4,065 research outputs found
Effects of progestogens in women with preterm premature rupture of membranes
Different strategies have been adopted for prevention of spontaneous preterm birth, including use of progestogens. So far, five randomized trials have been published evaluating the efficacy of progestogens in women with PPROM, including a total of 425 participants. All the five trials enrolled pregnant women with singleton pregnancies randomized between 20 and 34 weeks of gestation. In four trials women were randomized to either weekly intramuscular 250 mg 17α-hydroxyprogesterone-caproate or placebo, while Mirzaei et al. was a three arms trials in which women received weekly intramuscular 250 mg 17α-hydroxyprogesterone-caproate, or rectal progesterone 400 mg daily, or no treatment. In all the trials, latency antibiotics were used, and tocolysis was used permitted for first 48 hours at discretion of attending physician. Recently a meta-analysis including the five trials has been published. They found that when compared to placebo weekly intramuscular 250 mg 17α-hydroxyprogesterone-caproate did not alter the latency period to delivery in singleton gestations with PPROM. Additionally, there was no difference in gestational age at delivery between groups or in mode of delivery. No significant differences were reported in maternal or neonatal outcomes, with latency not significantly altered in sensitivity analyses. So far, no trials have been published evaluating natural vaginal progesterone in women with PPROM
Towards Automatically Addressing Self-Admitted Technical Debt: How Far Are We?
Upon evolving their software, organizations and individual developers have to
spend a substantial effort to pay back technical debt, i.e., the fact that
software is released in a shape not as good as it should be, e.g., in terms of
functionality, reliability, or maintainability. This paper empirically
investigates the extent to which technical debt can be automatically paid back
by neural-based generative models, and in particular models exploiting
different strategies for pre-training and fine-tuning. We start by extracting a
dateset of 5,039 Self-Admitted Technical Debt (SATD) removals from 595
open-source projects. SATD refers to technical debt instances documented (e.g.,
via code comments) by developers. We use this dataset to experiment with seven
different generative deep learning (DL) model configurations. Specifically, we
compare transformers pre-trained and fine-tuned with different combinations of
training objectives, including the fixing of generic code changes, SATD
removals, and SATD-comment prompt tuning. Also, we investigate the
applicability in this context of a recently-available Large Language Model
(LLM)-based chat bot. Results of our study indicate that the automated
repayment of SATD is a challenging task, with the best model we experimented
with able to automatically fix ~2% to 8% of test instances, depending on the
number of attempts it is allowed to make. Given the limited size of the
fine-tuning dataset (~5k instances), the model's pre-training plays a
fundamental role in boosting performance. Also, the ability to remove SATD
steadily drops if the comment documenting the SATD is not provided as input to
the model. Finally, we found general-purpose LLMs to not be a competitive
approach for addressing SATD
Building a local climate reference dataset: application to the Abruzzo region (Central Italy), 1930â2019
Reliable secular time series of essential climatic variables are a fundamental element for the assessment of vulnerability, impact and adaptation to climate change. Here, we implement a readily portable procedure for building an upgradable longâterm homogeneous climate dataset using monthly and daily observations of temperature and precipitation over a given area of interest, exemplified here with Abruzzo, a region in Central Italy characterized by complex orography. We process the dataset according to a preliminary ranking of stations based on data quantity and quality, and we exploit the Climatol algorithm for inhomogeneity correction. The corrected time series show trends in broad agreement with external databases (CRU, Berkeley Earth, EâOBS), and highlight the importance of relying on a local network for a better representation of gradients and variability over the territory. We estimate that maximum (TX) and minimum temperature (TN) increased by ~1.6 and ~2.2°C/century, respectively, over the period 1930â2019, while in the recent decades 1980â2019 we found an accelerated trend of ~5.7 and ~3.9°C/century. Precipitation (RR) decreased by ~10%/century in 1930â2019, while it has been increasing at a rate of ~26%/century in 1980â2019. The KöppenâGeiger climate classification is sensitive to the increase of precipitation in the recent decades, which is attributable to decreased summer precipitation overcompensated by more rain in late spring and early autumn. The cold climate types are retreating upwards along the slopes of the mountain ranges. Over the period 1980â2019, extreme values are also displaying significant trends. Every 2âyears, there is one less frost day (TN 25°C) in the Apennines area, while there is one more tropical night (TN >20°C) in the Adriatic coastal area. Precipitation extremes are increasing, especially along the coast, with rain accumulated in the rainiest days increasing at a rate of 1â2%/year
