LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Patient-controlled analgesia with oral methadone in cancer pain: preliminary report.

BACKGROUND
Methadone is a very useful drug in cancer pain because of its low cost, lack of active metabolites, high oral availability, and the rapid onset of its analgesic effect. It seems to be well tolerated in patients with difficult pain syndromes who are receiving high doses of opioids, and it may deter the development of tolerance, but a high individual variation in terminal elimination half-life can result in different rates and extents of drug accumulation. For this reason, oral patient-controlled analgesia with methadone was used in 24 advanced-disease patients with pain.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
A regimen of self-administered oral methadone at fixed doses and flexible patient-controlled dosage intervals to achieve adequate analgesia, while avoiding toxic effects of methadone accumulation, was used in 24 patients requiring opioid therapy. After a priming period of three days with fixed doses of 3-5 mg three times a day for naïve patients and 50% of the morphine equivalent of methadone in patients switched from morphine, patients and relatives were instructed to maintain the night-time dose and to administer a second dose when the pain recurred. When more than four doses of methadone a day were used, an increase of the dosage was prescribed. Continuous pain assessment and monitoring of symptoms were offered.


RESULTS
The majority of patients achieved good pain relief until death, and three were switched to very low doses of subcutaneous morphine in their final days. The methadone escalation index was about 2% a day, with a mean dosage increase of 0.3 mg a day for an average of 60 days of treatment at doses ranging from 9 to 80 mg. The plasma concentration in 14 patients ranged from 0.013 to 0.273 mcg/ml with dosages of 20-80 mg during chronic treatment. A mean of 2.4 doses a day was reported, including the fixed night-time dose. The extent of side effects was considered acceptable.


CONCLUSION
Patient-administered analgesia with oral methadone appears to be a simple, cheap and relatively safe technique for controlling cancer pain, permitting individualization by the patient him- or herself and avoiding the risk of accumulation. Continuous assessment is necessary.
A neural network approach for attenuation relationships : An application using strong ground motion data from Turkey

This paper presents an application of neural network approach for the prediction of peak ground acceleration (PGA) using the strong motion data from Turkey, as a soft computing technique to remove uncertainties in attenuation equations. A training algorithm based on the Fletcher–Reeves conjugate gradient back-propagation was developed and employed for three sample sets of strong ground motion. The input variables in the constructed artificial neural network (ANN) model were the magnitude, the source-to-site distance and the site conditions, and the output was the PGA. The generalization capability of ANN algorithms was tested with the same training data. To demonstrate the authenticity of this approach, the network predictions were compared with the ones from regressions for the corresponding attenuation equations. The results indicated that the fitting between the predicted PGA values by the networks and the observed ones yielded high correlation coefficients (R). In addition, comparisons of the correlations by the ANN and the regression method showed that the ANN approach performed better than the regression. Even though the developed ANN models suffered from optimal configuration about the generalization capability, they can be conservatively used to well understand the influence of input parameters for the PGA predictions. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The Participatory Effects of Redistricting

While the effects of legal and institutional arrangements on political participation are well documented, little attention has been given to the potential participatory effects of one of the United States’ most important electoral laws: constitutionally mandated reapportionment. By severing the ties between constituents and their incumbents, we argue, redistricting raises information costs, leading to increased levels of nonvoting in U.S. House contests. Survey data from the 1992 American National Election Studies show that redrawn citizens are half as likely to know their incumbent’s name as citizens who remain in a familiar incumbent’s district and, consequently, significantly more likely to roll off, or abstain from voting in the House election after having cast a presidential vote. We also show that participation rates in the 2002–2006 House elections in Texas—each of which followed a redistricting—match these patterns, with roll-off increasing 3% to 8% in portions of the state that were redrawn, controlling for other factors. The findings demonstrate that scholars and policy makers ought to be concerned with the extent to which the redrawing of congressional lines affects citizens’ exercise of political voice.
Is a planned caesarean section in women with cardiac disease beneficial?

