Regional Variation in the Length of Hospital Stay and Insurance Coverage: A State-wide Variation in Length of Stay and Insurance Types

With the continuously growing healthcare expenditure, it is important to examine the causes of this phenomenon. Length of hospital stay is one possible cause. Using the panel data from 2001 – 2008 Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, Statehealthfacts.org, Center for Disease Control and Prevention Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Almanac of Hospital Financial & Operating Indicators 2007, and Current Population Survey March Supplements, this paper utilizes regression analysis to investigate geographic variation on the length of stay, focusing on the relationship between the different insurance types and the length of stay. As a variety of insurance types offers different reimbursement rates, hospitals may discharge patients earlier, thereby affecting the length of stay. In addition to the effect of insurance, this paper examines the effect of other factors such as demographics, lifestyle, and supply availabilities on the length of stay. The study finds that there is a state-level variation in the length of stay and that length of stay varies depending on the percentage of people covered by different insurance types. This calls for legislation changes in some states to reduce healthcare spending

An Information-Theoretic Approach for Estimating Scenario Generalization in Crowd Motion Prediction

Learning-based approaches to modeling crowd motion have become increasingly successful but require training and evaluation on large datasets, coupled with complex model selection and parameter tuning. To circumvent this tremendously time-consuming process, we propose a novel scoring method, which characterizes generalization of models trained on source crowd scenarios and applied to target crowd scenarios using a training-free, model-agnostic Interaction + Diversity Quantification score, ISDQ. The Interaction component aims to characterize the difficulty of scenario domains, while the diversity of a scenario domain is captured in the Diversity score. Both scores can be computed in a computation tractable manner. Our experimental results validate the efficacy of the proposed method on several simulated and real-world (source,target) generalization tasks, demonstrating its potential to select optimal domain pairs before training and testing a model

MSI: Maximize Support-Set Information for Few-Shot Segmentation

FSS(Few-shot segmentation)~aims to segment a target class with a small number of labeled images (support Set). To extract information relevant to target class, a dominant approach in best performing FSS baselines removes background features using support mask. We observe that this support mask presents an information bottleneck in several challenging FSS cases e.g., for small targets and/or inaccurate target boundaries. To this end, we present a novel method (MSI), which maximizes the support-set information by exploiting two complementary source of features in generating super correlation maps. We validate the effectiveness of our approach by instantiating it into three recent and strong FSS baselines. Experimental results on several publicly available FSS benchmarks show that our proposed method consistently improves the performance by visible margins and allows faster convergence. Our codes and models will be publicly released

In Vitro and In Vivo Evaluation of Infestation Deterrents Against Lice

The human head louse is a cosmopolitan ectoparasite and frequently infests many people, particularly school-age children. Due to widespread pyrethroid resistance and the lack of efficient resistance management, there has been a considerable interest in the protection of uninfested people and prevention of reinfestation by disrupting lice transfer. In this study, two nonclinical model systems (in vitro and in vivo) were used to determine the efficacy of the infestation deterrents, Elimax lotion and Elimax shampoo, against human head lice or poultry chewing lice, respectively. With in vitro assessments, female head lice exhibited significantly higher avoidance responses to hair tufts treated with either of the test formulations, which led to significantly higher ovipositional avoidance when compared with female lice on control hair tufts. Additionally, both formulations were determined to be competent infestation deterrents in a competitive avoidance test in the presence of a known attractant (head louse feces extract). In in vivo assessments using a previously validated poultry model, Elimax shampoo was determined to be an efficacious deterrent against poultry chewing lice within Menopon spp. and Menacanthus spp

Probabilistic modeling and machine learning in structural and systems biology

This supplement contains extended versions of a selected subset of papers presented at the workshop PMSB 2007, Probabilistic Modeling and Machine Learning in Structural and Systems Biology, Tuusula, Finland, from June 17 to 18, 2006

Human iPS derived progenitors bioengineered into liver organoids using an inverted colloidal crystal poly (ethylene glycol) scaffold.

