Reducing the Incidence of Anaphylaxis Events in School Settings

Problem: Statistics show in a 2014 nationwide study that a 16% rate of anaphylaxis was reported in over five thousand schools. The anaphylactic reaction occurred between 79-83 % in classrooms and 12-15% in lunchrooms; 19% of the life-threatening reactions occurred on field trips, playgrounds, and other school events. Recent studies identified a knowledge deficit among school personnel when it comes to addressing food allergies. Context: The microsystem that will benefit from this project is part of a broader educational organization, a School District, in San Jose, Ca. The organization serves over 9000 students with diverse backgrounds, rich in ethnic and cultural diversity, with a curriculum designed to meet all the students\u27 needs. Intervention: This project\u27s current goal consists of identifying all children with food allergies, opening a communication link between the district nurses, parents, doctor, and school staff, implementing care plans for all children with food allergies, and educating all personnel involved in the process of care. Using educational resources and raising awareness among school personnel of food allergies being potentially life-threatening would decrease food allergy incidences in school settings. Results: This project is expected to increase awareness among school staff, teachers, health assistants, and other auxiliary staff members. By the current date, over 50% of the selected staff got trained regarding anaphylaxis signs and symptoms and action steps needed in case of an event. It is expected that by the end of 2020, over 70% of the selected staff will have completed the planned training. Conclusion: Creating and implementing a program to reduce the incidence of anaphylactic events within the School District improves students\u27 safety and the quality of care provided. A consistent training program has the benefits of increasing awareness among school staff related to signs and symptoms of anaphylaxis and the necessary actions that need to be taken regarding the occurrence of anaphylactic reactions in school settings

A method for automatically building and evaluating dictionary resources

This paper describes a method toward automatically building dictionaries from text. We present DEFINDER, a rule-based system for extraction of definitions from on-line consumer-oriented medical articles. We provide an extensive evaluation on three dimensions: i) performance of the definition extraction technique in terms of precision and recall, ii) quality of the built dictionary as judged both by specialists and lay users, iii) coverage of existing on-line dictionaries. The corpus we used for the study is publicly available. A major contribution of the paper is the range of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods

Evaluation of the DEFINDER System for Fully Automatic Glossary Construction

In this paper we present a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of DEFINDER, a rule-based system that mines consumer-oriented full text articles in order to extract definitions and the terms they define. The quantitative evaluation shows that in terms of precision and recall as measured against human performance, DEFINDER obtained 87% and 75% respectively, thereby revealing the incompleteness of existing resources and the ability of DEFINDER to address these gaps. Our basis for comparison is definitions from on-line dictionaries, including the UMLS Metathesaurus. Qualitative evaluation shows that the definitions extracted by our system are ranked higher in terms of user-centered criteria of usability and readability than are definitions from on-line specialized dictionaries. The output of DEFINDER can be used to enhance these dictionaries. DEFINDER output is being incorporated in a system to clarify technical terms for non-specialist users in understandable non-technical language

Evaluation of DEFINDER: A System to Mine Definitions from Consumer-oriented Medical Text

In this paper we present DEFINDER, a rule-based system that mines cons umer-oriented full text articles in order to extract definitions and the terms they define. This research is part of Digital Library Project at Columbia University, entitled PERSIVAL (PErsonalized Retrieval and Summarization of Image, Video and Language resources). One goal of the project is to present information to patients in language they can understand. A key component of this stage is to provide accurate and readable lay definitions for technical terms, which may be present in articles of intermediate complexity. The focus of this short paper is on quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the DEFINDER system. Our basis for comparison was definitions from Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), On-line Medical Dictionary (OMD) and Glossary of Popular and Technical Medical Terms (GPTMT). Quantitative evaluations show that DEFINDER obtained 87% precision and 75% recall and reveal the incompleteness of existing resources and the ability of DEFINDER to address gaps. Qualitative evaluation shows that the definitions extracted by our system are ranked higher in terms of user-based criteria of usability and readability than definitions from on-line specialized dictionaries. Thus the output of DEFINDER can be used to enhance existing specialized dictionaries, and also as a key feature in summarizing technical articles for non-specialist users

Graphite Electrode Modified with a New Phenothiazine Derivative and with Carbon Nanotubes for NADH Electrocatalytic Oxidation

The electrochemical behavior of a modified electrode obtained by immobilization of single-walled carbon nanotubes onto a graphite electrode modified with a new phenothiazine derivative, bis-phenothiazin-3-yl methane (BPhM), G/BPhM-CNT, has been evaluated and compared with BPhM adsorbed on graphite electrode (G/BPhM). The G/BPhM-CNT electrode presents improved performances for NADH electrocatalytic oxidation in comparison with G/BPhM electrode, expressed by: (i) a significant increase of electrocatalytic rate constant (kobs,[NADH] 0) for NADH oxidation (856.32 L mol–1 s–1 for G/BPhM-CNT and 51.63 L mol–1 s–1 for G/BPhM, in phosphate buffer, pH 7); (ii) the obtained amperometric sensors for NADH detection present increase sensitivity (S = 6.9 mA L mol–1 for G/BPhM-CNT and S = 0.55 mA L mol–1 for G/BPhM, pH 7)

GIST-IT: Summarizing Email Using Linguistic Knowledge and Machine

We present a system for the automatic extraction of salient information from email messages, thus providing the gist of their meaning. Dealing with email raises several challenges that we address in this paper: heterogeneous data in terms of length and topic. Our method combines shallow linguistic processing with machine learning to extract phrasal units that are representative of email content. The GIST-IT application is fully implemented and embedded in an active mailbox platform. Evaluation was performed over three machine learning paradigms

Corrosion Behavior of Composite Coatings Obtained by Electrolytic Codeposition of Copper with Al2O3 Nanoparticles

Composite coatings of copper incorporating Al2O3 nanoparticles electrodeposited on carbon steel were obtained and characterized. By using electrochemical methods such as open circuit potential (ocp) measurements, polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, the corrosion behavior of the Al2O3-copper nanocomposite coatings was examined. The corrosion parameters determined from the polarization curves recorded in Na2SO4 solution (pH 3) indicate that the corrosion process on copper-Al2O3 composite surface is slower than on pure copper. The impedance spectra recorded at the ocp showed in all cases an increase of the polarization resistance in time, which may be explained by the development of corrosion products on the electrode surface. Using a (2RC) equivalent electrical circuit, the process parameters were estimated by non-linear regression calculations with a Simplex method. The Al2O3 particles embedded in the electroplated copper, increase the polarization resistance and decrease the corrosion rates as compared with electrodeposited pure copper. The electrochemical results were corroborated with those obtained by SEM and EDX investigations