Yahoo!

About: Yahoo! is a company organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Web search query. The organization has 26749 authors who have published 29915 publications receiving 732583 citations. The organization is also known as: Yahoo! Inc. & Maudwen-Yahoo! Inc.

Canaloplasty: Three-year results of circumferential viscodilation and tensioning of Schlemm canal using a microcatheter to treat open-angle glaucoma.

Abstract: Purpose To report 3-year results of the safety and efficacy of canaloplasty, a procedure involving circumferential viscodilation and tensioning of the inner wall of Schlemm canal to treat open-angle glaucoma. Setting Multicenter surgical sites. Design Nonrandomized multicenter clinical trial. Methods This study comprised adult open-angle glaucoma patients having canaloplasty or combined cataract–canaloplasty surgery. Qualifying preoperative intraocular pressures (IOPs) were at least 16 mm Hg with historical IOPs of at least 21 mm Hg. A flexible microcatheter was used to viscodilate the full circumference of the canal and to place a trabecular tensioning suture. Primary outcome measures included IOP, glaucoma medication use, and adverse events. Results Three years postoperatively, all study eyes (n = 157) had a mean IOP of 15.2 mm Hg ± 3.5 (SD) and mean glaucoma medication use of 0.8 ± 0.9 compared with a baseline IOP of 23.8 ± 5.0 mm Hg on 1.8 ± 0.9 medications. Eyes with combined cataract–canaloplasty surgery had a mean IOP of 13.6 ± 3.6 mm Hg on 0.3 ± 0.5 medications compared with a baseline IOP of 23.5 ± 5.2 mm Hg on 1.5 ± 1.0 medications. Intraocular pressure and medication use results in all eyes were significantly decreased from baseline at every time point ( P Conclusion Canaloplasty led to a significant and sustained IOP reduction in adult patients with open-angle glaucoma and had an excellent short- and long-term postoperative safety profile. Financial Disclosure No author has a financial or proprietary interest in any material or method mentioned. Additional disclosures are found in the footnotes.

Superficial dry needling and active stretching in the treatment of myofascial pain – a randomised controlled trial

Abstract: Summary A pragmatic, single blind, randomised, controlled trial was conducted to test the hypothesis that superficial dry needling (SDN) together with active stretching is more effective than stretching alone, or no treatment, in deactivating trigger points (TrPs) and reducing myofascial pain. Forty patients with musculoskeletal pain, referred by GPs for physiotherapy, fulfilled inclusion / exclusion criteria for active TrPs. Subjects were randomised into three groups: group 1 (n=14) received superficial dry needling (SDN) and active stretching exercises (G1); group 2 (n=13) received stretching exercises alone (G2); and group 3 (n=13) were no treatment controls (G3). During the three-week intervention period for G1 and G2, the number of treatments varied according to the severity of the condition and subject/clinician availability. Assessment was carried out pre-intervention (M1), postintervention (M2), and at a three-week follow up (M3). Outcome measures were the Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SFMPQ) and Pressure Pain Threshold (PPT) of the primary TrP, using a Fischer algometer. Ninety-one per cent of assessments were blind to grouping. At M2 there were no significant inter-group differences, but at M3, G1 demonstrated significantly improved SFMPQ versus G3 (p=0.043) and significantly improved PPT versus G2 (p=0.011). There were no differences between G2 and G3. The mean PPT and SFMPQ scores correlated significantly in G1 only, though no significant inter-group differences were demonstrated. Numbers of patients requiring further treatment following the trial were: 6 (G1); 12 (G2); 9 (G3). Conclusion: SDN followed by active stretching is more effective than stretching alone in deactivating TrPs (reducing their sensitivity to pressure), and more effective than no treatment in reducing subjective pain. Stretching without prior deactivation may increase TrP sensitivity.

Framework for selecting and delivering advertisements over a network based on combined short-term and long-term user behavioral interests

Abstract: Targeted advertising content is provided for display in a page over a network in accordance with a technique in which advertisements are selected based on a determination of a user's short-term and long-term behavioral interests. Short-term and long-term information relating to a user's online activities is collected and associated with predetermined interest categories. Based on the collected information, short-term and long-term behavioral interest scores are determined for specific categories. The scores are employed to generate values for use in selecting advertisements. In one embodiment, a short-term score and two long-term scores are determined for one or more interest categories. A first long-term score models awareness with respect to a given category. A second long-term score and the short-term score are response-oriented scores that model the user's interest in making a response with respect to a given category, such as by purchasing a product or service within the category.

Canonicalization of terms in a keyword-based presentation system

Abstract: A presentation system accepts presentations or references to presentations from prospective presenters. Some or all of the presentations or references are stored in a database and referenced by keywords such that presentations to be presented in response to particular searches can be identified. A presentation manager handles accepting bids and settling terms between prospective presenters. The results of such processes might be stored in a presentation details database. A presentation server handles retrieving presentations from the presentation details database for presentation to users along with requests such as search results. Both the presentation manager and the presentation server can operate on a keywords-basis, wherein presentation terms specify keywords to be associated with particular presentations and the presentation server serves particular presentations based on keywords in a search query for which the presentations are to be returned.

Contextual advertising by combining relevance with click feedback

Abstract: Contextual advertising supports much of the Web's ecosystem today. User experience and revenue (shared by the site publisher and the ad network) depend on the relevance of the displayed ads to the page content. As with other document retrieval systems, relevance is provided by scoring the match between individual ads (documents) and the content of the page where the ads are shown (query). In this paper we show how this match can be improved significantly by augmenting the ad-page scoring function with extra parameters from a logistic regression model on the words in the pages and ads. A key property of the proposed model is that it can be mapped to standard cosine similarity matching and is suitable for efficient and scalable implementation over inverted indexes. The model parameter values are learnt from logs containing ad impressions and clicks, with shrinkage estimators being used to combat sparsity. To scale our computations to train on an extremely large training corpus consisting of several gigabytes of data, we parallelize our fitting algorithm in a Hadoop framework [10]. Experimental evaluation is provided showing improved click prediction over a holdout set of impression and click events from a large scale real-world ad placement engine. Our best model achieves a 25% lift in precision relative to a traditional information retrieval model which is based on cosine similarity, for recalling 10% of the clicks in our test data.