OBJECTIVES
In the general population, planned caesarean section is thought to be safer in high-risk situations as it avoids the greater risk of an emergency caesarean section. Only limited data exist on the optimal mode of delivery in women with structural heart disease. We investigated the relationship between mode of delivery and pregnancy outcome in women with pre-existing heart disease.


METHODS
The Registry on Pregnancy and Cardiac Disease is an on-going, global, prospective observational registry of women with structural heart disease. We report on 1262 deliveries, between January 2007 and June 2011.


RESULTS
The caesarean section was planned in 393 women (31%): 172 (44%) for cardiac and 221 (56%) for obstetric reasons of whom 53 delivered by emergency caesarean section. Vaginal delivery was planned in 869 (69%) women, of whom 726 (84%) actually delivered vaginally and 143 (16%) had an emergency caesarean section. Perinatal mortality(1.1 vs 2.7, p=0.14) and low apgar score (11.9 vs 10.1, p=0.45) were not significantly different in women who had a caesarean section or vaginal delivery; gestational age(37 vs 38 weeks p=0.003) and birth weight (3073 vs 2870 g p<0.001) were lower in women delivered by caesarean section compared with women delivered by vaginal delivery. In those delivered by elective or emergency caesarean section, there was no difference in maternal mortality (1.8% vs 1.5%, p=1.0), postpartum heart failure (8.8% vs 8.2% p=0.79) or haemorrhage (6.2% vs 5.1% p=0.61).


CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest that planned caesarean section does not confer any advantage over planned vaginal delivery, in terms of maternal outcome, but is associated with an adverse fetal outcome.
Involvement of polyamines in the contrasting sensitivity of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill.) to water deficit stress

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L. cv. GPF2) and soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill cv. Brag) genotypes were subjected to varying water stress levels of -0.2 to -0.8 MPa to assess their relative sensitivity towards water stress. Soybean seedlings experienced significantly more stress injury (as electrolyte leakage) than chickpea at all stress levels. LD 50 in terms of percent germination, root length, and root growth rate occurred at -0.4 MPa in soybean and at -0.6 MPa in chickpea. In chickpea, the root water content was higher than in soybean during stress. Endogenous levels of individual as well as total polyamines (PAs) in roots of 7-d-old seedlings subjected to -0.8 MPa stress increased to a significantly greater extent in chickpea than in soybean. The stress injury was accentuated as the PA levels declined in both the plant types. The reduced levels of PAs in soybean, especially putrescine (PUT) and spermidine (SPD) relative to chickpea, were related to higher stress injury and decreased water content. Exogenous PUT and SPD markedly mitigated the stress-induced effects, particularly in soybean. Inhibitor studies involving α-Difluromethylarginine (DFMA) and α-difluromethylornithine (DFMO), the biosynthetic inhibitors of PUT, as well as cyclohexylamine (CHA), biosynthetic inhibitor of SPD and SPM, corroborated the role of PAs in mediating the differential sensitivity of chickpea and soybean to water stress.
[Guidelines of the European Respiratory Society and the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons for the management of malignant pleural mesothelioma].

Disclaimer: "This Chinese translation has not been reviewed by European Respiratory Society prior to publication, therefore the European Respiratory Society may not be responsible for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies, or for any consequences arising there from, in the Chinese content." Correspondence to: A. Scherpereel. Dept of Pulmonary and Thoracic Oncology, Hospital Calmette CHRU of Lille 59037 Lille Cedex, France E-mail: a-scherpereel@chru-lille.fr Eur Respir J 2010; 35: 479-495. 欧洲呼吸学会和欧洲胸外科医师学会恶性 胸膜间皮瘤诊疗指南
Rotigotine transdermal system for control of early morning motor impairment and sleep disturbances in patients with Parkinson’s disease

This open-label study (NCT00243945) investigated the efficacy of rotigotine transdermal system in 54 Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with unsatisfactory control of early morning motor impairment and sleep disturbances. Rotigotine dose was up titrated for 8 weeks and maintained for 4 weeks. Mean rotigotine dose at end of maintenance was 11.83 mg/24 h (SD 3.86). Patients had two overnight hospital stays at baseline and end of treatment during which early morning motor performance was assessed, prior to first morning dose of regular oral antiparkinsonian medication. Rotigotine improved mean Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) part III score by −9.3 points, mean Timed Up and Go test duration by −1.4 s and mean morning finger tapping by 26.5 taps/min; 46% of patients were considered responders (≥30% improvement of UPDRS III). Mean Nocturnal Akinesia, Dystonia and Cramps Sum Score was reduced by 61%; mean number of nocturias decreased by 32%. Rotigotine also improved sleep quality. These results suggest a role for rotigotine in treatment of nocturnal and early morning motor disabilities in PD patients.
Training in Urban Medicine and Public Health: TRIUMPH.

PURPOSE
The number of U.S. medical school graduates who choose to practice in health professional shortage areas (HPSAs) has not kept pace with the needs of society. The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has created a new program that prepares medical students to reduce health disparities for urban medically underserved populations in Milwaukee. The authors describe the Training in Urban Medicine and Public Health (TRIUMPH) program and provide early, short-term outcomes.


METHOD
TRIUMPH integrates urban clinical training, community and public health curricula, longitudinal community and public health projects, mentoring, and peer support for select third- and fourth-year medical students. The authors tracked and held focus groups with program participants to assess their knowledge, skills, satisfaction, confidence, and residency matches. The authors surveyed community partners to assess their satisfaction with students and the program.


RESULTS
From 2009 to 2012, 53 students enrolled in the program, and 45 have conducted projects with community organizations. Participants increased their knowledge, skills, confidence, and commitment to work with urban medically underserved populations. Compared with local peers, TRIUMPH graduates were more likely to select primary care specialties and residency programs serving urban underserved populations. Community leaders have reported high levels of satisfaction and benefits; their interest in hosting students exceeds program capacity.


CONCLUSIONS
Early, short-term outcomes confirm that TRIUMPH is achieving its desired goals: attracting and preparing medical students to work with urban underserved communities. The program serves as a model to prepare physicians to meet the needs of urban HPSAs.
Mental health of children and adolescents with intellectual disabilities in Britain.

BACKGROUND
Few studies have employed formal diagnostic criteria to determine the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in contemporaneous samples of children with and without intellectual disabilities.


AIMS
To establish the prevalence of psychiatric disorders against ICD-10 criteria among children with and without intellectual disabilities, the association with social/environmental risk factors, and risk attributable to intellectual disability.


METHOD
Secondary analysis of the 1999 and 2004 Office for National Statistics surveys of the mental health of British children and adolescents with (n=641) and without (n=17 774) intellectual disability.


RESULTS
Prevalence of psychiatric disorders was 36% among children with intellectual disability and 8% among children without (OR=6.5). Children with intellectual disabilities accounted for 14% of all British children with a diagnosable psychiatric disorder. Increased prevalence was particularly marked for autistic-spectrum disorder (OR=33.4), hyperkinesis (OR=8.4) and conduct disorders (OR=5.7). Cumulative risk of exposure to social disadvantage was associated with increased prevalence.


CONCLUSIONS
A significant proportion of the elevated risk for psychopathology among children with intellectual disability may be due to their increased rate of exposure to psychosocial disadvantage.
Artificial Intelligence Safety Engineering: Why Machine Ethics Is a Wrong Approach

Machine ethics and robot rights are quickly becoming hot topics in artificial intelligence/robotics communities. We will argue that the attempts to allow machines to make ethical decisions or to have rights are misguided. Instead we propose a new science of safety engineering for intelligent artificial agents. In particular we issue a challenge to the scientific community to develop intelligent systems capable of proving that they are in fact safe even under recursive selfimprovement.
LTE Antenna Design for Mobile Phone With Metal Frame

A novel Long Term Evolution (LTE) antenna design for mobile phones with metal frame is proposed. In particular, in this design only the metal frame acts as the antenna radiating element, and the full-band LTE is covered with the help of a bandpass filter, an inductor, as well as a matching circuit. An antenna prototype is fabricated and measured; the measured operating bands with S11 lower than -6 dB cover 698-960 MHz (LTE low band) and 1710-2690 MHz (LTE high band). Good agreement between the simulation and measurement is obtained.
Telaprevir with peginterferon and ribavirin for chronic HCV genotype 1 infection.

