Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Superior efficacy of a Cremophor‐free albumin‐bound paclitaxel compared with solvent‐based paclitaxel in Chinese patients with metastatic breast cancer

Aim: In a previous study, a 130‐nm nanoparticle albumin‐bound paclitaxel (nab‐paclitaxel) demonstrated improved efficacy and safety profile compared with solvent‐based paclitaxel (sb‐paclitaxel) in Caucasian patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). The aim of the present randomized study was to compare the response rates and safety profile of nab‐paclitaxel with sb‐paclitaxel in Chinese patients with MBC.
„Rapid Assessments” - schnelle Bewertung medizinischer Technologien

Die Bewertung medizinischer Technologien (Health Technology Assessment, kurz HTA) hat sich in vielen Gesundheitssystemen als wichtiges Instrument der Entscheidungsunterstutzung etabliert. Oft handelt es sich dabei um eine systematische, mehrdimensionale Evaluation von Nutzen, Kosten und sonstigen Effekten der Anwendung medizinischer Technologien. Eine umfassende Technologiebewertung (HTA-Bericht) ist jedoch zeit- und kostenintensiv - wahrend Entscheidungen im Gesundheitswesen, etwa zur Kostenubernahme neuer Technologien, oft in vergleichsweise kurzen Zeitraumen getroffen werden mussen. International haben sich in einigen HTA-Einrichtungen Schnellverfahren fur die Durchfuhrung von HTA-Berichten etabliert, die jedoch sehr unterschiedliche Ansatze haben. Um einen Uberblick uber diese Vorgehensweisen zu gewinnen, wurde eine vergleichende Bestandsaufnahme durchgefuhrt. Daraus kann gefolgert werden, dass eine einheitliche Definition, was unter schnellen HTA-Berichten zu verstehen ist, derzeit nicht existiert. In diesem Artikel wird eine Konzeption fur eine beschleunigte Durchfuhrung von Technologiebewertungen vorgestellt und diskutiert. Diese soll sowohl die Belange von Entscheidungsgremien berucksichtigen und gleichzeitig die wissenschaftliche Qualitat der HTA-Berichte sicherstellen. Dieses bedarfsadaptierte Verfahren baut auf einer weitgehend standardisierten Vorgehensweise auf und ist daher modular mit obligatorischen und fakultativen Elementen angelegt. Fur eine zugige Bearbeitung ist jedoch eine enge Zusammenarbeit von Auftraggeber und -nehmer bei der Fokussierung der Fragestellung und der exakt darauf ausgerichteten Konzeption des HTA-Berichtes essenziell. Assessing the clinical, economical and other consequences of medical technologies (health technology assessment, HTA) is an important instrument to support decisions in many health care systems. A comprehensive HTA, however, is time-consuming and costly while, on the other hand, decisions have to be made quickly. A number of international HTA programmes established rapid assessment tracks although they are variable in scope and methods. In the first part of this paper, these programmes were compared with respect to scope, methods and time to complete assessments. It can be shown from this comparison that there is no common definition of „rapid assessments”. In the second part of the paper, a model for processing rapid assessment in the German context is introduced and discussed. The model aims at rapid assessments serving the needs of German decision-makers and ensuring high scientific quality at the same time. The model consists of a modular system that is tailored to the acutal demand of the decision-maker. Modules are obligatory (such as a systematic literature search) or optional (such as meta-analysis). All modules are subject to standardisation as far as possible. However, it should be kept in mind that a close collaboration between commissioners and executives of an HTA is necessary to focus on the question and work out the HTA accordingly.
Tumor Control in Birds

