Are Expert Patients Popular in Online Patient Portals?

Patients seek support and advice from other patients regarding diagnosis, medication, impact of medication, treatment, etc. The information on these sites may affect patients’ decisions on medical issues such as what medication and treatment to use etc. . This study addresses the following research questions to identify the organic antecedents of quality of response from peers in the online health community in Parkinson’s disease forum: What are the antecedents of a quality user? Do conventional influence measures predict the clinical accuracy of such users in the context online patient-to-patient portals? Patient safety is often affected by erroneous and/or misleading medical information exchanged on social networks. The critical factors identified could be used by healthcare social networks as the basis for improving the quality of information exchanged among users. The study utilizes the clinical evaluations of neurosurgeons to establish the quality of responses provided by the users

Super-polylogarithmic hypergraph coloring hardness via low-degree long codes

We prove improved inapproximability results for hypergraph coloring using the low-degree polynomial code (aka, the 'short code' of Barak et. al. [FOCS 2012]) and the techniques proposed by Dinur and Guruswami [FOCS 2013] to incorporate this code for inapproximability results. In particular, we prove quasi-NP-hardness of the following problems on $n$-vertex hyper-graphs: * Coloring a 2-colorable 8-uniform hypergraph with $2^{2^{\Omega(\sqrt{\log\log n})}}$ colors. * Coloring a 4-colorable 4-uniform hypergraph with $2^{2^{\Omega(\sqrt{\log\log n})}}$ colors. * Coloring a 3-colorable 3-uniform hypergraph with $(\log n)^{\Omega(1/\log\log\log n)}$ colors. In each of these cases, the hardness results obtained are (at least) exponentially stronger than what was previously known for the respective cases. In fact, prior to this result, polylog n colors was the strongest quantitative bound on the number of colors ruled out by inapproximability results for O(1)-colorable hypergraphs. The fundamental bottleneck in obtaining coloring inapproximability results using the low- degree long code was a multipartite structural restriction in the PCP construction of Dinur-Guruswami. We are able to get around this restriction by simulating the multipartite structure implicitly by querying just one partition (albeit requiring 8 queries), which yields our result for 2-colorable 8-uniform hypergraphs. The result for 4-colorable 4-uniform hypergraphs is obtained via a 'query doubling' method. For 3-colorable 3-uniform hypergraphs, we exploit the ternary domain to design a test with an additive (as opposed to multiplicative) noise function, and analyze its efficacy in killing high weight Fourier coefficients via the pseudorandom properties of an associated quadratic form.Comment: 25 page

Impact of Cloud Computing Announcements on Firm Valuation

With increasing demand for Cloud Computing services, a growing number of firms are citing business agility and costsavings as motivators for adopting Cloud Computing services. Extant literature does not provide any empirical evidence ofvalue of announcements made regarding the Cloud Computing environment. This paper examines impact of CloudComputing announcements on firm valuation, using event study methodology. This study explores the market impact ofadoption of Cloud Computing on the cloud vendors/providers and customers/adopters. The impact on firm value of thecompetitors, of the companies adopting Cloud Computing services, is also analyzed. The study shows that there is asignificant impact of those announcements on the firm value of the companies. However, it shows a contrasting impact on thecustomers, vendors and their respective competitors, when analyzed separately

Internet as Preferred Health Information Source: An Information Foraging Perspective

This study provides a model for assessing the likelihood of preferring internet as a health information source from a theoretical lens of information foraging using the HINTS 2014 data. Essentially, this study tries to answer the key question – When do patients prefer to use internet for health information over other sources such as government agencies, physicians etc.? This study focuses on preference to internet for health information by patients suffering from cancer. This paper contributes to the growing literature on health information seeking by providing a theoretical model to identify the organic antecedents of preference to internet sources for health information by users. The findings of the study provide a deeper understanding of the relationships between information seeking preferences of cancer patients and trust in various sources of health information as well as perceived value and search costs associated with the information foraging behavior

Misinformation in Online Health Communities

Spread of wrong information can be a serious deterrent to information system use especially in case of online community which typically have thousands of end users. However, literature has been weak in linking the prevalence of health misinformation on online social networks to the factors contributing to misinformation. This study seeks to reduce this gap by examining the impact of thread characteristics and user characteristics on the extent of misinformation in online social networking forum related to Parkinson\u27s disease. Our findings show that the correctness of a post is affected by clarity of the thread question, information richness and the user potential for making useful contributions

GSI Scientific Report 2009 [GSI Report 2010-1]

Displacement design response spectrum is an essential component for the currently-developing displacement-based seismic design and assessment procedures. This paper proposes a new and simple method for constructing displacement design response spectra on soft soil sites. The method takes into account modifications of the seismic waves by the soil layers, giving due considerations to factors such as the level of bedrock shaking, material non-linearity, seismic impedance contrast at the interface between soil and bedrock, and plasticity of the soil layers. The model is particularly suited to applications in regions with a paucity of recorded strong ground motion data, from which empirical models cannot be reliably developed

Elective cancer surgery in COVID-19-free surgical pathways during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: An international, multicenter, comparative cohort study

PURPOSE As cancer surgery restarts after the first COVID-19 wave, health care providers urgently require data to determine where elective surgery is best performed. This study aimed to determine whether COVID-19–free surgical pathways were associated with lower postoperative pulmonary complication rates compared with hospitals with no defined pathway. PATIENTS AND METHODS This international, multicenter cohort study included patients who underwent elective surgery for 10 solid cancer types without preoperative suspicion of SARS-CoV-2. Participating hospitals included patients from local emergence of SARS-CoV-2 until April 19, 2020. At the time of surgery, hospitals were defined as having a COVID-19–free surgical pathway (complete segregation of the operating theater, critical care, and inpatient ward areas) or no defined pathway (incomplete or no segregation, areas shared with patients with COVID-19). The primary outcome was 30-day postoperative pulmonary complications (pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, unexpected ventilation). RESULTS Of 9,171 patients from 447 hospitals in 55 countries, 2,481 were operated on in COVID-19–free surgical pathways. Patients who underwent surgery within COVID-19–free surgical pathways were younger with fewer comorbidities than those in hospitals with no defined pathway but with similar proportions of major surgery. After adjustment, pulmonary complication rates were lower with COVID-19–free surgical pathways (2.2% v 4.9%; adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.62; 95% CI, 0.44 to 0.86). This was consistent in sensitivity analyses for low-risk patients (American Society of Anesthesiologists grade 1/2), propensity score–matched models, and patients with negative SARS-CoV-2 preoperative tests. The postoperative SARS-CoV-2 infection rate was also lower in COVID-19–free surgical pathways (2.1% v 3.6%; aOR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.36 to 0.76). CONCLUSION Within available resources, dedicated COVID-19–free surgical pathways should be established to provide safe elective cancer surgery during current and before future SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks