cost effectiveness of the SMS intervention. The inclusion criteria will be as follows: diagnosed as patients with type 2 diabetes by the BIHS physician, using oral medication therapy, living in Dhaka city, registered with the BIHS hospital, using a mobile phone, willing to return for follow up after 6 months and providing written informed consent. Participants will be allocated to control and intervention arms after recruitment using a randomization software. Data will be collected on socio-demographic and economic information, mobile phone use and habits, knowledge of prevention, management and complications of diabetes, self-perceived quality of life assessment, self-reported diseases, medical history, family history of diseases, medication history, medication adherence, health seeking behaviour, tobacco use, physical activity, diet, mental health status, life events and disability, anthropometric measurements of weight, height, blood pressure and blood tests for HbA1c.


DISCUSSION
Mobile phone SMS services have the potential to communicate with diabetes patients and to build awareness about the disease, improve self-management and avoid complications also in resource-limited setting. If this intervention proves to be efficient and cost-effective in the current trial, large-scale implementation could be undertaken.


TRIAL REGISTRATION
DRKS00005188 .
Password memorability and security: empirical results

Users rarely choose passwords that are both hard to guess and easy to remember. To determine how to help users choose good passwords, the authors performed a controlled trial of the effects of giving users different kinds of advice. Some of their results challenge the established wisdom.
Impact of cocaine on adult hippocampal neurogenesis in an animal model of differential propensity to drug abuse.

Hippocampal plasticity (e.g. neurogenesis) likely plays an important role in maintaining addictive behavior and/or relapse. This study assessed whether rats with differential propensity to drug-seeking behavior, bred Low-Responders (bLR) and bred High-Responders (bHR) to novelty, show differential neurogenesis regulation after cocaine exposure. Using specific immunological markers, we labeled distinct populations of adult stem cells in the dentate gyrus at different time-points of the cocaine sensitization process; Ki-67 for newly born cells, NeuroD for cells born partway, and 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine for older cells born prior to sensitization. Results show that: (i) bHRs exhibited greater psychomotor response to cocaine than bLRs; (ii) acute cocaine did not alter cell proliferation in bLR/bHR rats; (iii) chronic cocaine decreased cell proliferation in bLRs only, which became amplified through the course of abstinence; (iv) neither chronic cocaine nor cocaine abstinence affected the survival of immature neurons in either phenotype; (v) cocaine abstinence decreased survival of mature neurons in bHRs only, an effect that paralleled the greater psychomotor response to cocaine; and (vi) cocaine treatment did not affect the ratio of neurons to glia in bLR/bHR rats as most cells differentiated into neurons in both lines. Thus, cocaine exerts distinct effects on neurogenesis in bLR vs. bHR rats, with a decrease in the birth of new progenitor cells in bLRs and a suppression of the survival of new neurons in bHRs, which likely leads to an earlier decrease in formation of new connections. This latter effect in bHRs could contribute to their enhanced degree of cocaine-induced psychomotor behavioral sensitization.
Stories from Survivors: Privacy & Security Practices when Coping with Intimate Partner Abuse

We present a qualitative study of the digital privacy and security motivations, practices, and challenges of survivors of intimate partner abuse (IPA). This paper provides a framework for organizing survivors' technology practices and challenges into three phases: physical control, escape, and life apart. This three-phase framework combines technology practices with three phases of abuse to provide an empirically sound method for technology creators to consider how survivors of IPA can leverage new and existing technologies. Overall, our results suggest that the usability of and control over privacy and security functions should be or continue to be high priorities for technology creators seeking ways to better support survivors of IPA.
Development and external validation of a new PTA assessment scale

BACKGROUND
Post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) is a key symptom of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Accurate assessment of PTA is imperative in guiding clinical decision making. Our aim was to develop and externally validate a short, examiner independent and practical PTA scale, by selecting the most discriminative items from existing scales and using a three-word memory test.


METHODS
Mild, moderate and severe TBI patients and control subjects were assessed in two separate cohorts, one for derivation and one for validation, using a questionnaire comprised of items from existing PTA scales. We tested which individual items best discriminated between TBI patients and controls, represented by sensitivity and specificity. We then created our PTA scale based on these results. This new scale was externally evaluated for its discriminative value using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis and compared to existing PTA scales.


RESULTS
The derivation cohort included 126 TBI patients and 31 control subjects; the validation cohort consisted of 132 patients and 30 controls. A set of seven items was eventually selected to comprise the new PTA scale: age, name of hospital, time, day of week, month, mode of transport and recall of three words. This scale demonstrated adequate discriminative values compared to existing PTA scales on three consecutive administrations in the validation cohort.


