PSYCHOSOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF INTENTIONAL AND UNINTENTIONAL NONADHERENCE IN PATIENTS UNDERGOING AUTOMATED PERITONEAL DIALYSIS AND CONTINUOUS AMBULATORY PERITONEAL DIALYSIS

Master'sMASTER OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Health-related quality of life in patients treated with Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis and Automated Peritoneal Dialysis in Singapore

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to compare the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) treated with continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) and automated peritoneal dialysis (APD) in Singapore. METHODS: The data used in this study were from two cross-sectional surveys of ESRD patients. HRQOL was assessed using the Kidney Disease Quality of Life (KDQOL) instrument. Socio-demographic characteristics and clinical data were collected. The physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) scores, kidney disease component summary (KDCS) score and its three scales (symptoms, effects, burden), and one health utility score [EuroQol 5-dimension (EQ-5D)] were calculated and compared between CAPD and APD using multivariate linear regression. RESULTS: In total, 266 patients were included, with 145 on CAPD (mean age 60.8 years) and 121 on APD (mean age 57.4 years). After adjustment for all variables collected, APD patients had significant higher scores in PCS and KDQOL symptoms than CAPD patients, suggesting that APD was associated with better physical health and milder dialysis-related symptoms. CONCLUSION: The HRQOL of CAPD and APD patients was largely equivalent in Singapore, but APD patients seemed to experience better physical health and be less bothered by dialysis-related symptoms

AdaMEC: Towards a Context-Adaptive and Dynamically-Combinable DNN Deployment Framework for Mobile Edge Computing

With the rapid development of deep learning, recent research on intelligent and interactive mobile applications (e.g., health monitoring, speech recognition) has attracted extensive attention. And these applications necessitate the mobile edge computing scheme, i.e., offloading partial computation from mobile devices to edge devices for inference acceleration and transmission load reduction. The current practices have relied on collaborative DNN partition and offloading to satisfy the predefined latency requirements, which is intractable to adapt to the dynamic deployment context at runtime. AdaMEC, a context-adaptive and dynamically-combinable DNN deployment framework is proposed to meet these requirements for mobile edge computing, which consists of three novel techniques. First, once-for-all DNN pre-partition divides DNN at the primitive operator level and stores partitioned modules into executable files, defined as pre-partitioned DNN atoms. Second, context-adaptive DNN atom combination and offloading introduces a graph-based decision algorithm to quickly search the suitable combination of atoms and adaptively make the offloading plan under dynamic deployment contexts. Third, runtime latency predictor provides timely latency feedback for DNN deployment considering both DNN configurations and dynamic contexts. Extensive experiments demonstrate that AdaMEC outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in terms of latency reduction by up to 62.14% and average memory saving by 55.21%

Adaptive absorbing boundary conditions for Schrodinger-type equations: application to nonlinear and multi-dimensional problems

We propose an adaptive approach in picking the wave-number parameter of absorbing boundary conditions for Schr\"{o}dinger-type equations. Based on the Gabor transform which captures local frequency information in the vicinity of artificial boundaries, the parameter is determined by an energy-weighted method and yields a quasi-optimal absorbing boundary conditions. It is shown that this approach can minimize reflected waves even when the wave function is composed of waves with different group velocities. We also extend the split local absorbing boundary (SLAB) method [Z. Xu and H. Han, {\it Phys. Rev. E}, 74(2006), pp. 037704] to problems in multidimensional nonlinear cases by coupling the adaptive approach. Numerical examples of nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equations in one- and two dimensions are presented to demonstrate the properties of the discussed absorbing boundary conditions.Comment: 18 pages; 12 figures. A short movie for the 2D NLS equation with absorbing boundary conditions can be downloaded at http://home.ustc.edu.cn/~xuzl/movie.avi. To appear in Journal of Computational Physic

A unified approach to split absorbing boundary conditions for nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equations

An efficient method is proposed for numerical solutions of nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equations in an unbounded domain. Through approximating the kinetic energy term by a one-way equation and uniting it with the potential energy equation, absorbing boundary conditions are designed to truncate the unbounded domain, which are in nonlinear form and can perfectly absorb the waves outgoing from the truncated domain. We examine the stability of the induced initial boundary value problems defined on the computational domain with the boundary conditions by a normal mode analysis. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the stable and tractable advantages of the method.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, 40 conference

