11 research outputs found
Delayed Treatment of Diagnosed Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Taiwan
Get PDFAbstract Background Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection is an ongoing public health problem in Taiwan. The National Tuberculosis Registry Campaign, a case management system, was implemented in 1997. This study examined this monitoring system to identify and characterize delayed treatment of TB patients. Methods Records of all tuberculosis cases treated in Taiwan from 2002 through 2005 were obtained from the National Tuberculosis Registry Campaign. Initiation of treatment more than 7 days after diagnosis was considered a long treatment delay. Results The study included 31,937 patients. The mean day of delayed treatment was 3.6 days. Most patients were treated immediately after diagnosis. The relationship between number of TB patients and days of delayed treatment after diagnosis exhibited a Power-law distribution. The long tail of the power-law distribution indicated that an extreme number occur cannot be neglected. Tuberculosis patients treated after an unusually long delay require close observation and follow up. Conclusion This study found that TB control is generally acceptabl in Taiwan; however, delayed treatment increases the risk of transmission. Improving the protocol for managing confirmed TB cases can minimize disease transmission.</p
Interconnection networks for parallel and distributed computing
Get PDFParallel computers are generally either shared-memory machines or distributed- memory machines. There are currently technological limitations on shared-memory architectures and so parallel computers utilizing a large number of processors tend tube distributed-memory machines. We are concerned solely with distributed-memory multiprocessors. In such machines, the dominant factor inhibiting faster global computations is inter-processor communication. Communication is dependent upon the topology of the interconnection network, the routing mechanism, the flow control policy, and the method of switching. We are concerned with issues relating to the topology of the interconnection network. The choice of how we connect processors in a distributed-memory multiprocessor is a fundamental design decision. There are numerous, often conflicting, considerations to bear in mind. However, there does not exist an interconnection network that is optimal on all counts and trade-offs have to be made. A multitude of interconnection networks have been proposed with each of these networks having some good (topological) properties and some not so good. Existing noteworthy networks include trees, fat-trees, meshes, cube-connected cycles, butterflies, Möbius cubes, hypercubes, augmented cubes, k-ary n-cubes, twisted cubes, n-star graphs, (n, k)-star graphs, alternating group graphs, de Bruijn networks, and bubble-sort graphs, to name but a few. We will mainly focus on k-ary n-cubes and (n, k)-star graphs in this thesis. Meanwhile, we propose a new interconnection network called augmented k-ary n- cubes. The following results are given in the thesis.1. Let k ≥ 4 be even and let n ≥ 2. Consider a faulty k-ary n-cube Q(^k_n) in which the number of node faults f(_n) and the number of link faults f(_e) are such that f(_n) + f(_e) ≤ 2n - 2. We prove that given any two healthy nodes s and e of Q(^k_n), there is a path from s to e of length at least k(^n) - 2f(_n) - 1 (resp. k(^n) - 2f(_n) - 2) if the nodes s and e have different (resp. the same) parities (the parity of a node Q(^k_n) in is the sum modulo 2 of the elements in the n-tuple over 0, 1, ∙∙∙ , k - 1 representing the node). Our result is optimal in the sense that there are pairs of nodes and fault configurations for which these bounds cannot be improved, and it answers questions recently posed by Yang, Tan and Hsu, and by Fu. Furthermore, we extend known results, obtained by Kim and Park, for the case when n = 2.2. We give precise solutions to problems posed by Wang, An, Pan, Wang and Qu and by Hsieh, Lin and Huang. In particular, we show that Q(^k_n) is bi-panconnected and edge-bipancyclic, when k ≥ 3 and n ≥ 2, and we also show that when k is odd, Q(^k_n) is m-panconnected, for m = (^n(k - 1) + 2k - 6’ / ‘_2), and (k -1) pancyclic (these bounds are optimal). We introduce a path-shortening technique, called progressive shortening, and strengthen existing results, showing that when paths are formed using progressive shortening then these paths can be efficiently constructed and used to solve a problem relating to the distributed simulation of linear arrays and cycles in a parallel machine whose interconnection network is Q(^k_n) even in the presence of a faulty processor.3. We define an interconnection network AQ(^k_n) which we call the augmented k-ary n-cube by extending a k-ary n-cube in a manner analogous to the existing extension of an n-dimensional hypercube to an n-dimensional augmented cube. We prove that the augmented k-ary n-cube Q(^k_n) has a number of attractive properties (in the context of parallel computing). For example, we show that the augmented k-ary n-cube Q(^k_n) - is a Cayley graph (and so is vertex-symmetric); has connectivity 4n - 2, and is such that we can build a set of 4n - 2 mutually disjoint paths joining any two distinct vertices so that the path of maximal length has length at most max{{n- l)k- (n-2), k + 7}; has diameter [(^k) / (_3)] + [(^k - 1) /( _3)], when n = 2; and has diameter at most (^k) / (_4) (n+ 1), for n ≥ 3 and k even, and at most [(^k)/ (_4) (n + 1) + (^n) / (_4), for n ^, for n ≥ 3 and k odd.4. We present an algorithm which given a source node and a set of n - 1 target nodes in the (n, k)-star graph S(_n,k) where all nodes are distinct, builds a collection of n - 1 node-disjoint paths, one from each target node to the source. The collection of paths output from the algorithm is such that each path has length at most 6k - 7, and the algorithm has time complexity O(k(^3)n(^4))
Beta-Thalassemia Major Births after National Screening Program in Taiwan
No full textObjective. A National Thalassemia Screening Program was adopted in Taiwan in 1993. This report examined that program 's results and impact. Methods . Patients with beta- thalassemia major born between 1994 and 2003 were recruited through the help of all thalassemia clinics in Taiwan. A structured questionnaire was designed to collect the reasons for affected births. Results. There were 97 affected births from 1994 to 2003. These births resulted after informed choice (n = 4), screening problems (n = 83) , and undetermined causes (n = 10). Approximately 83% (5/6) of affected births in 2003 came from interracial marriages. Conclusions. This report has identified several areas that might improve the thalassemia-screening program, including carrier screening in high school rather than in early pregnancy and the involvement of genetic counselors, providing care of new female immigrants
Carrier screening for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) in 107,611 pregnant women during the period 2005-2009: a prospective population-based cohort study.
