SmartHeLP: Smartphone-based Hemoglobin Level Prediction Using an Artificial Neural Network

Blood hemoglobin level (Hgb) measurement has a vital role in the diagnosis, evaluation, and management of numerous diseases. We describe the use of smartphone video imaging and an artificial neural network (ANN) system to estimate Hgb levels non-invasively. We recorded 10 second-300 frame fingertip videos using a smartphone in 75 adults. Red, green, and blue pixel intensities were estimated for each of 100 area blocks in each frame and the patterns across the 300 frames were described. ANN was then used to develop a model using the extracted video features to predict hemoglobin levels. In our study sample, with patients 20-56 years of age, and gold standard hemoglobin levels of 7.6 to 13.5 g/dL., we observed a 0.93 rank order of correlation between model and gold standard hemoglobin levels. Moreover, we identified specific regions of interest in the video images which reduced the required feature space

Smartphone-Based Prenatal Education for Parents with Preterm Birth Risk Factors

Objective To develop an educational mobile application (app) for expectant parents diagnosed with risk factors for premature birth. Methods Parent and medical advisory panels delineated the vision for the app. The app helps prepare for preterm birth. For pilot testing, obstetricians offered the app between 18–22 weeks gestational age to English speaking parents with risk factors for preterm birth. After 4 weeks of use, each participant completed a questionnaire. The software tracked topics accessed and duration of use. Results For pilot testing, 31 participants were recruited and 28 completed the questionnaire. After app utilization, participants reported heightened awareness of preterm birth (93%), more discussion of pregnancy or prematurity issues with partner (86%), increased questions at clinic visits (43%), and increased anxiety (21%). Participants reported receiving more prematurity information from the app than from their healthcare providers. The 15 participants for whom tracking data was available accessed the app for an average of 8 h. Conclusion Parents with increased risk for preterm birth may benefit from this mobile app educational program. Practice implications If the pregnancy results in preterm birth hospitalization, parents would have built a foundation of knowledge to make informed medical care choices

Bearing fault diagnosis using multidomain fusion-based vibration imaging and multitask learning.

Statistical features extraction from bearing fault signals requires a substantial level of knowledge and domain expertise. Furthermore, existing feature extraction techniques are mostly confined to selective feature extraction methods namely, time-domain, frequency-domain, or time-frequency domain statistical parameters. Vibration signals of bearing fault are highly non-linear and non-stationary making it cumbersome to extract relevant information for existing methodologies. This process even became more complicated when the bearing operates at variable speeds and load conditions. To address these challenges, this study develops an autonomous diagnostic system that combines signal-to-image transformation techniques for multi-domain information with convolutional neural network (CNN)-aided multitask learning (MTL). To address variable operating conditions, a composite color image is created by fusing information from multi-domains, such as the raw time-domain signal, the spectrum of the time-domain signal, and the envelope spectrum of the time-frequency analysis. This 2-D composite image, named multi-domain fusion-based vibration imaging (MDFVI), is highly effective in generating a unique pattern even with variable speeds and loads. Following that, these MDFVI images are fed to the proposed MTL-based CNN architecture to identify faults in variable speed and health conditions concurrently. The proposed method is tested on two benchmark datasets from the bearing experiment. The experimental results suggested that the proposed method outperformed state-of-the-arts in both datasets

A Case Control Study of Nutrient Intake Deficiencies in Patients Taking Warfarin

Introduction We previously published the case of a woman taking warfarin who was found to have scurvy, a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C. This led us to hypothesize that patients taking warfarin who consume a diet limited in vitamin K rich foods may be at risk for other nutrient deficiencies. To test our hypothesis, we studied dietary nutrient intake in patients taking warfarin compared to patients with heart disease not taking warfarin. Methods The warfarin (n=59) and control groups (n=24) comprised convenience samples of patients with heart disease over age 60 years. Patients completed a three-day food diary and reported use of supplements. Results Based on diet history, the most common deficiencies were vitamin D (100% both groups), vitamin E (93% warfarin, 92% control), vitamin A (71% warfarin, 71% control), vitamin K (66% warfarin, 58% control), vitamin C (58 % warfarin, 46% control) and pantothenic acid (69% warfarin, 71% control) with no significant differences in intake deficiencies between warfarin and control groups. Conclusion All of our patients had nutritional intake deficiencies. This may be due to Appalachian dietary habits and not the low vitamin K diet. It seems prudent to recommend multivitamins, however, universal multivitamin supplementation has not been supported by randomized controlled trials. More study is needed to determine the reason for poor nutritional intake in our Appalachian population and to determine whether similar results are evident in a larger sample

