Background:  How to improve patient safety remains an intractable problem, despite large investment and some successes. Context:  Academics have argued that the root of the problem is a lack of a comprehensive 'safety culture' in hospitals. Other safety-critical industries such as commercial aviation invest heavily in staff training to develop ...

Activation induced deaminase (AID) is an enzyme required for class switch recombination (CSR) and somatic hypermutation (SHM), processes that ensure antibody maturation and expression of different immunoglobulin isotypes. AID function is tightly regulated by tissue-and stage-specific expression, nuclear localization, and protein stability. Transcription factor YY1 is crucial for early B ...

The "wisdom of the crowd" phenomenon refers to the finding that the aggregate of a set of proposed solutions from a group of individuals performs better than the majority of individual solutions. Most often, wisdom of the crowd effects have been investigated for problems that require single numerical estimates. We ...

MP (Metabolic P) systems are a class of P systems introduced for modelling metabolic processes. We refer to the dynamical inverse problem as the problem of identifying (discrete) mathematical models exhibiting an observed dynamics. In this paper, we complete the definition of the algorithm LGSS (Log-gain Stoichiometric Stepwise regression) introduced ...

There has been limited epidemiologic information concerning preschoolers' behavioral and emotional problems in Eastern societies. This study was therefore aimed to investigate behavioral and emotional problems in a large sample of Taiwanese preschoolers using the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 1.5-5 (CBCL/1.5-5). The CBCL/1.5-5 was scored by mothers of 645 ...

Telecanthus, which is the lateral displacement of the medial canthus, can be a congenital deformity or can occur after facial trauma. Several epicanthoplasty methods have been described, but the orbitonasal angle and appropriate shape cannot be reconstructed in Asians. We solved this problem by using a dog-ear effect. This article ...

The prospect for consistent computer-aided refinement of stereoselective enzymes is explored by simulating the hydrolysis of enantiomers of an α-substituted ester by wild-type and mutant Candida antarctica lipase A, using several strategies. In particular, we focused on the use of the empirical valence bond (EVB) method in a quantitative screening ...

Complex problems in science, business, and engineering typically require some tradeoff between exploitation of known solutions and exploration for novel ones, where, in many cases, information about known solutions can also disseminate among individual problem solvers through formal or informal networks. Prior research on complex problem solving by collectives has ...

Gondak R O, Alves D B, Silva L F F, Mauad T & Vargas P A (2011) Histopathology Depletion of Langerhans cells in the tongue from patients with advanced-stage acquired immune deficiency syndrome: relation to opportunistic infections Aims:  To quantify and compare the expression of Langerhans cells (LCs) in the ...

This paper presents a unified approach to solve different bilinear factorization problems in computer vision in the presence of missing data in the measurements. The problem is formulated as a constrained optimization where one of the factors must lie on a specific manifold. To achieve this, we introduce an equivalent ...

Abstract With the advent of single-port laparoscopy, the spectrum of abdominal surgeries performed is widening. The retraction of the left lobe of the liver in the upper gastrointestinal procedures is a critical maneuver with its added possible complications. In our study, we used the Cerrahpasa retractor(®) (trademark pending by E. ...

Voit and Almeida have proposed the decoupling approach as a method for inferring the S-system models of genetic networks. The decoupling approach defines the inference of a genetic network as a problem requiring the solutions of sets of algebraic equations. The computation can be accomplished in a very short time, ...

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD), encompassing computer-aided detection and quantification, is an established and rapidly growing field of research. In daily practice, however, most radiologists do not yet use CAD routinely. This article discusses how to move CAD from the laboratory to the clinic. The authors review the principles of CAD for ...

Carbohydrates have been shown to play important roles in biological processes. The pace of development in carbohydrate research is, however, relatively slow due to the problems associated with the complexity of carbohydrate structures and the lack of general synthetic methods and tools available for the study of this class of ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Estimates of variance components for binary responses in presence of extreme case problems tend to be biased due to an under-identified likelihood. The bias persists even when a normal prior is used for the fixed effects. METHODS: A simulation study was carried out to investigate methods for the ...

We present a method for solving systems of polynomial equations appearing in computer vision. This method is based on polynomial eigenvalue solvers and is more straightforward and easier to implement than the state-of-the-art Gröbner basis method since eigenvalue problems are well studied, easy to understand, and efficient and robust algorithms ...

