Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An assessment of the learning curve for precut biliary sphincterotomy

OBJECTIVE:Precut sphincterotomy is considered unsafe when used by inexperienced endoscopists. We sought to determine whether procedural experience with precut sphincterotomy predicted either successful cannulation or development of complications in these patients.METHODS:We describe the experience of 253 consecutive patients who underwent precut biliary sphincterotomy done by one endoscopist between September, 1993 and April, 2001. Data were prospectively collected on procedure indication and outcome. All patients were contacted by phone 30 days after the procedure to determine outcome. We also described precut utilization over time.RESULTS:All 253 precut procedures were divided chronologically into five groups of 50, with 53 in the final group. The rates of successful cannulation after precutting were 88%, 94%, 90%, 88%, and 98%, respectively (p = 0.05 for groups 1–4 vs group 5). Overall complication rates were similar in all groups (12%, 18%, 20%, 12%, and 14%), with no difference in complication severity. Female gender predicted successful cannulation (OR = 2.9 [p = 0.02]), whereas an indication of sphincter of Oddi dysfunction predicted development of complications (OR = 1.7 [p = 0.03]). The total number of ERCP procedures performed increased over time, whereas the proportion of precut sphincterotomies performed decreased.CONCLUSIONS:Although the success rate for precut sphincterotomy may increase with procedural experience, the complication rate does not seem to decrease. Precut sphincterotomy continues to carry an increased complication rate over standard sphincterotomy even when performed by an experienced biliary endoscopist. The need for precut sphincterotomy appears to decrease with increasing ERCP experience.
Form and Structure of Newsgroups Giving Social Support: A Network Approach

Previous research has confirmed that newsgroups offer different forms of social support for their "members". One major distinction which emerged was that between newsgroups that offer more informational support and those that offer a mix of informational and other aspects of social support. In this study, we conduct a simple form of network analysis of the pattern of shared posts on a newsgroup to reveal the structure of the group. Clear and striking differences between the networks from the different types of group are demonstrated. Further, multi-social support group is revealed to be more complex, as predicted. This finding is supported by an examination of some of the messages that are posted to it. We argue, as others have previously done, that social network analysis is a very useful method when researching the nature of computer-mediated communication.
MICONAZOLE SORPTION TO INTRAVENOUS INFUSION SETS

The sorption of the antifungal drug miconazole onto the plastics of infusion bags and intravenous administration sets has been investigated. HPLC methodology was applied for the determination of miconazole concentrations. The results obtained indicate that the sorption of miconazole is low and is unlikely to result in significant loss of clinical efficacy.
Knowledge generation in online forums: a case study in the German educational domain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to get a first approximation of the usefulness of online forums with regard to information seeking and knowledge generation. Design/methodology/approach – This study captures the characteristics of knowledge generation by examining the pragmatics and types of information needs of posted questions and by investigating knowledge related characteristics of discussion posts as well as the success of communication. Three online forums were examined. The data set consists of 55 threads, containing 533 posts which were categorized manually by two researchers. Findings – Results show that questioners often ask for personal estimations. Information needs often aim for actionable insights or uncertainty reduction. With regard to answers, factual information is the dominant content type and has the highest knowledge value as it is the strongest predictor with regard to the generation of new knowledge. Opinions are also relevant, but in a rather subsequent and complementary way.
Computer-Assisted Automated Scoring of Polysomnograms Using the Somnolyzer System.

