Developing and deploying data mining techniques in healthcare

Improving healthcare is a top priority for all nations. US healthcare expenditure was $3 trillion in 2014. In the same year, the share of GDP assigned to healthcare expenditure was 17.5%. These statistics shows the importance of making improvement in healthcare delivery system. In this research, we developed several data mining methods and algorithms to address healthcare problems. These methods can also be applied to the problems in other domains.The first part of this dissertation is about rare item problem in association analysis. This problem deals with the discovering rare rules, which include rare items. In this study, we introduced a novel assessment metric, called adjusted support to address this problem. By applying this metric, we can retrieve rare rules without over-generating association rules. We applied this method to perform association analysis on complications of diabetes.The second part of this dissertation is developing a clinical decision support system for predicting retinopathy. Retinopathy is the leading cause of vision loss among American adults. In this research, we analyzed data from more than 1.4 million diabetic patients and developed four sets of predictive models: basic, comorbid, over-sampled, and ensemble models. The results show that incorporating comorbidity data and oversampling improved the accuracy of prediction. In addition, we developed a novel "confidence margin" ensemble approach that outperformed the existing ensemble models. In ensemble models, we also addressed the issue of tie in voting-based ensemble models by comparing the confidence margins of the base predictors.The third part of this dissertation addresses the problem of imbalanced data learning, which is a major challenge in machine learning. While a standard machine learning technique could have a good performance on balanced datasets, when applied to imbalanced datasets its performance deteriorates dramatically. This poor performance is rather troublesome especially in detecting the minority class that usually is the class of interest. In this study, we proposed a synthetic informative minority over-sampling (SIMO) algorithm embedded into support vector machine. We applied SIMO to 15 publicly available benchmark datasets and assessed its performance in comparison with seven existing approaches. The results showed that SIMO outperformed all existing approaches

Antenatal screening for chromosomal and genetic abnormalities:Cost effectiveness and outcome

Introduction: As an essential part of antenatal care, pregnant women of all ages should be offered screening for chromosomal abnormalities before 20 weeks of gestation. This study was aimed to evaluate the type and frequency of chromosomal abnormalities following pregnancy screening tests, so that we can compare the actual pregnancy outcomes with test results, helping us in practical decision making. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 557 pregnant patients, presenting for prenatal diagnostic amniocentesis for chromosomal abnormalities, to Al-Zahra hospital, Tabriz, Iran, since 2012 to 2015. Amniocentesis was conducted by an expert obstetrician at second trimester between 16 and 22 weeks of gestation. An interview was set for pregnancy outcomes to assess the test results. Results: Of 557 cases, the mean maternal age in amniocentesis was 31.84 ± 6.92 years (range: 15-47 years). Amniocentesis revealed the presence of chromosomal abnormalities in 32 cases (5.7%). The most common diagnosed chromosomal abnormality was Down syndrome (50.0%) followed by other chromosomal abnormalities. Following up the patients, 92.4% of newborns did not have any congenital abnormality, but the remaining (7.6%) had both chromosomal and non-chromosomal abnormalities. No fetal loss was reported in this study. Assessment of total costs revealed that $US100 had been spent for hospitalization, and about$US500 for genetic tests. Conclusion: There is still no consensus on the most cost-effective strategy that should be implemented to diagnose chromosomal anomalies. Therefore, we did not have an actual gold standard to compare with amniocentesis. More studies analyzing natural outcome after prenatal diagnosis of these chromosomal abnormalities are neede

اثر بخشی آموزش مدیریت استرس شناختی- رفتاری بر مهارت¬های کنترل خشم، افسردگی و اضطراب در پسران رزمی¬کار مبتدی دوره دوم دبیرستان : اثر بخشی آموزش مدیریت استرس شناختی- رفتاری بر مهارت¬های کنترل خشم، افسردگی و اضطراب در پسران رزمی¬کار

