bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Post-colonoscopy colorectal cancers in Sweden: room for quality improvement
Authors: Forsberg Anna , Hammar Ulf , Ekbom Anders , Hultcrantz Rolf 
Published: April 2017

Objective
Post-colonoscopy colorectal cancer (PCCRC), a cancer occurring within a short interval of a colonoscopy, might be partly explained as missed or incompletely resected lesions. Associated risk factors are age, sex, comorbidity, cancer location, and colonoscopy volume. There is a gap in the knowledge of prevalence of PCCRC and the impact of different risk factors in Sweden.

Methods
This is a retrospective population-based observational cohort study of the colonoscopies performed on adults during the years 2001–2010 that were identified from Swedish health registers. The rate of PCCRC (diagnosed 6–36 months after the first colonoscopy) was defined as the number of PCCRCs divided by the number of colorectal cancers (CRC) in the interval of 0–36 months. Univariate and multivariate Poisson regression analyses examined associations with PCCRC.

Results
There were 289 729 colonoscopies performed on 249 079 individuals included in the study. There were 16 319 individuals with a colorectal cancer diagnosis 0–36 months after a colonoscopy. Of these, 1286 (7.9%) were PCCRCs. In the multivariate analysis, young age (18–30 years) and former polyp diagnosis had the highest risks [relative risk (RR)=3.3; 95% confidence interval: 2.1–5.2 and RR=3.1; 95% confidence interval: 2.7–3.6]. The impact of other risk factors, such as female sex, comorbidity, right sided colorectal cancer location, and time period, was consistent with the finding in other studies.

Conclusion
The prevalence of PCCRC in Sweden seems to be relatively high, indicating that there is room for improvement in colonoscopy quality. The high RR of PCCRC in the youngest age group, even though there were only a few cases, has not been described in other studies.
Association Between Vitamin D Status and Schizophrenia
Authors: Salavert José , Grados Dolors , Ramiro Nuria , Carrión Maria Isabel , Fadeuilhe Christian , Palma Felipe , López Laura , Erra Alba , Ramírez Nicolás 
Published: April 2017

Abstract
Vitamin D deficiency has been linked with schizophrenia. We aimed to determine whether patients with a first episode of psychosis (FEP) had lower vitamin D levels compared with controls considering their final diagnosis. We conducted a cross-sectional study determining 25-hydroxyvitamin D blood levels. 25-Hydroxyvitamin D levels were considered optimum at 20 ng/mL or greater. A group of 45 adult patients with FEP and a group of 22 healthy controls matched for age were recruited. The patient group was subdivided in two final diagnosis groups (schizophrenia versus other psychoses) after a 6-month follow-up. Average vitamin D values were deficient for FEP patients, especially those 22 with a final diagnosis of schizophrenia. These results relating vitamin D and schizophrenia generate interest to further examine this association.
Cerclage Use: A Review of 3 National Guidelines
Authors: Sperling Jeffrey D. , Dahlke Joshua D. , Gonzalez Juan M. 
Published: April 2017

Importance
Preterm birth is a major contributor to perinatal morbidity and mortality. The most common intervention performed to improve perinatal outcomes for a woman experiencing cervical dilation in the second trimester without signs or symptoms of preterm labor is the cerclage.

Objective
We sought to review and compare available national guidelines on cerclage use.

Evidence Acquisition
We performed a descriptive review of 3 national guidelines on cerclage: The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Practice Bulletin on “Cerclage for the Management of Cervical Insufficiency,” Green-top Guideline from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists entitled “Cervical Cerclage,” and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada Clinical Practice Bulletin entitled “Cervical Insufficiency and Cervical Cerclage.” Guidelines were compared, and the following aspects of cerclage use for prevention of preterm delivery were summarized: indications and contraindications, risk factors for cervical insufficiency, perioperative considerations, and timing of removal. Recommendations and strength of evidence were reviewed based on each guideline's method of reporting. The references were compared with regard to the total number of randomized control trials, Cochrane Reviews, and systematic reviews/meta-analyses cited.

Results
The variations highlighted in the guidelines reflect the heterogeneity of the literature contributing to guidelines and the challenges of diagnosing and managing cervical insufficiency.

Conclusions
A cohesive international guideline may improve safety and quality and optimize patient outcomes.

Target Audience
Obstetricians and gynecologists, family physicians.

Learning Objectives
After completing this activity, the learner should be better able to outline variations in indications and contraindications for cervical cerclage use by international guideline, identify variation in perioperative considerations for cervical cerclage use by international guideline, and recognize variation in timing of removal by international guideline.
A Randomized Controlled Trial of Corticosteroids in Pediatric Septic Shock: A Pilot Feasibility Study*
Authors: Menon Kusum , McNally Dayre , O’Hearn Katharine , Acharya Anand , Wong Hector R. , Lawson Margaret , Ramsay Tim , McIntyre Lauralyn , Gilfoyle Elaine , Tucci Marisa , Wensley David , Gottesman Ronald , Morrison Gavin , Choong Karen 
Published: April 2017

Objective:
To determine the feasibility of conducting a randomized controlled trial of corticosteroids in pediatric septic shock.

