Intervention to Improve Screening Mammograms in Clinical Practice.

Abstract Breast cancer remains a challenging health issue in the United States, representing the second leading cause of cancer deaths for women. The key approach to tackle this issue is the early detection of breast cancer through annual mammography screening in asymptomatic women. This quality improvement project sought to improve the proportion of breast cancer screening documentation in a private obstetrics and gynecology practice that serves primarily Black women. In addition, the project is thought to improve the current utilization of office mammogram services and its mammogram completion rate. Comprehensive interventions implemented included establishing clear guidelines, staff education, using paper checklists and Electronic Health Records (EHR) tools, enhancing the scheduling workflow process, and providing phone call reminders to patients before mammogram appointments. The project site\u27s EHR and the CMS breast cancer screening report from the electronic clinical quality measure were used to collect data. The interventions were assessed by analyzing data extracted before and after the project. Data indicated that the proportion of eligible patients up-to-date with mammograms or receiving recommendations for breast cancer screening went from 50% pre-implementation to 76% post-implementation (chi-square 97.72, p \u3c .001). There was a 16 percent increase in the CMS breast cancer screening quality measures. The mammogram department saw a 12 percent increase in mammogram performance, and the rate of patient adherence to appointments increased by 19 percent (z = 2.89, p = .03). Project results indicate that an evidence-based, comprehensive process enhances the cancer screening process and improves patient appointment adherence. Recommendations include sustaining the project and improving breast cancer screening referrals and tracking in the EHR. Keywords: breast cancer, mammogram, screening

Cooperative Vehicle Perception and Localization Using Infrastructure-based Sensor Nodes

Reliable and accurate Perception and Localization (PL) are necessary for safe intelligent transportation systems. The current vehicle-based PL techniques in autonomous vehicles are vulnerable to occlusion and cluttering, especially in busy urban driving causing safety concerns. In order to avoid such safety issues, researchers study infrastructure-based PL techniques to augment vehicle sensory systems. Infrastructure-based PL methods rely on sensor nodes that each could include camera(s), Lidar(s), radar(s), and computation and communication units for processing and transmitting the data. Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communication is used to access the sensor node processed data to be fused with the onboard sensor data. In infrastructure-based PL, signal-based techniques- in which sensors like Lidar are used- can provide accurate positioning information while vision-based techniques can be used for classification. Therefore, in order to take advantage of both approaches, cameras are cooperatively used with Lidar in the infrastructure sensor node (ISN) in this thesis. ISNs have a wider field of view (FOV) and are less likely to suffer from occlusion. Besides, they can provide more accurate measurements since they are fixed at a known location. As such, the fusion of both onboard and ISN data has the potential to improve the overall PL accuracy and reliability. This thesis presents a framework for cooperative PL in autonomous vehicles (AVs) by fusing ISN data with onboard sensor data. The ISN includes cameras and Lidar sensors, and the proposed camera Lidar fusion method combines the sensor node information with vehicle motion models and kinematic constraints to improve the performance of PL. One of the main goals of this thesis is to develop a wind induced motion compensation module to address the problem of time-varying extrinsic parameters of the ISNs. The proposed module compensates for the effect of the motion of ISN posts due to wind or other external disturbances. To address this issue, an unknown input observer is developed that uses the motion model of the light post as well as the sensor data. The outputs of the ISN, the positions of all objects in the FOV, are then broadcast so that autonomous vehicles can access the information via V2I connectivity to fuse with their onboard sensory data through the proposed cooperative PL framework. In the developed framework, a KCF is implemented as a distributed fusion method to fuse ISN data with onboard data. The introduced cooperative PL incorporates the range-dependent accuracy of the ISN measurements into fusion to improve the overall PL accuracy and reliability in different scenarios. The results show that using ISN data in addition to onboard sensor data improves the performance and reliability of PL in different scenarios, specifically in occlusion cases

Primary Malignant Cardiac Tumors (PMCTs) Successful Resection of a Huge Liposarcoma of the Heart

Primary cardiac tumors are rare with an incidence ranging from 0.001% to 0.03% in autopsy series. The prognosis of cardiac sarcomas remains poor because it proliferates rapidly, and distant metastases are often found at diagnosis. We present a case of liposarcoma in the atrium of the heart as case report and same time ,we do a literature review about it.  Case Report: We present the case of a young 30 years old female with a significant tumor of cardiac liposarcoma, with chief complaint of dyspnea, tachycardia and heart failure even angina pectoris. Conclusion: The diagnostician’s differential diagnosis must be broad when encountering common chief complaints, such as tachycardia, heart failure and angina pectoris

A Review of Solar Photovoltaic Concentrators

Throughout the recent centuries, the limits of using energy resources due to the cost and environmental issues became one of the scientists’ concerns. Because of the huge amount of energy received by the Earth from the sun, the application of photovoltaic solar cells has become popular in the world. The photovoltaic (PV) efficiency can be increased by several factors; concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system is one of the important tools for efficiency improvement and enables for a reduction in the cell area requirement. The limits of the PV area can reduce the amount of absorbing irradiation; CPV systems can concentrate a large amount of sunlight into a smaller one by applying lenses or curved and flat mirrors. However, the additional costs on concentrating optics and cooling systems made CPV less common than nonconcentrated photovoltaic. This paper reviews the different types of PV concentrators, their performance with advantages and disadvantages, concentration ratio, acceptance angle, brief comparison between their efficiencies, and appropriate cooling system

