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    51636 research outputs found

    Streamlined Quantitative Imaging Biomarker Development: Generalization of radiomics through automated machine learning

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    Radiomics uses quantitative medical imaging features and AI to create predictive models which can be used as biomarkers. In this thesis, we have developped an adaptive radiomics framework to automatically optimize the radiomics workflow per application and demonstrate its use to create biomarkers in eight different clinical applications

    Victims\xe2\x80\x99 Rights and Safety

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    A Comparative Perspective on the Protection of Hate Crime Victims in the European Union

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    Hate crime victims involved in a criminal procedure experience difficulties that are different from problems encountered by other victims. In trying to meet the specific procedural needs of hate crime victims many EU Member States have introduced protective measures and services in criminal proceedings, but the adopted approaches are widely disparate. By reporting the results of an EU-wide comparative survey into hate crime victims within national criminal procedures the authors aim to: (1) make an inventory of the national (legal) definitions of hate crime and the protection measures available (on paper) for hate crime victims; and (2) critically discuss certain national choices, inter alia by juxtaposing the procedural measures to the procedural needs of hate crime victims to see if there are any lacunae from a victimological perspective. The authors conclude that the Member States should consider expanding their current corpus of protection measures in order to address some of the victims\xe2\x80\x99 most urgent needs

    Dutch Penal Protection Orders in Practice

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    Penal protection orders (PPOs) aim to protect initial victims from repeat victimisation and in a broader sense from any danger for his or her dignity or psychological and sexual integrity and may therefore be important instruments for victim safety. However, knowledge on the actual practice of the PPOs and the successes, dilemmas and challenges involved is scarce. In this article, we describe the legal framework and actual enforcement practice of Dutch PPOs. The theoretical framework leading our explorative analyses regards Lipsky\xe2\x80\x99s notion of \xe2\x80\x98street-level bureaucracy\xe2\x80\x99 and the succeeding work of Maynard & Musheno and Tummers on coping strategies and agency narratives of frontline workers. Using interview data from criminal justice professionals, victims and offenders, we describe the conditions of the enforcement practice and answer the question which coping mechanisms and types of agencies the professionals tend to apply in order to meet the legislative aims and to protect victims as effectively as possible. Results show that the five conditions described by Lipsky are clearly present. So far, in almost all situations the process of monitoring violations is reactive and because knowledge on risk indicators for violent escalation is still limited, it is difficult for frontline workers to decide how many and what type of resources should be invested in which cases. This results in a \xe2\x80\x98moving away from clients\xe2\x80\x99 strategy. However, within this context in which reactive enforcement is the default, we also found several examples of coping that represent \xe2\x80\x98moving towards clients\xe2\x80\x99 strategies

    Automatic detection of actionable findings and communication mentions in radiology reports using natural language processing

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    __Objectives:__ To develop and validate classifiers for automatic detection of actionable findings and documentation of nonroutine communication in routinely delivered radiology reports. \n__Methods:__ Two radiologists annotated all actionable findings and communication mentions in a training set of 1,306 radiology reports and a test set of 1,000 reports randomly selected from the electronic health record system of a large tertiary hospital. Various feature sets were constructed based on the impression section of the reports using different preprocessing steps (stemming, removal of stopwords, negations, and previously known or stable findings) and n-grams. Random forest classifiers were trained to detect actionable findings, and a decision-rule classifier was trained to find communication mentions. Classifier performance was evaluated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity. \n__Results:__ On the training set, the actionable finding classifier with the highest cross-validated performance was obtained for a feature set of unigrams, after stemming and removal of negated, known and stable findings. On the test set, this classifier achieved an AUC of 0.876 (95% CI 0.854-0.898). The classifier for communication detection was trained after negation removal, using unigrams as features. The resultant decision rule had a sensitivity of 0.841 (95% CI 0.706-0.921) and specificity of 0.990 (95% CI 0.981-0.994) on the test set. \n__Conclusions:__ Automatic detection of actionable findings and subsequent communication in routinely delivered radiology reports is possible. This can serve quality control purposes and may alert radiologists to the presence of actionable findings during reporting

    Diversity matters in the world of finance: does ethnic and religious diversity hinder financial development in developing countries

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    This paper investigates the relationship between ethnic and religious diversity and financial development by using the data for 102 developing countries. It is widely accepted that financial depth, and the more ready availability of finance, has a central role to play in fostering economic growth. We hypothesize that financial development in developing countries, especially those at the early stages of economic development, may be retarded by pre-existing ethnic and religious diversity, which may produce conflict. However, we believe that this risk can be moderated by sound institutional functioning \xe2\x80\x93 including good governance and democracy. Financial depth is measured by M2 and private credit (as a percentage of GDP); the Alesina fragmentation index is used for measuring ethnic and religious diversity, varieties of democracy (VDEM) and the quality of governance datasets. Our results are supportive of our hypothesis that ethnic and religious diversity can indeed hamper financial development; these risks, however, are mitigated by well-functioning institutional arrangement

    Aggressive Measures, Rising Inequalities and Mass Formation During the COVID-19 Crisis: An Overview and Proposed Way Forward