STUDY OBJECTIVES Manual scoring of polysomnograms is a time-consuming and tedious process. To expedite the scoring of polysomnograms, several computerized algorithms for automated scoring have been developed. The overarching goal of this study was to determine the validity of the Somnolyzer system, an automated system for scoring polysomnograms. DESIGN The analysis sample comprised of 97 sleep studies. Each polysomnogram was manually scored by certified technologists from four sleep laboratories and concurrently subjected to automated scoring by the Somnolyzer system. Agreement between manual and automated scoring was examined. Sleep staging and scoring of disordered breathing events was conducted using the 2007 American Academy of Sleep Medicine criteria. SETTING Clinical sleep laboratories. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS A high degree of agreement was noted between manual and automated scoring of the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). The average correlation between the manually scored AHI across the four clinical sites was 0.92 (95% confidence interval: 0.90-0.93). Similarly, the average correlation between the manual and Somnolyzer-scored AHI values was 0.93 (95% confidence interval: 0.91-0.96). Thus, interscorer correlation between the manually scored results was no different than that derived from manual and automated scoring. Substantial concordance in the arousal index, total sleep time, and sleep efficiency between manual and automated scoring was also observed. In contrast, differences were noted between manually and automated scored percentages of sleep stages N1, N2, and N3. CONCLUSION Automated analysis of polysomnograms using the Somnolyzer system provides results that are comparable to manual scoring for commonly used metrics in sleep medicine. Although differences exist between manual versus automated scoring for specific sleep stages, the level of agreement between manual and automated scoring is not significantly different than that between any two human scorers. In light of the burden associated with manual scoring, automated scoring platforms provide a viable complement of tools in the diagnostic armamentarium of sleep medicine.
EFFICIENT TESTS FOR AN AUTOREGRESSIVE UNIT ROOT BY GRAHwA ELLIOrr, THOMAS

The asymptotic power envelope is derived for point-optimal tests of a unit root in the autoregressive representation of a Gaussian time series under various trend specifications. We propose a family of tests whose asymptotic power functions are tangent to the power envelope at one point and are never far below the envelope. When the series has no deterministic component, some previously proposed tests are shown to be asymptotically equivalent to members of this family. When the series has an unknown mean or linear trend, commonly used tests are found to be dominated by members of the family of point-optimal invariant tests. We propose a modified version of the Dickey-Fuller t test which has substantially improved power when an unknown mean or trend is present. A Monte Carlo experiment indicates that the modified test works well in small samples.
Crossing the rubicon in lung adenocarcinoma: the conundrum of EGFR tyrosine kinase mutations.

Keyowrds: adenocarcinoma, epidermal growth factor, nonsmall cell lung cancer, tyrosine kinase mutations Chemotherapy in lung cancer: the state of the art In 2004 in Europe, there were an estimated 2,886,800 cases of cancer diagnosed, including data recorded in the 25 member states of the European Union. Lung cancer was the most common form, with a total of 381,500 cases (13.2%) and an estimated mortality of 341,800 cases (20% of the total) [1]. Approximately 85% of lung cancers are non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and the majority of patients present with advanced disease, with dismal prognosis. A landmark study in NSCLC showed that the combination of gemcitabine (Gemzar®) plus cisplatin attained a median survival of 9.1 months in comparison with 7.6 months with cisplatin alone [2]. A Phase III trial of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) showed similar results with paclitaxel (Taxol®)– cisplatin and gemcitabine–cisplatin, with median survival times of 8.1 and 8.9 months, respectively. A third arm of paclitaxel–gemcitabine showed a shorter survival of 6.7 months [3]. A recent meta-analysis, which included a study encompassing 4556 patients, showed a median survival of 9 months for gemcitabine-based chemotherapy in contrast with 8.2 months for non-gemcitabine combinations [4]. One of the mechanisms of tumor resistance to cisplatin is increased nucleotide excision repair (NER) activity, in particular increased levels of excision repair cross-complementing (ERCC)1. The 5 incision made by the ERCC1–xeroderma pigmentosum group F (ERCC1–XPF) complex is thought to be a rate-limiting step in the NER pathway, as demonstrated by an increase in excision activity in extracts from non-cisplatin-resistant cells after addition of purified ERCC1–XPF protein, compared with no increase in excision activity after addition of ERCC1–XPF to extracts from cisplatin-resistant cells [5]. The potential use of ERCC1 mRNA expression as a predictive marker for the effectiveness of cisplatin-based chemotherapy is an important area of clinical translational research. Together with ERCC1, ribonucleotide reductase (RR) subunit M1 is also involved in gemcitabine metabolism as a participant in the NER pathway, providing nucleotides that fill gaps created by ERCC1 excision of the DNA strand-containing cisplatin bulky adducts. Tumor overexpression of RRM1 mRNA in gemcitabine/cisplatin-treated NSCLC patients was associated with a short median survival of 3.6 months in contrast with 13.7 months for patients with low RRM1 mRNA expression (p = 0.009) [6]. This data brings a new era of customized chemotherapy based on NER transcripts.
Advanced coronary artery disease: Appropriate end points for trials of novel therapies.