BACKGROUND
Current therapy for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is effective in less than 50% of patients infected with HCV genotype 1. Telaprevir, a protease inhibitor specific to the HCV nonstructural 3/4A serine protease, rapidly reduced HCV RNA levels in early studies.


METHODS
We randomly assigned patients infected with HCV genotype 1 to one of three telaprevir groups or to the control group. The control group (called the PR48 group) received peginterferon alfa-2a (180 microg per week) and ribavirin (1000 or 1200 mg per day, according to body weight) for 48 weeks, plus telaprevir-matched placebo for the first 12 weeks (75 patients). The telaprevir groups received telaprevir (1250 mg on day 1 and 750 mg every 8 hours thereafter) for 12 weeks, as well as peginterferon alfa-2a and ribavirin (at the same doses as in the PR48 group) for the same 12 weeks (the T12PR12 group, 17 patients) or for a total of 24 weeks (the T12PR24 group, 79 patients) or 48 weeks (the T12PR48 group, 79 patients). The primary outcome was a sustained virologic response (an undetectable HCV RNA level 24 weeks after the end of therapy).


RESULTS
The rate of sustained virologic response was 41% (31 of 75 patients) in the PR48 group, as compared with 61% (48 of 79 patients) in the T12PR24 group (P=0.02), 67% (53 of 79 patients) in the T12PR48 group (P=0.002), and 35% (6 of 17 patients) in the T12PR12 group (this group was exploratory and not compared with the control group). Viral breakthrough occurred in 7% of patients receiving telaprevir. The rate of discontinuation because of adverse events was higher in the three telaprevir-based groups (21%, vs. 11% in the PR48 group), with rash the most common reason for discontinuation.


CONCLUSIONS
Treatment with a telaprevir-based regimen significantly improved sustained virologic response rates in patients with genotype 1 HCV, albeit with higher rates of discontinuation because of adverse events. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00336479.)
Mechanism of minimum quantity lubrication in high-speed milling of hardened steel

The rapid wear rate of cutting tools due to high cutting temperature is a critical problem to be solved in high-speed machining (HSM) of hardened steels. Near-dry machining such as minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) is regarded as one of the solutions to this difficulty. However, the function of MQL in HSM is still uncertain so far which prevents MQL from widely being utilized in the machining of hardened steels. In this paper, the mechanism of MQL in HSM of hardened steel is investigated more comprehensively. Comparing with dry cutting, the tool performance can be enhanced by MQL under all cutting speeds in this study. It is found that MQL can provide extra oxygen to promote the formation of a protective oxide layer in between the chip–tool interface. This layer is basically quaternary compound oxides of Fe, Mn, Si, and Al, and is proved to act as diffusion barriers effectively. Hence, the strength and wear resistance of a cutting tool can be retained which leads to a significant improvement of tool life. It is found that there exists an optimal cutting speed at which a stable protective oxide layer can be formed. When cutting speed is lower than this speed, there is less oxide layer and the improvement of tool life is less apparent. As the cutting speed is far beyond the optimal value, the protective layer is absent and the thermal cracks are apt to occur at the cutting edge due to large fluctuation of temperature. Resultantly, application of MQL is inappropriate in the extreme high-speed cutting condition irrespective of its little increase in tool life. Based on this study, it is concluded that the tool life can be effectively improved by MQL in HSM of NAK80 hardened steels when cutting parameters are chosen properly. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Understanding Changes in Belief and Attitude Toward Information Technology Usage: A Theoretical Model and Longitudinal Test