Neoplasia is common in pet birds, especially psittacines, and mainly involves the integument and urogenital system. Before treatment options are considered, a definitive diagnosis should be made and the extent of the disease determined. Treatment should initially be directed at tumor eradication and may involve using several modalities together or sequentially. Surgery, radiotherapy, and photodynamic therapy are used against localized tumors, while chemotherapy and biological response modification are also used against metastatic disease. In combination or adjunct therapy, surgery is used to excise or debulk the tumor, radiotherapy to sterilize local regional disease and chemotherapy and biological therapy to help prevent metastatic disease. The tumor control program should be rationally planned before application, rather than added on when one modality fails, as is commonly practiced. Tumor response to therapy should be regularly assessed both in the short and long term and wherever possible, assessment should be quantitated. Work place health and safety procedures for radiation and cytotoxic drugs should always be practiced. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Investigation of the population structure of Mycobacterium abscessus complex strains using 17-locus variable number tandem repeat typing and the further distinction of Mycobacterium massiliense hsp65 genotypes.

Mycobacterium abscessus complex is a significant pathogen in patients with non-cystic fibrosis (non-CF). Nevertheless, there is little description of the genetic diversity of this species. The aims of this study were to investigate the distribution of M. abscessus complex isolated from respiratory specimens by variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) typing. The results of 104 clinical isolates from 104 non-CF patients were compared using PFGE, hsp65 genotypes and clarithromycin susceptibility. The allelic diversity (Hunter-Gaston Discriminatory Index) of the 17 loci examined by VNTR typing was high (0.977). We determined that C28 sequevar erm(41) genotypes and clarithromycin-acquired resistance isolates were scattered in the minimum spanning tree. Intriguingly, VNTR typing and PFGE were highly congruent and revealed that there were clear examples of grouping of isolates from different individuals amongst both M. abscessus and M. massiliense, and showed five clusters of distinct identical isolates. Within these clusters, M. massiliense hsp65 type I formed three different clusters. Although the distribution of M. massiliense hsp65 type II-1 was low (9.3 %), M. massiliense hsp65 type II-1 isolates separated from clusters contained hsp65 type I isolates. Thus, M. massiliense hsp65 genotypes could be discriminated by analysing VNTRs with sufficient genetic distance for intra-species-level discrimination.
Hearing benefits in various types of tympanoplasties: A prospective study

Aims: The aim was to study about the hearing benefits achieved by various types of tympanoplasties done for both safe and unsafe type of chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM). Subjects and Methods: A total of 60 patients with both tubotympanic and atticoantral type of CSOM were taken up and evaluated with otomicroscopy and otoendoscopy, pure tone audiometry and radiological images. Surgeries were planned according to the involvement of the mastoid cavity and extent of the disease, ossicular chain involvement in view of disease clearance and hearing improvement. Statistical Analysis Used: Prospective study design with probability values. Results: Of 60 patients who underwent tympanoplasties 49 patients (81%) showed significant improvement in hearing with successful graft uptake. Conclusions: Mastoidectomy along with tympanoplasty proves beneficial in both disease clearance and hearing improvement. The generally available autologous ossicular grafts like incus or head of the malleus for ossiculoplasty improves the success rate by >80% as shown by us. Aeration of middle ear and infection control postoperatively is essential for functional success after any kind of tympanoplasty as achieved by us.
CONSUMER ATTITUDES TO FOODS AND NUTRITION

Whilst reports linking diet and health have been available for a number of years, it is only in the last couple of years that the subject has received significant coverage in the popular media of TV, radio, magazines and newspapers. Today, however, hardly a week passes without such coverage. This media attention is paralleled by unprecedented use of nutritional themes in the marketing of foodstuffs. A wide variety of products are sold on the basis of claims that they are:
Macroeconomics of the ICU

