Exploiting thesauri knowledge in medical guideline formalization

Abstract. As in software product lifecycle, the effort spent in maintaining medical knowledge in guidelines can be reduced, if modularization, formalization and tracking of domain knowledge are employed across the guideline development phases. We propose to exploit and combine knowledge templates with medical background knowledge from existing thesauri in order to produce reusable building blocks used in guideline development. These templates enable easier guideline formalization, by describing how chunks of medical knowledge can be combined into more complex ones and how they are linked to a textual representation. By linking our ontology used in guideline formalization with existing thesauri, we can use compilations of thesauri knowledge as building blocks for modeling and maintaining the content of a medical guideline. Our paper investigates whether medical knowledge acquired from several medical thesauri can be molded on a guideline pattern, such that it supports building of executable models of guidelines. Keywords: Linguistic and Control Patterns, Guideline Modelling and Formalization. 1. Objective Evidence-based clinical guidelines, representing disseminated state-of-the-art medical practice, undergo frequent changes due to new research results, and require permanent maintenance, similar to that required in a software project. Existing guideline modelin

Open Spin Chains in Super Yang-Mills at Higher Loops: Some Potential Problems with Integrability

The super Yang-Mills duals of open strings attached to maximal giant gravitons are studied in perturbation theory. It is shown that non-BPS baryonic excitations of the gauge theory can be studied within the paradigm of open quantum spin chains even beyond the leading order in perturbation theory. The open spin chain describing the two loop mixing of non-BPS giant gravitons charged under an su(2) of the so(6) R symmetry group is explicitly constructed. It is also shown that although the corresponding open spin chain is integrable at the one loop order, there is a potential breakdown of integrability at two and higher loops. The study of integrability is performed using coordinate Bethe ansatz techniques.Comment: 28 pages. References added in revised versio

Rotating Strings with Two Unequal Spins in Lunin-Maldacena Background

We study a string motion in the Lunin-Maldacena background, that is, the \beta-deformed AdS_5 \times \tilde{S}^5 background dual to a \beta-deformation of \mathcal{N} = 4 super Yang-Mills theory. For real \beta we construct a rotating and wound string solution which has two unequal spins in \tilde{S}^5. The string energy is expressed in terms of the spins, the winding numbers and the deformation parameter. In the expansion of \lambda/J^2 with the total spin J and the string tension \sqrt{\lambda} we present ``one-loop" and ``two-loop" energy corrections. The ``one-loop" one agrees with the one-loop anomalous dimension of the corresponding gauge-theory scalar operators obtained in hep-th/0503192 from the \beta-deformed Bethe equation as well as the anisotropic Landau-Lifshitz equation.Comment: 13 pages, LaTeX, no figure

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

A specification language for coordination in agent systems

Item does not contain fulltextThis paper introduces an executable coordination specification language, with which both pre-specified and more flexible and generic agent coordination approaches can be expressed. An iterative process was taken to define this language. First, useful language elements were defined, after which example coordination approaches were specified using this language. The language was extended incrementally with new language elements whenever new concepts were required to enable specification of the example coordination approaches. The approaches were simulated and tested using particular test cases. Finally, an evaluation of the coordination approaches was performed by means of formal verification.2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'07), Fremont, CA, 2-5 Nov. 200