1,957 research outputs found
Licklider Correspondence
No full textCorrespondence between Kevin Lynch and J.C.R. Licklider regarding the proposed topic of study. The study discussed became the Perceptual Form of the City, a research project investigating the individual’s perception of the urban landscape
Statistical Analysis of Proposed Pediatric Asthma Screening Survey
No full textBACKGROUND: Poor asthma control is responsible for considerable morbidity and mortality among children (1). Current pharmacotherapy can suppress exacerbations of asthma symptoms. Thus, proper treatment of asthma is imperative in limiting the toll of this disease process on individuals as well as society. Treatment protocols tend to be based on measurement of asthma severity (3), but there are currently no widely accepted guidelines defining efficacy of treatment (i.e.- asthma control).
OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the construct validity and reliability of an asthma survey among a group of known asthmatics. Furthermore, we intended to determine the level of correlation between survey responses and asthma severity amongst survey participants as well as to discern the ability of the survey to discriminate between mild persistent, moderate persistent and severe persistent asthma.
METHODS: Surveys from 207 parents/guardians of children aged 5-17 with physician-diagnosed asthma were evaluated for construct validity using Principal Components Factor Analysis. Reliability was assessed via Cronbach's alpha coefficient scale. Severity/response correlations were tested by Chi-square exact tests and the strength of each relationship was assessed using Spearman's correlation. Discriminating ability was analyzed by ROC curve, sensitivity, specificity and odds ratio.
RESULTS: Construct validity testing showed that the scale is unidimensional with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.8076, indicating a high degree of reliability. Significant associations between asthma severity and each question were found, indicating that more severe asthmatics reported significantly greater symptom frequency (p-value range <0.001 - 0.019, Spearman's range = 0.152 - 0.396). ROC analysis yielded an area under the curve of 0.728. Analysis of the ROC curve indicated an optimal cutoff score of =6 to indicate moderate-to-severe asthma. This cutoff yielded a sensitivity and specificity of 65.2% and 70.2%, respectively. Odds ratio was 4.407 (95% CI of 2.366 - 8.207).
CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that, among asthmatics, the survey is valid and reliable. We also noted more frequent symptoms as severity increased, indicating sub-optimal control among more severe asthmatics. Finally, the ability of the survey to predict asthma severity is not supported as the survey seems to assess asthma control, with higher scores indicating poorer control
Incidence and Clinical Relevance of Abnormal Complete Blood Counts in Survivors of Childhood Cancer
No full textBACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence and clinical significance of abnormal complete blood counts (CBCs) obtained during follow-up of childhood cancer survivors.
METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 193 survivors, diagnosed between 1970-1986, who have been followed in our center's After Cancer Experience Program and are participants in the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. Of these patients, 49% were female and 25% were racial/ethnic minorities. The primary outcome was determination of the cumulative percentage of patients having an abnormal CBC by 2 or 3 standard deviations (SDs). Four components of the CBC were examined and employed to define an abnormal CBC: low white blood cell count (WBC), high mean corpuscular volume (MCV), low platelet count, and low hemoglobin concentration. Association of treatment exposures to abnormal values was assessed with a multi-level logistic model.
RESULTS: There were 1,376 patient visits during 1,437 person-years of follow-up. The mean number of visits per survivor was 7.2 (SD 4.5). The cumulative percentage of subjects with at least one abnormal CBC was 70%. The cumulative percent of subjects with a value abnormal by 2 SD was WBC=23%, MCV=33%, platelets=9%, hemoglobin=49%. For values abnormal by 3 SD, the frequencies were WBC=3%, MCV=18%, platelets=1%, hemoglobin=27%. None of the patients developed myelodysplastic syndrome or a secondary leukemia during the follow-up period. Exposure to epipodophyllotoxins was associated with an increased risk of having abnormally high MCV values.
