43 research outputs found
BIOMEDICAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING AND EXTRACTION (BLUE-TEXT): A MINIMAL SYNTACTIC, SEMANTIC METHOD
Get PDFClinical text understanding (CTU) is of interest to health informatics because critical clinical information frequently represented as unconstrained text in electronic health records are extensively used by human experts to guide clinical practice, decision making, and to document delivery of care, but are largely unusable by information systems for queries and computations. Recent initiatives advocating for translational research call for generation of technologies that can integrate structured clinical data with unstructured data, provide a unified interface to all data, and contextualize clinical information for reuse in multidisciplinary and collaborative environment envisioned by CTSA program. This implies that technologies for the processing and interpretation of clinical text should be evaluated not only in terms of their validity and reliability in their intended environment, but also in light of their interoperability, and ability to support information integration and contextualization in a distributed and dynamic environment.
This vision adds a new layer of information representation requirements that needs to be accounted for when conceptualizing implementation or acquisition of clinical text processing tools and technologies for multidisciplinary research.
On the other hand, electronic health records frequently contain unconstrained clinical text with high variability in use of terms and documentation practices, and without commitmentto grammatical or syntactic structure of the language (e.g. Triage notes, physician and nurse notes, chief complaints, etc). This hinders performance of natural language processing technologies which typically rely heavily on the syntax of language and grammatical structure of the text.
This document introduces our method to transform unconstrained clinical text found in electronic health information systems to a formal (computationally understandable) representation that is suitable for querying, integration, contextualization and reuse, and is resilient to the grammatical and syntactic irregularities of the clinical text. We present our design rationale, method, and results of evaluation in processing chief complaints and triage notes from 8 different emergency departments in Houston Texas. At the end, we will discuss significance of our contribution in enabling use of clinical text in a practical bio-surveillance setting
Ontology driven integration platform for clinical and translational research
Get PDFSemantic Web technologies offer a promising framework for integration of disparate biomedical data. In this paper we present the semantic information integration platform under development at the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H) as part of our Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program. We utilize the Semantic Web technologies not only for integrating, repurposing and classification of multi-source clinical data, but also to construct a distributed environment for information sharing, and collaboration online. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is used to modularize and distribute reusable services in a dynamic and distributed environment. Components of the semantic solution and its overall architecture are described
Leveraging electronic health records for clinical research
Get PDFElectronic health records (EHRs) can be a major tool in the quest to decrease costs and timelines of clinical trial research, generate better evidence for clinical decision making, and advance health care. Over the past decade, EHRs have increasingly offered opportunities to speed up, streamline, and enhance clinical research. EHRs offer a wide range of possible uses in clinical trials, including assisting with prestudy feasibility assessment, patient recruitment, and data capture in care delivery. To fully appreciate these opportunities, health care stakeholders must come together to face critical challenges in leveraging EHR data, including data quality/completeness, information security, stakeholder engagement, and increasing the scale of research infrastructure and related governance. Leaders from academia, government, industry, and professional societies representing patient, provider, researcher, industry, and regulator perspectives convened the Leveraging EHR for Clinical Research Now! Think Tank in Washington, DC (February 18-19, 2016), to identify barriers to using EHRs in clinical research and to generate potential solutions. Think tank members identified a broad range of issues surrounding the use of EHRs in research and proposed a variety of solutions. Recognizing the challenges, the participants identified the urgent need to look more deeply at previous efforts to use these data, share lessons learned, and develop a multidisciplinary agenda for best practices for using EHRs in clinical research. We report the proceedings from this think tank meeting in the following paper
Biomedical informatics and translational medicine
Get PDFBiomedical informatics involves a core set of methodologies that can provide a foundation for crossing the "translational barriers" associated with translational medicine. To this end, the fundamental aspects of biomedical informatics (e.g., bioinformatics, imaging informatics, clinical informatics, and public health informatics) may be essential in helping improve the ability to bring basic research findings to the bedside, evaluate the efficacy of interventions across communities, and enable the assessment of the eventual impact of translational medicine innovations on health policies. Here, a brief description is provided for a selection of key biomedical informatics topics (Decision Support, Natural Language Processing, Standards, Information Retrieval, and Electronic Health Records) and their relevance to translational medicine. Based on contributions and advancements in each of these topic areas, the article proposes that biomedical informatics practitioners ("biomedical informaticians") can be essential members of translational medicine teams
Investigation of buckling Behavior of functionally graded thin-walled box beams under axial loading
No full textRecently, the growing needs of the engineering community for smart structures have led to targeted material technology gradually replacing conventional homogeneous and laminated composite materials. Among the sandwich-shaped structures with targeted core, the thin walled closed beam of sandwich box (with functionally graded core), due to having desirable properties such as high flexural stiffness, low density, desirable static and dynamic properties likewise high strength against mechanical loads and stresses have received much attention.
In some specific applications, components of modern structures, such as thin walled functionally graded beams with a closed box geometry, are subjected to axial or concentrated or wide transverse loads. Under these conditions, the choice of loading parameters may lead to lateral or axial buckling, which results in irrecoverable damage to the structure. Buckling of an axially loaded thin-walled functionally Graded sandwich box beam in presence of structural non-homogeneity is studied.
In this study, taking into account the effects of the structural heterogeneity (via power law distribution), porosity and effect of the cross-sections warping by means of Vlasov’s beam assumptions and applying the Hamilton’s principal the governing equations of the Buckling instability of the thin-walled functionally graded sandwich box porous beam were derived. Then the finite element method was developed to formulate the problem. In following, for the case of various boundary conditions, the related governing eigenvalue problem was derived and solved numerically. The validity of the results was accomplished by comparing the results with those of the literature. In following beside by providing the characteristic buckling curves, the effect of different parameters of the problem, including the beam aspect ratio, mixing volume fraction index, porosity index, core component modulus ratio and ceramic layer thickness on the buckling load were investigated comprehensively. It was observed that different parameters, especially the mixing index and structural porosity index has a considerable influence in determining the buckling boundary
Molecular dynamics simulations on interaction of ssDNA-causing DM1 with carbon and boron nitride nanotubes to inhibit the formation of CTG repeat secondary structures
No full textExposure of genomic, single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) during transcription and replication creates opportunities for the formation of inappropriate secondary structures. CTG repeat has been shown to form stable secondary structures that are the cause of inherited human genetic disease related to the myotonic dystrophy. Here, we investigated the role of SWCNT and BNNT in preventing CTG repeat using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The assessment of the simulations reveals that the ssDNA undergoes rapid conformational changes and wrap around the SWNTs via π-stacking interactions between SWNT’s wall and the nucleobases of the ssDNA. The ssDNA is observed to spontaneously wrap around SWNTs into compact right-handed helice within a few nanoseconds. Helical wrapping is driven by the electrostatic and torsional interactions within the sugar–phosphate backbone that result in ssDNA wrapping from the 3′end to the 5′end. Our computations demonstrate that the binding strength of the ssDNA to the SWCNT is substantially greater than to the BNNT. These findings would enable providing new avenues for therapeutic interventions in of myotonic dystrophy and potentially other triplet repeat disorders.Fil: Yoosefian, Mehdi. Graduate University Of Advanced Technology; IránFil: Mirhaji, Elnaz. Graduate University Of Advanced Technology; IránFil: Afshar, Mahboubeh. Graduate University Of Advanced Technology; IránFil: Juan, Alfredo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Física del Sur. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Física. Instituto de Física del Sur; Argentin
EVALUATING SEISMIC IN-SOIL ISOLATION OF MSW LANDFILL USING GEOSYNTHETIC LINERS IN SHAKING TABLE TEST: CASE STUDY OF TEHRAN KAHRIZAK LANDFILL
No full textSeismic loads may damage municipal solid waste landfills (MSWLF) through the relative movements within the waste, bottom-lining system, cover system, foundation, and interfaces. These movements can disrupt the performance of drainage and gas
collection systems, thereby resulting in environmental pollutions. The smooth synthetic materials might be placed beneath the structures to provide seismic protection by absorbing the imparted energy of earthquakes through the sliding mechanism. It has been found that a high-strength geomembrane placed over the other smooth and lubricated geomembrane sheets (e.g., geomembrane/geomembrane) constitutes a liner that is well suited for this application. In the present study, experimental investigations were conducted in order to evaluate the role of in-soil base isolation on seismic response of the Kahrizak MSW landfill with more than 7000 tons waste disposal daily in Tehran, Iran.Results of geophysical and geotechnical investigations in the landfill site are presented in detail. Shaking table tests were conducted on the MSW embankment isolated by semielliptic shaped liners and subjected to harmonic sinusoidal base excitations. Two types of base isolation system were employed in the experiments. The results of the isolated and non-isolated cases are compared in terms of permanent displacement and seismic response. It has been observed that, at all elevations, the spectral accelerations within the waste decreased by base isolation, especially for the more intense excitations. Although the fundamental period of the embankments significantly increased by increasing the amplitude of input motion, the base isolation mechanism did not affect the system period. In fact, isolation liners can significantly reduce
the seismic shear forces and accelerations transmitted to the landfill crest. The sliding displacement that is required to provide efficient soil isolation is in the range of permissible displacements for MSW landfills. Results of the present study demonstrate a suitable application of geosynthetic liners for seismic retrofitting of landfills