The inverse problem is the problem of converting detectable measurements into useful quantifiable indications. It is the problem of spectrum unfolding, image reconstruction, identifying a threat material, or devising a radiotherapy plan. The solution of an inverse problem requires a forward model that relates the quantities of interest to measurements. ...

Utilization of information and communication technologies such as mobile phones and wireless sensor networks becomes more and more common in the field of telemonitoring for chronic diseases. Providing elderly people with a mobile phone based patient terminal requires a barrier-free design of the overall user interface including the setup of ...

This study prospectively investigated developmental psychopathology pathway from the age of 7 to ages 14-16. The subjects (N = 1,857) were evaluated using the Korean version of the Child Behavior Checklist and reassessed using the Korean Youth Self Report. In path analyses, total problems, externalizing problems, and internalizing problems in childhood associated ...

BACKGROUND: The process of clinical decision-making and the patient-physician relationship continue to evolve. Increasing patient involvement in clinical decision-making is embodied in the concept of "shared decision-making" (SDM), in which the patient and physician share responsibility in the clinical decision-making process. Various patients' decision aid tools have been developed to ...

A general solution is derived for the grand partition function of one-dimensional self-assembly problem in multiple-component systems, with correction for the overcounting of non-symmetrical complexes.

In this article the authors report a meta-analysis that examines the association between internalizing problems (anxiety and depressive symptoms) and learning disabilities (LD) in adults. Two hypotheses about the relationship between internalizing problems and LD in adults are posited and tested: the abeyance hypothesis (internalizing problems decline in adulthood) and ...

Large-scale stockpiles are a common means for the storage of bulk material and their shape measurement is a prerequisite for effective transportation and logistics management. This paper proposes a projection-aided videometric method that is based on stereo vision and makes use of projections and epipolar geometry constraints to solve the ...

We describe a set of computational problems motivated by certain analysis tasks in genome resequencing. These are assembly problems for which multiple distinct sequences must be assembled, but where the relative positions of reads to be assembled are already known. This information is obtained from a common reference genome and ...

Abstract We prove that the genome aliquoting problem, the problem of finding a recent polyploid ancestor of a genome, with breakpoint distance can be solved in polynomial time. We propose an aliquoting algorithm that is a 2-approximation for the genome aliquoting problem with double cut and join distance, improving upon ...

Evidence-based practice (EBP) applies the principles and techniques of evidence-based decision making to interventions intended to improve, or ameliorate, the social or clinical problems of affected individuals, including offenders with drug abuse problems. This article provides a general overview of EBP, particularly as it applies to treatment and other interventions ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: RNA secondary structure prediction is a mainstream bioinformatic domain, and is key to computational analysis of functional RNA. In more than 30 years, much research has been devoted to defining different variants of RNA structure prediction problems, and to developing techniques for improving prediction quality. Nevertheless, most of ...

Twin support vector machines (TWSVMs) obtain faster learning speed by solving a pair of smaller SVM-type problems. In order to increase its efficiency further, this paper presents a coordinate descent margin based twin vector machine (CDMTSVM) compared with the original TWSVM. The major advantages of CDMTSVM lie in two aspects: ...

The beam orientation optimization (BOO) problem in intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) treatment planning is a nonlinear problem, and existing methods to obtain solutions to the BOO problem are time consuming due to the complex nature of the objective function and size of the solution space. These issues become even ...

Background: People with acquired progressive dysarthria typically experience increased problems with intelligibility in everyday conversation as their disease progresses. Such problems are likely to impact on both the person with dysarthria and those with whom they interact. If this is the case then we may ask questions not just about ...

Recently, there has been much interest around multitask learning (MTL) problem with the constraints that tasks should share a common sparsity profile. Such a problem can be addressed through a regularization framework where the regularizer induces a joint-sparsity pattern between task decision functions. We follow this principled framework and focus ...

In inverse electrocardiography (ECG), the problem of finding activation times on the heart noninvasively from body surface potentials is typically formulated as a nonlinear least squares optimization problem. Current solutions rely on iterative algorithms which are sensitive to the presence of local minima. As a result, improved initialization approaches for ...

Due to the enormity of the solution space for sequential ordering problems, non-exhaustive heuristic techniques have been the focus of many research efforts, particularly in the field of operations research. In this paper, we outline an ecologically motivated problem in which environmental samples have been obtained along a gradient (e.g. ...