Generation of human organoids from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) offers exciting possibilities for developmental biology, disease modelling and cell therapy. Significant advances towards those goals have been hampered by dependence on animal derived matrices (e.g. Matrigel), immortalized cell lines and resultant structures that are difficult to control or scale. To address these challenges, we aimed to develop a fully defined liver organoid platform using inverted colloid crystal (ICC) whose 3-dimensional mechanical properties could be engineered to recapitulate the extracellular niche sensed by hepatic progenitors during human development. iPSC derived hepatic progenitors (IH) formed organoids most optimally in ICC scaffolds constructed with 140 μm diameter pores coated with type I collagen in a two-step process mimicking liver bud formation. The resultant organoids were closer to adult tissue, compared to 2D and 3D controls, with respect to morphology, gene expression, protein secretion, drug metabolism and viral infection and could integrate, vascularise and function following implantation into livers of immune-deficient mice. Preliminary interrogation of the underpinning mechanisms highlighted the importance of TGFβ and hedgehog signalling pathways. The combination of functional relevance with tuneable mechanical properties leads us to propose this bioengineered platform to be ideally suited for a range of future mechanistic and clinical organoid related applications

Drug-resistant genotypes and multi-clonality in Plasmodium falciparum analysed by direct genome sequencing from peripheral blood of malaria patients.

Naturally acquired blood-stage infections of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum typically harbour multiple haploid clones. The apparent number of clones observed in any single infection depends on the diversity of the polymorphic markers used for the analysis, and the relative abundance of rare clones, which frequently fail to be detected among PCR products derived from numerically dominant clones. However, minority clones are of clinical interest as they may harbour genes conferring drug resistance, leading to enhanced survival after treatment and the possibility of subsequent therapeutic failure. We deployed new generation sequencing to derive genome data for five non-propagated parasite isolates taken directly from 4 different patients treated for clinical malaria in a UK hospital. Analysis of depth of coverage and length of sequence intervals between paired reads identified both previously described and novel gene deletions and amplifications. Full-length sequence data was extracted for 6 loci considered to be under selection by antimalarial drugs, and both known and previously unknown amino acid substitutions were identified. Full mitochondrial genomes were extracted from the sequencing data for each isolate, and these are compared against a panel of polymorphic sites derived from published or unpublished but publicly available data. Finally, genome-wide analysis of clone multiplicity was performed, and the number of infecting parasite clones estimated for each isolate. Each patient harboured at least 3 clones of P. falciparum by this analysis, consistent with results obtained with conventional PCR analysis of polymorphic merozoite antigen loci. We conclude that genome sequencing of peripheral blood P. falciparum taken directly from malaria patients provides high quality data useful for drug resistance studies, genomic structural analyses and population genetics, and also robustly represents clonal multiplicity

Safety Findings in Pediatric Patients During Long-Term Treatment With Teduglutide for Short-Bowel Syndrome-Associated Intestinal Failure : Pooled Analysis of 4 Clinical Studies

Background This analysis assessed combined safety data from 4 clinical studies of teduglutide in pediatric patients with short-bowel syndrome-associated intestinal failure (SBS-IF). Methods Safety data from teduglutide-treated patients in 4 clinical trials were pooled. The completed 12-week and 24-week phase 3 core studies (NCT01952080/EudraCT 2013-004588-30 and NCT02682381/EudraCT 2015-002252-27) enrolled children aged 1-17 years with SBS-IF. Patients could elect to enroll in ongoing open-label extensions (NCT02949362/EudraCT 2016-000863-17 and NCT02954458/EudraCT 2016-000849-30). Interim data from ongoing studies were included. Results Safety data are reported for 89 pediatric patients treated with teduglutide for a median (range) of 51.7 (5.0-94.7) weeks. Adverse events (AEs) were reported in all patients; the most common were vomiting (51.7%), pyrexia (43.8%), upper respiratory tract infection (41.6%), and cough (33.7%). Thirty-five patients (39.3%) had AEs considered related to teduglutide treatment; abdominal pain and vomiting were most frequent (5.6% each). Three serious AEs in 3 patients (3.4%) were considered related to teduglutide treatment: ileus, d-lactic acidosis, and gastrointestinal obstruction due to hard stools. All 3 events resolved. One cecal polyp was detected, which was not biopsied or found on repeat colonoscopy. No cases of neoplasia occurred. Conclusion Based on integrated data from 4 clinical studies, including long-term follow-up forPeer reviewe

'Tough'-constructions and their derivation

This article addresses the syntax of the notorious 'tough' (-movement) construction (TC) in English. TCs exhibit a range of apparently contradictory empirical properties suggesting that their derivation involves the application of both A-movement and A'-movement operations. Given that within previous Principles and Parameters models TCs have remained “unexplained and in principle unexplainable” (Holmberg 2000: 839) due to incompatibility with constraints on theta-assignment, locality, and Case, this article argues that the phase-based implementation of the Minimalist program (Chomsky 2000, 2001, 2004) permits a reanalysis of null wh-operators capable of circumventing the previous theoretical difficulties. Essentially, 'tough'-movement consists of A-moving a constituent out of a “complex” null operator which has already undergone A'-movement, a “smuggling” construction in the terms of Collins (2005a,b