Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Annual Review Clinic: A Chronic Disease Management Model Of Care For Schizophrenia And Delusional Disorder In Singapore

Objective: Schizophrenia and delusional disorders are recognised as chronic mental conditions. During this time, the clinical course may fluctuate and co-morbidities may set in. Individuals with these conditions often lack insight and have high rates of default. We report the need to develop a chronic disease model of care to cater to this unique group of individuals in Singapore. Methods: The Ministry of Health in Singapore recently funded the Institute of Mental Health to develop a model of psychiatric care for individuals with schizophrenia and delusional disorders. Crucial to the success was the development of an information technology (IT) enabled platform to track and monitor the clinical status of this group of individuals. On a yearly interval, patients undergo a comprehensive review and needs analysis of their psychiatric and medical needs in the Annual Review Clinic (ARC). Clinical ratings and metabolic parameters of every patient were obtained, and every patient was assigned a case-tracker or case manager to monitor their engagement with the relevant services. Results: In the first year of operations, ARC reviewed 1525 patients with schizophrenia and delusional disorders. The median GAS score for the cohort seen was 75 (slight impairment in functioning). The median CGI-S score was 2 (borderline mentally ill). 48.5% of reviewed patients were classified as overweight and above with BMI = 25. After the needs analysis, 100 patients received referrals to primary healthcare services for medical conditions that were recently diagnosed or for which they have defaulted medical treatment. Conclusions: In the first year of this program, a snapshot of the clinical status of the outpatient population was obtained and we also identified a high prevalence of obesity among the patients. Through this program, we can continuously monitor the health status of every patient and monitor for developing trends so as to plan the necessary interventions. ASEAN Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 14 (1): January - June 2013: XX XX .
Probabilistic Inference and Influence Diagrams

An influence diagram is a network representation for probabilistic and decision analysis models. The nodes correspond to variables which can be constants, uncertain quantities, decisions, or objectives. The arcs reveal the probabilistic dependence of the uncertain quantities and the information available at the time of the decisions. The detailed data about the variables are stored within the nodes, so the diagram graph is compact and focuses attention on the relationships among the variables. Influence diagrams are effective communication tools and recent developments also allow them to be used for analysis. We develop algorithms to address questions of inference within a probabilistic model represented as an influence diagram. We use the conditional independence implied by the diagram's structure to determine the information needed to solve a given problem. When there is enough information we can solve it, exploiting that conditional independence. These same results are applied to problems of decision analysis. This methodology allows the construction of computer tools to maintain and evaluate complex models.
Disjoint Products and Efficient Computation of Reliability

In this paper, we analyze the problem of computing the probability of the union of a set of events, where each event is given as the product of a set of Boolean variables. Each Boolean variable represents the operation or failure of a particular component. The problem has direct applications to the reliability analysis of complex systems as well as more general applications. After showing that the problem is NP-hard in general, we define simple, computationally efficient procedures for generating upper and lower bounds on the required probability. We show that these procedures produce the exact answer, i.e., the upper bound equals the lower bounds, for two classes of systems, matroids and threshold systems. These results draw on the relationship between this problem and the notion of shellability studied in the context of simplicial polytopes. Shellability is shown to have a very interesting and useful interpretation in this problem setting.
Endogenous Matrix Metalloproteinase (MMP)‐3 and MMP‐9 Promote the Differentiation and Migration of Adult Neural Progenitor Cells in Response to Chemokines

Adult neurogenesis is regulated by both intrinsic programs and extrinsic stimuli. The enhanced proliferation of adult neural stem/progenitor cells (aNPCs) in the subventricular zone and the migration of neuroblasts toward the ischemic region in adult brains present a unique challenge as well as an opportunity to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the extrinsic cue‐induced neurogenic responses. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are a family of proteinases known to play a role in extracellular matrix remodeling and cell migration. However, their presence in aNPCs and their potential function in injury‐induced aNPC migration remain largely unexplored. Here we demonstrate that in response to two injury‐induced chemokines, stromal cell‐derived factor 1 (SDF‐1) and vascular endothelial growth factor, aNPCs differentiated into migratory cells that expressed increased levels of MMP‐3 and MMP‐9. Whereas differentiated neuroblasts and a subpopulation of astrocytes migrated toward the chemokines, undifferentiated progenitors did not migrate. Blocking the expression of MMP‐3 or MMP‐9 in aNPCs interfered with both the differentiation of aNPCs and chemokine‐induced cell migration. Thus, endogenous MMPs expressed by aNPCs are important for mediating their neurogenic response to extrinsic signals.
s6raph: vertex-centric graph processing framework with functional interface

