We consider the semiparametric proportional hazards model for the cause-specific hazard function in analysis of competing risks data with missing cause of failure. The inverse probability weighted equation and augmented inverse probability weighted equation are proposed for estimating the regression parameters in the model, and their theoretical properties are established ...

Spatial organ arrangement plays an important role in flower development. The position and the identity of floral organs is influenced by various processes, in particular the expression of MADS-box transcription factors for identity and dynamics of the plant hormone auxin for positioning. We are currently integrating patterning processes of MADS ...

The need for improved models of chronic care is great and will become critical over the next years as the Medicare-aged population doubles. Many promising models have been developed by outstanding groups across the country. This article reviews key strategies used by successful models in chronic disease management and discusses ...

The goal of this overview is to discuss the ethics of premortem organ-protective measures with the aim of improving donation outcome for the recipient. A literature review was undertaken to find out which such measures were implemented in published articles on controlled donation after cardiac death. We reviewed studies on ...

We present a method of modeling dosimetric consequences of organ deformation and correlated motion of adjacent organ structures in radiotherapy. Based on a few organ geometry samples and the respective deformation fields as determined by deformable registration, principal component analysis (PCA) is used to create a low-dimensional parametric statistical organ ...

It has been shown that density functions of organ transit time distributions of vascular markers (washout curves) are characterized by a power-law tail, reflecting the fractal nature of the vascular network. Yet, thus far, no closed-form model is available that can be fitted to such organ outflow data. Here we ...

To investigate the effects of the coupling between excitation and contraction on whole-organ function,we have developed a novel biophysically based multiscale electromechanical model of the murine heart.Through comparison with a comprehensive in vivo experimental data set, we show good agreement with pressure and volume measurements at both physiological temperaturesand pacing ...

ABSTRACT: Background Transplantation is often the only way to treat a number of diseases leading to organ failure. To overcome rejection towards the trans- planted organ (graft), immunosuppression therapies are used, which have considerable side-effects and expose patients to opportunistic infections. The development of a model to complement the physician's ...

The Akaike information criterion and the associated Akaike weights (AW) rank pharmacokinetic models on the basis of goodness-of-fit and number of parameters. The usefulness of this information for improving the haemodynamic parameter estimates from DCE-MRI was investigated through two examples. In each of these, the estimates from the two-compartment exchange ...

Motivated by a study on pregnancy outcome, a computationally simple resampling procedure for nonparametric analysis of the cumulative incidence function of a competing risk is investigated for left-truncated data. We also modify the original procedure to producing the more desirable Greenwood-type variance estimates. These approaches are used to construct simultaneous ...

Drosophila melanogaster has become an important invertebrate model organism in biological and medical research, for mutational and genetic analysis, and in toxicological screening. Many screening assays have been developed that assess the flies' mortality, reproduction, development, morphology, or behavioral competence. In this study, we describe a new assay for locomotor ...

Chemicals in aquatic systems may impact a variety of endpoints including mortality, growth, or reproduction. Clearly, growth or reproduction will only be observed in organisms that survive. Because it is common to observe mortality in studies focusing on the reproduction of organisms, especially in higher concentration conditions, the resulting observed ...

Sex determination of the gonad is an extraordinary process by which a single organ anlage is directed to form one of two different structures, a testis or an ovary. Morphogenesis of these two organs utilizes many common cellular events; differences in the timing and execution of these events must combine ...

Abstract Background: Early discontinuation of breastfeeding exposes babies to severe and fatal illnesses. The aim of this study was to identify the barriers to relactation among Egyptian women who had stopped breastfeeding and to test different interventions to support the mothers to relactate. Subjects and Methods: We conducted a prospective ...

Advances in technology and engineering, along with European Union renewable energy targets, have stimulated a rapid growth of the wind power sector. Wind farms contribute to carbon emission reductions, but there is a need to ensure that these structures do not adversely impact the populations that interact with them, particularly ...

BACKGROUND: Sickness absence (SA) is a public health risk marker for morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to develop and validate prediction models to identify employees at risk of high SA. METHODS: Two prediction models were developed using self-rated health (SRH) and prior SA as predictors. SRH ...

OBJECTIVE: To compare methods of analyzing endogenous treatment effect models for nonlinear outcomes and illustrate the impact of model specification on estimates of treatment effects such as health care costs. DATA SOURCES: Secondary data on cost and utilization for inpatients hospitalized in five Veterans Affairs acute care facilities in 2005-2006. ...