Multivariate pattern analysis can be combined with Hidden Markov Model algorithms to track the second-by-second thinking as people solve complex problems. Two applications of this methodology are illustrated with a data set taken from children as they interacted with an intelligent tutoring system for algebra. The first "mind reading" application ...

BACKGROUND: Desire for death is not generally considered a harbinger of more severe suicidal behavior and is not routinely included in suicide research and assessment interviews. We aimed to compare desire for death and suicidal ideation as clinical markers for suicide attempts. METHODS: Using data from two nationally representative surveys ...

We show that two important problems that have applications in computational biology are ASP-complete, which implies that, given a solution to a problem, it is NP-complete to decide if another solution exists. We show first that a variation of Betweenness, which is the underlying problem of questions related to radiation ...

Various methods exist for conducting usability evaluation studies in health care. But although the methodology is clear, no usability evaluation method provides a framework by which the usability reporting activities are fully standardized. Despite the frequent use of forms to report the usability problems and their context-information, this reporting is ...

The International Index of Erectile Function is a well-worded and psychometrically valid self-report questionnaire widely used as the standard for the evaluation of male sexual function. However, some conceptual and statistical problems arise when using the measure with men who are not sexually active. These problems are illustrated using 2 ...

We determine the complexity of several constraint-satisfaction problems using the heuristic algorithm WalkSAT. At large sizes N, the complexity increases exponentially with N in all cases. Perhaps surprisingly, out of all the models studied, the hardest for WalkSAT is the one for which there is a polynomial time algorithm.

This study examined the relations between facial attractiveness, peer victimization, and internalizing problems in early adolescence. We hypothesized that experiences of peer victimization would partially mediate the relationship between attractiveness and internalizing problems. Ratings of attractiveness were obtained from standardized photographs of participants (93 girls, 82 boys). Teachers provided information ...

It has long been thought that word problems are more difficult to solve than number/equation problems. However, recent findings have begun to bring this broadly believed idea into question. The current study examined the processing differences between these two types of problems. The behavioral results presented here failed to show ...

Summary.  Although new technologies and treatments have improved the quality of life of people with haemophilia, they still face many health and socio-economic problems. We designed this study to identify some of these problems according to patients' attitudes towards efforts to solve them. This cross-sectional study was conducted in Shiraz, ...

The long-anticipated decision in Bilski v. Kappos was supposed to end uncertainty regarding the patentability of process claims (or, at the least, business method claims). Instead, the opinion featured a series of anomalies: The Court emphasized strict construction of the Patent Act, but acknowledged three judge-made exceptions to patentability. It ...

Primary nasopharyngeal Kaposi sarcoma is extremely rare, as only 1 case has been previously reported in the literature. We report a new case, which occurred in a 37-year-old man with a known history of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The patient presented with complaints of recurrent epistaxis and postnasal hemorrhage. ...

We derive new representations of the efficient score for coarse data problems based on Neumann series expansion. The representations can be applied to both ignorable and nonignorable coarse data. An approximation to the new representation may be used for computing locally efficient scores in such problems. We show that many ...

This paper presents a fast algorithm for restoring video sequences. The proposed algorithm, as opposed to existing methods, does not consider video restoration as a sequence of image restoration problems. Rather, it treats a video sequence as a space-time volume and poses a space-time total variation regularization to enhance the ...

This paper addresses the problem of establishing correspondences between two sets of visual features using higher-order constraints instead of the unary or pairwise ones used in classical methods. Concretely, the corresponding hypergraph matching problem is formulated as the maximization of a multilinear objective function over all permutations of the features. ...

Background Accurate knowledge of a patient's medical problems is critical for clinical decision making, quality measurement, research, billing and clinical decision support. Common structured sources of problem information include the patient problem list and billing data; however, these sources are often inaccurate or incomplete. Objective To develop and validate methods ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The clinical problem list is an important tool for clinical decision making, quality measurement and clinical decision support; however, problem lists are often incomplete and provider attitudes towards the problem list are poorly understood. METHODS: An ethnographic study of healthcare providers conducted from April, 2009 to January, 2010 ...

In this paper we look at the development of radiation therapy treatment planning from a mathematical point of view. Historically, planning for Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) has been considered as an inverse problem. We discuss first the two fundamental approaches that have been investigated to solve this inverse problem: Continuous ...