Efficacy and Tolerability of 6-Month Treatment with Tamsulosin Plus the Hexanic Extract of Serenoa repens versus Tamsulosin Plus 5-Alpha-Reductase Inhibitors for Moderate-to-Severe LUTS-BPH Patients: Results of a Paired Matched Clinical Study

The objective of this subset analysis was to evaluate and compare the efficacy and tolerability of two combination treatments for men with moderate-to-severe lower urinary tract symptoms associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia (LUTS/BPH). Data were from a real-world, open-label, prospective, and multicenter study performed in outpatient urology clinics. Men with moderate-to-severe LUTS/BPH received 6-month treatment with tamsulosin (TAM) in combination with either the hexanic extract of S. repens (HESr) or a 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor (5ARI). Changes in urinary symptoms and quality of life were measured using the IPSS and BII questionnaires, respectively. Treatment tolerability was assessed by recording adverse effects (AEs). Patients in the two study groups were matched using iterative and propensity score matching approaches. After iterative matching, data were available from 136 patients (n = 68 treated with TAM + 5ARI, n = 68 with TAM + HESr). After 6 months of treatment, mean (SD) IPSS total score improved by 7.7 (6.3) and 6.7 (5.0) points in the TAM + 5ARI and TAM + HESr groups, respectively (p = 0.272); mean BII total scores improved by 3.1 (2.9) and 2.9 (2.4) points (p = 0.751), respectively. AEs were reported by 26.5% and 10.3% of patients in the same groups, mostly affecting sexual function (p < 0.027). When used in a real-world setting to treat patients with moderate-severe LUTS/BPH, 6-month treatment with TAM + HESr was as effective as TAM + 5ARI, but with better tolerability. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

DSD: document sparse-based denoising algorithm

International audienceIn this paper, we present a sparse-based denoising algorithm for scanned documents. This method can be applied to any kind of scanned documents with satisfactory results. Unlike other approaches, the proposed approach encodes noise documents through sparse representation and visual dictionary learning techniques without any prior noise model. Moreover, we propose a precision parameter estimator. Experiments on several datasets demonstrate the robustness of the proposed approach compared to the state-of-the-art methods on document denoising

A symbol spotting approach in graphic documents

This paper addresses the problem of symbol spotting for graphic documents. We propose an approach where each graphic document is indexed as a text document by using the vector model and an inverted file structure. The method relies on a visual vocabulary built from a shape descriptor adapted to the document level and invariant under classical geometric transforms (rotation, scaling and translation). Regions of interest (ROI) selected with high degree of confidence using a voting strategy are considered as occurrences of a query symbol. The symbol spotting problem consists in locating all instances of a symbol embedded in documents. The representation of these symbols is not straightforward by using a good shape (symbol) descriptor because they are not isolated from their context. Therefore, a common strategy for symbol spotting consists in decomposing documents into components and in applying a shape descriptor on each of them. A vectorization step is needed for most of the approaches and usually, only symbols which satisfy some conditions are retrieved (eg. convexity, connectivity, closure, ...). Our objective is to tackle the problem from a point of view where neither symbol hypothesis nor vectorization step is needed. First of all, we proposed a descriptor to represent graphic symbols and its extension to document level. Then, we exploit a descriptechnique based on the concept of visual words for indexing graphic documents and for spotting non-segmented symbols into documents. Finally, we introduce a voting process on the detected ROI in order to locate instances of a query symbol...Dans cet article, nous proposons une méthode de localisation de symboles dans des documents graphiques. Les occurrences du symbole dans un document sont détectées grâce à un processus de vote sur des régions candidates. L’approche repose sur un vocabulaire visuel et afin de réduire la complexité d’appariement d’un symbole avec d’autres nous utilisons le modèle vectoriel et une indexation par un fichier inverse. Cette méthode s’appuie sur un descripteur défini à partir du concept de contexte de forme 1 adapté aux points d’intérêt. Ce descripteur est invariant à la rotation, à la translation et aux changements d’échelles. Les résultats expérimentaux sur la recherche de symboles isolés et sur la localisation de symboles nonsegmentés dans le document sont très prometteurs

El surgimiento de la didáctica de las ciencias como campo específico de conocimientos

Los desarrollos y debates en torno a la didáctica de las ciencias ameritan una revisión histórica que permite reconocer los problemas de que se ocupa, las causas de su emergencia, su evolución, los obstáculos con que se encuentra, las principales líneas de investigación, los desafíos y perspectivas para constituirse en un dominio científico, como un campo específico y coherente de conocimiento

Nuevos clinkers de cemento belitico de cenizas volantes, de la combustión del carbón de alto contenido en cal y cemento belítico

Referencia OEPM: P200301504.-- Fecha de solicitud: 27/06/2003.-- Titulares: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Fundación Labein.Nuevos clinker de cemento belítico de cenizas volantes, de la combustión del carbón de alto contenido en cal y cemento belítico. Clinker formado mayoritariamente por la fase alfa prima de baja temperatura (α' L-Ca2Si04) del silicato dicálcico, que contiene elementos como Fe, Al, Mg, Na y K que le confieren mayor reactividad. El cemento belítico formado por 100% de dicho clinker, se caracteriza porque durante su hidratación produce mínimas cantidades, de Ca(OH)2 asegurando una buena durabilidad del cemento en los ambientes agresivos en los que el Ca(OH)2 forme reacciones expansivas, como es el caso del ataque por sulfatos. El curado acelerado, de los morteros fabricados con dicho cemento, a temperatura igual o menor a 40ºC y el empleo de aditivos reductores de la demanda de agua aceleran la hidratación de la fase belita, alcanzando a los 7 días valores de resistencia mecánica equiparables a un cemento Portland convencional.Peer reviewe