Design:
Randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled trial.

Setting:
Seven tertiary level PICUs in Canada.

Patients:
Children newborn to 17 years old inclusive with suspected septic shock.

Intervention:
Administration of IV hydrocortisone versus placebo until hemodynamic stability is achieved or for a maximum of 7 days.

Measurements and Main Results:
One hundred seventy-four patients were potentially eligible of whom 101 patients met eligibility criteria. Fifty-seven patients were randomized, and 49 patients (23 and 26 patients in the hydrocortisone and placebo groups, respectively) were included in the final analysis. The mean time from screening to randomization was 2.4 ± 2.1 hours and from screening to first dose of study drug was 3.8 ± 2.6 hours. Forty-two percent of potentially eligible patients (73/174) received corticosteroids prior to randomization: 38.5% (67/174) were already on corticosteroids for shock at the time of screening, and in 3.4% (6/174), the treating physician wished to administer corticosteroids. Six of 49 randomized patients (12.2%) received open-label steroids, three in each of the hydrocortisone and placebo groups. Time on vasopressors, days on mechanical ventilation, PICU and hospital length of stay, and the rate of adverse events were not statistically different between the two groups.

Conclusions:
This study suggests that a large randomized controlled trial on early use of corticosteroids in pediatric septic shock is potentially feasible. However, the frequent use of empiric corticosteroids in otherwise eligible patients remains a significant challenge. Knowledge translation activities, targeted recruitment, and alternative study designs are possible strategies to mitigate this challenge.
A Hyper-Crosslinked Carbohydrate Polymer Scaffold Facilitates Lineage Commitment and Maintains a Reserve Pool of Proliferating Cardiovascular Progenitors
Authors: Baio Jonathan M. , Walden Ryan C. , Fuentes Tania I. , Lee Charles C. , Hasaniya Nahidh W. , Bailey Leonard L. , Kearns-Jonker Mary K. 
Published: April 2017

Background
Cardiovascular progenitor cells (CPCs) have been cultured on various scaffolds to resolve the challenge of cell retention after transplantation and to improve functional outcome after cell-based cardiac therapy. Previous studies have reported successful culture of fully differentiated cardiomyocytes on scaffolds of various types, and ongoing efforts are focused on optimizing the mix of cardiomyocytes and endothelial cells as well as on the identification of a source of progenitors capable of reversing cardiovascular damage. A scaffold culture that fosters cell differentiation into cardiomyocytes and endothelial cells while maintaining a progenitor reserve would benefit allogeneic cell transplantation.

Methods
Isl-1 + c-Kit + CPCs were isolated as clonal populations from human and sheep heart tissue. After hyper-crosslinked carbohydrate polymer scaffold culture, cells were assessed for differentiation, intracellular signaling, cell cycling, and growth factor/chemokine expression using real time polymerase chain reaction, flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, and calcium staining.

Results
Insulin-like growth factor 1, hepatocyte growth factor, and stromal cell derived factor 1α paracrine factors were induced, protein kinase B signaling was activated, extracellular signal-regulated kinase phosphorylation was reduced and differentiation into both cardiomyocytes and endothelial cells was induced by scaffold-based cell culture. Interestingly, movement of CPCs out of the G1 phase of the cell cycle and increased expression of pluripotency genes PLOU5F1 (Oct4) and T (Brachyury) within a portion of the cultured population occurred, which suggests the maintenance of a progenitor population. Two-color immunostaining and 3-color fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis confirmed the presence of both Isl-1 expressing undifferentiated cells and differentiated cells identified by troponin T and von Willebrand factor expression. Ki-67 labeling verified the presence of proliferating cells that remained in situ alongside the differentiated functional derivatives.

Conclusions
Cloned Isl-1 + c-kit + CPCs maintained on a hyper-cross linked polymer scaffold retain dual potential for proliferation and differentiation, providing a scaffold-based stem cell source for transplantation of committed and proliferating cardiovascular progenitors for functional testing in preclinical models of cell-based repair.
Guillain–Barré Syndrome and Swallowing Dysfunction
Authors: Mengi Tuğçe , Seçil Yaprak , İncesu Tülay Kurt , Arici Şehnaz , Akkiraz Zehra Özde , Gürgör Nevin , Gedizlioğlu Muhteşem , Ertekin Cumhur 
Published: April 2017

Purpose:
Patients with Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS), especially severe cases that require treatment in intensive care units, often experience swallowing difficulties. However, the oropharyngeal function of patients with GBS not treated in intensive care units is not typically evaluated using neurophysiological techniques.

