bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Possible effects of changes in the meteorological state over semi-arid areas on the general well-being of weather-sensitive patients
Authors: Yackerson Naomy S , Bromberg Ljuba , Adler Batiah , Aizenberg Alexander 
Published: April 2012

Abstract

Background
The influence of the changes in atmospheric states, typical for areas close to big deserts, on general well-being of hypertensive persons was analyzed.

Methods
Under test was the group of 20 hypertensive weather-sensitive patients; their blood pressure, pulse rate and appearance of 4 symptoms of discomfort sensations: arthritic pain, unjustified anxiety, severe headache and inexplicable tiredness- were registered. Symptoms are classified in ICD-9 code (780–790) and scored on a 4-point scale. Results were defined as positive (no departure from the range of normal values) or problematic; the daily number of the latter results was collected under the name “pathological reactions” NPR if at least two of these 7 checked symptoms (of one patient) were outside the normal range. Comparison of the current weather conditions with their means, questioning of patients and repeated examinations are used to gain information. The data was analyzed employing the SAS statistical software. Pearson and Spearman correlations were used, applied on the best and worst days, when a minimum and a maximum of pathological changes NPR in the patients’ well-being were observed. The statistical significance was p < 0.05 in all cases.

Results
~1500 medical observations and verbal statements were registered in the Primary Care Clinic (Be’er-Sheva, Israel) during 2001–2002. No meaning correlation was found between NPR and absolute values of temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure. Variations in wind speed WS and direction were expressed in blood pressure changes and in exacerbation of discomfort of various degrees. Unfavorable conditions correspond to days with dominant desert air streams and to high WS, when NPR reaches 85.7%; during the days with prevalent sea breeze NPR was ≤22.9%. The role of wind direction in NPR occurrence is prevalent when WS > 4 m·s-1. The Spearman test gives higher correlation than Pearson test (ρ ~ 0.14, p < 0.03 against ρ ~ 0.1, p < 0.04).

Conclusions
NPR is more affected by the air streams than by absolute values of meteorological parameters. The method of this study might give to family doctors some additional tools to predict deterioration in general feelings of chronic patients and could be related to other health problems influenced by the meteorological environment.
IRF5 promotes the proliferation of human thyroid cancer cells
Authors: Massimino Michele , Vigneri Paolo , Fallica Manuela , Fidilio Annamaria , Aloisi Alessandra , Frasca Francesco , Manzella Livia 
Published: April 2012

Abstract

Background
Interferon Regulatory Factor 5 is a transcription factor that regulates the expression of genes involved in the response to viral infection and in the stimulation of the immune system. Moreover, multiple studies have demonstrated that it negatively regulates cell growth and oncogenesis, favoring cell differentiation and apoptosis.
Thyroid carcinoma represents 98% of all thyroid malignancies and has shown a steady increase in incidence in both the USA and western European countries.

Findings
We investigated the expression, localization and function of IRF5 in thyroid cancer cells and found that it is highly expressed in both primary and immortalized thyroid carcinomas but not in normal thyrocytes. IRF5 levels were variably modulated by Interferon alpha but IRF5 only localized in the cytoplasmic compartment, thus failing to induce p21 expression as previously reported in different cell models. Furthermore, ectopic IRF5 increased both the proliferation rate and the clonogenic potential of malignant thyroid cells, protecting them from the cytotoxic effects of DNA-damaging agents. These results were directly attributable to IRF5, as demonstrated by the reduction in colony-forming ability of thyroid cancer cells after IRF5 silencing. An IRF5-dependent induction of endogenous B-Raf observed in all thyroid cancer cells might contribute to these unexpected effects.

Conclusions
These findings suggest that, in thyroid malignancies, IRF5 displays tumor-promoting rather than tumor-suppressor activities.
Emergency department diagnosis of upper extremity deep venous thrombosis using bedside ultrasonography
Authors: Rosen Tony , Chang Betty , Kaufman Martha , Soderman Mary , Riley David C 
Published: April 2012