Trigger Finger Release Performed Wide Awake: Prospective Comparison of Local Anesthetics

Introduction: Trigger fi­nger (TF) is one of the most common conditions treated by hand surgeons with a lifetime risk up to 10% in patients with diabetes. If conservative management fails, surgical treatment is undertaken, with or without sedation and a tourniquet, via a small incision to release the A1 pulley. A number of local anesthetics are readily available including Lidocaine, Ropivacaine and Marcaine as well as encapsulated formulations thereof such as Exparel. Since it’s approval in 2011, there have been numerous reports of successfully achieving prolonged pain relief with locally injected Exparel after various procedures, but to the best of our knowledge there have been no reports of its use in ambulatory hand surgery. In this study we prospectively evaluated the efficacy of Lidocaine, Marcaine, or bupivacaine with post-operative Exparel in controlling pain, opioid usage, and adverse reactions following TF surgery

Measurement Invariance of the Internet Addiction Test Among Hong Kong, Japanese, and Malaysian Adolescents

There has been increased research examining the psychometric properties on the Internet Addiction Test across different ages and populations. This population-based study examined the psychometric properties using Confirmatory Factory Analysis and measurement invariance using Item Response Theory (IRT) of the IAT in adolescents from three Asian countries. In the Asian Adolescent Risk Behavior Survey (AARBS), 2,535 secondary school students (55.91% girls) in Grade 7 to Grade 13 (Mean age = 15.61 years; SD=1.56) from Hong Kong (n=844), Japan (n=744), and Malaysia (n=947) completed a survey on their Internet use that incorporated the IAT scale. A nested hierarchy of hypotheses concerning IAT cross-country invariance was tested using multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. Replicating past finding in Hong Kong adolescents, the construct of IAT is best represented by a second-order three-factor structure in Malaysian and Japanese adolescents. Configural, metric, scalar, and partial strict factorial invariance was established across the three samples. No cross-country differences on Internet addiction were detected at latent mean level. This study provided empirical support to the IAT as a reliable and factorially stable instrument, and valid to be used across Asian adolescent populations

Differentiability of L-p of a vector measure and applications to the Bishop-Phelps-Bollobas property

