A Contribution of the Trivial Connection to Jones Polynomial and Witten's Invariant of 3d Manifolds I

We use the Chern-Simons quantum field theory in order to prove a recently conjectured limitation on the 1/K expansion of the Jones polynomial of a knot and its relation to the Alexander polynomial. This limitation allows us to derive a surgery formula for the loop corrections to the contribution of the trivial connection to Witten's invariant. The 2-loop part of this formula coincides with Walker's surgery formula for Casson-Walker invariant. This proves a conjecture that Casson-Walker invariant is a 2-loop correction to the trivial connection contribution to Witten's invariant of a rational homology sphere. A contribution of the trivial connection to Witten's invariant of a manifold with nontrivial rational homology is calculated for the case of Seifert manifolds.Comment: 28 page

Ranking Significant Discrepancies in Clinical Reports

Medical errors are a major public health concern and a leading cause of death worldwide. Many healthcare centers and hospitals use reporting systems where medical practitioners write a preliminary medical report and the report is later reviewed, revised, and finalized by a more experienced physician. The revisions range from stylistic to corrections of critical errors or misinterpretations of the case. Due to the large quantity of reports written daily, it is often difficult to manually and thoroughly review all the finalized reports to find such errors and learn from them. To address this challenge, we propose a novel ranking approach, consisting of textual and ontological overlaps between the preliminary and final versions of reports. The approach learns to rank the reports based on the degree of discrepancy between the versions. This allows medical practitioners to easily identify and learn from the reports in which their interpretation most substantially differed from that of the attending physician (who finalized the report). This is a crucial step towards uncovering potential errors and helping medical practitioners to learn from such errors, thus improving patient-care in the long run. We evaluate our model on a dataset of radiology reports and show that our approach outperforms both previously-proposed approaches and more recent language models by 4.5% to 15.4%.Comment: ECIR 2020 (short

Applying an intervention framework to assess North Carolina's adolescent pregnancy prevention efforts

PurposeWe assessed the extent to which implementing adolescent pregnancy prevention programs in conjunction with three level implementation strategies reduces adolescent pregnancy rates at the county-level in North Carolina (NC).MethodsFixsen and colleagues' (2005) three levels of implementation were used to organize the prevention strategies: core (e.g., training, fidelity monitoring), organizational (e.g., administrative support), and external (e.g., community resources).ResultsCounties that had adolescent friendly clinic/services (external) were more likely to report lower adolescent pregnancy rates in comparison to counties that did not have access to such services.ConclusionsFindings suggest external implementation strategies are key to reducing adolescent pregnancy rates

Depressive Symptoms among Latino Sexual Minority Men and Latina Transgender Women in a New Settlement State: The Role of Perceived Discrimination

Background. Little is known about the role of discrimination on depression among Latino sexual and gender identity minorities. This manuscript examined the relationship between ethnic/racial discrimination and sexual discrimination on clinically significant depressive symptoms among Latino sexual minority men (i.e., gay and bisexual men and other men who have sex with men) and Latina transgender women. Methods. A community-based participatory research partnership recruited participants (N = 186; 80.6% cisgender men) in North Carolina to a social network-based HIV intervention. Using baseline data, we quantified the amount of perceived discrimination and conducted mixed-effects logistic regression analyses to examine correlates of clinically significant depressive symptoms. Results. A high percentage of participants reported ethnic/racial discrimination (73.7%) and sexual discrimination (53.8%). In the multivariable models, ethnic/racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, masculinity, fatalism, and social support were significantly associated with clinically significant depressive symptoms. Discussion. Improving mental health requires multilevel interventions that address pertinent individual, interpersonal, and system level factors

Adapting and testing a vulnerability model for Latino/a sexual and gender minorities in a new settlement state