No full textBackgroundSpinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is the most common neuromuscular autosomal recessive disorder. The American College of Medical Genetics has recently recommended routine carrier screening for SMA because of the high carrier frequency (1 in 25-50) as well as the severity of that genetic disease. Large studies are needed to determine the feasibility, benefits, and costs of such a program.Methods and findingsThis is a prospective population-based cohort study of 107,611 pregnant women from 25 counties in Taiwan conducted during the period January 2005 to June 2009. A three-stage screening program was used: (1) pregnant women were tested for SMA heterozygosity; (2) if the mother was determined to be heterozygous for SMA (carrier status), the paternal partner was then tested; (3) if both partners were SMA carriers, prenatal diagnostic testing was performed. During the study period, a total of 2,262 SMA carriers with one copy of the SMN1 gene were identified among the 107,611 pregnant women that were screened. The carrier rate was approximately 1 in 48 (2.10%). The negative predictive value of DHPLC coupled with MLPA was 99.87%. The combined method could detect approximately 94% of carriers because most of the cases resulted from a common single deletion event. In addition, 2,038 spouses were determined to be SMA carriers. Among those individuals, 47 couples were determined to be at high risk for having offspring with SMA. Prenatal diagnostic testing was performed in 43 pregnant women (91.49%) and SMA was diagnosed in 12 (27.91%) fetuses. The prevalence of SMA in our population was 1 in 8,968.ConclusionThe main benefit of SMA carrier screening is to reduce the burden associated with giving birth to an affected child. In this study, we determined the carrier frequency and genetic risk and provided carrier couples with genetic services, knowledge, and genetic counseling
Scalable Text Mining with Sparse Generative Models
No full textThe information age has brought a deluge of data. Much of this is in text form, insurmountable in scope for humans and incomprehensible in structure for computers. Text mining is an expanding field of research that seeks to utilize the information contained in vast document collections. General data mining methods based on machine learning face challenges with the scale of text data, posing a need for scalable text mining methods.
This thesis proposes a solution to scalable text mining: generative models combined with sparse computation. A unifying formalization for generative text models is defined, bringing together research traditions that have used formally equivalent models, but ignored parallel developments. This framework allows the use of methods developed in different processing tasks such as retrieval and classification, yielding effective solutions across different text mining tasks. Sparse computation using inverted indices is proposed for inference on probabilistic models. This reduces the computational complexity of the common text mining operations according to sparsity, yielding probabilistic models with the scalability of modern search engines.
The proposed combination provides sparse generative models: a solution for text mining that is general, effective, and scalable. Extensive experimentation on text classification and ranked retrieval datasets are conducted, showing that the proposed solution matches or outperforms the leading task-specific methods in effectiveness, with a order of magnitude decrease in classification times for Wikipedia article categorization with a million classes. The developed methods were further applied in two 2014 Kaggle data mining prize competitions with over a hundred competing teams, earning first and second places
Genotypes of Couples at Risk for Offspring with Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
No full text<p>Genotypes of Couples at Risk for Offspring with Spinal Muscular Atrophy.</p
Spinal Muscular Atrophy Genotype Distribution.
No full text<p>Spinal Muscular Atrophy Genotype Distribution.</p
Outcome of Population-based Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Screening in Taiwan.
No full text<p>*Data available from the Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health, Taiwan (<a href="http://www.bhp.doh.gov.tw/BHPnet/Portal/" target="_blank">http://www.bhp.doh.gov.tw/BHPnet/Portal/</a>).</p
Demographic Characteristics of the 107,611 Pregnant Women Enrolled in the Study.