Parallel processing of big graph-shaped data still presents many challenges. Several approaches have appeared recently, and a strong trend focusing on understanding graph computation as iterative vertex-centric computations has emerged. There have been several systems in the vertex-centric approach, for example Pregel, Giraph, GraphLab and PowerGraph. Though programs developed in these systems run efficiently in parallel, writing vertex-programs usually results in code with poor readability, that is full of side effects and control statements unrelated to the algorithm. In this paper we introduce ``s6raph'', a new vertex-centric graph processing framework with a functional interface that allows the user to write clear and concise functions. The user can choose one of several default behaviours provided for most common graph algorithms. We discuss the design of the functional interface and introduce our prototype implementation in Erlang.
The quality of quality of life

See article on page 527 Functional bowel disorders are highly prevalent in the general population. In the US Householder Survey about 70% of respondents had at least one functional bowel disorder, 9.4% had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and 2.9% had functional dyspepsia.1 These disorders often have significant symptom overlap making them difficult to distinguish.2 3 In this issue (see page 527), Chassany et al describe the initial development, preliminary psychometric testing and cross-cultural assessment of a multi-item disease specific health related quality of life (HRQOL) instrument for use in multinational clinical trials of IBS or functional dyspepsia. If only an efficacious therapy could be found! Health related quality of life assessment is becoming increasingly recognised as an important outcome and predictor for patients with chronic diseases. HRQOL is generally assessed by quantitative questionnaires completed by patients themselves which assess physical and psychosocial attitudes and function. The three kinds of HRQOL measures used in research and practice include global assessments, generic instruments and disease specific instruments.4 5The global assessment, usually a graded summary such as good, fair or poor or a 10 cm visual analog scale, may help to predict a relation between simple parameters, like disease severity and function, but is often inadequate for more sophisticated hypothesis testing. Generic instruments are multi-item problem lists that are meant to be independent of sex, age and disease and are applied to compare …
Accumulating short bouts of running exercise throughout the day reduces postprandial plasma triacylglycerol concentrations and resting blood pressure in healthy young men

Background: This study examined the effect of accumulating short bouts of exercise on postprandial plasma triacylglycerol and resting blood pressure in healthy young men. Methods: Nineteen subjects underwent two 2-d trials in a randomized counterbalanced order. On day 1, subjects either rested or performed multiple 6 min running bouts (30 min rest between each) until they had accumulated an energy expenditure of 4.2 MJ (1000 kcal). On day 2, subjects rested and consumed test meals for breakfast and lunch. Blood pressure was measured throughout days 1 and 2. Venous blood samples were obtained throughout day 2. Results: Systolic and diastolic blood pressure was lower for the exercise compared with the control trial on day 1. Postprandial plasma triacylglycerol concentrations and systolic blood pressure were lower throughout day 2 on the exercise compared with the control trial. Conclusion: Accumulating short bouts of exercise throughout the day may modify cardiovascular disease risk.
Trastuzumab in the adjuvant treatment of early-stage breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

BACKGROUND We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to compare treatment outcomes for human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER)-2-positive breast cancer patients receiving adjuvant chemotherapy with or without trastuzumab. METHODS We identified randomized clinical trials comparing adjuvant chemotherapy with or without trastuzumab in patients with resectable breast cancer. Fixed-effects meta-analysis was used to combine data. RESULTS Five eligible trials were identified, reporting outcomes on 13,493 women. Fixed-effects analysis showed disease-free survival to be superior for trastuzumab-treated patients (risk ratio [RR], 0.62; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.56-0.68). Superiority was also observed for patients receiving trastuzumab with respect to mortality (RR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.57-0.77), locoregional recurrence (RR, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.43-0.77), and distant recurrence (RR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.52-0.68). Patients receiving trastuzumab with chemotherapy had a higher risk for congestive heart failure (RR, 7.60; 95% CI, 4.07-14.18) and left ventricular ejection fraction decline (RR, 2.09; 95% CI, 1.84-2.37). A higher risk for central nervous system metastasis as the first recurrence event (RR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.06-2.40) was also noted in patients receiving trastuzumab. CONCLUSIONS The use of trastuzumab should be considered an integral part of the adjuvant therapy of HER-2-positive breast cancer patients.
RISK REDUCING BEHAVIORS IN A COMMUNITY SAMPLE OF WOMEN WITH A FAMILY HISTORY OF BREAST CANCER

