LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Algorithm 756: A MATLAB Toolbox for Schwarz-Christoffel Mapping

The Schwarz-Christoffel transformation and its variations yield formulas for conformal maps from standard regions to the interiors or exteriors of possibly unbounded polygons. Computations involving these maps generally require a computer, and although the numerical aspects of these transformations have been studied, there are few software implementations that are widely available and suited for general use. The Schwarz-Christoffel Toolbox for MATLAB is a new implementation of Schwarz-Christoffel formulas for maps from the disk, half-plane, strip, and rectangle domains to polygon interiors, and from the disk to polygon exteriors. The toolbox, written entirely in the MATLAB script language, exploits the high-level functions, interactive environment, visualization tools, and graphical user interface elements supplied by current versions of MATLAB, and is suitable for use both as a standalone tool and as a library for applications written in MATLAB, Fortran, or C. Several examples and simple applications are presented to demonstrate the toolbox's capabilities.
Exclusion of patients from quality measurement of diabetes care in the UK pay-for-performance programme.

BACKGROUND
We examined associations between patient and practice characteristics and exclusions from quality indicators for diabetes during the first 3 years of the Quality and Outcomes Framework, a major pay-for-performance scheme in the UK.


METHODS
Three cross-sectional analyses, conducted using data from the electronic medical records of all patients with diabetes registered in 23 general practices in Brent, North West London between 2004/2005 and 2006/2007. Patterns of exclusions were examined for three intermediate outcome indicators.


RESULTS
Excluded patients were less likely to achieve treatment targets for HbA(1c) (2004/2005, 2006/2007), blood pressure (2005/2006, 2006/2007) and cholesterol (2005/2006). Black and South Asian patients were more likely to be excluded from the HbA(1c) indicator than White patients [adjusted odds ratio = 1.64 (1.17-2.29) in 2005/2006]. Patients diagnosed with diabetes duration of > 10 years [adjusted odds ratio = 2.01 (1.65-2.45) for HbA(1c) in 2006-2007] and those with co-morbidities (adjusted odds ratio, ≥ 3 co-morbidities compared with no co-morbidity for HbA(1c) adjusted odds ratio = 1.90 (1.24-2.90) in 2004/2005] were more likely to be excluded. Larger practices excluded more patients from the HbA(1c) indicator [adjusted odds ratio, practice ≥ 7000 compared with < 3000, 3.52 (2.35-5.27) in 2005-2006]. More deprived practices consistently excluded more patients from all indicators, whilst in 2007 older patients were excluded to a larger degree [adjusted odds ratio = 2.52 (1.21-5.28) ≥ 75 compared with 18-44 for blood pressure control].


CONCLUSIONS
Patients excluded from pay-for-performance programmes may be less likely to achieve treatment goals and disproportionately come from disadvantaged groups. Permitting physicians to exclude patients from pay-for-performance programmes may worsen health disparities.
Lack of e Y cacy of low dose oral interferon alfa in symptomatic HIV-1 infection : a randomised , double blind , placebo controlled trial