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    A series of aggressive restrictive measures were adopted around the world in 2020–2022 to attempt to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from spreading. However, it has become increasingly clear the most aggressive (lockdown) response strategies may involve negative side-effects such as a steep increase in poverty, hunger, and inequalities. Several economic, educational, and health repercussions have fallen disproportionately on children, students, young workers, and especially on groups with pre-existing inequalities such as low-income families, ethnic minorities, and women. This has led to a vicious cycle of rising inequalities and health issues. For example, educational and financial security decreased along with rising unemployment and loss of life purpose. Domestic violence surged due to dysfunctional families being forced to spend more time with each other. In the current narrative and scoping review, we describe macro-dynamics that are taking place because of aggressive public health policies and psychological tactics to influence public behavior, such as mass formation and crowd behavior. Coupled with the effect of inequalities, we describe how these factors can interact toward aggravating ripple effects. In light of evidence regarding the health, economic and social costs, that likely far outweigh potential benefits, the authors suggest that, first, where applicable, aggressive lockdown policies should be reversed and their re-adoption in the future should be avoided. If measures are needed, these should be non-disruptive. Second, it is important to assess dispassionately the damage done by aggressive measures and offer ways to alleviate the burden and long-term effects. Third, the structures in place that have led to counterproductive policies should be assessed and ways should be sought to optimize decision-making, such as counteracting groupthink and increasing the level of reflexivity. Finally, a package of scalable positive psychology interventions is suggested to counteract the damage done and improve humanity's prospects

    Does accountability enhance service delivery?

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    This article assesses whether the Local Government Council\xe2\x80\x99s Scorecard Initiative, implemented in \nUganda since 2009, achieved its intended impact of enhancing service delivery by providing information \non the performance of local government. We analyse a district-level panel dataset (2005\xe2\x80\x932016) with \nadministrative data, as well as Afrobarometer data on citizen perceptions (2005\xe2\x80\x932017). Empirically, \nwe exploit the phasing in of the scorecard for a meticulous difference-in-difference framework with \ndistrict-specific trends. The results show some small measurable impacts of the scorecard along the \nso-called \xe2\x80\x98long route of accountability\xe2\x80\x99 on public service delivery. Scorecard districts appear to spend less \nof their budgets in comparison with non-scorecard districts. This points to greater budgetary restraint of \nlocal government councils in scorecard districts. Although no direct impacts on service delivery can be \ndetected, districts with more electoral competition in their constituencies perform better on one \nservice-delivery indicator, the primary school leaving exam pass rate. Concomitantly, the scorecard \nimpacts on perceptions of corruption, as citizens of scorecard districts perceive the local councillors as \nless corrupt compared to citizens of non-scorecard districts. This result can be interpreted as an indica- \ntion of the trust-enhancing effect of government scorecards and civic engagement. Overall, our results \nprovide a quantitative contribution to the literature on accountability by demonstrating that civil society \nreporting mechanisms about the performance of political representatives only trickle down slowly to \nimproved services. The findings suggest that the sustained implementation of instruments to provide cit- \nizens with more information about their political representatives may have a positive impact on civil \nsociety perceptions as well as relevant political and policy outcomes. Like earlier research, we find that \nimpacts also depend on political competitiveness, thus highlighting the positive role of democracy. \n\xc3\x93 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd

    Socio-demographic characteristics associated with emotional and social loneliness among older adults

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    Background: International studies provide an overview of socio-demographic characteristics associated with loneliness among older adults, but few studies distinguished between emotional and social loneliness. This study examined socio-demographic characteristics associated with emotional and social loneliness. Methods: Data of 2251 community-dwelling older adults, included at the baseline measure of the Urban Health Centers Europe (UHCE) project, were analysed. Loneliness was measured with the 6-item De Jong-Gierveld Loneliness Scale. Multivariable logistic regression models were used to evaluate associations between age, sex, living situation, educational level, migration background, and loneliness. Results: The mean age of participants was 79.7 years (SD = 5.6 years); 60.4% women. Emotional and social loneliness were reported by 29.2 and 26.7% of the participants; 13.6% experienced emotional and social loneliness simultaneously. Older age (OR: 1.16, 95% CI: 1.06\xe2\x80\x931.28), living without a partner (2.16, 95% CI: 1.73\xe2\x80\x932.70), and having a low educational level (OR: 1.82, 95% CI: 1.21\xe2\x80\x932.73), were associated with increased emotional loneliness. Women living with a partner were more prone to emotional loneliness than men living with a partner (OR: 1.78, 95% CI: 1.31\xe2\x80\x932.40). Older age (OR: 1.11, 95% CI: 1.00\xe2\x80\x931.22) and having a low educational level (OR: 1.77, 95% CI: 1.14\xe2\x80\x932.74) were associated with increased social loneliness. Men living without a partner were more prone to social loneliness than men living with a partner (OR: 1.94, 95% CI: 1.35\xe2\x80\x932.78). Conclusions: Socio-demographic characteristics associated with emotional and social loneliness differed regarding sex and living situation. Researchers, policy makers, and healthcare professionals should be aware that emotional and social loneliness may affect older adults with different socio-demographic characteristics

    On the Evolution of Product Portfolio of Cooperatives versus IOFs: An Agent-Based Analysis of the Single Origin Constraint

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    An agent-based model is developed to address the relationship between the ownership structure of an \nenterprise and the evolution of its product portfolio. The coherence and evolution of a product \nportfolio is operationalized by transition rules regarding the Moore environment. The distinguishing \nfeature of a cooperative is the single origin constraint according to Cook (1997), which is modelled \nas a cooperative assigning an infinite lifetime to the first product in its product portfolio, while all \nother products have finite lifetime. All product of an investor-owned firm (IOF) are assumed to have \nfinite lifetime. Our simulation results show that the single origin constraint pulls the activities of the \ncooperative in one cluster centered around the first activity, while the IOF\xe2\x80\x99s product portfolio \ndevelops in a centrifugal way. The cooperative and the IOF are more diversified in a mixed duopoly

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