Abstract   Background and aim: Humans face many pressures in their daily life. Adolescence is one of the sensitive periods of every person. This period is the time of discovery or awareness of cultural-spiritual values, the period of contradictions and conflicts, his imagination and dreams. Therefore, the aim of the current research was the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral stress management training on anger, depression and anxiety control skills in martial arts beginners of the second year of high school. Methods: The present study was a quasi-experimental type. The implementation method was as follows: 50 male martial arts subjects (Taekwondo, Judo and Wushu) were asked to complete questionnaires related to anger, depression and anxiety control as a pre-test, then the experimental group under training. Cognitive-behavioral stress management was performed during 10 sessions (the control group did not receive any training). The statistical analysis of the current research was done using multivariate analysis of covariance, and using spss software. Results: The results of the present study showed that the cognitive-behavioral stress management training in the experimental group led to a significant difference in the variable of anger and anxiety control skills (P<0.05). Also, the results indicate that cognitive behavioral stress management training in the experimental group did not lead to a significant difference between the scores of the experimental and control groups in the depression variable (P=0.87). Conclusion: Based on the present research, it seems that cognitive-behavioral stress management training has improved the anger and anxiety control skills of martial arts teenagers.چکیده مقدمه: انسان­ها در زندگی روزمره خود با فشارهای متعددی روبه­رو هستند. دوره نوجوانی یکی از دوره­های حساس هر فردی است. این دوران زمان کشف یا آگاهی از ارزش­های فرهنگی-معنوی، دوران تضاد­ها و تعارض­ها، تخیل و رویاهای اوست. لذا هدف از پژوهش حاضر اثر بخشي آموزش مديريت استرس شناختي–رفتاري بر مهارت­های کنترل خشم، افسردگی و اضطراب در پسران رزمی­کار مبتدی دوره دوم دبیرستان بود. روش کار: پژوهش حاضر از نوع شبه­آزمایشی بود. روش اجرا به این صورت بود که از 50 آزمودنی پسر نوجوان رزمی­کار (تکواندو، جودو و وشو) خواسته شد تا پرسشنامه­های مربوط به کنترل خشم، افسردگی و اضطراب را به عنوان پیش­آزمون تکمیل کنند، سپس گروه آزمایشی تحت آموزش مدیریت استرس شناختی- رفتاری طی 10 جلسه قرار گرفتند، (گروه کنترل هیچ نوع آموزشی دریافت نکردند). تجزیه و تحلیل آماری پژوهش حاضر با استفاده از روش تحلیل کواریانس چند متغیری، و با استفاده از نرم­افزار spss انجام شد. یافته­ها: نتایج پژوهش حاضر نشان داد که آموزش مدیریت استرس شناختی- رفتاری در گروه تجربی، منجر به تفاوت معنی­داری در متغیر مهارت کنترل خشم و اضطراب شده است (05/0>P). همچنین نتایج حاکی از آن است که آموزش مدیریت استرس شناختی رفتاری در گروه‌ تجربی، منجر به تفاوت معنی‌دار بین نمرات گروه‌های آزمایش و کنترل در متغیر افسردگی نشده است (87/0P=). نتیجه­گیری: بر اساس پژوهش حاضر به نظر می­رسد که آموزش مدیریت استرس شناختی- رفتاری سبب بهبود مهارت­های کنترل خشم و اضطراب نوجوانان رزمی­کار شده است

The concepts of Human Development and Human Development Index trend in Iran

Human Development has been defined as enlarging people's choices in a way which enables them to lead longer, healthier and fuller lives, in a democratized society. Human Development Index (HDI) has been measured and compared by three indices. A long and healthy life is measured by life expectancy at birth, knowledge by the adult literacy rate and the combined gross enrollment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary schools and a decent standard of living is measured by GDP per capita or purchasing power parity.The above mentioned indices, which are components of Human Development Index, are summed up and divided to three. According to Human Development Reports, Iran Index has increased from 56% in 1975 to 73% in 2002.Meanwhile world average index was 0.729% in 2002. Among 177 UN members, the ranking for Iran was 106 in 2001 and 101 in 2002. Although, the HDI has an ascending trend in Iran, the three indices may be increased, while the HDI is decreased, because the value or longevity, knowledge and living level are determined by the highest and the least values of specific countries and it shows the rank of each country in comparison to the other countries. Health care managers and health staff have a key role in enhancing the health indices, and accordingly they have a great share in Human Development and improving Iran in the world rankings