Background: Interferon alfa (IFN-á) exhibits dose related in vitro activity against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with complete inhibition of HIV replication at IFN-á concentrations > 256 IU/ml. In mid-1990, Kenyan investigators reported that oral administration of an extremely low dose (150 IU/day) of natural human (nHu) IFN-á resulted in complete alleviation of AIDS related complex and AIDS symptoms and resolution of opportunistic infections without additional treatment. Moreover, loss of HIV antibody seropositivity was reported in approximately 10% of treated patients. Subsequent small studies failed to substantiate these spectacular claims, but controversy on the eYcacy of this treatment persisted. Methods: We studied 559 adult Ugandan patients with WHO stage 2–4 HIV infection and a Karnofsky performance score of more than 50, who had not received any drugs with antiretroviral activity in the previous 3 months. The patients were randomly assigned in a double blind fashion either to 150 IU oral nHuIFN-á/day or placebo. The duration of treatment was extended from 28 weeks to 60 weeks 9 months after enrolment had started. At that time 112 subjects had already received 28 weeks of treatment and been discontinued from the study. Results: Both study groups were comparable with respect to all baseline characteristics studied, except that the nHuIFN-á group had slightly lower absolute CD4+ lymphocyte counts (median 60.7 × 10/l) than the placebo group (median 85.3 × 10/l) (p=0.033). Therefore, all analyses were adjusted for CD4+ lymphocyte counts at entry. In both treatment groups there was relentless progression of HIV disease. Subjects treated with nHuIFN-á and placebo had similar mortality, disease progression rates, decline of CD4+ lymphocyte counts and Karnofsky performance scores, and prevalence of symptoms. No patient reverted to HIV-l seronegative antibody status. Serious adverse events were not seen. Quality control of the study medication documented that the active drug indeed contained IFN-á activity. Conclusions: The current large, randomised, double blind, placebo controlled study did not show any benefit from oral treatment with 150 IU nHuIFN-á/day in a population of African patients with symptomatic HIV infection. (Sex Transm Inf 1998;74:265–270)
An assessment of the inverter switching characteristics in DTC induction motor drives

The switching characteristics of an inverter feeding an induction motor controlled with the direct torque control (DTC) technique are assessed in steady state. At first, the application share of the inverter voltage vectors for the stator flux covering half a sextant is defined and predicted. The prediction indicates that, under operation at fixed inverter dc link voltage and stator flux magnitude, the application share depends only on the supply frequency of the motor and, to a small extent, on the load. Afterwards, the inverter transitions and the corresponding phase commutations within a stator flux sextant are analyzed. The outcome of the analysis permits to compute the commutations of the inverter phases in one turn of the stator flux and, from them, the inverter switching frequency is obtained. Its value is influenced by the sampling interval and the control delay arising from the microprocessor implementation of DTC. For given sampling interval and control delay, it is shown that the inverter switching frequency depends on the same quantities as the application share of the inverter voltage vectors. A comparison with the switching characteristics of an inverter controlled with the space vector modulation technique is carried out. At last, the paper discusses the sensitivity of the switching frequency of an inverter for DTC to the following quantities: inverter dc link voltage, sampling interval and control delay. Throughout the paper simulation and experimental results are given to confirm the theoretical findings.
A phase I study of 5-fluorouracil/leucovorin and arsenic trioxide for patients with refractory/relapsed colorectal carcinoma.

PURPOSE
This Phase I study was designed to determine a safe combination dose of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and arsenic trioxide (ATO) to treat 5-FU-resistant relapsed/refractory colorectal cancer patients. We studied the effect of ATO in the downregulation of thymidylate synthase (TS) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells and in tumor biopsies.


EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN
ATO was administered for 5 consecutive days during the first week and twice during weeks 2 to 3 and once on week 4. 5-FU/leucovorin (LV) was administered on days 8, 15, and 22. A modified accelerated titration design was used. 5-FU was dose escalated first followed by a planned dose increase for ATO.


RESULTS
No dose-limiting toxicities were seen in seven patients who received 0.15 mg/kg ATO; grade 3 toxicities were as follows: neutropenia 1, diarrhea 1, and bowel obstruction 1. In patients receiving 0.20 mg/kg ATO, grade 3 toxicities were QTc prolongation 1, fatigue 4, alkaline phosphatase elevation 2, diarrhea 2, and peripheral edema 1. TS gene expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cell decreased in all patients. Eight tumors were biopsied, four showed TS downregulation, three showed upregulations, and one did not change. Estimated median progression-free survival and overall survival were 3.1 and 13.9 months, respectively. In patients who showed TS increase or no change versus TS reduction, estimated median progression-free survival was 2.6 versus 7.9 months (P = 0.188) and overall survival was 8.6 versus 11.7 months (P = 0.44), respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Thus, we determined 0.20 mg/kg ATO, 2,600 mg/m(2) 5-FU, and 500 mg/m(2) leucovorin (LV) to be the recommended phase II dose.
Implementing wireless Adhoc networks for disaster relief communication

