Operative mortality in resource-limited settings: the experience of Medecins Sans Frontieres in 13 countries.

OBJECTIVE: To determine operative mortality in surgical programs from resource-limited settings. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: A retrospective cohort study of 17 surgical programs in 13 developing countries by 1 humanitarian organization, Médecins Sans Frontières, was performed between January 1, 2001, and December 31, 2008. Participants included patients undergoing surgical procedures. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Operative mortality. Determinants of mortality were modeled using logistic regression. RESULTS: Between 2001 and 2008, 19,643 procedures were performed on 18,653 patients. Among these, 8329 procedures (42%) were emergent; 7933 (40%) were for obstetric-related pathology procedures and 2767 (14%) were trauma related. Operative mortality was 0.2% (31 deaths) and was associated with programs in conflict settings (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 4.6; P = .001), procedures performed under emergency conditions (AOR = 20.1; P = .004), abdominal surgical procedures (AOR = 3.4; P = .003), hysterectomy (AOR = 12.3; P = .001), and American Society of Anesthesiologists classifications of 3 to 5 (AOR = 20.2; P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Surgical care can be provided safely in resource-limited settings with appropriate minimum standards and protocols. Studies on the burden of surgical disease in these populations are needed to improve service planning and delivery. Quality improvement programs are needed for the various stakeholders involved in surgical delivery in these settings

Pairwise and incremental multi-stage alignment of metagenomes: A new proposal

Traditional comparisons between metagenomes are often performed using reference databases as intermediary templates from which to obtain distance metrics. However, in order to fully exploit the potential of the information contained within metagenomes, it becomes of interest to remove any intermediate agent that is prone to introduce errors or biased results. In this work, we perform an analysis over the state of the art methods and deduce that it is necessary to employ fine-grained methods in order to assess similarity between metagenomes. In addition, we propose our developed method for accurate and fast matching of reads.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Letter to Nancy Kitchen regarding SEAALL membership, November 7, 1974

A letter from Oscar Trelles II to Nancy Kitchen asking for information on becoming a SEAALL member

Letter to Pearl Von Allmen regarding the ORALL Spring Meeting, April 18, 1974

A letter from Oscar Trelles II to Pearl Von Allmen asking Von Allmen to advertise the ORALL Spring Meeting to SEAALL members

Letter to William Younger regarding SEAALL membership list, June 10, 1974

A letter from Oscar Trelles II to William Younger requesting a SEAALL membership list

Agile Adoption in Information Technology Departments at Research Universities

This dissertation analyzes Agile methods and how they are adopted by Information Technology (IT) departments in research universities. Existing literature has focused on Agile adoption in private and public sectors. This study fills a knowledge gap in the research literature on Agile adoption in university contexts. Three research questions guide this study: What are the uses of Agile methods in research universities? What are the specific factors that affect adoption of agile methods in research universities? Why do research universities adopt (or not adopt) Agile methods? By answering these questions, the present study contributes to the growing literature on the opportunities and challenges of adopting Agile methods. Methodologically, the study is based on a survey of the Chief Information Officers (CIOs) of 418 research universities (response rate of 41.4%) and elite interviews. The survey included questions about Agile adoption in terms of purpose, methods, challenges, and organizational environment. The elite interviews explored the factors affecting Agile adoption and were supplemented with secondary documents about the organizational characteristics of the IT departments. The survey results show that many IT departments (nearly 60%) in these universities have adopted Agile. Agile is used to accelerate software development, manage projects, and increase productivity. The challenges of adopting Agile include pervasiveness of traditional waterfall methods, funding limitations, lack of skills, inconsistent process and practices, and organizational resistance to change. With respect to organizational factors, the level of research university is a determinant for adopting Agile. R1 Doctoral Universities (i.e., very high research activity) have more adoption of Agile methods compared to R2 Doctoral Universities (i.e., high research activity) or R3 Doctoral/ Professional Universities (i.e., D/PU). CIOs’ experience with Agile is a critical factor for adopting Agile. Elite interviews with the CIOs show the significance of the organizational context to adopt Agile. IT departments support university research and teaching; hence, these departments have a constant need to address the university departments’ needs. Leadership of these departments influences Agile adoption. Agile fosters frequent and effective communication among the team members. Overall, IT departments adopt Agile to increase their organizational efficiency in delivering their services efficiently within the universities