This study was designed to examine and explain the use of risk-reducing behaviors in a group of women recruited from the community who had a family history of breast cancer. An empirically derived model was developed that included variables hypothesized to influence adherence intentions, early detection behaviors, and high-risk clinic contact intentions. The model included the background variables of age, objective risk, education, income, and healthcare communication and the proximal variables of perceived risk, cancer specific distress, and attitude. This study also prospectively examined the use of high-risk services. Participants included women (N = 187) with a family history of breast cancer who had no prior contact with a high-risk or familial breast cancer clinic or program. Study hypotheses were tested with correlational analyses, structural equation modeling (SEM), and logistic regression. Results of SEM found that the proposed variables accounted for 42% of the variance in adherence intentions, and 23% of the variance in both early detection behaviors and clinic contact intentions. Approximately 24% of the women who participated in this study contacted the high-risk clinic to receive additional information about their risk. Predictors of clinic contact included higher objective risk, higher clinic contact intentions, lower perceived risk, and higher cancer distress. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Commentary: practicing on the tip of an information iceberg? Evidence of underpublication of registered clinical trials in oncology.

OBJECTIVE Members of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors require, as a condition of consideration for publication, that all clinical trials be registered in a public trials registry. We evaluated the proportion of registered trials that are published in the peer-reviewed literature. METHODS After downloading the contents of the National Institutes of Health's ClinicalTrials.gov registry, we used key words to identify trials in oncology. We then evaluated the proportion of trials that had been published in journals listed in PubMed.gov. Among trials with published results, we determined the proportion that reported positive versus negative results. RESULTS Among the 2,028 trials meeting the inclusion criteria, 17.6% were available in PubMed. Twenty-one percent of the trials registered before September 1, 2004 were published, compared with 11.9% of those registered after this date. Trials sponsored by clinical trial networks published the greatest proportion of registered studies (59.0%); studies sponsored by industry published the fewest (5.9%). Among published studies, 64.5% reported the results as positive findings. CONCLUSIONS Less than one in five studies in cancer that are registered with clinicaltrials.gov have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Research sponsors, researchers, and journal editors should redouble their efforts to encourage publication of registered clinical trials in oncology.
Dynamic Scheduling of a Multiclass Make-to-Stock Queue

Motivated by make-to-stock production systems, we consider a scheduling problem for a single server queue that can process a variety of different job classes. After jobs are processed, they enter a finished goods inventory that services customer demand. The scheduling problem is to dynamically decide which job class, if any, to serve next in order to minimize the long-run expected average cost incurred per unit of time, which includes linear costs which may differ by class for backordering and holding finished goods inventory. Under the heavy traffic condition that the server must be busy the great majority of the time in order to satisfy customer demand, the scheduling problem is approximated by a dynamic control problem involving Brownian motion. The Brownian control problem is solved, and its solution is interpreted in terms of the queueing system to obtain a scheduling policy. A simulation experiment is performed that demonstrates the policy's effectiveness.
Airline Seat Allocation with Multiple Nested Fare Classes

This paper addresses the problem of determining optimal booking policies for multiple fare classes that share the same seating pool on one leg of an airline flight when seats are booked in a nested fashion and when lower fare classes book before higher ones. We show that a fixed-limit booking policy that maximizes expected revenue can be characterized by a simple set of conditions on the subdifferential of the expected revenue function. These conditions are appropriate for either the discrete or continuous demand cases. These conditions are further simplified to a set of conditions that relate the probability distributions of demand for the various fare classes to their respective fares. The latter conditions are guaranteed to have a solution when the joint probability distribution of demand is continuous. Characterization of the problem as a series of monotone optimal stopping problems proves optimality of the fixed-limit policy over all admissible policies. A comparison is made of the optimal solutions .
A Randomization Rule for Selecting Forecasts

We propose a randomized strategy for selecting/combining forecasts that is better than the forecasts used to produce it in a sense made precise in this paper. Unlike traditional methods this approach requires that no assumptions be made about the distribution of the event being forecasted or the error distribution and stationarity of the constituent forecasts. The method is simple and easy to implement.
Exact and Approximate Evaluation of Batch-Ordering Policies for Two-Level Inventory Systems