Intensive care macroeconomics may be defined as the study of fiscal relationships between service organization and the processes and outcomes of care. There are substantial international variations in funding intensive care services, which cannot be explained by differences in case mix or population health, Some of the variance may be attributed to the absence of explicit criteria for intensive care resource allocation and utilization at the level both of whole populations and within individual hospital services. This can result in inefficiencies either from excessive funding of unnecessary care, or inadequate funding with too little being delivered too late. Managed care is seen as a method for driving cost-efficiency, but will fail if quality issues are ignored. Intensive care needs to become much more proactive in its relationships with other hospital services. It should promote research into the processes and outcomes of care, with particular emphasis on factors that may predispose to, and prevent, critical illness, The planning of intensive care services would be facilitated by a common terminology and uniform methods of needs assessments.
CDC reports first case of vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that in summer 2002, a 40 year old Michigan woman became the first person worldwide known to have been infected with a strain of Staphylococcus aureus that was resistant to the antibacterial vancomycin. The Michigan woman developed foot ulcers and other skin infections after becoming infected with the bacterium following an amputation. She …
When I say … mastery learning

In 1968, as a college sophomore, I enrolled in a basic statistics course with 30 other students. The course was taught using mastery learning principles: it was delivered in 16 units sequenced by week; it provided practice and study opportunities in several forms; it used formative and summative testing; very high standards were expressed as minimum passing test scores; instructor feedback and coaching were provided, and its delivery allowed for variations in the time or opportunities needed to achieve the goal of each unit. After teaching and practice, we reported for unit testing at 10.00 am every Tuesday on a pass-the-test, see-you-next-week basis. Retests, as needed, were scheduled for Fridays at 5.00 pm (party time for US college students) or, as a last resort, at 7.00 am on Sunday mornings (doomsday option: never needed). All 30 students passed the course with an A grade, with no differences among us. We all felt great about this experience of success. The only downside was that the professor, Dr Jack Michael, was reprimanded by the dean for grading too leniently. ‘How can everyone be a high achiever? ’ groused the dean. ‘Someone must fail! ’
Molecular characterization of the stomach microbiota in patients with gastric cancer and controls - eScholarship

Persistent infection of the gastric mucosa by Helicobacter pylori , can initiate an inflammatory cascade that progresses into atrophic gastritis, a condition associated with reduced capacity for secretion of gastric acid and an increased risk in developing gastric cancer. The role of H. pylori as an initiator of inflammation is evident but the mechanism for development into gastric cancer has not yet been proven. A reduced capacity for gastric acid secretion allows survival and proliferation of other microbes that normally are killed by the acidic environment. It has been postulated that some of these species may be involved in the development of gastric cancer, however their identities are poorly defined. In this study, the gastric microbiota from ten patients with gastric cancer was characterized and compared with five dyspeptic controls using the molecular profiling approach, terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP), in combination with 16S rRNA gene cloning and sequencing. T-RFLP analysis revealed a complex bacterial community in the cancer patients that was not significantly different from the controls. Sequencing of 140 clones revealed 102 phylotypes, with representatives from five bacterial phyla (Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Fusobacteria). The data revealed a relatively low abundance of H. pylori and showed that the gastric cancer microbiota was instead dominated by different species of the genera Streptococcus , Lactobacillus , Veillonella and Prevotella . The respective role of these species in development of gastric cancer remains to be determined.
A guiding framework to maximise the power of the arts in medical education: a systematic review and metasynthesis

A rich literature describes many innovative uses of the arts in professional education. However, arts‐based teaching tends to be idiosyncratic, depending on the interests and enthusiasm of individual teachers, rather than on strategic design decisions. An overarching framework is needed to guide implementation of arts‐based teaching in medical education. The objective of this study was to review and synthesise the literature on arts‐based education and provide a conceptual model to guide design, evaluation and research of the use of the arts in medical education.
Robust facial landmark detection using mixture of discriminative visibility-aware models

Facial landmark detection is a fundamental process included in many face analysis tasks. However, it faces great challenges for the facial images to be detected usually containing large variations, which will deteriorate the detection precision. Among such variations, partial occlusions and pose variations take great effects. In this study, the authors present a mixture of discriminative visibility-aware models (MDVMs) for facial landmark detection, to improve the generalisation ability of the model to occlusion and pose variation. By adopting different structure constrains for different poses as well as selecting different appearance model for the occluded parts, the MDVMs method can efficiently address the problem of partial occlusion and pose variation. Experiment results demonstrate that their proposed MDVMs method outperforms the well-known template-based methods, and can obtain much more accurate and robust facial landmarks detection results under both occlusions and pose variations.
The Cimicidae and their importance in Public Health (Hemiptera-Heteroptera; Cimicidae)