Sexual health vulnerability among Latino/a sexual and gender minorities is poorly understood, despite high rates of HIV and STDs among Latino/as, particularly in new settlement states in the southern US. The lack of a model specific to Latino/a sexual and gender minorities complicates the study of vulnerability. To move vulnerability research forward with this population, key constructs must be defined and processes for model development described. Clarity in the operationalization of vulnerability, as well as in the approach for adapting a vulnerability model to Latino/a sexual and gender minorities, can improve replicability to other similar populations and standardize a method toward model development. This study tests a new theoretical model of vulnerability for Latino/a sexual and gender minorities by adapting the General Model of Vulnerability. A community-based participatory research partnership recruited Latino/a sexual and gender minorities (i.e., men who have sex with men and transgender women; N=186) in North Carolina to participate in the HOLA intervention. Using baseline data collected in 2012, I performed latent class analysis to operationalize vulnerability across three domains (i.e., socioeconomic stability, health care, and social) using eight indicators (i.e., educational attainment, employment status, routine check-up, social support, acculturation, racial/ethnic and sexual discrimination, and internalized homonegativity) to identify underlying classes of vulnerability, then tested the association between class membership and three sexual health behaviors (i.e., HIV testing, STD testing, and condom use). In this sample, I identified three latent classes of vulnerability: High Education and Employment (18.8% of the sample; characterized by high educational attainment and employment status), Low Education and High Social Support (63.4%), and High Education and Discrimination (17.7%; high educational attainment and racial/ethnic and sexual discrimination). Membership in the Low Education and High Social Support class and the High Education and Discrimination class was significantly associated with more condomless anal or vaginal intercourse, whereas membership in the High Education and Employment class was associated with less condomless anal or vaginal intercourse (p < 0.05). I found no significant associations between vulnerability and HIV testing nor STD testing. Overall, the results from this study found that the identification of latent classes of vulnerability differentially predicted a sexual health behavior among Latino/a sexual and gender minorities in NC. These findings highlight the utility of identifying typologies of vulnerability to predict patterns of sexual health behavior. This information can be used to tailor future efforts to specific groups of Latino/a sexual and gender minorities, as well as other vulnerable populations living in other parts of the US. Developing intervention components that harness facilitators (e.g., social support) and address barriers (e.g., discrimination) to health, focusing specifically on those uniquely vulnerable, is critical to increasing the reach and effectiveness of tailored health promotion and HIV/STD prevention programming

Induced liver injury after high-dose methylprednisolone in a patient with multiple sclerosis

A 33-year-old woman with multiple sclerosis, medicated with high doses of methylprednisolone, cyclophosphamide and glatiramer acetate, was referred to our department due to acute liver injury. The laboratory investigation was normal except for weakly positive antinuclear antibodies. Cyclophosphamide and glatiramer acetate were suspended, and intravenous immunoglobulin with maintenance of high doses of methylprednisolone was initiated. The patient developed another episode of acute hepatitis so the immunoglobulin was stopped. After that, she had three more episodes of elevation of liver enzymes with no hepatic insufficiency while medicated only with high doses of methylprednisolone. At this time, liver biopsy showed focal centrilobubar hepatocyte necrosis with minimal interface hepatitis. After the high doses of methylprednisolone were suspended, the patient remained asymptomatic, with normal hepatic enzymes. This case emphasises that, although rare, induced liver injury after high doses of methylprednisolone can occur.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A novel shape feature to classify microcalcifications

Clinical evident shows that the shape of mammographic calcification is an indicator of the pathology. Microcalcifications (MC) with rough shape are early signs of malignant breast cancer. This thesis proposed a shape metric to help radiologist in classifying regions of interest. Region growing and gradient vector flow algorithm are used to obtain the contour of MC to calculate the normalized distance signature. A three level wavelet decomposition with a Daubechies eight tap wavelet is used to provide a bandpass function and extract the desired shape feature of the MC. A comparison with previously used shape features such as compactness, moment, Fourier descriptors is provided. 58 malignant and 125 benign cases, totaling 368 individual MC, are tested by the proposed method and previously used shape features

Bacteriological, physicochemical and mineral studies on Awedele spring water and soil samples in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria

Enterococci abound in faeces, survive long outside the enteric environment and possess unique ability to acquire and transfer antibiotic resistance. Recent studies have identified Enterococci as a relevant indicator of water quality. The current study focused on the prevalence of antimicrobial resistant forms of Enterococcus species isolated from Awedele spring water in Ekiti State Nigeria. The bacteriological and physicochemical quality of the water samples was also assessed. The mineral content of the adjacent soil samples was also determined. Antibiotic resistance among isolated Enterococcus species was highest to penicillin as all isolates demonstrated complete resistance to the antibiotics. Prevalence of gentamycinresistant enterococci was lowest (48%). Mean total bacterial and enterococcus count ranged from 1.8 x104 to 8.6 x 104 cfu/ml and 1.5 x 105 to 4.0 x 105 cfu/ml respectively. While calling for an improved data capturing system for drinking water surveillance in developing nations, the study highlights the need for continuous efforts aimed at instigating the required hygiene behavioral change among residents of rural settlements in the developing world