CONCLUSION
We introduce a valid, practical and examiner independent PTA scale, which is suitable for mild TBI patients at the emergency department and yet still valuable for the follow-up of more severely injured TBI patients.
Vitreomacular traction as a consequence of posterior hyaloidal contraction after transpupillary thermotherapy.

PURPOSE
To describe the pathogenesis, clinical characteristics, management, and outcomes of patients in whom vitreomacular traction evolved pursuant to treatment of choroidal melanoma with transpupillary thermotherapy.


DESIGN
Retrospective, uncontrolled, observational, interventional case series.


METHODS
Vitreomacular traction with macular distortion, macular edema, and vision loss developed in 6 eyes of 6 patients after successful transpupillary thermotherapy for choroidal melanoma. Clinical examination, fluorescein angiography, fundus photography, and spectral-domain optical coherence tomography were performed. Symptomatic patients underwent pars plana vitrectomy (PPV). Primary outcome measures include visual acuity and resolution of macular distortion by clinical examination, spectral-domain optical coherence tomography, or both.


RESULTS
In all 6 patients, the malignant lesions were treated successfully. The posterior hyaloid was attached in all eyes before transpupillary thermotherapy. All eyes demonstrated focal hyaloidal contraction and vitreomacular traction between the transpupillary thermotherapy scar and the macula. Mean time from transpupillary thermotherapy to PPV for treatment of vitreomacular traction was 23 ± 18 months. Mean length of follow-up was 11 months. Mean logarithm of the minimal angle of resolution visual acuity before transpupillary thermotherapy was 0.23 ± 0.38. Mean visual acuity after transpupillary thermotherapy was 0.53 ± 0.42. Mean visual acuity before membrane peel was 0.65 ± 0.34. Mean visual acuity after membrane peel was 0.44 ± 0.21. All patients undergoing PPV showed visual improvement.


CONCLUSIONS
Hyaloidal contraction can occur after transpupillary thermotherapy and is a reversible cause of vision loss. The mechanism of vision loss resulting from hyaloidal contraction is flat vitreomacular traction. PPV and membrane peeling are effective in improving macular anatomic features and visual function.
Combining polymers with diamond-like carbon (DLC) for highly functionalized materials

Abstract Diamond-like carbon (DLC) can be effectively coated on polymer surfaces in order to modify polymers for highly functionalized materials. DLC films have been widely used for many industrial applications due to their outstanding physical properties such as high hardness, wear resistance and biological compatibility. Polymers, on the other hand, can create soft, flexible, highly absorbent and cost-effective materials by selecting or controlling their molecular structures. The DLC films coated on such polymer substrates have been investigated and extensively used because recently, quite a few applications of the polymer–DLC composites to e.g. gas barrier films and biocompatible medical devices have been proposed. In this article, we discussed the barrier properties, especially the gas barrier properties and the biocompatibility of DLC-coated polymers, after summarizing the fundamentals of DLC and polymers, followed by the explanation as to the adhesion and fracture behavior of DLC and polymers, which is crucial for the creation of a new polymer–DLC composite.
Conventional physical therapy with lumbar traction; clinical evaluation and magnetic resonance imaging for lumbar disc herniation.

OBJECTIVE
This study measures and compares the outcome of conservative physical therapy with traction, by using magnetic resonance imaging and clinical parameters in patients presenting with low back pain caused by lumbar disc herniation.


METHODS
A total of 26 patients with LDH (14F, 12M with mean aged 37 +/- 11) were enrolled in this study and 15 sessions (per day on 3 weeks) of physical therapy were applied. That included hot pack, ultrasound, electrotherapy and lumbar traction. Physical examination of the lumbar spine, severity of pain, sleeping order, patient and physician global assessment with visual analogue scale, functional disability by HAQ, Roland Disability Questionnaire, and Modified Oswestry Disability Questionnaire were assessed at baseline and at 4-6 weeks after treatment. Magnetic resonance imaging examinations were carried out before and 4-6 weeks after the treatment


RESULTS
All patients completed the therapy session. There were significant reductions in pain, sleeping disturbances, patient and physician global assessment and disability scores, and significant increases in lumbar movements between baseline and follow-up periods. There were significant reductions of size of the herniated mass in five patients, and significant increase in 3 patients on magnetic resonance imaging after treatment, but no differences in other patients.


CONCLUSIONS
This study showed that conventional physical therapies with lumbar traction were effective in the treatment of patient with subacute LDH. These results suggest that clinical improvement is not correlated with the finding of MRI. Patients with LDH should be monitored clinically (Fig. 3, Ref. 18).
Recent Advances in the Synthesis of Thiophene Derivatives by Cyclization of Functionalized Alkynes

This review is intended to highlight some recent and particularly interesting examples of the synthesis of thiophene derivatives by heterocyclization of readily available S-containing alkyne substrates.
Nutrition and cognitive development.