Online) An Open Access

ABSTRACT The objective of the present study is to investigate the relationship of accounting conservatism with the bankruptcy risk and the reduction of profitability of companies. Bankruptcy risk indices of the decrease in net profit, and the decrease in dividend per share (DPS) were used as the dependent variables and the index of accounting conservatism was used as the independent variable. To test the research hypotheses and investigate the relationship between conservatism and the dependent variables, the data of 68companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange as the sample size were used. The temporal scope of the study was from 2005 to 2010. The data were analyzed by the method of paneldata analysis. To evaluate the appropriate models for testing hypotheses in the paneldata, Hausman and Chow tests were used. The results of the research indicated that accounting conservatism has anegative significant correlation with bankruptcy risk and a positive significant correlation with profitability indices. Keywords: Accounting Conservatism, Bankruptcy Risk, Net Profit, DPS INTRODUTION When investing in in common stock, investors should do comprehensive investigations. In other words, they should consider many factors when investing because they change their assets into common stocks. If investors start to invest without considering some factors, they will not attain favorable results (Mehrani, 2004). Important cases to which shareholders pay great attention are profitability, DPS andstock returns. If these indices decrease in future, or their increase is probable, they will have bad news for shareholders. Conservatism is one co the qualitative features related to financial information content. In theoretical concepts of financial reporting, conservatism refers to the application of a degree of caring which is required for judgments for doing evaluation in ambiguous conditions, in such a way that incomes and assets are not presented more than those in reality and costs or debts are not presented less than those in reality. Conservatism is a cautious response to ambiguity. If there is no ambiguity, there is no need to conservatism and the more the degree of ambiguity and the risk, the more need to conservatism (Shabahang, 2004). Theoretical Framework Traditionally, conservatism is declared with the proverb "do not identify any profit, just identify all losses". In spite of the lack of a comprehensive definition of conservatism, in accounting literature, two important features of conservatism are investigated. First one is the existence of advocacy in presenting less than reality of the book value less than market value of the assets which was proposed byFeltham an

Efficient (j, k)-Dominating Functions

For positive integers j and k, an efficient (j, k)-dominating function of a graph G = (V, E) is a function f: V → {0, 1, 2,..., j} such that the sum of function values in the closed neighbourhood of every vertex equals k. The relationship between the existence of efficient (j, k)-dominating functions and various kinds of efficient dominating sets is explored. It is shown that if a strongly chordal graph has an efficient (j, k)-dominating function, then it has an efficient dominating set. Further, every efficient (j, k)-dominating function of a strongly chordal graph can be expressed as a sum of characteristic functions of efficient dominating sets. For j \u3c k there are strongly chordal graphs with an efficient dominating set but no efficient (j, k)-dominating function. The problem of deciding whether a given graph has an efficient (j, k)-dominating function is shown to be NP-complete for all positive integers j and k, and solvable in polynomial time for strongly chordal graphs when j = k. By taking j = 1 we obtain NP-completeness of the problem of deciding whether a given graph has an efficient k-tuple dominating set for any fixed positive integer k. Finally, we consider efficient (2, 2)-dominating functions of trees. We describe a new constructive characterization of the trees with an efficient dominating set and a constructive characterization of the trees with two different efficient dominating sets. A number of open problems and questions are stated throughout the work

The Effects of Physical Education Course on Mental Health of Students in Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan-Iran

IntroductionMental disorders are a major cause of morbidity and disability in the worldand can reduce the success and academic achievement. Experts believe that exercise can be used as a means to achieve favorable mental status. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of physical education course (I) on mental health of Bu-Ali Sina University students, Hamadan.MethodologyIn this descriptive study, 108 students of Bu-Ali Sina University, were randomly selected as research sample. Data collection tool was the 28-item standard questionnaire of Mental Health of Goldberg (GHQ-28) with 0. 89 reliability. To determine the suspected cases of mental disorders, cutoff point 23 has been used. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics (Pair t-tests) at the significance level 0.05.ResultsThe findings showed that the average pretest score of students` mental health was 21.86 ± 8.96 and the average post-test score was 22.55 ± 10.83. 40.7 percent of participants were suspected to have mental disorders before participation in physical education classes (score above 23) and decreased to 37% after the end of the semester, the dependent t-test results showed no significant difference between students` mental health before and after the general physical education (p> 0.05). The post-test results showed that depressive symptoms were significantly increased (p>0.05; 2.81 ± 5.64).Conclusio