A review of the Cimicidae of importance in public health is presented. After a general morphological study, special attention is given to knowledge of the biology and ecology of bed-bugs, mainly as regards their relation to the human environment and the possibility of their role in disease transmission. The species Cimex lectularius and C. hemipterus are given particular attention and data on their relevance to questions of public health are revised. Taxonomy, biosystematic and geographical distribution are presented, the epidemiologically important groups listed and control measures discussed. The paper ends with identification keys for both adult and immature stages as well as for arthropod indoor fecal traces.
Single image dehazing by latent region-segmentation based transmission estimation and weighted L 1-norm regularisation

Image dehazing is a useful technique which can eliminate the bad effect of haze on images and enhance the performances of image/video processing algorithms in the hazy weather. In this study, a single image dehazing method is proposed. The authors estimate the initial transmission properly based on latent region-segmentation and refine the estimated initial transmission by an objective function with a novel weighted L 1-norm regularisation term. The half-quadratic splitting minimisation method is employed to solve this optimisation problem. They also define an evaluation function to estimate the reliable global atmospheric light. With the refined transmission map and atmospheric light they recover the haze-free image by the haze imaging model. The authors’ method is compared with three state-of-the-art methods and is also validated by two image quality assessment methods. The comparative experimental results and evaluations demonstrate that their method can recover comparable and even better results with clear details, low contrast loss and high contrast in most cases.
Patch strategy for deep face recognition

Convolutional neural network (CNN) has proven to be a highly efficient approach to face recognition. In this study, the authors introduce a new layer to embed the patch strategy in convolutional architectures to improve the effectiveness of face representation. Meanwhile, a multi-branch CNN is constructed to learn features of each cropped patch by the patch strategy and then fuses all the patch features together to form the entire face representation. Compared with the traditional patch methods, their approach has the advantage that no extra space is needed to store the facial patches since the images are cropped online. Moreover, due to the end-to-end training, this approach makes a better use of the interactions between global and local features in the model. Two baseline CNNs (i.e. AlexNet and ResNet) are used to analyse the effectiveness of their method. Experiments show that the proposed system achieves comparable performance with other state-of-the-art methods on the labelled faces in the wild and YouTube face verification tasks. To ensure the reproducibility, the publicly available training set CASIA-WebFace is used.
Learner : preceptor ratios for practice‐based learning across health disciplines: a systematic review

Practice‐based learning is a cornerstone of developing clinical and professional competence in health disciplines. Practice‐based learning systems have many interacting components, but a key facet is the number of learners per preceptor. Different learner : preceptor ratios may have unique benefits and pose unique challenges for participants. This is the first comprehensive systematic review of the topic. Our research questions were: What are the benefits and challenges of each learner : preceptor ratio in practice‐based learning from the perspectives of the learners, preceptors, patients and stakeholder organisations (i.e. the placing and health care delivery organisations)? Are any ratios superior to others with respect to these characteristics and perspectives?
Caesarean Section for Fetal Distress, the Interval From Decision to Delivery, and the Relative Risk of Poor Neonatal Condition

SummarySummaryThere were 9387 deliveries within the study period, of which 104 (1·1 per cent) were caesarean sections for fetal distress in labour, with a singleton cephalic presentation at 37 or more weeks gestational age. Caesarean section for fetal distress was associated with a significant increase in the incidence of poor neonatal condition as defined by low Apgar scores (P<0·-001) or special care baby unit admission for asphyxia (P<0·001): but not with any increased incidence of fetal scalp blood or umbilical arterial or venous acidaemia.There was an association (P<0·05) between the interval between decision to deliver and operative delivery, and admission to the special care unit. The relative risk doubled between a 10 and a 35 minute interval. No correlation was found between the decision delivery interval and 1 or 5 minute Apgar scores, or cord arterial and venous acid-base results.A short interval from decision to delivery may be important if optimal neonatal condition is to be achieved.
Androgen Receptor Expression Along with Loss of bcl‐2, ER, and PR Expression in Benign and Malignant Apocrine Lesions of the Breast: Implications for Therapy