BACKGROUND The segment of patients with advanced coronary artery disease, or disease that is not amenable to conventional revascularization therapies, continues to grow. Because the natural history of these patients is less defined, the appropriate end points for trials of novel revascularization therapies involving patients with advanced coronary artery disease are not certain. METHODS AND RESULTS The Mediators of Social Support Study (MOSS) prospectively followed up outcomes of long-term survival, quality of life, resource use, and costs for 1189 patients and compared outcomes of patients with advanced coronary artery disease with those of a reference group who underwent bypass surgery or angioplasty. CONCLUSIONS Despite greater disease burden, cost, and mortality for patients with advanced coronary artery disease, a number of self-reported measures of general health status improved in a similar fashion to that of patients eligible for angioplasty or bypass surgery. These findings should inform the design of trials involving novel therapies, suggesting that angina status and mortality be included as primary end points in the consideration of efficacy. This work also suggests that additional studies of novel therapies involving larger sample sizes may be required to confidently characterize efficacy.
Prevention of postcataract endophthalmitis: evidence-based medicine

Purpose of review To provide a summary of current peer-reviewed publications on the methods of prophylaxis against postcataract endophthalmitis. Recent findings Preoperative application of povidone–iodine remains the standard protocol for the prevention of postoperative endophthalmitis. More recent evidence suggests that intracameral cefuroxime administered at the conclusion of surgery significantly reduces the risk of endophthalmitis. However, its clinical use has been limited because of a lack of commercially available antibiotic indicated for intraocular injection. Although topical antibiotic application continues to be a controversial topic with respect to the types of antibiotic prescribed and dosage, most ophthalmologists do prescribe an antibiotic for the perioperative period. Resistance against antibiotics, including the very popular classes of fluoroquinolones, is rising. Most notably, methicillin resistance continues to increase over time. Summary Prevention of postcataract endophthalmitis remains a difficult topic to study given the low incidence. In addition to appropriate wound construction, a combination of povidone–iodine and antibiotics provide a reasonable approach in reducing the risk of this rare but serious infection.
Cyclic-prefixed orthogonally time multiplexed orthogonal amplitude modulation

Orthogonally multiplexed orthogonal amplitude modulation (OMOAM) is a modulation family unifying numerous modulations date back from 1960s and also many standard-preferable modulations. By converting frequency multiplexing to time multiplexing, orthogonally time multiplexed orthogonal amplitude modulation (OTMOAM) is proposed to explore advantages over the conventional orthogonally multiplexed orthogonal amplitude modulation (OMOAM). Transmitter and receiver system models unifying both OTMOAM and OMOAM are provided, and bit error rate (BER) for both systems are also derived for flat Rayleigh fading channel. Numerical results show that OTMOAM provides lower PAPR and better BER performance in high signal-to-noise power ratio than the conventional OMOAM.
Empirical study of the dynamic behavior of JavaScript objects

Despite the popularity of JavaScript for client‐side web applications, there is a lack of effective software tools supporting JavaScript development and testing. The dynamic characteristics of JavaScript pose software engineering challenges such as program understanding and security. One important feature of JavaScript is that its objects support flexible mechanisms such as property changes at runtime and prototype‐based inheritance, making it difficult to reason about object behavior. We have performed an empirical study on real JavaScript applications to understand the dynamic behavior of JavaScript objects. We present metrics to measure behavior of JavaScript objects during execution (e.g., operations associated with an object, object size, and property type changes). We also investigated the behavioral patterns of observed objects to understand the coding or user interaction practices in JavaScript software. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Field and greenhouse evaluation of rapeseed spray oil against spider mites, green peach aphid and pear psylla in Serbia.