30 Gwlford Street, London W O N 1EH, UK There has been a long standing interest in whether undernutrition, at a sensitive or critical period of brain growth or maturation could have a long lasting or permanent 'programming' influence on later cognitive performance. One noteworthy example of a nutritional influence on cognitive function is maternal iodine deficiency, which may result in frank cretinism or reduced cognitive function and school performance in the offspring. These nutritional effects, mediated here by an endocrine mechanism, are irreversible. A key question is whether other general or specific nutritional insufficiencies can likewise influence or 'programme' cognitive function. Given the extent and range of nutritional deficiencies worldwide, this question is of great significance for mankind. Animal studies have demonstrated that nutritional deprivation affects measures of performance, but it is difficult to extrapolate from such measures in animals (largely rodents) to human cognition, though they are of importance in establishing both the principle and mechanism of any associations. Causal links between early nutrition and later cognitive performance in man have been difficult to establish. Nutritional deprivation studies would clearly be unethical, so that most investigations have been of nutritional supplementation in populations suffering poverty and undernutrition, which may confound the relationship, making the influence of undernutrition itself difficult to assess. The greatest need, identified by Birch in 1968, is for randomised trials of nutritional intervention and outcome in man. Some such studies have been undertaken relatively recently. As well as overall or protein-energy nutrition, there is considerable interest in whether a deficiency of specific nutrients at a sensitive or critical period for brain development could result in a long term or permanent cognitive deficit. The role of dietary iron intake in later cognitive function has been extensively researched in both animals and humans. Zinc deficiency has also received attention in this respect. That breast fed infants perform better than those fed artificially, even after adjusting for potential confounding factors, has led to the hypothesis
Development of a community health inclusion index: an evaluation tool for improving inclusion of people with disabilities in community health initiatives

BACKGROUND
Community health initiatives often do not provide enough supports for people with disabilities to fully participate in healthy, active living opportunities. The purpose of this study was to design an instrument that focused on integrating disability-related items into a multi-level survey tool that assessed healthy, active living initiatives.


METHODS
The development and testing of the Community Health Inclusion Index (CHII) involved four components: (a) literature review of studies that examined barriers and facilitators to healthy, active living; (b) focus groups with persons with disabilities and professionals living in geographically diverse settings; (c) expert panel to establish a final set of critical items; and (d) field testing the CHII in 164 sites across 15 communities in 5 states to assess the instrument's reliability.


RESULTS
Results from initial analysis of these data indicated that the CHII has good reliability. Depending on the subscale, Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.700 to 0.965. The CHII's inter-rater agreement showed that 14 of the 15 venues for physical activity or healthy eating throughout a community had strong agreement (0.81 - 1.00), while one venue had substantial agreement (0.61 - 0.80).


CONCLUSION
The CHII is the first instrument to operationalize community health inclusion into a comprehensive assessment tool that can be used by public health professionals and community coalitions to examine the critical supports needed for improving healthy, active living among people with disabilities.
A unified framework for event summarization and rare event detection

In this paper, we have proposed an unified framework for event summarization and rare event detection and presented the graph-structure learning and editing method to solve these problems efficiently. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method outperformed conventional algorithms in complex and crowded public scenes by exploiting and utilizing causality, frequency, and significance of relations of events.
ExoplanetSat: Detecting transiting exoplanets using a low-cost CubeSat platform

Nanosatellites, i.e. spacecraft that weigh between 1 and 10 kg, are drawing increasing interest as platforms for conducting on-orbit science. This trend is primarily driven by the ability to piggyback nanosatellites on the launch of large spacecraft and hence achieve orbit at greatly reduced cost. The CubeSat platform is a standardized nanosatellite configuration, consisting of one, two, or three 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm units (1, 2, or 3 “U”s) arranged in a row. We present a CubeSat-based concept for the discovery of transiting exoplanets around the nearest and brightest Sun-like stars. The spacecraft prototype—termed ExoplanetSat—is a 3U space telescope capable of monitoring a single target star from low Earth orbit. Given the volume limitations of the CubeSat form factor, designing a capable spacecraft requires overcoming significant challenges. This work presents the initial satellite configuration along with several subsystem-specific solutions to the aforementioned constraints. An optical design based on a modified commercial off-the-shelf camera lens is given. We also describe a novel two-stage attitude control architecture that combines 3-axis reaction wheels for coarse pointing with a piezoelectric translation stage at the focal plane for fine pointing. Modeling and simulation results are used to demonstrate feasibility by quantifying ExoplanetSat pointing precision, signal-to-noise ratio, guide star magnitude, and additional design parameters which determine system performance.