Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognitive Rehabilitation in Alzheimer's Disease: A Controlled Intervention Trial.

BACKGROUND Cognitive Rehabilitation for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an integrative multimodal intervention. It aims to maintain autonomy and quality of life by enhancing the patients' abilities to compensate for decreased cognitive functioning. OBJECTIVE We evaluated the feasibility of a group-based Cognitive Rehabilitation approach in mild AD dementia and assessed its effect on activities of daily living (ADL). METHODS We included 16 patients with AD dementia in a controlled partial-randomized design. We adapted the manual-guided Cognitive Rehabilitation program (CORDIAL) to a group setting. Over the course of three months, one group received the Cognitive Rehabilitation intervention (n = 8), while the other group received a standardized Cognitive Training as an active control condition (n = 8). ADL-competence was measured as primary outcome. The secondary outcome parameters included cognitive abilities related to daily living, functional cognitive state, and non-cognitive domains, e.g., quality of life. For each scale, we assessed the interaction effect 'intervention by time', i.e., from pre-to post-intervention. RESULTS We found no significant interaction effect of intervention by time on the primary outcome ADL-competence. The interaction effect was significant for quality of life (Cohen's d: -1.43), showing an increase in the intervention group compared with the control group. CONCLUSIONS Our study demonstrates the feasibility of a group-based Cognitive Rehabilitation program for patients with mild AD dementia. The Cognitive Rehabilitation showed no significant effect on ADL, possibly reflecting a lack of transfer between the therapy setting and real life. However, the group setting enhanced communication skills and coping mechanisms. Effects on ADL may not have reached statistical significance due to a limited sample size. Furthermore, future studies might use an extended duration of the intervention and integrate caregivers to a greater extent to increase transfer to activities of daily living.
Convalescent Plasma for Ebola Virus Disease.

n engl j med 374;25 nejm.org June 23, 2016 2498 cizumab according to two definitions of refractoriness.2,3 Regardless of the definition, a lower percentage of patients in the caplacizumab group than in the placebo group had disease that was refractory to treatment, which suggests that caplacizumab might prevent refractory TTP and its associated worse outcomes.1 To clarify, Table 3 of our article reports the cumulative number of patients with at least one adverse event that was considered to be related or possibly related to the investigational medicinal product, whereas the text separately reports the number of patients with at least one adverse event that was considered to be either related or possibly related to treatment. We confirm that the data regarding patients with relapse during the 12-month follow-up include those with relapse during the 1-month follow-up: 11 patients in the caplacizumab group, as compared with 3 in the placebo group, had a relapse during the entire follow-up period. Overall, 13 patients in each treatment group had at least one recurrence of TTP (exacerbation or relapse). Flora Peyvandi, M.D., Ph.D.
Does charging different user fees for primary and secondary care affect first-contacts with primary healthcare? A systematic review

Policy-makers are increasingly considering charging users different fees between primary and secondary care (differential user charges) to encourage utilisation of primary health care in health systems with limited gate keeping. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the impact of introducing differential user charges on service utilisation. We reviewed studies published in MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane library, EconLIT, HMIC, and WHO library databases from January 1990 until June 2015. We extracted data from the studies meeting defined eligibility criteria and assessed study quality using an established checklist. We synthesized evidence narratively. Eight studies from six countries met our eligibility criteria. The overall study quality was low, with diversity in populations, interventions, settings, and methods. Five studies examined the introduction of or increase in user charges for secondary care, with four showing decreased secondary care utilisation, and three showing increased primary care utilisation. One study identified an increase in primary care utilisation after primary care user charges were reduced. The introduction of a non-referral charge in secondary care was associated with lower primary care utilisation in one study. One study compared user charges across insurance plans, associating higher charges in secondary care with higher utilisation in both primary and secondary care. Overall, the impact of introducing differential user-charges on primary care utilisation remains uncertain. Further research is required to understand their impact as a demand side intervention, including implications for health system costs and on utilisation among low-income patients.
Large-Scale Occupational Skills Normalization for Online Recruitment

Job openings often go unfulfilled despite a surfeit of unemployed or underemployed workers. One of the main reasons for this is a mismatch between the skills required by employers and the skills that workers possess. This mismatch, also known as the skills gap, can pose socio-economic challenges for an economy. A first step in alleviating the skills gap is to accurately detect skills in human capital data such as resumes and job ads. Comprehensive and accurate detection of skills facilitates analysis of labor market dynamics. It also helps bridge the divide between supply and demand of labor by facilitating reskilling and workforce training programs. In this paper, we describe SKILL, a Named Entity Normalization (NEN) system for occupational skills. SKILL is composed of 1) A skills tagger which uses properties of semantic word vectors to recognize and normalize relevant skills, and 2) A skill entity sense disambiguation component which infers the correct meaning of an identified skill by leveraging Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. Datadriven evaluation using end-user surveys demonstrates that SKILL achieves 90% precision and 73% recall for skills tagging. SKILL is currently used by various internal teams at CareerBuilder for big data workforce analytics, semantic search, job matching, and recommendations.ch.
Optimal Recourse Strategy for Battery Swapping Stations Considering Electric Vehicle Uncertainty

