MORMED: towards a multilingual social networking platform facilitating medicine 2.0

The broad adoption of Web 2.0 tools has signalled a new era of "Medicine 2.0" in the field of medical informatics. The support for collaboration within online communities and the sharing of information in social networks offers the opportunity for new communication channels among patients, medical experts, and researchers. This paper introduces MORMED, a novel multilingual social networking and content management platform that exemplifies the Medicine 2.0 paradigm, and aims to achieve knowledge commonality by promoting sociality, while also transcending language barriers through automated translation. The MORMED platform will be piloted in a community interested in the treatment of rare diseases (Lupus or Antiphospholipid Syndrome)

The extended mixture distribution survival tree based analysis for clustering and patient pathway prognostication in a stroke care unit

In our previous work we proposed a special class of survival distribution called Mixture distribution survival trees, which are constructed by approximating different nodes in the tree by distinct types of mixture distributions to achieve more improvement in the likelihood function and thus the improved within node homogeneity. We proposed its applications in modelling hospital length of stay and clustering patients into clinically meaningful patient groups, where partitioning was based on covariates representing patient characteristics such as gender, age at the time of admission, and primary diagnosis code. This paper proposes extended Mixture distribution survival trees and demonstrates its applications to patient pathway prognostication and to examine the relationship between hospital length of stay and/or treatment outcome. 5 year retrospective data of patients admitted to Belfast City Hospital with a diagnosis of stroke is used to illustrate the approach.peer-reviewe

Mathematics & Statistics 2017 APR Self-Study & Documents

UNM Mathematics & Statistics APR self-study report, review team report, response report, and initial action plan for Spring 2017, fulfilling requirements of the Higher Learning Commission

Information and communication technologies (ICT) for enhanced education of children with autism spectrum disorders

Recent developments in the area of information and communication technologies for people with special needs has led to significant changes in the way specialists and educators can address the daily impairments posed by people with abnormal behaviour, such as autism. Computer based educative methods are increasingly being considered as a key tool for educating people with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). Recent research has demonstrated that persons with autism, especially children, enjoy interacting with computers particularly as they are free from the expectations and judgments that make social interaction problematic. Virtual Environments (VEs), usually accompanied by three dimensional (3D) humanoid characters have been proven to play an essential role in special education and social interventions. Emotionally expressive avatars (a computer user’s representation of himself/ herself or alter ego), can advance the quality of tutor-learner interaction, with unobtrusive wireless sensors integrating an autistic person’s feedback and reaction. In this paper we review some developments in information and communication technology (ICT) for managing children with ASDs and also describe the approach we are taking to developing a platform to enhance and mediate the teacher-child educational process

An extended phase type survival tree for patient pathway prognostication

Survival tree based analysis is a powerful method of prognostication and determining clinically meaningful patient groups from a given dataset of patients' length of stay. In our previous work [1, 2] we proposed a phase type survival tree method for clustering patients into homogeneous groups with respect to their length of stay where partitioning is based on covariates representing patient characteristics such as gender, age at the time of admission, and primary diagnosis code. This paper extends this approach to examine the relationship between LOS in hospital and destination on discharge among these patient groups. An application of this approach is illustrated using 5 year retrospective data of patients admitted to Belfast City Hospital with a diagnosis of stroke (hemorrhagic stroke, cerebral infarction, transient ischaemic attack TIA, and stroke unspecified).peer-reviewe

THE POLITICS OF SOUTHERN ASIAN BALLISTIC MISSILES: TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR A MUTUAL RESTRAINT REGIME

