Adverse Anesthesia Outcomes: A Retrospective Study of an Ambulatory Surgical Center versus a Dental Office Setting

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the adverse events that occur with general anesthesia for dental rehabilitation between a hospital setting and dental clinic setting. Methods: A retrospective chart review was performed examining patients who had received dental rehabilitation with general anesthesia at the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Pediatric Dentistry. Subjects were either treated in the Pediatric Dental Clinic or the Hospital Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) from July 2005 to December 2006. Anesthesia records of induction, intubation, maintenance, emergence and recovery were compared between the two settings.Results: There were a total of 422 charts reviewed with n=193 cases in the dental clinic and n=229 cases in the ASC. Patients in the dental clinic setting were slightly older (t = 2.63, df = 420, p-value = 0.0089), and healthier (chi-square = 45.9, df = 2, p-value Conclusion: Overall, the prevalence of adverse events occurring with dental rehabilitation under general anesthesia in the dental clinic setting was lower compared to adverse events in the hospital-based ambulatory surgical setting

Codes With Hierarchical Locality

In this paper, we study the notion of {\em codes with hierarchical locality} that is identified as another approach to local recovery from multiple erasures. The well-known class of {\em codes with locality} is said to possess hierarchical locality with a single level. In a {\em code with two-level hierarchical locality}, every symbol is protected by an inner-most local code, and another middle-level code of larger dimension containing the local code. We first consider codes with two levels of hierarchical locality, derive an upper bound on the minimum distance, and provide optimal code constructions of low field-size under certain parameter sets. Subsequently, we generalize both the bound and the constructions to hierarchical locality of arbitrary levels.Comment: 12 pages, submitted to ISIT 201

An Alternate Construction of an Access-Optimal Regenerating Code with Optimal Sub-Packetization Level

Given the scale of today's distributed storage systems, the failure of an individual node is a common phenomenon. Various metrics have been proposed to measure the efficacy of the repair of a failed node, such as the amount of data download needed to repair (also known as the repair bandwidth), the amount of data accessed at the helper nodes, and the number of helper nodes contacted. Clearly, the amount of data accessed can never be smaller than the repair bandwidth. In the case of a help-by-transfer code, the amount of data accessed is equal to the repair bandwidth. It follows that a help-by-transfer code possessing optimal repair bandwidth is access optimal. The focus of the present paper is on help-by-transfer codes that employ minimum possible bandwidth to repair the systematic nodes and are thus access optimal for the repair of a systematic node. The zigzag construction by Tamo et al. in which both systematic and parity nodes are repaired is access optimal. But the sub-packetization level required is $r^k$ where $r$ is the number of parities and $k$ is the number of systematic nodes. To date, the best known achievable sub-packetization level for access-optimal codes is $r^{k/r}$ in a MISER-code-based construction by Cadambe et al. in which only the systematic nodes are repaired and where the location of symbols transmitted by a helper node depends only on the failed node and is the same for all helper nodes. Under this set-up, it turns out that this sub-packetization level cannot be improved upon. In the present paper, we present an alternate construction under the same setup, of an access-optimal code repairing systematic nodes, that is inspired by the zigzag code construction and that also achieves a sub-packetization level of $r^{k/r}$.Comment: To appear in National Conference on Communications 201

Modularity-Maximizing Network Communities via Mathematical Programming

In many networks, it is of great interest to identify "communities", unusually densely knit groups of individuals. Such communities often shed light on the function of the networks or underlying properties of the individuals. Recently, Newman suggested "modularity" as a natural measure of the quality of a network partitioning into communities. Since then, various algorithms have been proposed for (approximately) maximizing the modularity of the partitioning determined. In this paper, we introduce the technique of rounding mathematical programs to the problem of modularity maximization, presenting two novel algorithms. More specifically, the algorithms round solutions to linear and vector programs. Importantly, the linear programing algorithm comes with an a posteriori approximation guarantee: by comparing the solution quality to the fractional solution of the linear program, a bound on the available "room for improvement" can be obtained. The vector programming algorithm provides a similar bound for the best partition into two communities. We evaluate both algorithms using experiments on several standard test cases for network partitioning algorithms, and find that they perform comparably or better than past algorithms.Comment: Submitted to EPJB. 9 pages, 3 EPS figure

Factors affecting mobile banking adoption : an empirical study in Gwalior region

The aim of this study is to examine the factors which influence customers to adopt mobile banking. Going through the previous literature, four determinant factors have been identified. Individual variable is evaluated using a 5-point Likert-scale. Self-administered quantitative questionnaires were distributed, targeting the respondents in the Gwalior region which falls in central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, using the primary data collection method. A quantitative research technique was utilized for this exploration. A pilot investigation of 20 respondents was led to confirm the reliability of the questionnaire. Data was analysed using regression tests. The outcomes of this investigation brought the conclusion that perceived utility, perceived convenience, and perceived trust have a positive impact on the behavioural intention to adopt mobile banking whereas perceived financial costs were found to be insignificant. The paper concludes with a discussion of the exploration results and draws out a few implications for future researc