Catastrophic disasters cause failure of conventional communication systems where they can be collapsed completely or partially. In such situations disaster relief operations are deployed immediately in order to save human lives. Communication and exchange of Information are extremely vital for disaster response in order to gather information and make important decisions. Hence raises the requirement for rapidly deployable, robust to failures, easily maintainable and service provider independent communication systems. But the feasible technology options are very limited. Use of portable wireless Ad-hoc networks for establishing communication with the aid of existing infrastructure in a post disaster situation in order to coordinate field activities of rescue crews can solve many problems exist. In this paper we have proposed a wireless Ad-hoc network architecture that can be used to establish emergency communication. Core of the network is created using Wi-Fi nodes adopting the Ad-hoc paradigm. Portable wirelesses nodes can be installed in the disaster area where they inter communicate while rescuers and survivors can connect to these nodes using Wi-Fi devices. System is specifically aimed for communication using smart phones as they are common and Wi-Fi capable. At least one of the nodes in an area has a long distance transceiver unit in order to establish communication between the rescue operation and a faraway data center. A prototype system is constructed to evaluate the function of the network and its performance through several disaster applications such as Voice over IP (Internet Protocol), broadcasting messages, peer to peer texting and file transferring.
Heparin Therapy in Pediatric Patients: A Prospective Cohort Study

ABSTRACT: Current guidelines for heparin therapy in pediatric patients have been extrapolated from trials in adult patients without rigorous evaluation of efficacy and safety. We prospectively monitored consecutive pediatric patients receiving systemic doses of heparin over 10 mo at one institution using a predetermined nomogram to monitor maintenance therapy. Sixty-five consecutive children; 38 males and 27 females, received systemic doses of heparin. Thirty children had deep venous thrombosis and/or pulmonary embolism; 11 had arterial thrombi, most frequently after diagnostic angiography; and the remaining 24 received heparin prophylactically, for congenital heart disease. Twenty-nine (45%) of the 65 patients were less than 1 y of age and 22 (34%) were 10 y or older. Congenital heart disease was the predominant diagnosis under 1 y and deep venous thrombosis in older children. After a bolus dose of 50 U/kg, 39% of children (n = 30) achieved a minimal level activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT). Sixty-eight percent of children achieved a minimal level APTT by 24 h and 81% by 48 h. For all 65 children, APTT values were within the therapeutic range 43% of the time. APTT values outside the therapeutic range were twice as likely to be low as high. The average amount of heparin required to maintain therapeutic APTT values for children was 22 U/kg/h: 28 U/kg/h for infants <1 y and 20 U/kg/h for the rest. Bleeding was rare (2%) and mild. Documented recurrent thrombotic disease was more common (7%) with associated morbidity. In summary, a commonly used protocol for administration of heparin to children was rigorously evaluated and shown to provide insufficient amounts of heparin in the first days of treatment. Average requirements of heparin per kilogram per hour were determined and will form the bases of future studies.
Study of effect of microsecond pulsed electric fields on threshold area of HeLa cells

Microsecond pulse electric field (μsPEF) application development substantially affected the development of research process including controlling cell functions by using pulses of electrical fields to create pores through a cellular membrane causes cell lysis and apoptosis commonly known as electroporation. Here we demonstrate the influence of the μsPEF on the threshold area (TA) of human cervical cancer cells (HeLa) membrane. The electric field for μsPEF is 3 kV/cm while the pulse interval is 100 ms. The pulse length and the number of pulses were fixed at 10 μs and 5, respectively. While the cultured skin cells are placed in 9 mm-gap EP electrode chamber for allowing real time observation of membrane permeability changes and cellular physiology. In order to initiate higher cell viability rate, high transfection efficiency, lower sample contamination and smaller Joule heating effect the modification of EP chamber need to be done which can be controlled by pH scale, temperature and humidity. The experiment using high pulse electrical field with simply repetitive pulses shows the threshold area of cell membrane was decreasing gradually to 44.59 μm, and is settled within hundreds of second. We found that the threshold area of cells membrane was affected when exposed to high voltage pulse electric field. The dependence of the threshold area on the HeLa cell membrane might be associated with the electrical impedance of the plasma membrane that begins to fluctuate after the application of a certain level of μsPEF.
GPS Signal Authentication From Cooperative Peers