Biological efficacy of rapeseed spray oil against twospotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae Koch) on cucumber, against European red mite [Panonychus ulmi (Koch)] on apple, green peach aphid (Myzus persicae Sulzer) on pepper and pear psylla [Cacopsylla pyri (L.)] was evaluated in seven field and three greenhouse trials at eight localities in Serbia during 2005-2008. The efficacy of rapeseed spray oil in controlling these pests was compared to the following insecticides and/or acaricides: abamectin, acetamiprid, bifenthrin, clofentezine, diflubenzuron, dimethoate, fenazaquin, mineral oil, combination of mineral oil and methidathion, pymetrozine and spirodiclofen. In two greenhouse trials against a T. urticae population on cucumber, the efficacy of rapeseed oil was 84.1% and 94.6%, 11 days after treatment (DAT). Applied as a late dormant oil against winter eggs of P. ulmi in two apple orchards at the BBCH 09 growth stage, rapeseed spray oil achieved 89.3% and 98.9% efficacy, 24 DAT. In a treatment against the summer population of P. ulmi, rapeseed oil showed 97.4% (7 DAT), 80.5% (14 DAT), 68.6% (21 DAT) and 67.7% (38 DAT) efficacy. Three field trials against M. persicae on pepper revealed high (> 96%, 7-14 DAT) efficacy of rapeseed spray oil; in a greenhouse trial, the oil achieved 86.9% efficacy 8 DAT. Applied at the BBCH 09 pear growth stage against eggs laid by winterform females of C. pyri, rapeseed oil showed a total efficacy of > 90% in both assessments. Such high and persistant efficacy primarily results from the fact that the number of newly deposited, white eggs was reduced to null, while the effect on nymphs was weaker. The importance of these results for biorational pest control of spider mites, green peach aphid and pear psyllid in Serbia is
A Three-Stage Model for a Decentralized Distribution System of Retailers

We present and study a three-stage model of a decentralized distribution system consisting ofn retailers, each of whom faces a stochastic demand for an identical product. In the first stage, before the demand is realized, each retailer independently orders her initial inventory. In the second stage, after the demand is realized, each retailer decides how much of her residual supply/demand she wants to share with the other retailers. In the third stage, residual inventories are transshipped to meet residual demands, and an additional profit is allocated. Our model is an extension of the two-stage model of Anupindi et al. (ABZ) (2001), which implicitly assumes that all residuals enter the transshipment stage. We show, however, that allocation rules in the third stage based on dual solutions, which were used in the ABZ model, may induce the retailers to hold back some of their residual supply/demand. In general, we study the effect of implementing various allocations rules in the third stage on the values of the residual supply/demand the retailers are willing to share with others in the second stage, and the trade-off involved in achieving an optimal solution for the corresponding centralized system.
Phylogenetic Relationship of Trypanosoma corvi with Other Avian Trypanosomes

The phylogenetic relationships of avian trypanosomes, common parasites of birds, remain ambiguous and validity of many species is questionable. Analyses based on 18S rRNA sequences, dimensions of the kinetoplast disc and the size of kinetoplast (k) DNA minicircles were used to differentiate among large trypanosomes parasitizing birds of the Old World. These trypanosomes with typical striated appearance formed two well-supported groups-the ”Trypanosoma avium” clade and the ”Trypanosoma corvi” clade. Interestingly, the isolate derived from the Central European hippoboscid fly (Ornithomyia avicularia) is closely related to T. corvi from a raven captured in the U.K., whereas a trypanosome obtained from the blood of a raven of the Central Europe origin (Czech Republic) is a typical member of the ”T. avium” clade.
Parents’ views of the National Autistic Society’s EarlyBird Plus Programme