Abstract
A 27-year-old man presents to the emergency department with a 1-day history of severe right upper extremity pain and swelling. The patient's status is post open reduction internal fixation for a left tibial plateau fracture, which was complicated by methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus osteomyelitis. A peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) line was subsequently placed for intravenous antibiotic therapy. Emergency department bedside ultrasound examination of both the right axillary vein and subclavian vein near the PICC line tip revealed deep venous thrombosis of both veins. Bedside upper extremity vascular ultrasonography can assist in the rapid diagnosis of upper extremity deep venous thrombosis in the emergency department.
Estradiol ameliorates arthritis and protects against systemic bone loss in Staphylococcus aureus infection in mice
Authors: Gjertsson Inger , Lagerquist Marie K , Kristiansson Erik , Carlsten Hans , Lindholm Catharina 
Published: April 2012

Abstract
Introduction
Staphylococcus aureus is a common cause of bacterial arthritis, which is associated with progressive bone loss in affected joints. We recently showed that S. aureus infection also induces a significant systemic bone loss in mice. This study was performed to assess the effect of estradiol treatment on the clinical course and outcome of S. aureus arthritis and on infection-induced bone loss in experimental S. aureus infection.

Methods
Mice were ovariectomized, treated with estradiol or placebo, and S. aureus infection was established by intravenous inoculation of bacteria.

Results
Estradiol treatment was found to decrease significantly the frequency and clinical severity of S. aureus arthritis, a finding that was accompanied with significantly higher serum levels of interleukin-10 in estradiol-treated mice. Estradiol was also highly protective against S. aureus-induced systemic trabecular, and cortical bone loss. Lack of endogenous estrogens and S. aureus infection had additive effects on trabecular bone loss. The S. aureus-infected, ovariectomized mice lost as much as 76% of their trabecular bone mass.

Conclusions
Treatment with estradiol ameliorates S. aureus arthritis and is protective against infection-induced systemic bone loss in experimental S. aureus infection.
Patient safety teaching in Australian medical schools: a national survey
Authors: Spigelman Allan D , Debono Deborah S , Oates Kim , Dunn Adam G , Braithwaite Jeffrey 
Published: April 2012

Objective To measure perceptions of Australian medical students and staff about whether key Learning Topics included in the National Patient Safety Education Framework (NPSEF) are being taught and what challenges to patient safety teaching are thought to be operating. Methods A cross-sectional survey of medical deans, educators and students was conducted in 2010. Twenty of twenty-one Australian medical schools participated. Using a five-point Likert scale, respondents rated whether patient safety topics were taught in their medical school and challenges to including patient safety in the curriculum. Results There were 2413 eligible responses: deans (or nominees) ( n = 14); medical educators ( n = 98); and medical students ( n = 2301). There was most agreement that teaching occurred about communicating effectively (8% neutral or disagreed) and least agreement that there was teaching about adverse events and near misses (35% neutral or disagreed). Deans, educators and students responded positively about available champions and expertise and negatively to the curriculum being too full to include patient safety. There were consistent differences between the responses of the stakeholder groups ( P < 0.0005 in a non-parametric test). Deans were more positive than educators, who were more positive than students. Conclusions Strong variability between perceptions of Learning Areas reveals opportunities for improvement in teaching about patient safety, especially in the area of recognizing and addressing adverse events and risks. Consistent differences across stakeholder groups reveal disparities in the perceptions of the teachers and their students. The results indicate targets for improving patient safety learning and closing the feedback loop between students and staff.
Service Scaling on Hyper-Networks
Authors: Chan Wai Kin Victor , Hsu Cheng 
Published: April 2012

Service scaling is concerned with service productivity, and hyper-networks with the design of service scaling. This new model uniquely explains Internet-based economic activities, such as e-commerce/e-business and social networking, which are quintessential new genres of service for Knowledge Economy. These activities possess unprecedented promises for scaling: up (reaching the population), down (personalization), and transformational (new business designs). The concept of hyper-networks has been proposed recently by one of the authors to help explain the analytical nature of such scaling. It establishes the principle of designing multiple simultaneous layers of digital connections (networking) of persons and organizations on the same basic networks (e.g., the Internet), and interrelating them through “value worm holes” to inflate value propositions (business spaces) and enable massive, simultaneous value cocreations across the life cycles of persons and organizations. This paper further analyzes the mathematical properties of hyper-networks in the context of a person's multiple roles in his/her life cycle, where each role sparks a particular network. Agent-based simulation experiments confirm that multi-layered networking (e.g., simultaneous multiple social networks) decreases exponentially the degrees of separation, and thereby increases the possibility for value proposition and cocreation in the community. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
Service-Dominant Logic as a Foundation for Service Science: Clarifications
Authors: Vargo Stephen L. , Akaka Melissa Archpru 
Published: April 2012

