Evaluation of the risk of death for very low-birthweight babies and comparation between neonatal intensive care units: application of ROC curves

In general, the neonatal rates of mortality are considered the most important measure for the evaluation of health services and the development of society. Babies with very low birthweight (<1500g at birth) contribute significantly to the increase of the mortality and morbidity rates.This study aims to compare, in the same set of babies, 4 different indexes of clinical seriousness; these indexes quantify the risk of death for babies with very low birthweight. The study was conducted on 169 new-borns with birthweight under 1500g, admitted to the Neonatology Unit of the Hospital Garcia de Orta in Portugal, between January 1992 and July 1995. The data were collected retrospectively on the same set of new-horns to permit the comparison of the different indexes. To compare Neonatal Intensive Care Units, we use another set of new-borns. These data (234 new-borns with very low birthweight) were collected in 4 different Portuguese hospitals (H-1, H-2, H-3 and H-4) during 1995.The 4 indexes studied were: CRIB (Clinical Risk Index for Babies), TISS (Neonatal Therapeutical Intervention Score System), SNAP (Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology) and SNAP-PE (Score for Neonatal Acute Physiology-Perinatal Extension). Also, included in the study was the variable WEIGHT (birthweight) because it is an important index to evaluate the initial risk of death.The selection of the best diagnostic test was based on the Receiver Operating Characteristic (RDC) curves. The results, based on the ROC curves, allow the conclusion that CRIB is the best index for evaluating the risk of neonatal death, and that hospital H-4 has better performance in terms of neonatal intensive care

Triplectic Quantization of W2 gravity

The role of one loop order corrections in the triplectic quantization is discussed in the case of W2 theory. This model illustrates the presence of anomalies and Wess Zumino terms in this quantization scheme where extended BRST invariance is represented in a completely anticanonical form.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

Early Identification of Violent Criminal Gang Members

Gang violence is a major problem in the United States accounting for a large fraction of homicides and other violent crime. In this paper, we study the problem of early identification of violent gang members. Our approach relies on modified centrality measures that take into account additional data of the individuals in the social network of co-arrestees which together with other arrest metadata provide a rich set of features for a classification algorithm. We show our approach obtains high precision and recall (0.89 and 0.78 respectively) in the case where the entire network is known and out-performs current approaches used by law-enforcement to the problem in the case where the network is discovered overtime by virtue of new arrests - mimicking real-world law-enforcement operations. Operational issues are also discussed as we are preparing to leverage this method in an operational environment.Comment: SIGKDD 201

An evaluation of comfort afforded by hearing protection devices

This paper focused on the comfort afforded by 3 models of hearing protection devices. Devices were selected and, after being tested in a real occupational context, evaluated using a questionnaire regarding different comfort indexes. In this way, it was possible to compare the “performance” of the hearing protectors regarding the comfort indexes, and to determine which one, globally, has afforded the greatest comfort. Since that it is not likely that all the indexes contribute in the same way to the global comfort sensation, each worker was asked to score the importance of each index evaluated before. This enabled to order the indexes by the importance they have on the global comfort feeling. It is hopped that this study contributes to a greater efficacy of the hearing conservation programs implemented through the use of hearing protection

Rizobactérias nativas da Caatinga com potencial para redução dos efeitos da seca em soja (Glycine max L.).

Resumo: Rizobactérias nativas da Caatinga com potencial para redução dos efeitos adversos da seca em soja (Glycine max L.) No semiárido brasileiro, a vegetação predominante é a Caatinga, bioma ainda pouco explorado, que apresenta plantas e micro-organismos com alta resistência aos períodos de seca imposto pelo clima. Os micro-organismos associados às plantas deste bioma, são capazes de desenvolver mecanismos de proteção celular contra o estresse hídrico, assim como proteção vegetal contra a dessecação. O presente estudo buscou compreender as rizobactérias associadas a Mimosa artemisiana a fim de selecionar bactérias tolerantes à seca com características de promover o crescimento de plantas sob condições de estresse hídrico, diminuindo assim, os efeitos adversos impostos pela seca. As amostras de solo rizosférico foram coletadas ao longo da Caatinga, englobando os estados da BA e PE, totalizando quatro pontos de coleta. Com o uso de metodologias dependentes de cultivo, foi isolado bactérias com algumas características de promoção de crescimento de plantas diretos e/ou indiretos, como produção de AIA e fixação de nitrogênio. Além disso, linhagens capazes de crescer em meio com reduzida atividade de água e com mecanismos de proteção contra a dessecação, como, produção de EPS, biofilme, produção da ACC deaminase e indução de resistência sistêmica através das enzimas peroxidase e polifenoloxidase. Uma linhagem de Paenibacillus sp. e outra de Bacillus sp. foram capazes de promover o crescimento de soja sob condições de estresse hídrico, aumentando alguns parâmetros vegetais como, parte aérea e sistema radicular analisados.Dissertação (Mestrado em Microbiologia Agrícola) - ESALQ/USP, Piracicaba. Orientador: Itamar Soares de Melo (CNPMA)

Digestibilidade "in vivo" dos constituintes da parede celular do capim quicuio-da-amazônia (Brachiaria humidicola (Rendle) Schweickerdt).

bitstream/item/40158/1/Circ-Tec-48-CPATU.pd

Triplectic Gauge Fixing for N=1 Super Yang-Mills Theory

The Sp(2)-gauge fixing of N = 1 super-Yang-Mills theory is considered here. We thereby apply the triplectic scheme, where two classes of gauge-fixing bosons are introduced. The first one depends only on the gauge field, whereas the second boson depends on this gauge field and also on a pair of Majorana fermions. In this sense, we build up the BRST extended (BRST plus antiBRST) algebras for the model, for which the nilpotency relations, s^2_1=s^2_2=s_1s_2+s_2s_1=0, hold.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, latex forma