Parent training interventions are recommended for parents soon after their child’s autism spectrum condition diagnosis with the aim of improving parents’ psychological well-being and coping, as well as the child’s behaviour. This report explores parents’ views of the EarlyBird Plus Programme through data collected routinely in the post-programme questionnaire. Participants’ reported increased understanding of autism and improvements in their communication with their child and their ability to manage their child’s behaviour. Parents appeared to value the opportunity to meet with other parents, and the programme seemed acceptable to the majority of parents who attended.
A Hybrid UTD-PO Solution for Multiple-Cylinder Diffraction Analysis Assuming Spherical-Wave Incidence

A modified hybrid uniform theory of diffraction-physical optics formulation for the analysis of the multiple diffraction caused by an array of cylinders, assuming spherical-wave incidence, is hereby presented. The solution, validated with numerical data from technical literature, is mathematically less complex and computationally more efficient-particularly for a large number of cylinders-than other existing methods, due to the fact that high-order diffraction terms (slope diffraction) are not considered, without such lack of terms barely entailing any loss in accuracy. Results can be applied in radiowave propagation analysis when multiple diffraction over rounded obstacles has to be considered.
Resolving intermediates in biological proton-coupled electron transfer: A tyrosyl radical prior to proton movement

The coupling of proton chemistry with redox reactions is important in many enzymes and is central to energy transduction in biology. However, the mechanistic details are poorly understood. Here, we have studied tyrosine oxidation, a reaction in which the removal of one electron from the amino acid is linked to the release of its phenolic proton. Using the unique photochemical properties of photosystem II, it was possible to oxidize the tyrosine at 1.8 K, a temperature at which proton and protein motions are limited. The state formed was detected by high magnetic field EPR as a high-energy radical intermediate trapped in an unprecedentedly electropositive environment. Warming of the protein allows this state to convert to a relaxed, stable form of the radical. The relaxation event occurs at 77 K and seems to involve proton migration and only a very limited movement of the protein. These reactions represent a stabilization process that prevents the back-reaction and determines the reactivity of the radical.
Systemic Progesterone Administration in Early Life Alters the Hyperalgesic Responses to Surgery in the Adult: A Study on Female Rats

BACKGROUND:There has recently been a substantial increase in the survival of prematurely born neonates and an increase of in utero surgeries. Noxious stimulation in the newborn alters the pain response to injury in adult life. Progesterone, an effective antihyperalgesic agent in the adult, is at high concentration in the pregnant mother. Therefore, we investigated the effects of early-life progesterone on postsurgical outcomes in adult rats. METHODS:Female rat pups were administered progesterone or vehicle during the first 7 days postpartum (P1–P7). A second control group had no injections. Half of each of these groups received an incision of the hindpaw at P3 and the other half did not. At P60, all groups of these now adult rats received a second paw incision. Tactile sensitivity and thermal sensitivity were measured weekly at P14–P42 (period I), at P60 (just before the second incision), and every 2 days of P61–P70 (period II). At P67, rats were fixed by systemic paraformaldehyde perfusion and their spinal cords taken for staining and immunocytochemical analysis of activated p-p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase. RESULTS:Rats with surgery at P3 had greater tactile and thermal hyperalgesia in period I than the nonoperated rats, a difference abolished by progesterone treatment. P3 incision also resulted in long-lasting tactile and thermal hyperalgesia after the P60 incision (period II), both of which were markedly smaller in degree and faster to resolve in rats receiving early progesterone. Even in rats that were not operated on in period I, neonatal progesterone lessened the tactile hyperalgesia in period II. More spinal cells showed p-p38 staining in vehicle-treated rats as a result of the early-life incision but not in those treated with progesterone. CONCLUSIONS:These findings suggest that endogenously high progesterone in utero may have a similarly protective action and that the development of nociceptive circuitry can be strongly influenced by neonatal progesterone.