Minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance(mRMR) Based Feature Selection Technique for Pattern Classification System

Feature Selection is an important hurdle in classification systems. We study how to select good features by making the covariance matrix of each sample data set and extracting the features from it .Then, we try to find out the length of each sample by finding the error rate .We perform experimental comparison of our algorithm and other methods using two data sets(binary and functional) and three different classifiers(support vector machine, linear discriminant analysis and naïve Bayes).The results show that the MRMR features are less correlated with each other as compared to other methods and hence improves the classification accuracy

Plaster cast versus functional brace for non-surgical treatment of Achilles tendon rupture (UKSTAR): a multicentre randomised controlled trial and economic evaluation

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. Background Patients with Achilles tendon rupture who have non-operative treatment have traditionally been treated with immobilisation of the tendon in plaster casts for several weeks. Functional bracing is an alternative non-operative treatment that allows earlier mobilisation, but evidence on its effectiveness and safety is scarce. The aim of the UKSTAR trial was to compare functional and quality-of-life outcomes and resource use in patients treated non-operatively with plaster cast versus functional brace. Methods UKSTAR was a pragmatic, superiority, multicentre, randomised controlled trial done at 39 hospitals in the UK. Patients (aged ≥16 years) who were being treated non-operatively for a primary Achilles tendon rupture at the participating centres were potentially eligible. The exclusion criteria were presenting more than 14 days after injury, previous rupture of the same Achilles tendon, or being unable to complete the questionnaires. Eligible participants were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive a plaster cast or functional brace using a centralised web-based system. Because the interventions were clearly visible, neither patients nor clinicians could be masked. Participants wore the intervention for 8 weeks. The primary outcome was patient-reported Achilles tendon rupture score (ATRS) at 9 months, analysed in the modified intention-to-treat population (all patients in the groups to which they were allocated, excluding participants who withdrew or died before providing any outcome data). The main safety outcome was the incidence of tendon re-rupture. Resource use was recorded from a health and personal social care perspective. The trial is registered with ISRCTN, ISRCTN62639639. Findings Between Aug 15, 2016, and May 31, 2018, 1451 patients were screened, of whom 540 participants (mean age 48·7 years, 79% male) were randomly allocated to receive plaster cast (n=266) or functional brace (n=274). 527 (98%) of 540 were included in the modified intention-to-treat population, and 13 (2%) were excluded because they withdrew or died before providing any outcome data. There was no difference in ATRS at 9 months post injury (cast group n=244, mean ATRS 74∙4 [SD 19∙8]; functional brace group n=259, ATRS 72∙8 [20∙4]; adjusted mean difference –1∙38 [95% CI –4∙9 to 2∙1], p=0·44). There was no difference in the rate of re-rupture of the tendon (17 [6%] of 266 in the plaster cast group vs 13 [5%] of 274 in the functional brace group, p=0·40). The mean total health and personal social care cost was £1181 for the plaster cast group and £1078 for the functional bract group (mean between-group difference –£103 [95% CI –289 to 84]). Interpretation Traditional plaster casting was not found to be superior to early weight-bearing in a functional brace, as measured by ATRS, in the management of patients treated non-surgically for Achilles tendon rupture. Clinicians may consider the use of early weight-bearing in a functional brace as a safe and cost-effective alternative to plaster casting.UK National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment Programm

Delays between the onset of symptoms and first rheumatology consultation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis in the UK: an observational study

Objective To investigate delays from symptom onset to rheumatology assessment for patients with a new onset of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or unclassified arthritis. Methods Newly presenting adults with either RA or unclassified arthritis were recruited from rheumatology clinics. Data on the length of time between symptom onset and first seeing a GP (patient delay), between first seeing a general practitioner (GP) and being referred to a rheumatologist (general practitioner delay) and being seen by a rheumatologist following referral (hospital delay) were captured. Results 822 patients participated (563 female, mean age 55 years). The median time between symptom onset and seeing a rheumatologist was 27.2 weeks (IQR 14.1–66 weeks); only 20% of patients were seen within the first 3 months following symptom onset. The median patient delay was 5.4 weeks (IQR 1.4–26.3 weeks). Patients who purchased over-the-counter medications or used ice/heat packs took longer to seek help than those who did not. In addition, those with a palindromic or an insidious symptom onset delayed for longer than those with a non-palindromic or acute onset. The median general practitioner delay was 6.9 weeks (IQR 2.3–20.3 weeks). Patients made a mean of 4 GP visits before being referred. The median hospital delay was 4.7 weeks (IQR 2.9–7.5 weeks). Conclusion This study identified delays at all levels in the pathway towards assessment by a rheumatologist. However, delays in primary care were particularly long. Patient delay was driven by the nature of symptom onset. Complex multi-faceted interventions to promote rapid help seeking and to facilitate prompt onward referral from primary care should be developed

Polymorphous low-grade adenocarcinoma of the salivary glands - A review

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Diagnosis of endocarditis caused by <i>Mycobacterium abscessus</i>

We report a fatal case of native valve endocarditis due to Mycobacterium abscessus in a hemodialysis patient. The diagnosis was based on culture isolation of acid-fast bacilli from peripheral blood and a permanent catheter tip, and their identification as M abscessus by a reverse hybridization-based assay and direct DNA sequencing of the 16S-23S internal transcribed spacer region. Rapid diagnosis and combination therapy are essential to minimize mortality due to this pathogen. Although combination therapy was started with clarithromycin and tigecycline, the patient refused to take clarithromycin due to severe abdominal pain. The patient became afebrile after therapy with tigecycline alone although bacteremia persisted. He was discharged against medical advice and readmitted three months later for persistent fever. His blood cultures again yielded M abscessus and a transesophageal echocardiogram showed two mobile vegetations. The patient was noncompliant with therapy and died due to cardiac arrest and multiorgan failure. This report shows that M abscessus should also be considered in the differential diagnosis of infective endocarditis in hemodialysis patients

Representation Projection Invariance Mitigates Representation Collapse

Fine-tuning contextualized representations learned by pre-trained language models remains a prevalent practice in NLP. However, fine-tuning can lead to representation degradation (also known as representation collapse), which may result in instability, sub-optimal performance, and weak generalization. In this paper, we propose Representation Projection Invariance (REPINA), a novel regularization method to maintain the information content of representation and reduce representation collapse during fine-tuning by discouraging undesirable changes in the representations. We study the empirical behavior of the proposed regularization in comparison to 5 comparable baselines across 13 language understanding tasks (GLUE benchmark and six additional datasets). When evaluating in-domain performance, REPINA consistently outperforms other baselines on most tasks (10 out of 13). We also demonstrate its effectiveness in few-shot settings and robustness to label perturbation. As a by-product, we extend previous studies of representation collapse and propose several metrics to quantify it. Our empirical findings show that our approach is significantly more effective at mitigating representation collapse.Comment: 41 pages, 6 figure