Abstract: Apocrine lesions of the breast are not uncommon. Limited studies have suggested that apocrine cells may be under the influence of an androgenic, rather than an estrogenic, regulatory system. Furthermore, a recent study has shown that metaplastic apocrine cells of the breast lack expression of bcl‐2, a B‐cell leukemia/lymphoma gene protein whose expression in the breast is believed to be regulated by estrogen. This study was undertaken to immunohistochemi‐cally assess the status of expression of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), bcl‐2, and androgen receptor (AR), in a series of mammary apocrine lesions ranging from simple metaplasia to metastatic carcinoma, and to determine whether there is any possible interrelationship or correlation between the expression of these hormone receptors and that of bcl‐2.
Application of silica nanoparticles in maize to enhance fungal resistance.

In this study, maize treated with nanosilica (20-40 nm) is screened for resistance against phytopathogens such as Fusarium oxysporum and Aspergillus niger and compared with that of bulk silica. The resistivity is measured for disease index and expression of plant responsive compounds such as total phenols, phenylalanine ammonia lyase, peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase. The results indicate that nanosilica-treated plant shows a higher expression of phenolic compounds (2056 and 743 mg/ml) and a lower expression of stress-responsive enzymes against both the fungi. Maize expresses more resistance to Aspergillus spp. , than Fusarium spp. These results show significantly higher resistance in maize treated with nanosilica than with bulk, especially at 10 and 15 kg/ha. In addition, hydrophobic potential and silica accumulation percentage of nanosilica treated maize (86.18° and 19.14%) are higher than bulk silica treatment. Hence, silica nanoparticles can be used as an alternative potent antifungal agent against phytopathogens.
Suicide rate in the dental profession: Fact or myth and coping strategies

This article summarizes relevant scientific data on the alleged high suicide rate among dentists as compared to other health care professions. Potential contributing risk factors for the dental profession are identified. In addition, a brief review is provided for major depressive disorder, a contributor to increased suicide, along with its symptoms, underlying theory, drug treatment and coping skills to combat this disorder.
Inquérito sobre uso de medicamentos por idosos aposentados, Belo Horizonte,MG

OBJETIVO: Caracterizar o uso de medicamentos por aposentados e pensionistas idosos, com enfase nas diferencas entre generos. METODOS: Inquerito domiciliar conduzido com amostra aleatoria simples de 667 individuos com 60 anos ou mais, residentes em Belo Horizonte, MG, em 2003. Os idosos foram entrevistados por farmaceuticos, utilizando questionario padronizado. Foram estimadas a prevalencia de uso e a media de medicamentos usados nos ultimos 15 dias anteriores a entrevista, as quais foram estratificadas de acordo com o genero segundo variaveis sociodemograficas e de saude. RESULTADOS: A prevalencia de uso de medicamentos foi de 90,1%, significativamente maior entre as mulheres (93,4%) do que entre os homens (84,3%). Mulheres utilizaram em media 4,6±3,2 produtos e homens 3,3±2,6 (p<0,001). Os principios ativos mais usados pelos idosos pertenciam aos sistemas cardiovascular, nervoso, e do trato alimentar e metabolismo. O consumo foi superior entre as mulheres nesses tres grupos, assim como as medias de uso de medicamentos segundo variaveis sociodemograficas e de saude selecionadas. CONCLUSOES: O estudo identificou uso mais intenso de medicamentos pelas mulheres, fato que as torna mais vulneraveis aos prejuizos de polifarmacia, como risco de interacoes e uso inadequado.