Secure reliable position information is indispensable for many transportation systems and services, such as traffic monitoring, fleet management, electronic toll collection, route guidance, vehicle telematics, and emergency response. Unfortunately, civil Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are vulnerable to spoofing attacks. This paper introduces a signal authentication architecture based on a network of cooperative GPS receivers. A receiver in the network correlates its received military P(Y) signal with those received by other receivers (hereinafter referred to as cross-check receivers) to detect spoofing attacks. This paper describes three candidate structures to implement this architecture and evaluates spoofing detection performance through theoretical analyses and field experiments. We show that the spoofing detection performance improves exponentially with increasing number of cross-check receivers. Even if the cross-check receivers are low cost, unreliable, and in challenging environment, cooperative authentication can match, if not outperform, a single high-quality reliable reference receiver in terms of spoofing detection performance.
Perfect Discrimination Graphs: Indexing Terms with Integer Exponents

Perfect discrimination trees [12] are used by many efficient resolution and superposition-based theorem provers (e.g. E-prover [17], Waldmeister [10], Logic Reasoner, ...) in order to efficiently implement rewriting and unit subsumption. We extend this indexing technique to handle a class of terms with integer exponents (or I-terms), a schematisation language allowing to capture sequences of iterated patterns [8]. We provide an algorithm to construct the so called perfect discrimination graphs from I-terms and to retrieve indexed I-terms from their instances. Our research is essentially motivated (but not restricted to) by some approaches to inductive proofs, for which termination of the proof procedure is capital.
Longitudinal Muscle Dysfunction in Achalasia Esophagus and Its Relevance

Muscularis propria of the esophagus is organized into circular and longitudinal muscle layers. Goal of this review is to summarize the role of longitudinal muscle in physiology and pathophysiology of esophageal sensory and motor function. Simultaneous manometry and ultrasound imaging that measure circular and longitudinal muscle contraction respectively reveal that during peristalsis 2 layers of the esophagus contract in perfect synchrony. On the other hand, during transient relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter (LES), longitudinal muscle contracts independently of circular muscle. Recent studies provide novel insights, i.e., longitudinal muscle contraction of the esophagus induces LES relaxation and possibly descending relaxation of the esophagus. In achalasia esophagus and other motility disorders there is discoordination between the 2 muscle layers. Longitudinal muscle contraction patterns are different in the recently described three types of achalasia identified by high-resolution manometry. Robust contraction of the longitudinal muscle in type II achalasia causes pan-esophageal pressurization and is the mechanism of whatever little esophageal emptying that take place in the absence of peristalsis and impaired LES relaxation. It may be that preserved longitudinal muscle contraction is also the reason for superior outcome to medical/surgical therapy in type II achalasia esophagus. Prolonged contractions of longitudinal muscles of the esophagus is a possible mechanism of heartburn and "angina like" pain seen in esophageal motility disorders and possibly achalasia esophagus. Novel techniques to record longitudinal muscle contraction are on the horizon. Neuro-pharmacologic control of circular and longitudinal muscles is different, which provides an important opportunity for the development of novel pharmacological therapies to treat sensory and motor disorders of the esophagus.
Antipyretic and antinociceptive properties of Mentha longifolia Huds. (Lamiaceae) leaf aqueous extract in rats and mice.