Battery swapping stations (BSSs) present an alternative way of charging electric vehicles (EVs) that can lead toward a sustainable EV ecosystem. Although research focusing on the BSS strategies has been ongoing, the results are fragmented. Currently, an integrated way of considering stochastic EV station visits through planning and operations has not been fully investigated. To create comprehensive and resilient battery swapping stations, a two-stage optimization with recourse is proposed. In the planning stage, the investment for battery purchases is recommended even before the EV station visit uncertainties are made known. In the operation stage, the battery allocation decisions, such as charging, discharging, and swapping are then coordinated. To apply the recourse strategy in creating representative scenarios, the EV station visit distribution techniques are also proposed using a modified K-means clustering method. Aside from the sensitivity analysis made with swapping prices and charging intervals, the strategy comparisons with conventional strategies have also demonstrated the practicality of the BSS coordination to future electricity and transportation networks.
Copy and paste redeemed

Modern software development relies on code reuse, which software engineers typically realise through handwritten abstractions, such as functions, methods, or classes. However, such abstractions can be challenging to develop and maintain. One alternative form of re-use is copy-paste-modify, a methodology in which developers explicitly duplicate source code to adapt the duplicate for a new purpose. We observe that copy-paste-modify can be substantially faster to use than manual abstraction, and past research strongly suggests that it is a popular technique among software developers. We therefore propose that software engineers should forego hand-written abstractions in favour of copying and pasting. However, empirical evidence also shows that copy-paste-modify complicates software maintenance and increases the frequency of bugs. To address this concern, we propose a software tool that merges together similar pieces of code and automatically creates suitable abstractions. This allows software developers to get the best of both worlds: custom abstraction together with easy re-use. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we have implemented and evaluated a prototype merging tool for C++ on a number of near-miss clones (clones with some modifications) in popular Open Source packages. We found that maintainers find our algorithmically created abstractions to be largely preferable to existing duplicated code.
Long-term alcohol use patterns and HIV disease severity.

OBJECTIVE We examined the relationship between alcohol use trajectories and HIV disease severity among men and women participating in the Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS). DESIGN Prospective cohort of HIV-infected persons in care at eight US Veterans Health Administration sites. METHODS Between 2002 and 2010, we assessed alcohol consumption annually using the alcohol use disorders identification test-consumption (AUDIT-C). HIV disease severity was ascertained using the VACS index, a validated measure of morbidity and all-cause mortality. We examined the relationship between alcohol use and HIV disease severity patterns using joint trajectory modeling. Alcohol use trajectories were validated using phosphatidylethanol - a biomarker of alcohol consumption - measured between 2005 and 2006 among a subset of participants. We examined associations between membership in alcohol use and VACS index trajectories using multinomial regression. RESULTS Among eligible participants, we identified four alcohol consumption trajectories: abstainers (24% of the sample), lower risk (44%), moderate risk (24%), and higher risk drinkers (8%). Alcohol use trajectories were highly correlated with phosphatidylethanol (Cramér's V = 0.465, P < 0.001): mean concentrations were 4.4, 17.8, 57.7, and 167.6 ng/ml in the abstainer, lower risk, moderate risk, and higher risk groups, respectively. Four VACS index trajectories were identified: low (2%), moderate (46%), high (36%), and extreme (16%). Higher risk drinkers were most common in the extreme VACS index group, and were absent in the low index group. In multivariable analysis, the association between alcohol use and VACS index trajectory membership remained significant (P = 0.002). CONCLUSION Alcohol use trajectories characterized by persistent unhealthy drinking are associated with more advanced HIV disease severity among HIV-infected veterans in the United States.
Altered levels of soluble markers of inflammation in people living with HIV on long term suppressive antiretroviral therapy