We consider a two-level inventory system with one warehouse and N identical retailers. Lead times (transportation times) are constant and the retailers face independent Poisson demand. In a previous paper, we derived a recursive procedure for determining the policy costs for an average item in case of one-for-one replenishment policies. In this paper, we show how these results can be used for the exact or approximate evaluation of more general policies where both the retailers and the warehouse order in batches. We compare our methods to the method recently suggested by A. Svoronos and P. Zipkin.
The prevalence of burnout and depression in medical doctors working in the Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality community healthcare clinics and district hospitals of the Provincial Government of the Western Cape: a cross-sectional study

Abstract Aim: This study investigated burnout and depression in medical doctors in the context of work-related conditions and the role of resilience as a modifiable factor. Method: A cross-sectional, observational study was conducted on consenting medical doctors (n = 132) working at Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality primary healthcare facilities of the Provincial Government of the Western Cape. Data were collected from doctors at 27 facilities by means of a self-administered questionnaire battery, containing socio-demographic information, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Results: Of 132 doctors included in the analysis, 76% experienced burnout, as indicated by high scores in either the emotional exhaustion or depersonalisation subscales. In addition, 27% of doctors had cut-off scores on the BDI indicating moderate depression, while 3% were identified to have severe depression. The number of hours, work load, working conditions and system-related frustrations were ranked as the most important contributing factors to burnout. More experienced doctors and those with higher resilience scores had lower levels of burnout, as evident by their lower scores in the emotional exhaustion and depersonalisation domains of the MBI. Conclusion: Both burnout and depression are prevalent problems in doctors working at district level and in communities. Resilience appears to be protective and may be a useful target for future intervention.
Consumer Insights from Peer-to-Peer Communication in an Online Health Community of Weight Management

To demonstrate a theory-based method of identifying consumer insights in online peer-to-peer discussion, the present study analyzed posts from The Biggest Loser League, a weight-management online community, and found a considerable proportion of posts revealing negative attitudes toward food and beverage products, a lack of discussion on healthy food and beverage choices, and higher frequencies of content related to verbal persuasion and mastery experience. These findings suggest that sources of self-efficacy are a frequent topic in online discussions. While Bandura's (1997) model theorizes that verbal persuasion is the third most powerful source of self-efficacy, findings from the present study suggest that the sources of self-efficacy communication depend upon the mode of the communication. Specifically, people expect to exchange encouragement (verbal persuasion) more often in online all-peer communication. Practically, the present study suggests that participating online health communities can help to discourage unhealthy eating habits and increase self-efficacy of weight management. However, more information on healthy choices needs to be provided.
A Minimal Algorithm for the 0-1 Knapsack Problem

Several types of large-sized 0-1 Knapsack Problems (KP) may be easily solved, but in such cases most of the computational effort is used for sorting and reduction. In order to avoid this problem it has been proposed to solve the so-called core of the problem: a Knapsack Problem defined on a small subset of the variables. The exact core cannot, however, be identified before KP is solved to optimality, thus, previous algorithms had to rely on approximate core sizes.In this paper we present an algorithm for KP where the enumerated core size is minimal, and the computational effort for sorting and reduction also is limited according to a hierarchy. The algorithm is based on a dynamic programming approach, where the core size is extended by need, and the sorting and reduction is performed in a similar “lazy” way.Computational experiments are presented for several commonly occurring types of data instances. Experience from these tests indicate that the presented approach outperforms any known algorithm for KP, having very stable solution times.
On Optimal Allocation of Indivisibles Under Uncertainty

The optimal allocation of indivisible resources is formalized as a stochastic optimization problem involving discrete decision variables. A general stochastic search procedure is proposed, which develops the concept of the branch-and-bound method. The main idea is to process large collections of possible solutions and to devote more attention to the most promising groups. By gathering more information to reduce the uncertainty and by narrowing the search area, the optimal solution can be found with probability one. Special techniques for calculating stochastic lower and upper bounds are discussed. The results are illustrated by a computational experiment.
Query Expansion Using Word Embeddings

We present a suite of query expansion methods that are based on word embeddings. Using Word2Vec's CBOW embedding approach, applied over the entire corpus on which search is performed, we select terms that are semantically related to the query. Our methods either use the terms to expand the original query or integrate them with the effective pseudo-feedback-based relevance model. In the former case, retrieval performance is significantly better than that of using only the query, and in the latter case the performance is significantly better than that of the relevance model.