The Prevalence of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Infection and Genotypes in Patients with Hemophilia and Other Blood Coagulopathies in Mashhad, Iran

Background and Aim: Patients with blood coagulopathies treated with multiple transfusions have a high risk to acquire some viral infections such as hepatitis C. This research was aimed to identify hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection prevalence, and the viral genotypes among patients with hemophilia and other inherited coagulopathies in Mashhad, Iran. Methods: Medical records of 760 patients with inherited coagulopathies including hemophilia were reviewed in Sarvar Clinic of Mashhad. Plasma samples were subjected to detect antibodies against HCV (anti-HCV) by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. HCV RNA and genotypes were determined by a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method. Results: Totally 128 individuals (16.8%) including patients with hemophilia (n=116) and individuals with other coagulopathies (n=12) were found to be seropositive for anti-HCV. They comprised 122 men and six women with a mean age of 31.6 ± 10.5 years. The PCR results were available for 118 patients, of whom 86 individuals (72.9%) were found to have detectable HCV RNA in their serum. The most frequent genotypes were 1a and 3a (49.1% and 35.8%, respectively). HCV genotypes were not significantly correlated with the patients’ age (p=0.477) as well as with the serum levels of alanine aminotransferase (p=0.655) and aspartate aminotransferase (p=0.332). Conclusion: The patients with blood coagulation disorders had a greater prevalence of HCV infection in comparison with the general population in our region. The most common subgenotypes of HCV were 1a, and 3a, respectively. These results could assist professionals to choose more efficient approaches for the management of their patients. *Corresponding Author: Mohammad Reza Hedayati-Moghaddam; Email: [email protected] Please cite this article as: Badiei Z, Ahmadi-Ghezeldasht S, Sima HR, Habibi M, Khamooshi M, Azimi A, Hedayati-Moghaddam MR. The Prevalence of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) Infection and Genotypes in Patients with Hemophilia and Other Blood Coagulopathies in Mashhad, Iran. Arch Med Lab Sci. 2021;7:1-7 (e9). https://doi.org/10.22037/amls.v7.3396

Cell Wall N-Linked Mannoprotein Biosynthesis Requires Goa1p, a Putative Regulator of Mitochondrial Complex I in Candida Aabicans

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The Goa1p of Candida albicans regulates mitochondrial Complex I (CI) activities in its role as a putative CI accessory protein. Transcriptional profiling of goa1Δ revealed a down regulation of genes encoding β-oligomannosyl transferases. Herein, we present data on cell wall phenotypes of goa1Δ (strain GOA31). We used transmission electron microscopy (TEM), GPC/MALLS, and NMR to compare GOA31 to a gene-reconstituted strain (GOA32) and parental cells. We note by TEM a reduction in outer wall fibrils, increased inner wall transparency, and the loss of a defined wall layer close to the plasma membrane. GPC-MALLS revealed a reduction in high and intermediate Mw mannan by 85% in GOA31. A reduction of β-mannosyl but not α-mannosyl linkages was noted in GOA31 cells. β-(1,6)-linked glucan side chains were branched about twice as often but were shorter in length for GOA31. We conclude that mitochondrial CI energy production is highly integrated with cell wall formation. Our data also suggest that not all cell wall biosynthetic processes are dependent upon Goa1p even though it provides high levels of ATP to cells. The availability of both broadly conserved and fungal-specific mutants lacking CI subunit proteins should be useful in assessing functions of fungal-specific functions subunit proteins

Traumatic Pulmonary Pneumatoceles (Pseudocyst)

Introduction: Traumatic pulmonary parenchymal cavitary lesions (TPPCs) are pulmonary pseudocysts raiding secondary to lung contusion. Method: To provide an overview of the etiology, presentation, diagnosis and treatment of TPPCs, and to discuss this in the context of a cohort of 12 retrospectively reviewed patients with TPPCs presenting to Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden, from January 2014 to December 2016. Between January 2014 and December 2016, a total of twelve trauma patients presented to Sahlgrenska University Hospital with TPPC following blunt trauma. Results: TPPCs are of limited clinical consequence. Inexperienced clinicians may treat these inappropriately. A Computed Tomography (CT) scan is the investigation of choice. Treatment is symptomatic. Intervention is indicated only in case of complications

Impact of Three-Dimensional Indoor Environment on the Performance of Ultra-Dense Wireless Networks

With rapidly increasing traffic demand, it is expected that ultra-dense wireless access networks are deployed in many buildings in a near future. Performance evaluation of in-building ultra-dens networks is thus of profound importance. Buildings consist of walls and floors in three-dimensional environments, and the walls and floors attenuate the radio propagation. However, previous studies on the performance evaluation of wireless networks have mainly focused on open areas with an assumption of two-dimensional environments.  In this thesis, we investigate the effects of walls and floors on the performance of user data rate when wireless access networks are densely deployed inside a building. We assume a building of a typical shape, and perform Monte Carlo simulations with multiple configurations of different wall and floor losses as well as different sets of numbers of users and base stations per floor. Numerical results indicate that penetration loss due to walls and floors can increase the data rate of both average and five-percentile users, as this tends to better isolate a given base station and its connected users from the signals of others. We also observe that increasing the number of indoor base stations does not necessarily improve received user data rate because the number of users is limite