Objective(s): To assess the levels of systemic inflammatory markers of age-associated comorbidities in people living with HIV (PLHIV) on long term suppressive antiretroviral therapy (ART). Design: Prospective cross-sectional study in a well-defined Indian cohort of PLHIV. Methods: Blood samples were obtained from therapy naïve PLHIV (Pre-ART, n=43), PLHIV on ART for >5 years (ART, n=53), and HIV-negative healthy controls (HIVNC, n=41). Samples were analyzed for 92 markers of inflammation, sCD14, sCD163, telomere length and HIV-1 reservoir. Results: Despite a median duration of eight years of successful ART, sCD14 (p<0.001) and sCD163 (p=0.04) levels continued to be significantly elevated in ART group as compared to HIVNC. Besides, eleven inflammatory markers, including 4E-BP1, ADA, CCL23, CD5, CD8A, CST5, MMP1, NT3, SLAMF1, TRAIL and TRANCE, were found to be significantly different (p<0.05) between the groups. Many of these markers are associated with age-related co-morbidities including cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive decline and some of these markers are being reported for the first time in the context of HIV-induced inflammation. Linear regression analysis showed a significant negative association between HIV-1positivity and telomere length (p<0.0001). in ART-group CXCL1 (p=0.048) and TGF-α (p=0.026) have a significant association with increased telomere length and IL-10RA was significantly associated with decreased telomere length (p=0.042). Conclusions: The study identified several candidate biomarkers of age-related pre-mature aging in PLHIV on successful ART in a standardized public-health setting. This observation warrants further mechanistic studies to generate evidence to highlight the need for enhanced treatment monitoring and special interventions in HIV-infected individuals.
Advanced Dementia.

An 89-year-old male nursing home resident with a 10-year history of Alzheimer’s disease presents with a temperature of 38.3°C, a productive cough, and a respiratory rate of 28 breaths per minute. Nurses report that for the past 6 months he has been coughing at breakfast and having trouble swallowing. He has profound memory deficits, no longer recognizes his daughter (who is his health care proxy), is bedbound, is able to mumble a couple of words, and is unable to perform any activities of daily living. The nurse asks whether he should be hospitalized. How should this patient be evaluated and treated?
Gaze based weakly supervised localization for image classification: application to visual recognition in a food dataset. (Apprentissage faiblement supervisé basé sur le regard: application à la reconnaissance visuelle dans un ensemble de données sur l'alimentation)

In this dissertation, we discuss how to use the human gaze data to improve the performance of the weak supervised learning model in image classification. The background of this topic is in the era of rapidly growing information technology. As a consequence, the data to analyze is also growing dramatically. Since the amount of data that can be annotated by the human cannot keep up with the amount of data itself, current well-developed supervised learning approaches may confront bottlenecks in the future. In this context, the use of weak annotations for high-performance learning methods is worthy of study. Specifically, we try to solve the problem from two aspects: One is to propose a more time-saving annotation, human eye-tracking gaze, as an alternative annotation with respect to the traditional time-consuming annotation, e.g. bounding box. The other is to integrate gaze annotation into a weakly supervised learning scheme for image classification. This scheme benefits from the gaze annotation for inferring the regions containing the target object. A useful property of our model is that it only exploits gaze for training, while the test phase is gaze free. This property further reduces the demand of annotations. The two isolated aspects are connected together in our models, which further achieve competitive experimental results.
Effects on Pain and Mobility of a New Diet Supplement in Dogs with Osteoarthritis: A Pilot Study

In this study, we have evaluated the efficacy of a new diet supplement in reducing chronic pain and improving mobility in a group of 10 dogs with Osteoarthritis (OA). OA is a common debilitating condition affecting humans and animals. Tablets containing a preparation of natural ingredients (Cannabidiol (CBD)-rich fraction, Boswellia serrata Roxb. in a Phytosome® delivery form and Cucumis melo L. extract) were administered for 30 days. Veterinary evaluations were performed and owners filled questionnaires on chronic pain (Helsinki chronic pain index- HCPI) three times during the study. The product was well tolerated and owners reported a good palatability and ease of administration. In terms of effectiveness, results of a Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) on HCPI highlighted a significant reduction of pain scores at the end of the study. Based on our observations, our new dietary supplement has beneficial effects in dogs with OA after the treatment.
A Vortex-Based Doppler Velocity Dealiasing Algorithm for Tropical Cyclones

In this study, a vortex-based Doppler velocity dealiasing (VDVD) algorithm for tropical cyclones (TCs) is proposed. The algorithm uses a Rankine combined vortex model as a reference field for dealiasing based on an inner–outer iterative procedure. The structure of the reference vortex is adjusted in an inner iterative procedure of VDVD that applies the ground-based velocity track display (GBVTD) technique. The outer loop of the VDVD based on the GBVTD-simplex algorithm is used for center correction. The VDVD is able to recover not only the aliased Doppler velocities from a simulated symmetric vortex but also those superimposed with wavenumber-1 asymmetry, radial wind, or mean flow. For real cases, the VDVD provides dealiased Doppler velocity with 99.4% accuracy for all pixels, based on 472 elevation sweeps from a typhoon without landfall. It is suggested that the VDVD algorithm can improve the quality of downstream applications such as Doppler wind retrievals and radar data assimilations of TCs and other storms, such as tornadoes and mesocyclones, with vortex signatures.
In the Spotlight