The antipyretic and antinociceptive properties of Mentha longifolia Huds. (Lamiaceae) leaf aqueous extract were investigated using lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced pyrexia in rats, and acetic acid and hot plate analgesia tests in mice. Pentoxifylline, paracetamol and morphine were used as standard drugs for comparison. M. longifolia leaf aqueous extract and pentoxifylline (37.5-150 mg/kg i.p.) significantly (P < 0.05-0.02) reduced the LPS (50 g/kg i.m.)-elicited pyrexia. Pentoxifylline (50 mg/kg i.p.) also significantly (P < 0.01) reduced LPS (50 g/kg i.m.)-induced pyrexia. M. longifolia leaf aqueous extract (6.25-100 mg/kg i.p.) and paracetamol (500 mg/kg i.p.) profoundly inhibited the writhes produced by 3% acetic acid. Furthermore, the plant extract (25-400 mg/kg i.p.) and morphine (10 mg/kg i.p.) significantly (P < 0.001) delayed the hot plate reaction time in mice. The LD(50) values for oral and intraperitoneal administration of the plant extract were > 3200 mg/kg and 1730 mg/kg, respectively. Phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of flavonoids, saponins, tannins, reducing sugars, cardiac glycosides and triterpene steroids in the leaves of M. longifolia. These data indicate that M. longifolia leaf aqueous extract has antipyretic and antinociceptive properties. Furthermore, the relatively high LD(50) values obtained for oral and intraperitoneal administration of the plant extract demonstrate that the plant extract is non-toxic to mice.
Miles and Me

Quincy Troupe's candid account of his friendship with Miles Davis is a revealing portrait of a great musician and an intimate study of a unique relationship. It is also an engrossing chronicle of the author's own development, both artistic and personal. As Davis' collaborator on "Miles: The Autobiography", Troupe - one of the major poets to emerge from the 1960s - had exceptional access to the musician. This memoir goes beyond the life portrayed in the autobiography to describe in detail the processes of Davis' spectacular creativity and the joys and difficulties his passionate, contradictory temperament posed to the men's friendship. It shows how Miles Davis, both as a black man and an artist, influenced not only Quincy Troupe but whole generations.Troupe has written that Miles Davis was "irascible, contemptuous, brutally honest, ill-tempered when things didn't go his way, complex, fair-minded, humble, kind and a son-of-a-bitch." The author's love and appreciation for Davis make him a keen, though not uncritical, observer. He captures and conveys the power of the musician's presence, the mesmerizing force of his personality, and the restless energy that lay at the root of his creativity. He also shows Davis' lighter side: cooking, prowling the streets of Manhattan, painting, riding his horse at his Malibu home. Troupe discusses Davis' musical output, situating his albums in the context of the times - both political and musical - out of which they emerged. "Miles and Me" is an unparalleled look at the act of creation and the forces behind it, at how the innovations of one person can inspire both those he knows and loves and the world at large.
Introduction of hypothermia for neonates with perinatal asphyxia in the Netherlands and Flanders.

BACKGROUND
Therapeutic hypothermia was introduced in the Netherlands and Flanders, Belgium, in 2008. Since then, an increasing number of patients has been treated - up to 166 in 2010. Complications and outcome were registered in an online database.


OBJECTIVES
The aim of this study was to analyse complications and outcome after implementation.


METHODS
Data were retrieved from an online database to which all centres had contributed.


RESULTS
In 3 years, 332 patients were treated. Excluding 24 patients with congenital abnormalities or metabolic disorders, mortality was 31.8%. Of the 210 survivors without congenital malformations, 21 had cerebral palsy, another 19 a developmental delay of more than 3 months at the age of at least 24 months, and 2 had severe hearing loss. The total adverse outcome, combining death and adverse neurodevelopment, in 308 patients without congenital malformations is 45.5%, which is similar to that of the large trials.


CONCLUSIONS
The introduction of therapeutic hypothermia for neonates with perinatal asphyxia in the Netherlands and Flanders has been rapid and successful, with results similar to findings in the randomised controlled trials.