Service science is an emerging discipline concerned with the evolution, interaction, and reciprocal cocreation of value among service systems (Maglio and Spohrer [Maglio, P. P., J. Spohrer. 2008. Fundamentals of Service Science. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 36(1) 18–20.]; Spohrer et al. [Spohrer, J., S. Vargo, N. Caswell, P. Maglio. 2008. The Service System is the Basic Abstraction of Service Science. 41st Annual HICSS Conference Proceedings.]). Service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch [Vargo, S., R. F. Lusch. 2004a. Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing. Journal of Marketing 68(1) 1–17.] [Vargo, S., R. F. Lusch. 2008. Service-Dominant Logic: Continuing the Evolution. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 36(1) 1–10.]) is an alternative to the traditional, goods-dominant (G-D) paradigm for understanding economic exchange and value creation. This service-centered view is based on the idea that service – the application of competences for the benefit of another – is the basis of all exchange. S-D logic has been identified as an appropriate philosophical foundation for the development of service science (Maglio et al. [Maglio, P. P., S. L. Vargo, N. Caswell, J. Spohrer, 2009. The Service System is the Basic Abstraction of Service Science. Information Systems and e-business Management (in press).]). However, perhaps partly because S-D logic is first necessarily encountered through the G-D logic paradigm to which it runs counter, it is sometimes misinterpreted and thus misrepresented. This paper discusses S-D logic as a foundation for service science by reviewing the foundational premises of S-D logic and clarifying several misinterpretations related to (1) the S-D logic meaning of “service,” (2) the role of service in economic exchange, and (3) the nature of value cocreation. Drawing on these clarifications, implications of an S-D logic foundation for service science are proposed. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
Computational Thinking of Service Systems: Dynamics and Adaptiveness Modeling
Authors: Qiu Robin G. 
Published: April 2012

Service is broadly considered as an application of specialized knowledge, skill, and experience, performed for co-creation of respective values of both consumer and provider. Services are engineered and delivered through a heterogeneous service system. Compared to physical goods in manufacturing, resources, largely people (end users as the service consumer and employees as the service provider) – the main focus of a service system, cannot be held and are more complex to model and manage as people participating in service production and consumption have physiological and psychological issues, cognitive capability, and sociological constraints, etc. As the world becomes more complex and uncertain socially and economically, this research proposes a computational thinking approach to modeling of the dynamics and adaptiveness of a service system, aimed at fully leveraging today's ubiquitous digitalized information, computing capability and computational power so that the service system can be studied qualitatively and quantitatively. Ultimately, with this foundation we will successively and successfully develop the following mechanisms to implement and enhance service systems: A mechanism to timely capture end users' requirements, changes, expectation and satisfaction in a variety of technical, social, and cultural aspects; A mechanism to efficiently and cost-effectively provide employees right means and assistances to engineer services while promptly responding the changes; A mechanism to allow involved people consciously infuse as much intelligence as possible into all levels and aspects of decision-making to assure necessary system adaptiveness for smarter operations. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
The Consequences of Information Overload in Knowledge Based Service Economies: An Empirical Research Conducted in Geneva
Authors: Dubosson Magali , Fragniere Emmanuel 
Published: April 2012

We have conducted survey research to measure the perception of the Genevese population regarding the problem of information overload. The sample size is 581. Main findings indicate that information overload is a real concern in Geneva and seems to affect the efficiency of companies. Themes like sources and mediums of communications, utility of information, information pollution are investigated. In the first part of the analysis, we propose descriptive statistics. In the second part we explore a few hypotheses that are tested. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
iFAO: Facility Network Transformation Services for Specific Customer Oriented Service Industries
Authors: Dong Jin , Bai Xinxin , Yin Wenjun , Xie Ming , Fasano JP , Li Thomas 
Published: April 2012

