The diagnosis and treatment of elderly patients with acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic bronchitis.

The syndrome of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) consists of chronic bronchitis (CB), bronchiectasis, emphysema, and reversible airway disease that combine uniquely in an individual patient. Older patients are at risk for COPD and its components--emphysema, CB, and bronchiectasis. Bacterial and viral infections play a role in acute exacerbations of COPD (AECOPD) and in acute exacerbations of CB (AECB) without features of COPD. Older patients are at risk for resistant bacterial organisms during their episodes of AECOPD and AECB. Organisms include the more-common bacteria implicated in AECOPD/AECB such as Haemophilus influenzae, Moraxella catarrhalis, and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Less-common nonenteric, gram-negative organisms including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, gram-positive organisms including Staphylococcus aureus, and strains of nontuberculosis Mycobacteria are more often seen in AECOPD/AECB episodes involving elderly patients with frequent episodes of CB or those with bronchiectasis. Risk-stratified antibiotic treatment guidelines appear useful for purulent episodes of AECOPD and episodes of AECB. These guidelines have not been prospectively validated for the general population and especially not for the elderly population. Using a risk-stratification approach for elderly patients, first-line antibiotics (e.g., amoxicillin, ampicillin, pivampicillin, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, and doxycycline), with a more-limited spectrum of antibacterial coverage, are used in patients who are likely to have a low probability of resistant organisms during AECOPD/AECB. Second-line antibiotics (e.g., amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, second- or third-generation cephalosporins, and respiratory fluoroquinolones) with a broader spectrum of coverage are reserved for patients with significant risk factors for resistant organisms and those who have failed initial antibiotic treatment

Coherence Identification of Business Documents: Towards an Automated Message Processing System

This paper describes our recent efforts in developing a text segmentation technique in our business document management system. The document analysis is based upon a knowledge-based analysis of the documents’ contents, by automating the coherence identification process, without a full semantic understanding. In the technique, document boundaries can be identified by observing the shifts of segments from one cluster to another. Our experimental results show that the combination of the heterogeneous knowledge is capable to address the topic shifts. Given the increasing recognition of document structure in the fields of information retrieval as well as knowledge management, this approach provides a quantitative model and automatic classification of documents in a business document management system. This will beneficial to the distribution of documents or automatic launching of business processes in a workflow management system

Knowledge Discovery from Financial Text

The abundance of on-line electronic financial news articles has opened up new possibilities for intelligent systems that could extract and organize relevant knowledge automatically in a usable format. While most typical information extraction systems require a hand-built dictionary of templates and, subsequently, are subject to ceaseless modification to accommodate new patterns that are observed in the text, in this research, we propose a novel text-based decision support system (DSS) that will (i) extract event sequences from shallow text patterns and (ii) predict the likelihood of the occurrence of events using a classifier-based inference engine. We investigated more than 2,000 financial reports with 28,000 sentences. Experiments show the DSS outperforms other similar statistical models

Psychological stresses among divorced professional women

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of factors, impacts and coping mechanisms in divorce in relation to psychological stress among professional women. This research utilized the mixed method approach with sequential exploratory strategy. The quantitative data from Revised PSS-10 were used to support the qualitative section. This data gave an initial picture on psychological stress among divorced professional women. In this study, there were 18 respondents participating using purposive sampling. The selection criteria were that a divorced professional woman had to be working in the related field of study that she took in the university or college. This study discovered that occupational prestige and stubbornness were the two main reasons that have affected the marriage. This study has produced a framework to raise awareness of forgiveness and skill of adjustment that enabled a divorced professional woman to seek emotional stability. It was proposed that this framework was used for a more thorough research on culture and social norms on a domestic level. It was also recommended that a more in-depth quantitative method focusing on stress level in divorced among professional women were utilized for future studies

