SCOL: Supervised Contrastive Ordinal Loss for Abdominal Aortic Calcification Scoring on Vertebral Fracture Assessment Scans

Abdominal Aortic Calcification (AAC) is a known marker of asymptomatic Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Diseases (ASCVDs). AAC can be observed on Vertebral Fracture Assessment (VFA) scans acquired using Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) machines. Thus, the automatic quantification of AAC on VFA DXA scans may be used to screen for CVD risks, allowing early interventions. In this research, we formulate the quantification of AAC as an ordinal regression problem. We propose a novel Supervised Contrastive Ordinal Loss (SCOL) by incorporating a label-dependent distance metric with existing supervised contrastive loss to leverage the ordinal information inherent in discrete AAC regression labels. We develop a Dual-encoder Contrastive Ordinal Learning (DCOL) framework that learns the contrastive ordinal representation at global and local levels to improve the feature separability and class diversity in latent space among the AAC-24 genera. We evaluate the performance of the proposed framework using two clinical VFA DXA scan datasets and compare our work with state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, for predicted AAC scores, we provide a clinical analysis to predict the future risk of a Major Acute Cardiovascular Event (MACE). Our results demonstrate that this learning enhances inter-class separability and strengthens intra-class consistency, which results in predicting the high-risk AAC classes with high sensitivity and high accuracy.Comment: Accepted in conference MICCAI 202

Burden of severe maternal morbidity and association with adverse birth outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia: protocol for a prospective cohort study

Objectives The AMANHI morbidity study aims to quantify and describe severe maternal morbidities and assess their associations with adverse maternal, fetal and newborn outcomes in predominantly rural areas of nine sites in eight South Asian and sub-Saharan African countries. Methods AMANHI takes advantage of on-going population-based cohort studies covering approximately 2 million women of reproductive age with 1- to 3-monthly pregnancy surveillance to enrol pregnant women. Morbidity information is collected at five follow-up home visits - three during the antenatal period at 24-28 weeks, 32-36 weeks and 37+ weeks of pregnancy and two during the postpartum period at 1-6 days and after 42-60 days after birth. Structured- questionnaires are used to collect self-reported maternal morbidities including hemorrhage, hypertensive disorders, infections, difficulty in labor and obstetric fistula, as well as care-seeking for these morbidities and outcomes for mothers and babies. Additionally, structured questionnaires are used to interview birth attendants who attended women's deliveries. All protocols were harmonised across the sites including training, implementation and operationalising definitions for maternal morbidities. Importance of the AMANHI morbidity study Availability of reliable data to synthesize evidence for policy direction, interventions and programmes, remains a crucial step for prioritization and ensuring equitable delivery of maternal health interventions especially in high burden areas. AMANHI is one of the first large harmonized population- based cohort studies being conducted in several rural centres in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and is expected to make substantial contributions to global knowledge on maternal morbidity burden and its implications

A database assisted quality of service and pricing based spectrum allocation framework for TV white spaces

Analog to digital switchover of TV transmission has freed up a large amount of licensed spectrum. This spectrum is in the form of chunks, referred as TV White Spaces (TVWS). It is made compulsory by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for unlicensed users to access TVWS through Access Points (APs), who have to query a FCC approved database e.g., WhiteNet, periodically to avail the free spectrum. It is important that for efficient utilization of available spectrum, APs must assign spectrum to end users based on their Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Moreover, care must be taken in charging end users while meeting their QoS requirements, as different end users demand different pricing schemes i.e., fixed pricing and variable pricing. Considering these challenges, a pre-existing database architecture (WhiteNet) has been modified in this paper by adding new features in it. It is proposed to characterize end users’ QoS requirements in the form of demand indices and provide admission control on the basis of pricing schemes. It is proved with our experimental results that our proposed scheme is a useful addition in FCC’s TVWS database framework

Turnover Intention of Employees, Supervisor Support, and Open Innovation: The Role of Illegitimate Tasks

Recently, the small and micro enterprises have earned significant fame in the management and entrepreneurship discipline. Researchers have examined the turnover intention of employees working within formal organizations, but ignored the employees working within small and micro enterprises. The aim of this study is to analyze the moderating effects of supervisor support on the relationship between illegitimate tasks and turnover intention of the employees of small and micro enterprises. An interview-administered questionnaire approach was used for data collection, and the snowball sampling technique was employed in this study to contact employees who were working within small and micro enterprises. The sample size was 420 employees from Lahore city (the provincial capital city of Punjab, Pakistan). Results showed that supervisor support would moderate the impact of illegitimate tasks on turnover intention, and a high level of support available from supervisor to the employee at the workplace would make them less likely to leave the organization as opposed to an employee who has less supervisor support at the workplace. The study reveals that supervisor support in small and micro enterprises is necessary to reduce or eliminate stress in the environment. Consequently, this study implies that the managers and supervisors of small and micro enterprises should provide logic and explanation to their subordinates and motivate their subordinates as to why they are assigned that particular task instead of any other employee and how important it is. This study contributes to the field of small and micro enterprises by evaluating the relationship between illegitimate tasks and turnover intention. This study is unique because management scholars have more often studied employees’ behavior in large corporations rather than in small and micro enterprises

Turnover Intention of Employees, Supervisor Support, and Open Innovation: The Role of Illegitimate Tasks

Recently, the small and micro enterprises have earned significant fame in the management and entrepreneurship discipline. Researchers have examined the turnover intention of employees working within formal organizations, but ignored the employees working within small and micro enterprises. The aim of this study is to analyze the moderating effects of supervisor support on the relationship between illegitimate tasks and turnover intention of the employees of small and micro enterprises. An interview-administered questionnaire approach was used for data collection, and the snowball sampling technique was employed in this study to contact employees who were working within small and micro enterprises. The sample size was 420 employees from Lahore city (the provincial capital city of Punjab, Pakistan). Results showed that supervisor support would moderate the impact of illegitimate tasks on turnover intention, and a high level of support available from supervisor to the employee at the workplace would make them less likely to leave the organization as opposed to an employee who has less supervisor support at the workplace. The study reveals that supervisor support in small and micro enterprises is necessary to reduce or eliminate stress in the environment. Consequently, this study implies that the managers and supervisors of small and micro enterprises should provide logic and explanation to their subordinates and motivate their subordinates as to why they are assigned that particular task instead of any other employee and how important it is. This study contributes to the field of small and micro enterprises by evaluating the relationship between illegitimate tasks and turnover intention. This study is unique because management scholars have more often studied employees’ behavior in large corporations rather than in small and micro enterprises