2821 research outputs found
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A recommendation system based on AI for storing Block data in the Electronic Health Repository
Get PDFA proliferation of wearable sensors that record physiological signals has resulted in an exponential growth of data on digital
health. To select the appropriate repository for the increasing amount of collected data, intelligent procedures are becoming
increasingly necessary. However, allocating storage space is a nuanced process. Generally, patients have some input in choosing
which repository to use, although they are not always responsible for this decision. Patients are likely to have idiosyncratic
storage preferences based on their unique circumstances. The purpose of the current study is to develop a new predictive model
of health data storage to meet the needs of patients while ensuring rapid storage decisions, even when data is streaming from
wearable devices. To create the machine learning classifier, we used a training set synthesized from small samples of experts who
exhibited correlations between health data and storage features. The results confirm the validity of the machine learning
methodolog
A systematic review of the discrimination and absolute mortality predicted by the National Early Warning Scores according to different cut-off values and prediction windows
Get PDFBackground
Although early warning scores were intended to simply identify patients in need of life-saving interventions, prediction has become their commonest metric. This review examined variation in the ability of the National Early Warning Scores (NEWS) in adult patients to predict absolute mortality at different times and cut-offs values.
Method
Following PRISMA guidelines, all studies reporting NEWS and NEWS2 providing enough information to fulfil the review's aims were included.
Results
From 121 papers identified, the average area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (AUC) for mortality declined from 0.90 at 24-hours to 0.76 at 30-days. Studies with a low overall mortality had a higher AUC for 24-hour mortality, as did general ward patients compared to patients seen earlier in their treatment. 24-hour mortality increased from 1.8% for a NEWS ≥3 to 7.8% for NEWS ≥7. Although 24-hour mortality for NEWS <3 was only 0.07% these deaths accounted for 9% of all deaths within 24-hours; for NEWS <7 24-hour mortality was 0.23%, which accounted for 44% of all 24-hour deaths. Within 30-days of a NEWS recording 22% of all deaths occurred in patients with a NEWS <3, 52% in patients with a NEWS <5, and 75% in patient with a NEWS <7.
Conclusion
NEWS reliably identifies patients most and least likely to die within 24-hours, which is what it was designed to do. However, many patients identified to have a low risk of imminent death die within 30-days. NEWS mortality predictions beyond 24-hours are unreliable
Work-family conflict and the role of socio-cultural factors : the case of the Nigerian migrant women in the Irish healthcare sector
Get PDFSystemic review of studies on work-family conflict (WFC) demonstrate that high levels of stress and mental health problems are some of the consequences of WFC and also two well known risk factors for suicide amongst health care workers. Studies have also evidenced that female healthcare workers have a higher suicide rate than the national average as result of intensified WFC. The office for National statistics has noted a 20% increase in mental health problems and suicide rate in the industry since the start of the Covid19 pandemic. There is no doubt that WFC has been an enduring preoccupation of researchers considering its ominous consequences. However, majority of the studies and findings continue to assume that individuals live and function within a single culture and overlook the fact that globalisation has resulted in an ethnic diverse and multi-cultural workforce especially in the Western world. For instance, ethnic black/African-American women are reported to suffer depression or decreases in psychological well-being at disparate rates when compared with white women implying a higher susceptibility to WFC. Despite these emerging facts and globalisation with its attendant growing migrant population, very little is known about the work-family conflict (WFC) experiences of ethnic migrant sub-groups across diverse cultural contexts such as the migrant Nigerians in the Irish healthcare sector. This has left a void in the knowledge of WFC for this group despite their preponderance in the healthcare sector. This study therefore, sought to help fill a critical gap in work-family conflict research by exploring the experiences of WFC amongst this group
Identification of the factors that affect entrepreneurship in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe
Get PDFThe former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe have the
developed world’s lowest number of entrepreneurs. Since small and medium
businesses are the economic drivers for long term economic growth, this issue
creates an economic weakness for the Czech Republic and greater region. In the
literature there is a lot of general knowledge about entrepreneurship, but very
little is focused on entrepreneurship in the East compared to the literature
available regarding Western nations. This study’s research is focused on the
factors that affect entrepreneurship in the former communist countries of Central
and Eastern Europe in terms of culture, norms, and the impact of communism on
today’s entrepreneurial environment. The aim of this study is to broaden our
understanding of how entrepreneurship currently works in this unique region,
because understanding the factors, characteristics, and barriers to entry for new
entrepreneurial economic activity will help business development, and raise
economic growth in the region.
In order to identify, understand, and compare the characteristics of
entrepreneurs, the research is focused on three areas: how entrepreneurship has
evolved from West to East, an investigation of the factors that that influence
entrepreneurship in developing countries with transitional economies, and finally,
an analysis of the factors that impact entrepreneurship in the former communist
countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
A mixed methods approach was used for the design of the primary research:
Qualitative methodology was used to collect data through semi structured
interviews, while Quantitative methodology was used to collect information
through an electronic questionnaire. The secondary research was then compared
with the primary research using triangulation to identify the critical themes of
entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern Europe. The characteristics identified in
the region were: control and corruption, critical thinking, risk taking, access to
capital and mentoring, and education. Overall, the communist machinery that
kept markets closed still exists today, with the former communist politicians still
in charge, and the power structures organized in such a way as to keep wealth
within the hands of a few. The psychological effects of communism have left a
measurable impact upon individual appetite for risk, standing out, or thinking differently. Finally, there is a lack of infrastructure available to train and mentor
new entrepreneurs.