User beliefs and attitudes are key perceptions driving information technology usage. These per ceptions, however, may change with time as users gain first-hand experience with IT usage, which, in turn, may change their subsequent IT usage behavior. This paper elaborates how users' be 1Ritu Agarwal was the accepting senior editor for this paper. liefs and attitudes change during the course of their IT usage, defines emergent constructs driving such change, and proposes a temporal model of belief and attitude change by drawing on expectation-disconfirmation theory and the extant IT usage literature. Student data from two longi tudinal studies in end-user computing (computer based training system usage) and system devel opment (rapid application development software usage) contexts provided empirical support for the hypothesized model, demonstrated its generali zability across technologies and usage contexts, and allowed us to probe context-specific diffe rences. Content analysis of qualitative data vali dated some of our quantitative results. We report that emergent factors such as disconfirmation and satisfaction are critical to understanding changes in IT users' beliefs and attitudes and recommend that they be included in future process models of IT usage.
Correction of endothelial dysfunction in chronic heart failure: additional effects of exercise training and oral L-arginine supplementation.

OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to analyze whether L-arginine (L-arg.) has comparable or additive effects to physical exercise regarding endothelium-dependent vasodilation in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF).


BACKGROUND
Endothelial dysfunction in patients with CHF can be corrected by both dietary supplementation with L-arg. and regular physical exercise.


METHODS
Forty patients with severe CHF (left ventricular ejection fraction 19 +/- 9%) were randomized to an L-arg. group (8 g/day), a training group (T) with daily handgrip training, L-arg. and T (L-arg. + T) or an inactive control group (C). The mean internal radial artery diameter was determined at the beginning and after four weeks in response to brachial arterial administration of acetylcholine (ACh) (7.5, 15, 30 microg/min) and nitroglycerin (0.2 mg/min) with a transcutaneous high-resolution 10 MHz A-mode echo tracking system coupled with a Doppler device. The power of the study to detect clinically significant differences in endothelium-dependent vasodilation was 96.6%.


RESULTS
At the beginning, the mean endothelium-dependent vasodilation in response to ACh, 30 microg/min was 2.54 +/- 0.09% (p = NS between groups). After four weeks, internal radial artery diameter increased by 8.8 +/- 0.9% after ACh 30 microg/min in L-arg. (p < 0.001 vs. C), by 8.6 +/- 0.9% in T (p < 0.001 vs. C) and by 12.0 +/- 0.3% in L-arg. +/- T (p < 0.005 vs. C, L-arg. and T). Endothelium-independent vasodilation as assessed by infusion of nitroglycerin was similar in all groups at the beginning and at the end of the study.


CONCLUSIONS
Dietary supplementation of L-arg. as well as regular physical exercise improved agonist-mediated, endothelium-dependent vasodilation to a similar extent. Both interventions together seem to produce additive effects with respect to endothelium-dependent vasodilation.
Smart home research

This paper is a survey for smart home research, from definition to current research status. First we give a definition to smart home, and then describe the smart home elements, typical research projects, smart home networks research status, smart home appliances and challenges at last.
Identification of NDM-1-producing Enterobacteriaceae in Norway.

Reference Centre for Detection of Antimicrobial Resistance, Department of Microbiology and Infection Control, University Hospital of North Norway, N-9038 Tromsø, Norway; Department of Medical Microbiology, Drammen Hospital, Drammen, Norway; Department of Medicine, Drammen Hospital, Drammen, Norway; Laboratory for Medical Microbiology, Levanger Hospital, Levanger, Norway; Research Group for Host-Microbe Interactions, Department of Medical Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway
VideoBERT: A Joint Model for Video and Language Representation Learning

Self-supervised learning has become increasingly important to leverage the abundance of unlabeled data available on platforms like YouTube. Whereas most existing approaches learn low-level representations, we propose a joint visual-linguistic model to learn high-level features without any explicit supervision. In particular, inspired by its recent success in language modeling, we build upon the BERT model to learn bidirectional joint distributions over sequences of visual and linguistic tokens, derived from vector quantization of video data and off-the-shelf speech recognition outputs, respectively. We use this model in a number of tasks, including action classification and video captioning. We show that it can be applied directly to openvocabulary classification, and confirm that large amounts of training data and cross-modal information are critical to performance. Furthermore, we outperform the state-of-theart on video captioning, and quantitative results verify that the model learns high-level semantic features.