Syntheses and X-ray investigations within the system FeS₂-CoS₂

Pyrite (FeS2), cattierite (CoS2), and various transitional members of the solid solution compounds were prepared. The methods used are as follows: First, sulfides of cobalt, iron, or cobalt-iron were obtained by precipitation from a mixture of the cobalt chloride and/or ferrous sulfate in an aqueous solution. The dried precipitates were then mixed with an equal weight amount of sulfur and placed into silica glass tubes. After evacuation, they were filled with hydrogen gas of 3/4 of atmospheric pressure and sealed. The samples were then heated up to 500°C (for FeS2), 650°C (for FeS2-CoS2), and 750°C (for CoS2) for 24 to 72 hours. Pyrite, solid solutions of FeS2-CoS2, and cattierite were then formed. In addition, pyrite has also been synthesized by using the method of WOHLER (1836). This method is based on the direct reaction of S with Fe2O3 which are mixed in certain proportions and placed in an electric furnace at a constant temperature of 360°C. An amount of NH4Cl equal to that of Fe2O3 + S was also added to the mixture before heating. The time of heating was between 24 to 72 hours. The pyrite crystals so produced appeared as cubes, octahedra, pyritohedra and as their combinations. The density of natural pyrite could be changed through mechanical grinding. The finer the sample was ground the lower the density was. Therefore, the ratio of Fe to S changed from 1:1.994 to 1:1.945. This was calculated from the equation: nM=n(A + xB) = NoVd, where n is the theoretical number of atoms per unit cell (=4), A and B are atomic weights of elements in solid solution, No is the Avogadro’s number, V is the volume of the unit cell, and d is the density. Or, the number of atoms per unit cell, varied from n’ = 3.995 to n’ = 3.941 assuming that molecular weight is exactly FeS2 (calculated from the same equation: n’ = VdNo/A). Experiments on the detection of the decomposition of pyrites have also been made by using the X-ray diffraction method. The pyrites decomposed completely into pyrrhotite and sulfur at 625°C in a vacuum; however, the decomposition started well below 625°C e.g. at 400°C. The average lattice parameter of synthetic pyrite (5.40762 kX at 25°C) was slightly higher than that of the natural pyrites (5.40651 kX at 25°C). Yet, the linear thermal expansion coefficients of synthetic pyrite (average = 7.26 x 10-6 deg-1) did not differ much from those of the natural ones (8.52 to 9.25 x 10-6 deg-1) in spite of the variable crystal habit and the diverse localities of occurrence of the natural pyrites (cubes, pyritohedra, and octahedra of pyrite from the U. S., and Peru were used). The average lattice parameter of synthetic cattierite (CoS2) was 5.52508 kX at 25°C and the average linear thermal expansion coefficient was 13.76 x 10-6 deg-1. The components FeS2 and CoS2 formed a complete series of solid solutions at 650°C and the lattice parameter changed along a straight line from that of FeS2 to that of CoS2. --Abstract, pages ii-iv

Physical property tests of rock, centrifugal tests and the design of underground mine openings

Proper design of stable underground mine openings is important to the mining industry today. Various methods have been utilized by investigators to approach this goal. A review of previous investigations of each of the phases of underground mine opening stress analysis is presented. An approximate method of designing underground mine structures based on estimation of the initial stress field, rock physical property tests, and model tests, together with preliminary field data, is presented, and a specific example given --Forward, page i

Effective gauge group of pure loop quantum gravity is SO(3): New estimate of the Immirzi parameter

We argue that the effective gauge group for {\it pure} four-dimensional loop quantum gravity(LQG) is SO(3) (or $SO(3,C)$) instead of SU(2) (or $SL(2,C)$). As a result, links with half-integer spins in spin network states are not realized for {\it pure} LQG, implying a modification of the spectra of area and volume operators. Our observations imply a new value of $\gamma \approx 0.170$ for the Immirzi parameter which is obtained from matching the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy to the number of states from LQG calculations. Moreover, even if the dominant contribution to the entropy is not assumed to come from configurations with the minimum spins, the results of both pure LQG and the supersymmetric extension of LQG can be made compatible when only integer spins are realized for the former, while the latter also contains half-integer spins, together with an Immirzi parameter for the supersymmetric case which is twice the value of the SO(3) theory. We also verify that the $-{1/2}$ coefficient of logarithmic correction to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy formula is robust, independent of whether only integer, or also half-integer spins, are realized.Comment: new value of Immirzi parameter is ~0.170; dominance of miminum spin configurations is not assumed in comparing with Bekenstein-Hawking formula; typos corrected. Version pressed in PL

Flagellin induces β-defensin 2 in human colonic ex vivo infection with enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli

Enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) is an important foodborne pathogen in the developed world and can cause life-threatening disease particularly in children. EHEC persists in the human gut by adhering intimately to colonic epithelium and forming characteristic attaching/effacing lesions. In this study, we investigated the innate immune response to EHEC infection with particular focus on antimicrobial peptide and protein expression by colonic epithelium. Using a novel human colonic biopsy model and polarized T84 colon carcinoma cells, we found that EHEC infection induced expression of human β-defensin 2 (hBD2), whereas hBD1, hBD3, LL-37 and lysozyme remained unchanged. Infection with specific EHEC deletion mutants demonstrated that this was dependent on flagellin, and apical exposure to purified flagellin was sufficient to stimulate hBD2 and also interleukin (IL)-8 expression ex vivo and in vitro. Flagellin-mediated hBD2 induction was significantly reduced by inhibitors of NF-κB, MAP kinase p38 and JNK but not ERK1/2. Interestingly, IL-8 secretion by polarized T84 cells was vectorial depending on the side of stimulation, and apical exposure to EHEC or flagellin resulted in apical IL-8 release. Our results demonstrate that EHEC only induces a modest immune response in human colonic epithelium characterized by flagellin-dependent induction of hBD2 and low levels of IL-8