ABSTRACT Southern Asia is witnessing the rapid proliferation of ballistic missiles in and around the region. This proliferation phenomenon, together with ongoing and enduring conflicts amongst the “competing parties” (China, India and Pakistan) creates a potential surfacing of “nuclear flashpoint” in the region. This research is an endeavour to explore the causes of this nuclear and missile race amongst the Southern Asian powers (China, India, and Pakistan) with the help of the theory of strategic culture. This study proceeds in the following way: it assesses the geo-political forces at work in the region; examines the strategic culture of China, India and Pakistan; traces the motivation of these countries for the strategic weapon programmes and delivery systems; describes their nuclear doctrines and command and control structures; and the current status of their ballistic missile programmes. It then addresses the prospects for Pakistan, India and China to move towards a system of mutual restraint regime, in which international regime theory is discussed as a conceptual framework; cold war models of strategic arms limitation and reduction models are studied and the important role of Confidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs) is identified. The same procedure is then applied in the context of Southern Asian region; problem areas identified with the help of CSBMs tools; and conclusions reached as to the potential to move beyond CSBMs into full restraint regime. The study finds the very nature of the overlapping threat perceptions and the continuance of the unresolved issues and disputes as the main hurdles in the successful restraint models. Recommendations are therefore made for more comprehensive CSBMs leading to a Southern Asian regional version of cold war prototypes of strategic arms limitation and reduction for a more comprehensive and fruitful restraint model, which might then be applied and adhered to at the global level. The study therefore opens new avenues of research and progress in the discipline

Are housing price cycles asymmetric? evidence from the US States and metropolitan areas

Abstract: This paper investigates asymmetry in US housing price cycles at the state and metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level, using the Triples test (Randles, Flinger, Policello, & Wolfe, 1980) and the Entropy test of Racine and Maasoumi (2007). Several reasons may account for asymmetry in housing prices, including non-linearity in their determinants and in behavioural responses, in particular linked to equity constraints and loss aversion. However, few studies have formally tested the symmetry of housing price cycles. We find that housing prices are asymmetric in the vast majority of cases. Taking into account the results of the two tests, deepness asymmetry, which represents differences in the magnitude of upswings and downturns, is found in 39 out of the 51 states (including the District of Columbia) and 238 out of the 381 MSAs. Steepness asymmetry, which measures differences in the speed of price changes during upswings and downturns, is found in 40 states and 257 MSAs. These results imply that linear models are in most cases insufficient to capture housing price dynamics

Genome architecture in the fungal kingdom

Previous studies have suggested that the location of genes in genomes is not random; instead they may be organized in a way that is beneficial to cellular processes and the organism. While a few studies have investigated the organization of genes on a whole genome scale, they were limited in the functions of genes used in the search and in the number and type of genomes searched. With the recent explosion of available fungal genomes and tools to automatically annotate many genes in a short period of time, it is now possible to obtain a global view of the level of clustering in the genomes of an entire kingdom. To find gene clusters in many genomes, we have constructed a robust and flexible algorithm that runs in trivial time. In parallel, we have annotated 72 fungal genomes using four automated annotation tools that provide information about protein function, protein targeting, involvement in biochemical pathways and paralogous gene families. We used the clustering algorithm to search for clusters from the four annotation categories. We discovered that all the genomes contained clusters of related genes, and that in several cases the clusters included genes involved in processes that were specific to the species in which they are found. This has dramatically expanded our knowledge of both the types of clusters and the number of genomes known to contain clusters. This study has generated information that will assist researchers in addressing many questions central to molecular and cell biology as well as evolutionary studies

Costing hospital resources for stroke patients using phase-type models

Optimising resources in healthcare facilities is essential for departments to cope with the growing population’s requirements. An aspect of such performance modelling involves investigating length of stay, which is a key performance indicator. Stroke disease costs the United Kingdom economy seven billion pounds a year and stroke patients are known to occupy long periods of time in acute and long term beds in hospital as well as requiring support from social services. This may be viewed as an inefficient use of resources. Thrombolysis is a therapy which uses a clot-dispersing drug which is known to decrease the institutionalisation of eligible stroke patients if administered 3 h after incident but it is costly to administer to patients. In this paper we model the cost of treating stroke patients within a healthcare facility using a mixture of Coxian phase type model with multiple absorbing states. We also discuss the potential benefits of increasing the usage of thrombolysis and if these benefits balance the expense of administering the drug.peer-reviewe