No full text<p>Demographic Characteristics of the 107,611 Pregnant Women Enrolled in the Study.</p
Autoantibodies against type I IFNs in patients with life-threatening COVID-19
No full textInterindividual clinical vari-ability is vast in humans infected withsevere acute respiratory syndrome corona-virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), ranging from silent in-fection to rapid death. Three risk factors forlife-threatening coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19) pneumonia have been identified—being male, being elderly, or having othermedical conditions—but these risk factorscannot explain why critical disease remainsrelatively rare in any given epidemiologicalgroup. Given the rising toll of the COVID-19pandemic in terms of morbidity and mortality,understanding the causes and mechanisms oflife-threatening COVID-19 is crucial.The Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Rockefeller University, the St. Giles Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (R01AI088364), the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program (UL1 TR001866), a Fast Grant from Emergent Ventures, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Yale Center for Mendelian Genomics and the GSP Coordinating Center funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) (UM1HG006504 and U24HG008956), the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the Investments for the Future program (ANR-10-IAHU-01), the Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory of Excellence (ANR-10-LABX-62-IBEID), the French Foundation for Medical Research (FRM) (EQU201903007798), the FRM and ANR GENCOVID project (ANRS-COV05), the Square Foundation, Grandir – Fonds de solidarité pour l’enfance, the SCOR Corporate Foundation for Science, the Institut Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), and the University of Paris. Samples from San Raffaele Hospital were obtained through the Covid-BioB project and by healthcare personnel of San Raffaele Hospital, San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (SR-TIGET) clinical laboratory and clinical research unit, funded by the Program Project COVID-19 OSR-UniSR and Fondazione Telethon. The French COVID Cohort Study Group was sponsored by INSERM and supported by the REACTing consortium and by a grant from the French Ministry of Health (PHRC 20-0424). The Cov-Contact Cohort was supported by the REACTing consortium, the French Ministry of Health, and the European Commission (RECOVER WP 6). The Milieu Intérieur Consortium was supported by the French Government’s Investissement d’Avenir program, Laboratoire d’Excellence Milieu Intérieur grant (ANR-10-LABX-69-01) (primary investigators: L.Q.-M. and D.Du.). The Simoa experiment was supported by the PHRC-20-0375 COVID-19 grant “DIGITAL COVID” (primary investigator: G.G.). S.G.T. is supported by a Leadership 3 Investigator Grant awarded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and a COVID19 Rapid Response Grant awarded by UNSW Sydney. C.R.-G. and colleagues were supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (COV20_01333 and COV20_01334, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation RTC-2017-6471-1; AEI/FEDER, UE) and Cabildo Insular de Tenerife (CGIEU0000219140 and “Apuestas científicas del ITER para colaborar en la lucha contra la COVID-19”). S.T.-A. and A.B. were supported by ANR-20-COVI-0064 (primary investigator: A.Be.). This work is supported by the French Ministry of Health “Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique Inter regional 2013,” by the Contrat de Plan Etat-Lorraine and FEDER Lorraine, and by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the second Investissements d’Avenir program FIGHT-HF (reference no. ANR-15-RHU-0004) and by the French PIA project “Lorraine Université d’Excellence” (reference no. ANR-15-IDEX-04-LUE) (45); and biobanking is performed by the Biological Resource Center Lorrain BB-0033-00035. This study was supported by the Fonds IMMUNOV, for Innovation in Immunopathology; by a grant from the Agence National de la Recherche (ANR-flash Covid19 “AIROCovid” to F.R.-L.); and by the FAST Foundation (French Friends of Sheba Tel Hashomer Hospital). Work in the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease was supported by NIH grants P01AI138398-S1, 2U19AI111825, and R01AI091707-10S1; a George Mason University Fast Grant; and the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation. The Amsterdam UMC Covid-19 Biobank was supported by grants from the Amsterdam Corona Research Fund, the Dr. C.J. Vaillant Fund, and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development [ZonMw; NWO-Vici-Grant (grant no. 918·19·627 to D.v.d.B.)]. This work was also supported by the Division of Intramural Research of the National Institute of Dental Craniofacial Research and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, and by Regione Lombardia, Italy (project “Risposta immune in pazienti con COVID-19 e comorbidita”). The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University or the Department of Defense. J.H. holds an Institut Imagine M.D.-Ph.D. fellowship from the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller. J.R. is supported by the INSERM Ph.D. program (“poste d’accueil Inserm”). P.Ba. was supported by the French Foundation for Medical Research (FRM, EA20170638020) and the M.D.-Ph.D. program of the Imagine Institute (with the support of the Fondation Bettencourt-Schueller). We thank the Association “Turner et vous” for their help and support. Sample processing at IrsiCaixa was possible thanks to the crowdfunding initiative YoMeCorono. D.C.V. is supported by the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec clinician-scientist scholar program. K.K. was supported by the Estonian Research Council grant PUT1367. We thank the GEN-COVID Multicenter Study (https://sites.google.com/dbm.unisi.it/gen-covid). We thank the NIAID Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology, Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (contract no. HHSN316201300006W/HHSN27200002 to MSC, Inc.), the Operations Engineering Branch for developing the HGRepo system to enable streamlined access to the data, and the NCI Advanced Biomedical Computational Science (ABCS) for data transformation support. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority was supported under contract no. HHSO10201600031C (to J.H.). Financial support was provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) K08AI135091; the Burroughs Wellcome Fund CAMS; the Clinical Immunology Society; and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology
