Stronger instruments via integer programming in an observational study of late preterm birth outcomes

In an optimal nonbipartite match, a single population is divided into matched pairs to minimize a total distance within matched pairs. Nonbipartite matching has been used to strengthen instrumental variables in observational studies of treatment effects, essentially by forming pairs that are similar in terms of covariates but very different in the strength of encouragement to accept the treatment. Optimal nonbipartite matching is typically done using network optimization techniques that can be quick, running in polynomial time, but these techniques limit the tools available for matching. Instead, we use integer programming techniques, thereby obtaining a wealth of new tools not previously available for nonbipartite matching, including fine and near-fine balance for several nominal variables, forced near balance on means and optimal subsetting. We illustrate the methods in our on-going study of outcomes of late-preterm births in California, that is, births of 34 to 36 weeks of gestation. Would lengthening the time in the hospital for such births reduce the frequency of rapid readmissions? A straightforward comparison of babies who stay for a shorter or longer time would be severely biased, because the principal reason for a long stay is some serious health problem. We need an instrument, something inconsequential and haphazard that encourages a shorter or a longer stay in the hospital. It turns out that babies born at certain times of day tend to stay overnight once with a shorter length of stay, whereas babies born at other times of day tend to stay overnight twice with a longer length of stay, and there is nothing particularly special about a baby who is born at 11:00 pm.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AOAS582 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Deep Learning using K-space Based Data Augmentation for Automated Cardiac MR Motion Artefact Detection

Quality assessment of medical images is essential for complete automation of image processing pipelines. For large population studies such as the UK Biobank, artefacts such as those caused by heart motion are problematic and manual identification is tedious and time-consuming. Therefore, there is an urgent need for automatic image quality assessment techniques. In this paper, we propose a method to automatically detect the presence of motion-related artefacts in cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) images. As this is a highly imbalanced classification problem (due to the high number of good quality images compared to the low number of images with motion artefacts), we propose a novel k-space based training data augmentation approach in order to address this problem. Our method is based on 3D spatio-temporal Convolutional Neural Networks, and is able to detect 2D+time short axis images with motion artefacts in less than 1ms. We test our algorithm on a subset of the UK Biobank dataset consisting of 3465 CMR images and achieve not only high accuracy in detection of motion artefacts, but also high precision and recall. We compare our approach to a range of state-of-the-art quality assessment methods.Comment: Accepted for MICCAI2018 Conferenc

Building a Stronger Instrument in an Observational Study of Perinatal Care for Premature Infants

An instrument is a random nudge toward acceptance of a treatment that affects outcomes only to the extent that it affects acceptance of the treatment. Nonetheless, in settings in which treatment assignment is mostly deliberate and not random, there may exist some essentially random nudges to accept treatment, so that use of an instrument might extract bits of random treatment assignment from a setting that is otherwise quite biased in its treatment assignments. An instrument is weak if the random nudges barely influence treatment assignment or strong if the nudges are often decisive in influencing treatment assignment. Although ideally an ostensibly random instrument is perfectly random and not biased, it is not possible to be certain of this; thus a typical concern is that even the instrument might be biased to some degree. It is known from theoretical arguments that weak instruments are invariably sensitive to extremely small biases; for this reason, strong instruments are preferred. The strength of an instrument is often taken as a given. It is not. In an evaluation of effects of perinatal care on the mortality of premature infants, we show that it is possible to build a stronger instrument, we show how to do it, and we show that success in this task is critically important. We also develop methods of permutation inference for effect ratios, a key component in an instrumental variable analysis

GridCertLib: a Single Sign-on Solution for Grid Web Applications and Portals

This paper describes the design and implementation of GridCertLib, a Java library leveraging a Shibboleth-based authentication infrastructure and the SLCS online certificate signing service, to provide short-lived X.509 certificates and Grid proxies. The main use case envisioned for GridCertLib, is to provide seamless and secure access to Grid/X.509 certificates and proxies in web applications and portals: when a user logs in to the portal using Shibboleth authentication, GridCertLib can automatically obtain a Grid/X.509 certificate from the SLCS service and generate a VOMS proxy from it. We give an overview of the architecture of GridCertLib and briefly describe its programming model. Its application to some deployment scenarios is outlined, as well as a report on practical experience integrating GridCertLib into portals for Bioinformatics and Computational Chemistry applications, based on the popular P-GRADE and Django softwares.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure; final manuscript accepted for publication by the "Journal of Grid Computing

The laryngoscope and 19th century British understanding of laryngeal movements

The source of the human voice is obscured from view. The development of the laryngoscope in the late 1850s provided the potential to see the action of the vocal folds during speaking for the first time. This new instrument materially contributed to the understanding of vocal fold neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neuropathology. The laryngoscope led to the elucidation of disorders that previously were determined by changes in sound. The objective of this paper is to detail the consequences of this novel visualization of the larynx, and to trace how it led to an appreciation of how the voice was produced by movements of the vocal folds. This is demonstrated through an examination of the activities and practices of a group of London clinicians in the second half of the 19th century

Sperimagnetism in Fe(78)Er(5)B(17) and Fe(64)Er(19)B(17) metallic glasses: II. Collinear components and ferrimagnetic compensation

Magnetization measurements on an Fe(64)Er(19)B(17) glass and polarized-beam neutron scattering measurements on Fe(78)Er(5)B(17) and Fe(64)Er(19)B(17) were described in part I. The finite spin-flip neutron scattering cross sections were calculated using a sperimagnetic structure based on random cone arrangements of the magnetic moments. The temperature variation of the cross sections of Fe(64)Er(19)B(17) suggested that a compensated sperimagnetic phase existed at T(comp). The analysis of the non-spin-flip neutron scattering cross sections is described here in part II. Two spin-dependent total structure factors S(+/-+/-). (Q) were defined from these cross sections and, despite the limited range of the data 0.5 angstrom(-1) , are zero on both sublattices in the compensated sperimagnetic structure at T(comp). The pre-peak in the spin-dependent total structure factors at 112 K showed that it originated in the atomic structure and it may involve Fe-Er-Fe 'collineations' at a radial distance of approximate to 6.0 angstrom. Finally, the RDF(+/-+/-) (r) of Fe(64)Er(19)B(17) at 180 K and of Fe(78)Er(5)B(17) at 2 K show that both glasses have the (mu(Fe) UP:mu(Er) DOWN) structure like the (Fe, Tb)(83)B(17) collinear ferrimagnets

Cross-linguistic study of vocal pathology: perceptual features of spasmodic dysphonia in French-speaking subjects

Clinical characterisation of Spasmodic Dysphonia of the adductor type (SD) in French speakers by Klap and colleagues (1993) appears to differ from that of SD in English. This perceptual analysis aims to describe the phonetic features of French SD. A video of 6 French speakers with SD supplied by Klap and colleagues was analysed for frequency of phonatory breaks, pitch breaks, harshness, creak, breathiness and falsetto voice, rate of production, and quantity of speech output. In contrast to English SD, the French speaking SD patients demonstrated no evidence pitch breaks, but phonatory breaks, harshness and breathiness were prominent features. This verifies the French authors’ (1993) clinical description. These findings suggest that phonetic properties of a specific language may affect the manifestation of pathology in neurogenic voice disorders

State-resolved measurements of single-electron capture in slow Ne7+- and Ne8+-helium collisions

Single-electron capture in collisions of 9 keV x q Ne8+ and Ne7+ ions with He has been studied using cold-target recoil-ion momentum spectroscopy. With an improved apparatus a longitudinal momentum resolution of 0.07 au has been achieved. This momentum component is directly proportional to the difference in the binding energy of the active electron between the final and the initial state. For the first time state- resolved differential cross sections have been determined with respect to the main quantum number, subshell level and spin state of the captured electron. A comparison with recent theoretical results for energy levels in Be-like Ne is given

Polymer reptation and nucleosome repositioning

We consider how beads can diffuse along a chain that wraps them, without becoming displaced from the chain; our proposed mechanism is analogous to the reptation of "stored length" in more familiar situations of polymer dynamics. The problem arises in the case of globular aggregates of proteins (histones) that are wound by DNA in the chromosomes of plants and animals; these beads (nucleosomes) are multiply wrapped and yet are able to reposition themselves over long distances, while remaining bound by the DNA chain.Comment: 9 pages, including 2 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. Let

Response Style Differences in the Inattentive and Combined Subtypes of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

This study examined potential differences between the inattentive and combined ADHD subtypes using laboratory tasks assessing behavioral inhibitory processes. Seventy-five children completed two tasks of behavioral inhibition believed to isolate different processes: the cued reaction time task (CRT), a basic inhibition task, and the go/no-go task (GNG), a complex inhibition task that incorporates motivational contingencies. Three groups of participants were identified, including ADHD/Inattentive (n = 17), ADHD/Combined (n = 37), and comparison (n = 21). Results indicated that rather than showing behavioral inhibition deficits, the ADHD/I children appeared overly inhibited, as evidenced by slower reaction times across the two tasks and significantly higher errors of omission in the GNG task. Additionally, the ADHD/I children did not demonstrate cue dependency effects on the CRT task, suggesting that they were failing to incorporate relevant information before making a response. The sluggish and inhibited performance of the ADHD/I group challenges the idea that it is a subtype of ADHD