CONCLUSIONS: Mildly abnormal CBC values are common in survivors of childhood cancer. Abnormal values are often of questionable significance but seem to persist over time. Epipodophyllotoxin therapy was found to be associated with increased frequency of high MCV levels
Children and Disasters: A tribute to Professor Kevin Ronan
No full text(c) The Author/sIn 1997, Professor Kevin Ronan published a paper in the first ever edition of the Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies, titled “The Effects of a “Benign” Disaster: Symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress in Children Following a Series of Volcanic Eruptions”. Over the next 23 years, Kevin and his many colleagues pursued aspects of children and disasters to both improve practice and advance scholarship in this area. In March 2020 we were saddened by the untimely passing of Kevin. As a tribute to Professor Ronan this special issue of the Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies brings together accounts of current research and practice initiatives inspired by, building upon, and directly influenced by Professor Ronan’s work
Abstract ED02-02: Second cancers among cancer survivors: High-risk populations to target for prevention
No full textContinuous metadata flows for distributed multimedia
No full textThe practical use of temporal multimedia has increased markedly in recent years as enabling technologies for the distribution and streaming of media have become available. As a part of this trend, hypermedia systems and models have adapted accordingly to incorporate such distributed multimedia for presentation. Structured interpretation of information has long been a fundamental feature of both open hypermedia systems and knowledge systems. Metadata, in its many forms, has become the cornerstone for providing this structured knowledge above and beyond basic data and information. This thesis presents the rationale and requirements for continuous metadata, which supports the metadata accompanying distributed multimedia throughout the lifecycle of streamed media, from generation, through distribution, to presentation. Throughout this process it is the temporal and continuous nature of the metadata which is paramount. A conceptual framework for continuous metadata is proposed to encapsulate these principles and ideas. Continuous metadata and the associated framework enable the development, in particular, of real-time, collaborative, semantically enriched distributed multimedia applications. Experience building one such system using continuous metadata is evaluated within the framework. An ontology is developed for the system to enable the collation, distribution, and presentation of structure aiding navigation of multimedia, and it is shown how continuous metadata utilising the ontology can be distributed using multicas
Predicting Adverse Health Outcomes in Long-Term Survivors of a Childhood Cancer
No full textMore than 80% of children and young adults diagnosed with invasive cancer will survive five or more years beyond their cancer diagnosis. This population has an increased risk for serious illness- and treatment-related morbidity and premature mortality. A number of these adverse health outcomes, such as cardiovascular disease and some second primary neoplasms, either have modifiable risk factors or can be successfully treated if detected early. Absolute risk models that project a personalized risk of developing a health outcome can be useful in patient counseling, in designing intervention studies, in forming prevention strategies, and in deciding upon surveillance programs. Here, we review existing absolute risk prediction models that are directly applicable to survivors of a childhood cancer, discuss the concepts and interpretation of absolute risk models, and examine ways in which these models can be used applied in clinical practice and public health
Optimizing fully homomorphic encryption
No full textThesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2016.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 50-51).Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) presents the possibility of removing the need to trust cloud providers with plaintext data. We present two new FHE scheme variants of BGV'12, both of which remove the need for key switching after a ciphertext multiplication, overall halving the runtime of bootstrapping. We also present multiple implementations of 32-bit integer addition evaluation, the fastest of which spends 16 seconds computing the addition circuit and 278 seconds bootstrapping. We nd that bootstrapping consumes approximately 90% of the computation time for integer addition and secure parameter settings are currently bottlenecked by the memory size of commodity hardware.by Kevin C. King.M. Eng
Author Correction: Environmental variability supports chimpanzee behavioural diversity
No full textThe original version of the Supplementary Information associated with this Article included an incorrect Supplementary Data 1 file, in which three columns (L, M and P) had slightly different variable names from those written in the code. The HTML has been updated to include a corrected version of Supplementary Data 1; the correct version of Supplementary Data 1 can be found as Supplementary Information associated with this Correction.Additional co-authors: Mattia Bessone, Gregory Brazzola, Valentine Ebua Buh, Rebecca Chancellor, Heather Cohen, Charlotte Coupland, Bryan Curran, Emmanuel Danquah, Tobias Deschner, Dervla Dowd, Manasseh Eno-Nku, J. Michael Fay, Annemarie Goedmakers, Anne-Céline Granjon, Josephine Head, Daniela Hedwig, Veerle Hermans, Sorrel Jones, Jessica Junker, Parag Kadam, Mohamed Kambi, Ivonne Kienast, Deo Kujirakwinja, Kevin E. Langergraber, Juan Lapuente, Bradley Larson, Kevin C. Lee, Vera Leinert, Manuel Llana, Sergio Marrocoli, Amelia C. Meier, David Morgan, Emily Neil, Sonia Nicholl, Emmanuelle Normand, Lucy Jayne Ormsby, Liliana Pacheco, Alex Piel, Jodie Preece, Martha M. Robbins, Aaron Rundus, Crickette Sanz, Volker Sommer, Fiona Stewart, Nikki Tagg, Claudio Tennie, Virginie Vergnes, Adam Welsh, Erin G. Wessling, Jacob Willie, Roman M. Wittig, Yisa Ginath Yuh, Klaus Zuberbühler & Hjalmar S. Küh
Disclaimers: The Philadelphia House Price Indices are in the public domain, and
No full textprovided free of charge. Persons are free to share or otherwise use the indices as they see fit, provided that they cite the source and do not modify the original slides. However, the author requests neither the credit nor the blame for any investment or policy decisions undertaken based upon the information contained herein. Finally, although the author is affiliated with the Econsult Corporation, the indices reflect the views and opinion of the author, and not necessarily those of Econsult. © 2005, Kevin C. Gillen, All Rights Reserved. Q: What are the Philadelphia House Price Indices? A: The Philadelphia house price indices (hereafter, HPIs) are a set of indices characterizing the average rate of appreciation in Philadelphia house values over time. They are analogous to a Dow Jones Index, but for house prices rather than stock prices: although the actual level of the indices does not mean much, the change in the index from one time period to another does. In particular, the indices are estimated in such a way so that the percent change in the index over any time period should be representative of the average percent change i
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