The original contribution of this work has been the identification of these factors,
which expands the knowledge base of global entrepreneurship in terms of the
unique social, cultural, and business environment for the former communist
countries of Central and Eastern Europe
Leisure, religion and the (infra)secular city: the Manchester and Salford Whit Walks
Get PDFDrawing on the Manchester and Salford Whit Walks, a Church of England Whitsuntide procession, this research adopts della Dora’s concept of the infrasecular to interpret the interstitiality of the religious or civic nature of leisure experiences in the urban context. Processional walking at Whitsuntide originated as a pre-industrial custom that was simultaneously a religious and a leisure practice. However, with the decline of religion the meanings the Whit Walks have changed in a number of dimensions. Using the lens of infrasecular geography, this research explored the ways in which these Walks have remade sacred space in the secular city through an historical account of their evolution, interviews with participants and observation. The research re-emphasises the continuing importance of custom to contemporary leisure practice and through the infrasecular lens
enables new insights into the dynamics of the historical spaces of leisure practice. The study concludes that religion remains an important influence on leisure and that the concept of the infrasecular merits further investigation in leisure practices
Pointer-based item-to-item collaborative filtering recommendation system using a machine learning model
Get PDFThe advent of digital marketing has enabled companies to adopt personalized item recommendations for their customers. This process keeps them ahead of the competition.
One of the techniques used in item recommendation is known as an item-based recommendation system or item-item collaborative filtering. Presently, item recommendation
is based completely on ratings like 1 − 5, which is not included in the comment section.
In this context, users or customers express their feelings and thoughts about products or services. This paper proposes a machine learning model system where 0, 2, 4 are used
to rate products. 0 is negative, 2 is neutral, 4 is positive. This will be in addition to
the existing review system that takes care of the users’ reviews and comments, without disrupting it. We have implemented this model by using Keras, Pandas and Sci-kit
Learning libraries to run the internal work. The proposed approach improved prediction
with 79% Accuracy for Yelp datasets of businesses across 11 metropolitan areas in four
countries, along with a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 21%, Precision at 79%, Recall
at 80% and F1-Score at 79%. Our model shows scalability advantage and how organizations can revolutionize their recommender systems to attract possible customers and
increase patronage. Also, the proposed similarity algorithm was compared to conventional algorithms to estimate its performance and accuracy in terms of its Root Mean Square Error (RSME), Precision and Recall. Results of this experiment indicate that the
similarity recommendation algorithm performs better than the conventional algorithm and enhances recommendation accuracy
The feeling's mutual
Get PDFThe impact of COVID-19 has shown that mutual aid groups like AA may be even more beneficial than we realised, say Lisa Ogilvie and Jerome Carson
Combined atmospheric pressure plasma and UV surface functionalisation and diagnostics of nylon 6.6 fabrics
Get PDFThe purpose of this work is to functionalize and characterize the surface of nylon 6.6 fabrics by exposure to a novel atmospheric cold plasma coupled with ultraviolet (UV) excimer laser treatment. It was found that plasma/UV treatment does not significantly physically degrade or ablate fibre surfaces, but creates changes to surface chemistry in the form of additional functional groups (principally NH2 and COOH). These chemical surface changes are not easily analyzed with techniques such as FTIR-ATR, which was found to be too insensitive; therefore, a new low-temperature surface diagnostic dyeing method was developed, and the results of this compared with those from X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Mechanisms for surface changes are proposed, in which surface free radicals are created by the plasma in the presence or absence of the laser, the characteristics of which depend on the atmosphere type and plasma power used. Radical production was observed through the use of a radical scavenger in combination with UV–vis spectroscopic analysis and by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR
Effects of edge shapes on thermal-fluid processes in oscillatory flows
Get PDFThermoacoustic machines, Stirling engines or coolers, and pulse tube coolers are examples of energy systems that operate based on oscillatory flow principles. This class of technology would achieve an improved efficiency from appropriately designed heat exchangers, stacks, regenerators and thermal buffer tubes. In this paper, heat transfer and oscillatory flow behaviour in three identical parallel-plate heat exchangers, one ‘heat
source’ positioned between two ‘heat sinks’, are investigated using numerical method. The effect of different plate edge shapes on heat transfer, flow structures and acoustic pressure drop are examined at a selected drive ratio of 0.3 – 2.0%. Flow parameters show a strong dependency on drive ratio and flow direction, especially at low excitation where gas displacements are below or comparable to the heat exchanger length. Cone edge shape minimises the flow complexity better than other shapes with a negligible effect on the heat
transfer. The result of this study will benefit the design and development of compact and high-efficiency heat exchangers for the next generation of oscillatory-flow energy and thermal management systems
The effect of simultaneous heat/fire and impact on carbon fibril and particle release from carbon fibre-reinforced composites
Get PDFA novel laboratory scale testing equipment has been designed and developed, which combines impact
and heat/fire conditions to enable the testing of composite laminates, including the ability to capture
debris/particles released during the test. This incorporates a pendulum impactor to create impact
whilst the sample is exposed to a cone heater at a particular heat flux for a specified period of time.
A protocol for testing samples under different conditions and capturing particles released, both from
the front and back faces, along with effluents has been provided. A carbon fibre-reinforced epoxy
composite was impacted whilst being exposed to different heat fluxes for a range of time periods. A
loss of stiffness related to the heating exposure time was found to affect the damage type. At lower
heat fluxes, the captured particles included broken carbon fibres, decomposed resinous particles and
resin coated fibres. Quantitative and morphological analyses of captured particles demonstrated that
the sizes of decomposed resin particles and fibres reduced with longer exposure time or increased
heat flux. This information could be useful to provide insight into potential health hazards of
components of the composites