Sepsis accounts annually for nearly 10% of total U.S. deaths, costing nearly $17 billion/year. Sepsis is a manifestation of disordered systemic inflammation. Properly regulated inflammation allows for timely recognition and effective reaction to injury or infection, but inadequate or overly robust inflammation can lead to Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome (MODS). There ...

Although a wide range of vertebrates have been considered in research on numerical competence, little is known about the role of number-related decisions in the predatory strategies of invertebrates. Here, we investigate how numerical competence is expressed in a highly specialized predatory strategy adopted by the small juveniles of Portia ...

While self-organizing maps (SOM) have often been used to map and describe chemical space, this paper focuses on their use to accelerate similarity searches based on vectors of high-dimensional real-value descriptors for which classical, binary fingerprint-based similarity speed-up procedures do not apply. Fuzzy tricentric pharmacophore (FPT) and ISIDA substructure counts ...

OBJECTIVE: To determine if there is a relationship between level of education and the accuracy of self-reported physical activity as a proxy measure of aerobic fitness. DESIGN: Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination from the years 1999 - 2004 was used. Linear regression was performed for measured maximal ...

In vertebrates, internal organs are positioned asymmetrically across the left-right (LR) axis, placing them in a defined area within the body. This LR asymmetric placement is a conserved feature of the vertebrate body plan. Events determining LR asymmetry occur during embryonic development, and are regulated by the coordinated action of ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Adaptations are often made to evidence-based practices (EBPs) by systems, organizations, and/or service providers in the implementation process. The degree to which core elements of an EBP can be maintained while allowing for local adaptation is unclear. In addition, adaptations may also be needed at the system, policy, ...

This article uses meta-analytic methods (k = 38) to examine the relationship between organizational justice climate and unit-level effectiveness. Overall, our results suggest that the relationship between justice and effectiveness is significant (ρ = .40) when both constructs are construed at the collective level. Our results also indicate that distributive ...

Competing risks data are routinely encountered in various medical applications due to the fact that patients may die from different causes. Recently, several models have been proposed for fitting such survival data. In this paper, we develop a fully specified subdistribution model for survival data in the presence of competing ...

Pyridine-modified COF-10 exhibits enhanced stability in humid air relative to un-modified COF-10. Solid state NMR and computational studies were used to probe the nature of pyridine interactions with the framework. We propose two models for pyridine-framework interactions with different stabilities.

Organic farming conserves natural resources, promotes biodiversity, guarantees animal welfare and obtains healthy products from raw materials through natural processes. In order to evaluate possibilities of increasing organic animal production, this study proposes a farm-scale multicriteria method for assessing the conversion of dairy goat systems to the organic model. In ...

The director of the Magnet Recognition Program® provides a comprehensive look at the Magnet® Model component Empirical Quality Outcomes. This article examines the importance of outcomes data that the organization already collects and how these should be used. Quantitative benchmarks should be established. These outcomes will represent the "report card" ...

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive and construct validity of a high-stakes objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) used to select candidates for a 3-month clinical rotation to assess practice-readiness status. Summary: Analyses were undertaken to establish the reliability and validity of the OSCE. The generalizability ...

Recently, Wu and colleagues [1] proposed two novel statistics for genome-wide interaction analysis using case/control or case-only data. In computer simulations, their proposed case/control statistic outperformed competing approaches, including the fast-epistasis option in PLINK and logistic regression analysis under the correct model; however, reasons for its superior performance were not ...

like any organization committed to quality, institutional review boards (IRBs) desire to benchmark themselves with their colleagues. In order to do so, there is a need for high-quality, well-validated, and well-populated datasets designed for this purpose. Unlike other areas of healthcare, there are no such aggregated databases of IRB information. ...

AbstractBackground:The ability to palpate neck masses and lymph nodes and appreciate qualities such as size, location, and consistency is critical for patient care and an important clinical skill for all physicians. Medical students currently learn neck palpation by practicing on healthy, standardized patients; however, studies of similar procedures have shown ...

Predictive analytics are driving many healthcare organizations' hiring decisions in today's competitive market. It's important for organizations to capture the right data to help optimize their recruitment strategies and eliminate the time and money holes spent on untargeted recruitment campaigns.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) induced gastrointestinal toxicity has attracted greater attention over the years. The development of NSAIDs having safer therapeutic profile depends on the better understanding of their mechanisms, physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties. The present investigation is aimed at in silico three dimensional quantitative structure-pharmacokinetic relationship (3D-QSPkR) assessment of ...

The importance of the Electronic Health Record (EHR), that stores all healthcare-related data belonging to a patient, has been recognised in recent years by governments, institutions and industry. Initiatives like the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) have been developed for the definition of standard methodologies for secure and interoperable EHR ...

OBJECTIVES/HYPOTHESIS: To assess the face and construct validity of two assessment tools for a microlaryngoscopy simulator-a Checklist Assessment for Microlaryngeal Surgery and Global Rating Assessment for Microlaryngeal Surgery. STUDY DESIGN: Blinded experimental simulator-based study. METHODS: There were 15 candidates divided into a novice (≤50 procedures performed) or experienced (>50 procedures) ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE:To establish and validate an assessment tool of cataract surgery performed by residents suitable for a competency-based curriculum. PATIENTS AND METHODS:A three-component evaluation tool was created based on review of the literature and was refined using a modified Delphi technique. Faculty surgeons viewed two videos of cataract surgery, ...

Physical obstructions are becoming increasingly recognized as major factors influencing the migrations, population structures, spawning success and recruitment of freshwater organisms. This paper presents a simple but effective method, intended for use by environmental managers, government agencies and conservation bodies, of rapidly assessing and prioritizing barriers to the migrations of ...

Heart function measured by electrocardiograms (ECG) is crucial for patient care. ECG generated waveforms are used to find patterns of irregularities in cardiac cycles in patients. In many cases, irregularities evolve over an extended period of time which requires continuous monitoring. However this requires wireless ECG recording devices. These devices ...

This paper investigates the application of the Enterprise Information System (EIS) paradigm to standardized cardiovascular condition monitoring. There are many specifications in cardiology, particularly in the electrocardiography (ECG) standardization arena. The existence of ECG formats, however, does not guarantee the implementation of homogeneous, standardized solutions for ECG management. In fact, ...

Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) is a powerful tool to infer the physical process of macromolecules including local concentration, binding, and transport from fluorescence intensity measurements. Interpretation of FCS data relies critically on objective multiple hypothesis testing of competing models for complex physical processes that are typically unknown a priori. Here, ...

Medical studies often involve semi-competing risks data, which consist of two types of events, namely terminal event and non-terminal event. Because the non-terminal event may be dependently censored by the terminal event, it is not possible to make inference on the non-terminal event without extra assumptions. Therefore, this study assumes ...

About 35 years after its first suggestion, QM/MM became the standard theoretical approach to investigate enzymatic structures and processes. The success is due to the ability of QM/MM to provide an accurate atomistic picture of enzymes and related processes. This picture can even be turned into a movie if nuclei-dynamics ...

In vitro models of biological tissues are indispensable tools for unraveling human physiology and pathogenesis. They usually consist of a single layer of a single cell type, which makes them robust and suitable for parallelized research. However, due to their simplicity, in vitro models are also less valid as true ...

The novice-to-expert continuum serves as the basis for many development and advancement models. Consideration of the intent of the model, domains, and characteristics of practice, a foundation in reflective practice, and implications for educators are essential for successful implementation of a novice-to-expert model. An example of a long-standing novice-to-expert model ...

The general purpose of this work is to analyze the overlap between organizational identification and commitment. Specifically, our study focuses on the analysis of the differences and similarities between sense of belonging (a dimension of organizational identification) and affective commitment (a dimension of organizational commitment). In order to do this, ...

Selection into general practice training is undertaken using a competency based approach. The clear advantage of this approach over traditional methods has been demonstrated through evaluation of its validity and reliability. However, the relationship between selection and performance in the Royal College of General Practitioner examinations (MRCGP) has yet to ...

In human crowds as well as in many animal societies, local interactions among individuals often give rise to self-organized collective organizations that offer functional benefits to the group. For instance, flows of pedestrians moving in opposite directions spontaneously segregate into lanes of uniform walking directions. This phenomenon is often referred ...

This article modifies the traditional functional leadership model to accommodate contemporary needs in healthcare leadership based on two findings. First, the article argues that it is important that the ideal healthcare leadership emphasizes the outcomes of the patient care more than processes and structures used to deliver such care; and ...

Association models, like frailty and copula models, are frequently used to analyze clustered survival data and evaluate within-cluster associations. The assumption of noninformative censoring is commonly applied to these models, though it may not be true in many situations. In this paper, we consider bivariate competing risk data and focus ...