Methods:
Electrophysiological techniques were used to determine dysphagia limit and sequential water swallowing values in an electromyography laboratory.

Results:
This study assessed 18 patients with GBS who were not treated in the intensive care unit between 4 and 45 days after their hospital admission; 18 healthy volunteers were used as a control group. Of the 18 patients with GBS, 7 exhibited the clinical involvement of either a single cranial nerve or a combination of cranial nerves while 11 did not show any lower cranial nerve involvement. Clinical dysphagia was observed in seven patients and six of these cases involved a lower cranial nerve while five patients without cranial nerve involvement had silent dysphagia according to the dysphagia limit test. In addition, the duration of sequential swallowing was significantly prolonged in all patients with GBS compared with the control subjects.

Conclusions:
The present findings demonstrated that neurophysiological techniques are useful and easily applicable for patients with GBS and that there were no complications. Furthermore, cranial nerve involvement in patients with GBS likely increased the incidence of oropharyngeal dysphagia, and subclinical dysphagia may be present in this population as well. Therefore, neurophysiological techniques can be initially used and then repeated during follow-up visits for all types of patients with GBS.
Modernization, wealth and the emergence of strong alpha oscillations in the human EEG
Authors: Parameshwaran Dhanya , Thiagarajan Tara C. 
Published: April 2017

ABSTRACTOscillations in the alpha range (8-15 Hz) have been found to appear prominently in the EEG signal when people are awake with their eyes closed, and since their discovery have been considered a fundamental cerebral rhythm. While the mechanism of this oscillation continues to be debated, it has been shown to bear positive relation to memory capacity, attention and a host of other cognitive outcomes. Here we show that this feature is largely undetected in the EEG of adults without post-primary education and access to modern technologies. Furthermore, we show that the spatial extent and energy of the oscillation have wide variation, with energy ranging over a thousand fold across the breath of humanity with no centralizing mean. This represents a divergence in a fundamental functional characteristic of an organ demonstrating both that modernization has had a profound influence on brain dynamics and that a meaningful ‘average’ human brain does not exist in a dynamical sense.
The feature-weighted receptive field: an interpretable encoding model for complex feature spaces
Authors: St-Yves Ghislain , Naselaris Thomas 
Published: April 2017

AbstractWe introduce the feature-weighted receptive field (fwRF), an encoding model designed to balance expressiveness, interpretability and scalability. The fwRF is organized around the notion of a feature map—a transformation of visual stimuli into visual features that preserves the topology of visual space (but not necessarily the native resolution of the stimulus). The key assumption of the fwRF model is that activity in each voxel encodes variation in a spatially localized region across multiple feature maps. This region is fixed for all feature maps; however, the contribution of each feature map to voxel activity is weighted. Thus, the model has two separable sets of parameters: “where” parameters that characterize the location and extent of pooling over visual features, and “what” parameters that characterize tuning to visual features. The “where” parameters are analogous to classical receptive fields, while “what” parameters are analogous to classical tuning functions. By treating these as separable parameters, the fwRF model complexity is independent of the resolution of the underlying feature maps. This makes it possible to estimate models with thousands of high-resolution feature maps from relatively small amounts of data. Once a fwRF model has been estimated from data, spatial pooling and feature tuning can be read-off directly with no (or very little) additional post-processing or in-silico experimentation.We describe an optimization algorithm for estimating fwRF models from data acquired during standard visual neuroimaging experiments. We then demonstrate the model’s application to two distinct sets of features: Gabor wavelets and features supplied by a deep convolutional neural network. We show that when Gabor feature maps are used, the fwRF model recovers receptive fields and spatial frequency tuning functions consistent with known organizational principles of the visual cortex. We also show that a fwRF model can be used to regress entire deep convolutional networks against brain activity. The ability to use whole networks in a single encoding model yields state-of-the-art prediction accuracy. Our results suggest a wide variety of uses for the feature-weighted receptive field model, from retinotopic mapping with natural scenes, to regressing the activities of whole deep neural networks onto measured brain activity.
Temporal changes in the nasal microbiota and host antimicrobial responses to intranasal mupirocin decolonisation: Observations in healthy staphylococcal carriers
Authors: Liu Su-Hsun , Tang Yi-Ching , Lin Yi-Hsiung , Chen Kuan-Fu , Chen Chih-Jung , Huang Yhu-Chering , Chen Leslie Y. 
Published: April 2017