Toward Automatically Completing GitHub Workflows
Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) are nowadays at the core of
software development. Their benefits come at the cost of setting up and
maintaining the CI/CD pipeline, which requires knowledge and skills often
orthogonal to those entailed in other software-related tasks. While several
recommender systems have been proposed to support developers across a variety
of tasks, little automated support is available when it comes to setting up and
maintaining CI/CD pipelines. We present GH-WCOM (GitHub Workflow COMpletion), a
Transformer-based approach supporting developers in writing a specific type of
CI/CD pipelines, namely GitHub workflows. To deal with such a task, we designed
an abstraction process to help the learning of the transformer while still
making GH-WCOM able to recommend very peculiar workflow elements such as tool
options and scripting elements. Our empirical study shows that GH-WCOM provides
up to 34.23% correct predictions, and the model's confidence is a reliable
proxy for the recommendations' correctness likelihood
Editorial: New professionalism and the future of work: Interdisciplinary perspectives on transformations in business-health relationships
This special issue provides new perspectives into the future of work and it focuses on how
innovation, entrepreneurship, and the evolution of digital robotics could influence health and
productivity of individuals and enterprises. The world of work is changing rapidly, especially
in terms of increasing digitalization and robotic innovation. Such a scenario may represent
an opportunity for workers who adapt themselves, but also a potential source of stress and
poor well-being for those subjects less inclined to change
On the Fractal Nature of Nervous Cell System
In a detailed study entitled âMorphological development of thick â tufted layer V pyramidal cells in the rat somatosensory cortex, â an international team of scientists (Romand et al., 2011) reported a series of results pertaining to an analytical investigation of the morphological development of thick-tufted layer V pyramidal cells (also called the principal cells) in the rat somatosensory cortex. At the end of the Introduction Section, the Authors stated âall compartments of a TTL5 cell undergo different developmental changes, supporting the notion that multiple functional compartments receive different inputs an
Radial neck fractures in children: results when open reduction is indicated
BACKGROUND: Radial neck fractures in children are rare, representing 5% of all elbow pediatric fractures. Most are minimally displaced or nondisplaced. Severely displaced or angulated radial neck fractures often have poor outcomes, even after open reduction, and case series reported in literature are limited. The aim of the study is to analyze the outcomes of patients with a completely displaced and angulated fracture who underwent open reduction when closed reduction failed. METHODS: Between 2000 and 2009, 195 patients with radial neck fractures were treated in our institute. Twenty-four cases satisfied all the inclusion criteria and were evaluated clinically and radiologically at a mean follow-up of 7 years. At follow-up, the carrying angle in full elbow extension and the range of motion of the elbow and forearm were measured bilaterally. We recorded clinical results as good, fair, or poor according to the range of movement and the presence of pain. Radiographic evaluation documented the size of the radial head, the presence of avascular necrosis, premature physeal closure, and cubitus valgus. RESULTS: Statistical analysis showed that fair and poor results are directly correlated with loss of pronation-supination (P=0.001), reduction of elbow flexion-extension (P=0.001), increase of elbow valgus angle (P=0.002), necrosis of the radial head (P=0.001), premature physeal closure (P=0.01), and associated lesions (olecranon fracture with or without dislocation of the elbow) (P=0.002). DISCUSSION: In our cases, residual radial head deformity due to premature closure of the growth plate and avascular necrosis were correlated with a functional deficit. Associated elbow injury was coupled with a negative prognosis. In our series, about 25% of patients had fair and 20% had poor results. Outcomes were good in 55% and felt to represent a better outcome than if the fracture remained nonanatomically reduced with residual angulation and/or displacement of the radial head. This study reports the largest series of these fractures with a combination of significant angulation and displacement of the fracture requiring open reduction. We feel that open reduction is indicated when the head of the radius is completely displaced and without contact with the rim of the metaphysis
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