Facility Network Transformation (FNT) is a strategic approach to assess and optimize industrial facility networks for new site selection, demand forecasting, and performance evaluation in customer oriented service industries such as banking and retail. In practice, FNT requirements are often diverse, dynamic and industry specific. It is often difficult to implement a generic FNT service fully integrated with legacy systems. The heterogeneity of spatial information further calls for a loosely coupled architecture. An innovative spatial decision support system, iFAO (Intelligent Facility Network Analytics and Optimization), for FNT problems using Service Oriented Architecture principles was developed. In this paper, key FNT service patterns are identified and modeled to provide an industry independent solution, and an SOA-based framework for iFAO is proposed. An underlying data model design is elaborated which acts as a common language for experts from different domains to communicate and help speed up the solution development. A retail case is presented to illustrate how SOA based iFAO services are integrated to address real industrial problems, especially for quick decisions on business strategy in the competitive and ever-changing marketplace. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
Editorial Column—Welcome to Our Declaration of Interdependence
Authors: Spohrer Jim 
Published: April 2012

[Excerpt] As the nations, businesses, non-profits, and people of the world become more interdependent, value creation and conflict resolution mechanisms, both historically evolved and consciously designed, are becoming more diverse, complex, and unfortunately, more susceptible to cascade failures and the law of unintended consequences. Service science is emerging as the study of value-cocreation phenomena in a globally integrated and connected world, which has the potential to become significantly smarter and more sustainable. In a service world, diverse entities create, abandon, utilize, ignore, configure, reconfigure, specialize, integrate, protect, and share resources and relationships to cocreate benefits with and for each other, both as individuals and collectives, both for the short-term and the long-term. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
Homeworking and Service Delivery: A Win Win Arrangement?
Authors: Beaumont Phil , Pate Judy , Paton Robert A. , Stewart Sandra 
Published: April 2012

In order to meet the ever-increasing demands of the market place, many organizations have sought to become more agile and flexible. One potential route to increased flexibility is home working. However, in a service dominant world what is less well considered is the impact of such flexible work practices on co-workers, partners and customers. Some of the human resource management literature provides a positive stance, where both employee and employer benefit from home working arrangements, whereas other studies have challenged and questioned the practice and suggest that the benefits of home working have been overstated. This paper draws on results of a case study investigation to appraise, for the various stakeholders, the qualitative benefits and costs of homeworking. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
Editorial Column—Service Science and Network Science
Authors: Hsu Cheng 
Published: April 2012

[Excerpt] Service science is a big umbrella under which many new and traditional results can find their comfortable places. However, as a creditable scientific field, it has to provide the premium that comes from the coalescence of the parts: the uniquely service science results that come from, e.g., the intersection of science, management and engineering. Jim Spohrer's declaration of interdependence (see the editorial column, Service Science, 1(1)) squarely places the focus on value cocreation in a digitally connected world. I concur. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
Cloud Software Service: Concepts, Technology, Economics
Authors: Katzan Harry 
Published: April 2012

Cloud software service is a modality for providing computer facilities and deploying software via the Internet. The concept combines Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Cloud computing represents a contextual shift in how computers are provisioned and accessed. Software-as-a-service is an architectural continuum that represents a democratization of access to software, computing platforms, and data through network effects, and the monetization of its value to customers and end users. One of the defining characteristics of cloud software service is the transfer of control from the client domain to the service provider. Another is that the client benefits from economy of scale on the part of the provider. There are many different examples of cloud software service, and this paper seeks to combine the salient elements into a composite picture of the subject matter. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]
A Stochastic Model of Resource Allocation for Service Systems
Authors: Badinelli Ralph 
Published: April 2012

Purpose: In this paper we develop a resource allocation model for a service system. The uncertainty of the relationship between inputs and outputs of a process of co-creation of value by a service provider and a service recipient is modeled with a stochastic form of the technology function of each service process of the system. The model development is directed at providing useful policy prescription for service providers and a foundation for research into the nature of resource allocation policies in service industries. Design/methodology/approach: The model development makes use of concepts of probability theory, optimization theory and extant DEA models. Findings: A practical optimization for allocating resources to service processes as well as insights into the complexity of service resource management are obtained. Research limitations/implications: The model presented in this paper is based on constant returns to scale of the service process. Nonlinear technology functions will be the subject of future research. Originality/value: To date, service science lacks models for resource management that approach the usefulness of resource-management models for manufacturing enterprises even though the service economy in the industrialized world is larger than the manufacturing economy. This paper initiates a stream of model-building research. [Service Science, ISSN 2164-3962 (print), ISSN 2164-3970 (online), was published by Services Science Global (SSG) from 2009 to 2011 as issues under ISBN 978-1-4276-2090-3.]