SUMMARYBackgroundHow intranasal mupirocin decolonisation affects the human nasal microbiota remains unknown. To characterize the temporal dynamics of the nasal microbial community in healthy staphylococcal carriers in response to intranasal mupirocin decolonisation, we serially sampled the anterior nares of four healthy carriers to determine the nasal microbial profile via sequencing of bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA.ResultsBefore decolonisation, the nasal microbiota differed by the initial, culture-based staphylococcal carriage status, withFirmicutes(54.1%) andProteobacteria(75.8%) dominating the microbial community in the carriers and the noncarrier, separately. The nasal microbiota lost its diversity immediately after decolonisation (Shannon diversity: 1.33, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06-1.54) as compared to before decolonisation (1.78, 95%CI: 0.58-1.93). The initial staphylococcal carriage status, expression levels of human neutrophil peptide 1, and sampling times were major contributors to the between-community dissimilarities (Pfor marginal permutation test: .014) though of borderline significance when considering data correlation (Pfor blocked permutation test: .047) in both nonmetric multidimensional scaling and constrained correspondence analysis. Results of univariable and multivariable differential abundance analysis further showed that, in addition to Staphylococci, multiple genera of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria were differentially enriched or depleted by mupirocin use.ConclusionsMupirocin could affect both Gram-positive and Gram-negative commensals along with altered host antimicrobial responses. How the nasal microbiome recovered after short-term antibiotic perturbation depended on the initial staphylococcal carriage status. The potential risks associated with loss of colonisation resistance need to be considered in high-risk populations receiving targeted decolonisation.
Logistics optimisation in road construction project
Authors: Choudhari Sanjay , Tindwani Amit 
Published: April 2017

PurposeThis study aims to assist the project manager in minimising the material logistics cost of road project by planning the optimal movement of aggregate across three stages of supply chain: sourcing, processing and distribution.Design/methodology/approachThe paper conceptualises the raw material consumption in a road project as a logistics network distribution problem. A linear programming (LP) formulation is constructed with appropriate decision variables by integrating the three stages of material movement. The series of LP scenarios are solved using an LP solver to decide the optimal movement of the aggregate to be consumed in different layers of road segments.FindingsThe results obtained from the model show that planning material logistics of an entire road project using optimisation provides substantial saving in logistics costs than using common sense. Further, the magnitude of cost saving improves as the complexity of the model increases in term of enormous feasible options.Practical implicationsThe model shown in this paper may serve as a basis for planning the logistics of raw materials consumed in the road projects. The small improvement in material flows by optimising supply chain shows sensible cost benefit to the project manager and hence control and monitor the overall cost and activities of the project. The output of the model is also expected to help the project team as an input in the decision-making processes such as appropriate material sourcing contract, capacity assessment of material processing facility and transportation planning.Originality/valueWhile the optimisation models are widely used and popular among the many industrial applications, this research shows distinct application of such a model in managing the logistics of the road construction project.
Risk assessment in public-private partnership infrastructure projects
Authors: Osei-Kyei Robert , Chan Albert P.C. 
Published: April 2017

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically compare the risk factors in public-private partnership (PPP) projects in developing and developed countries, represented by Ghana and Hong Kong, respectively.

Design/methodology/approach
A structured questionnaire survey was conducted with PPP practitioners in Ghana and Hong Kong. In total, 103 valid responses were received for analysis. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance and mean ranking were used for data analysis.

Findings
The results show that respondents from Ghana ranked country risk factors higher, whereas their Hong Kong counterparts ranked project-specific risks higher. The top five significant risks in Ghana are corruption, inflation rate fluctuation, exchange rate fluctuation, delay in project completion and interest rate fluctuation. In Hong Kong, the top five significant risk factors are delay in land acquisition, operational cost overruns, construction cost overruns, delay in project completion and political interference.

Originality/value
The results of the study inform international investors of the appropriate risk mitigation measures and preventive actions to use when engaging in PPP arrangements in any part of the world. Further, governments who are yet to use the PPP concept would be informed of the prevailing risk factors in other neighbouring countries (i.e. developing or developed countries).
A future for facility management
Authors: Atkin Brian , Bildsten Louise 
Published: April 2017

Purpose
This paper aims to discuss the current debates in facility management to understand where the research community is working and where the facility management sector and discipline might be heading.

Design/methodology/approach
A review of research outputs has been undertaken to identify research themes. The discussion is based on developments that are already shaping how one should view facility management and outlines a possible future based on a number of strategically important questions and their likely answers.

Findings
There is a broad landscape of research themes; yet, a significant portion of the most-cited journal papers were published more than 10-15 years ago. Current debates are focused mostly on operational improvement; few are directed at more strategic objectives. Those in the informal media are concerned with more speculative themes, particularly the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI), which are indicative of disruptive technology. These themes are debated mostly by practitioners.

Originality/value
Many views are expressed in this editorial – some are controversial whilst others should be regarded as matters of fact. The underlying aim is to stimulate debate and action among readers about what appears to be a dilemma for the facility management sector and discipline. Does it continue along the same trajectory or should it be bold and strike out in new directions and meet the challenges presented by disruptive innovations, notably the IoT and AI? Hard choices await and not all decisions will lead to preferred outcomes.