Non-Adherence in Patients on Peritoneal Dialysis: A Systematic Review

Background: It has been increasingly recognized that non-adherence is an important factor that determines the outcome of peritoneal dialysis (PD) therapy. There is therefore a need to establish the levels of non-adherence to different aspects of the PD regimen (dialysis procedures, medications, and dietary/fluid restrictions). Methods: A systematic review of peer-reviewed literature was performed in PubMed, PsycINFO and CINAHL databases using PRISMA guidelines in May 2013. Publications on non-adherence in PD were selected by two reviewers independently according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Relevant data on patient characteristics, measures, rates and factors associated with non-adherence were extracted. The quality of studies was also evaluated independently by two reviewers according to a revised version of the Effective Public Health Practice Project assessment tool. Results: The search retrieved 204 studies, of which a total of 25 studies met inclusion criteria. Reported rates of nonadherence varied across studies: 2.6 1353% for dialysis exchanges, 3.9 1385% for medication, and 14.4 1367% for diet/fluid restrictions. Methodological differences in measurement and definition of non-adherence underlie the observed variation. Factors associated with non-adherence that showed a degree of consistency were mostly socio-demographical, such as age, employment status, ethnicity, sex, and time period on PD treatment. Conclusion: Non-adherence to different dimensions of the dialysis regimen appears to be prevalent in PD patients. There is a need for further, high-quality research to explore these factors in more detail, with the aim of informing intervention designs to facilitate adherence in this patient populatio

Application of cold-adaptive Pseudomonas sp. SDR4 and Mortierella alpina JDR7 co-immobilized on maize cob in remediating PAH-contaminated freeze-thawed soil

There are large areas of contaminated soils with low- and medium-concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the coldest regions of the earth, potentially threatening ecological safety and human health. Using maize cobs (MC) as the carrier, two cold-adaptive PAHs-degrading microorganisms, bacterial (Pseudomonas sp., SDR4) and fungal (Mortierella alpine, JDR7) strains were co-immobilized. The degradation characteristics of phenanthrene (Phe), pyrene (Pyr) and benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) in freeze-thawed soil by both co-immobilized and free microorganism were studied. The removal rate of Phe, Pyr and BaP using the co-immobilized fungal-bacterial consortium within 60 d was 59.2±3.7%, 46.6±3.3%, and 36.8±2.7%, respectively, which was obviously higher than that of free fungal-bacterial consortium in the same time. Ten percent (w/w) was the optimal amount of inoculum for PAH degradation in the co-immobilized fungal-bacterial consortium. Under low-temperature conditions, when the initial concentration of PAH was between 10-100 mg•kg−1, the immobilized cold-adaptive fungal-bacterial consortium displayed the desired degradation of PAHs. The scanning electronic microscope (SEM) observation and mass transmission showed that the microstructure of co-immobilized mixed system was beneficial to the growth of SDR4 and JDR7 at low temperature. These results imply that the cold-adaptive fungal-bacterial consortium, co-immobilized on MC, has the potential for application in remediating PAH contaminated soil under the freeze-thawing environment

Study on the Effect of Binders on the Properties of Mullite Porous Ceramics for Flue Gas Filtration

Fused mullite particles are used to prepare mullite porous ceramics by gel-casting method, using polysilicon waste and ρ-Al2O3 powder as the binder, and starch as the pore forming agent. The content of the pore forming agent was 20%, and the ratio of the mass of fused mullite particles to the mass of the binder was 9:1, 8:2, 7:3, and 6:4, respectively. The effects of binder content on the properties of mullite ceramics in terms of phase composition, microstructure, apparent porosity, compressive strength, bulk density, pore size distribution, and filtration pressure drop were investigated. It was found that prepared porous mullite possessed relatively high apparent porosity (56.64-58.19%), and low bulk density (1.28-1.31g/cm3). With increasing binder content, the sintering shrinkage rate increased from 2.07 to 5.92%, the compressive strength increased from 1.01MPa to 6.08MPa. Therefore, the preparation of mullite ceramics was a near net size preparation, and the prepared porous ceramics meet the requirements of flue gas filtration