[EN] We study the properties of Gâteaux, Fréchet, uniformly Fréchet and uniformly Gâteaux smoothness of the space Lp(m) of scalar p-integrable functions with respect to a positive vector measure m with values in a Banach lattice. Applications in the setting of the Bishop-Phelps-Bollobás property (both for operators and bilinear forms) are also given.Research supported by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and FEDER under projects MTM2012-36740-c02-02 (L. Agud and E.A. Sanchez-Perez), MTM201453009-P (J.M. Calabuig) and MTM2014-54182-P (S. Lajara). S. Lajara was also supported by project 19275/PI/14 funded by Fundacion Seneca-Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnologia de la Region de Murcia within the framework of PCTIRM 2011-2014.Agud Albesa, L.; Calabuig, JM.; Lajara, S.; Sánchez Pérez, EA. (2017). Differentiability of L-p of a vector measure and applications to the Bishop-Phelps-Bollobas property. Revista de la Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales Serie A Matemáticas. 111(3):735-751. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13398-016-0327-xS7357511113Acosta, M.D., Aron, R.M., García, D., Maestre, M.: The Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás theorem for operators. J. Funct. Anal. 254(11), 2780–2799 (2008)Acosta, M.D., Becerra-Guerrero, J., Choi, Y.S., García, D., Kim, S.K., Lee, H.J., Maestre, M.: The Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás theorem for bilinear forms and polinomials. J. Math. Soc. Jpn 66(3), 957–979 (2014)Acosta, M.D., Becerra-Guerrero, J., García, D., Maestre, M.: The Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás theorem for bilinear forms. Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 11, 5911–5932 (2013)Agud, L., Calabuig, J.M., Sánchez Pérez, E.A.: On the smoothness of $$L^p$$ L p of a positive vector measure. Monatsh. Math. 178(3), 329–343 (2015)Aron, R.M., Cascales, B., Kozhushkina, O.: The Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás theorem and Asplund operators. Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 139, 3553–3560 (2011)Bishop, E., Phelps, R.R.: A proof that every Banach space is subreflexive. Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 67, 97–98 (1961)Bollobás, B.: An extension to the theorem of Bishop and Phelps. Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 2, 181–182 (1970)Cascales, B., Guirao, A.J., Kadets, V.: A Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás theorem type theorem for uniform algebras. Adv. Math. 240, 370–382 (2013)Choi, Y.S., Song, H.G.: The Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás theorem fails for bilinear forms on $$\ell _1\times \ell _1$$ ℓ 1 × ℓ 1 . J. Math. Anal. Appl. 360, 752–753 (2009)Deville, R., Godefroy, G., Zizler, V.: Smoothness and renormings in Banach spaces. Pitman Monographs and Surveys in Pure and Appl. Math., vol. 64, Longman, Harlow (1993)Diestel, J., Uhl, J.J.: Vector Measures. Math. Surveys, vol. 15, AMS, Providence, RI (1977)Fabian, M., Godefroy, G., Montesinos, V., Zizler, V.: Inner characterizations of weakly compactly generated Banach spaces and their relatives. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 297, 419–455 (2004)Fabian, M., Godefroy, G., Zizler, V.: The structure of uniformly Gâteaux smooth Banach spaces. Israel J. Math. 124, 243–252 (2001)Fabian, M., Habala, P., Hájek, P., Montesinos, V., Zizler, V.: Banach Space Theory: The Basis for Linear and Nonlinear Analysis. CMS Books in Mathematics, Springer, New York (2011)Fabian, M., Lajara, S.: Smooth renormings of the Lebesgue–Bochner function space $$L^1(\mu, X)$$ L 1 ( μ , X ) . Stud. Math. 209(3), 247–265 (2012)Ferrando, I., Rodríguez, J.: The weak topology on $$L^p$$ L p of a vector measure. Top. Appl. 155(13), 1439–1444 (2008)Hájek, P., Johanis, M.: Smooth analysis in Banach spaces. De Gruyter Series in Nonlinear Analysis and Applications, De Gruyter (2014)Kim, S.K.: The Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás theorem for operators from $$c_0$$ c 0 to uniformly convex spaces. Israel J. Math. 197, 425–435 (2013)Kim, S.K., Lee, H.J.: The Bishop–Phelps–Bollobás theorem for operators from $$C(K)$$ C ( K ) to uniformly convex spaces. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 421(1), 51–58 (2015)Hudzik, H., Kamińska, A., Mastylo, M.: Monotonocity and rotundity properties in Banach lattices. Rock. Mount J. Math. 30(3), 933–950 (2000)Kutzarova, D., Troyanski, S.L.: On equivalent norms which are uniformly convex or uniformly differentiable in every direction in symmetric function spaces. Serdica 11, 121–134 (1985)Okada, S., Ricker, W.J., Sánchez-Pérez, E.A.: Optimal Domain and Integral Extension of Operators Acting in Function Spaces. Operator Theory: Advances and Applications, vol. 180. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel (2008

High efficiency silicon solar cell based on asymmetric nanowire

Improving the efficiency of solar cells through novel materials and devices is critical to realize the full potential of solar energy to meet the growing worldwide energy demands. We present here a highly efficient radial p-n junction silicon solar cell using an asymmetric nanowire structure with a shorter bottom core diameter than at the top. A maximum short circuit current density of 27.5 mA/ cm(2) and an efficiency of 7.53% were realized without anti-reflection coating. Changing the silicon nanowire (SiNW) structure from conventional symmetric to asymmetric nature improves the efficiency due to increased short circuit current density. From numerical simulation and measurement of the optical characteristics, the total reflection on the sidewalls is seen to increase the light trapping path and charge carrier generation in the radial junction of the asymmetric SiNW, yielding high external quantum efficiency and short circuit current density. The proposed asymmetric structure has great potential to effectively improve the efficiency of the SiNW solar cells.111918Ysciescopu

Coarse-grained reconfigurable array architectures

Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Array (CGRA) architectures accelerate the same inner loops that benefit from the high ILP support in VLIW architectures. By executing non-loop code on other cores, however, CGRAs can focus on such loops to execute them more efficiently. This chapter discusses the basic principles of CGRAs, and the wide range of design options available to a CGRA designer, covering a large number of existing CGRA designs. The impact of different options on flexibility, performance, and power-efficiency is discussed, as well as the need for compiler support. The ADRES CGRA design template is studied in more detail as a use case to illustrate the need for design space exploration, for compiler support and for the manual fine-tuning of source code