During pregnancy, the maternal immune system plays a central role as it suffers significant alterations in order to promote the required immune tolerance that allows the semiallogeneic fetus to thrive. These immunological changes are complex and have been the object of intensive investigation, with many recent reports published herein and elsewhere. Despite this work, the topic is far from being completely understood and continues to be on the forefront of scientific research. It has been demonstrated that during pregnancy, there is an expansion of regulatory T cells, CD18 T cells specific for paternal and fetal antigens and enhanced turnover in other leukocyte populations. In addition, it has been shown in mice that many of these T-cell regulatory changes persist postpartum and have an impact on subsequent pregnancies and on the subsequent maternal immune response. Moreover, T-cell subset manipulation has also revealed modified cardiovascular abnormalities during normal rodent pregnancy and in rodent models of pregnancy-associated hypertension. However, how these T-cell regulatory changes contribute to postpartummaternal cardiovascular behavior has not been fully examined and the question of whether altered immunity modifies pregnancyinduced changes in the vascular system remains unanswered. In the current issue, Bonney and colleagues explore this topic by comparing changes in function and remodeling of systemic resistance vessels 4 weeks postpartum in normal C57BL/6 (B6) and immune-deficient mice, the recombinase 1-deficient/B6 (Rag1 / ), which have genetic absence of T and B cells, but have natural killer T cells, in order to focus on the critical role of the adaptive immunity. Their results show that immune deficiency did not change responsiveness to acetylcholine (ACh) and phenylephrine at baseline but decreased arterial distensibility and increased stiffness postpartum. Adoptive transfer of CD8 T cells into Rag1 / mice decreased response to ACh while increasing distensibility and wall thickness. Additionally, Bonney and colleagues observed that the postpartum vessels fromCD4-deficient mice,which haveB cells andCD8T cells, but noCD4 cells, show increased distensibility and decreased responsiveness to ACh as compared to postpartum Rag1 / , in a pattern similar to that seen in Rag1 / given CD8 T cells prior to mating. Altogether, the studies presented by Bonney et al suggest that T cells and their associated factor, particularly the CD8 T cells, play a key role in the postpartum remodeling of maternal resistance vessels. This highlights the importance of pregnancy-induced immune changes in the subsequent cardiovascular maternal response.
The Role of Computed Tomography in the Classification of Pediatric Pelvic Fractures-Revisited.

OBJECTIVES To determine the need of CT scans in the assessment of pediatric pelvic fractures DESIGN:: Retrospective Chart Review SETTING:: Level-1 Pediatric Trauma CenterPatients/Participants: 30 pediatric trauma patients with pelvic fractures who have obtained both a radiograph and CT Scan MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREMENTS:: Fleiss Kappa coefficient to compare inter-reliability. RESULTS The average age of the patients was 7 years (range 1-13 years). 17 were male and 13 were female. The Torode and Zieg classification included 3 type I, 6 type II, 13 type III, and 8 type IV. The Kappa values for inter-observer agreement comparing radiographs were 0.453 and CT scans were 0.42. Three patients (10%) were treated with a Spica cast, and none required surgery for their pelvic fracture. Four patients (11%) demonstrated liver, spleen, or kidney injuries on CT. Out of those four, one had indications for laparotomy and drain placement, one died secondary to shock, and two were treated conservatively. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study demonstrated that plain radiographs alone can be used to classify and manage most pediatric fractures, confirming Silber's prior findings. Furthermore, we recommend Schreck and Haasz et al.'s specific instances in which CT scans should be used, sparing the general pediatric population unnecessary radiation. Such cases include patients with an abnormal abdominal or pelvic exam, complex fracture patterns, displacement is greater than 1 cm, femur deformities, hematuria, GCS <13, hemodynamic instability, an AST>200 U/L, a Hct <30%, or an abnormal chest X-ray.
How children develop their ability to combine words: a network-based approach

A new way to study and represent early syntactic development is introduced that offers a promising avenue to improve on standard cumulative approaches to language learning. The analysis is inspired by complex network theory and explores an important issue in psycholinguistics: how children combine words syntactically. To this end, the article exploits the longitudinal data of multiple individual studies stored and publicly available in the CHILDES database. This analysis proves useful in two regards: in coincidence with previous approaches to syntactic development, it reveals a similar linear–nonlinear pattern of syntactic development (a combination of linear periods interrupted by abrupt transitions) in typical children regardless the language they are acquiring. It also provides a straightforward objective measure of syntactic impairment in atypically developing children. A striking difference between typical and atypical children lies in the connectivity of functional words, which suddenly become hubs but only in typical development. Our technique offers a formal measure of impairment with respect to typical syntactic development, which goes beyond the standard notion of retardation in development, for the Down syndrome condition.
N ov 2 00 4 Basic properties for sand automata

We prove several results about the relations between injectivity and surjectivity for sand automata. Moreover, we begin the exploration of the dynamical behavior of sand automata proving that the property of nilpotency is undecidable. We believe that the proof technique used for this last result might reveal useful for many other results in this context.