The influence of different methods of hysteroscopic metroplasty using a bipolar resectoscope on the restoration of reproductive function in women with a septate uterus

Uterine septum is the most common congenital anomaly of the uterus, accounting for 35% of all diagnosed malformations. Data on the effectiveness of restoring reproductive function in women with a septate uterus after hysteroscopic metroplasty are contradictory, there are no data on the comparison of reproductive results after removal and dissection of the septum using a bipolar hysteroresectoscope. The purpose of the study was to assess the effectiveness of reproductive function recovery after dissection and removal of the uterine septum using a bipolar hysteroresectoscope. Material and methods. 78 patients of group B with uterine septum, reproductive failure, bipolar hysteroscopic metroplasty were under observation. Among the examined patients, 39 suffered from miscarriage and 39 suffered from infertility. 37 women of the BI group underwent hysteroscopic bipolar dissection of the uterine septum; 41 women of the BII group underwent hysteroscopic bipolar resection of the septum. Results and their discussion. Within 2 years after metroplasty, pregnancy occurred in 86.49% of women in the BI group and in 100% of women in the BII group (p>0.05); the specific weight of miscarriages was 9.38% and 0.00%, respectively (p>0.05); childbirth - 58.88% and 70.97% (p>0.05); premature births – 17.65% and 6.45% (p>0.05); term deliveries - 38.24% and 64.52% (p<0.04, SD 0.34 [0.12-0.93]). In women with initial infertility, pregnancy occurred in 61.54% of women in the BI group (n=13) within 2 years after the operation, in 69.23% in the BII group (n=13) (p>0.05); the specific weight of miscarriages was 25.00% and 22.22%, respectively (p>0.05); childbirth - 75.00% and 77.78% (p>0.05); premature births – 12.50% and 11.00% (p>0.05); term deliveries - 62.50% and 66.67% (p>0.05). Analysis of recovery of reproductive function 2 years after surgery in women with initial miscarriage showed that 90.48% of women in the BI group became pregnant, 94.44% in the BII group (p>0.05); the specific weight of miscarriages was 31.58% and 11.76%, respectively (p>0.05); childbirth - 68.42% and 88.24% (p>0.05); premature births – 26.32% and 5.88% (p>0.05); term deliveries - 42.11% and 82.35% (p<0.02, SD 0.16 [0.03-0.73]). Conclusions. The use of the technique of removal of the uterine septum during bipolar hysteroresectoscopy compared to the technique of its dissection in women with a septate uterus and reproductive failure leads to a probable increase in the termination of pregnancy by term delivery both in the general group and in the group of patients with initial miscarriage

Applying desirability functions to preference modelling in low-energy building design optimization

Building performance optimization is a valuable aid to design decision-making. Most existing research takes an ‘a posteriori’ approach, where stakeholder preferences are considered after deriving optimised results. Whilst this approach yields technically optimal solutions, it overlooks sub-optimal solutions that still satisfy stakeholder preferences. This research develops a technique to incorporate preferences into optimization by applying a “desirability function” to each criterion for multiple stakeholders. The approach enables the tradeoffs between decision-makers to be visualised as a Pareto frontier and aids “democratic” decision-making. Hence, incorporating preferences in advance of optimization may increase the likelihood of finding a desirable solution

Exploring the role of work identity and work locus of control in information security awareness

A growing body of research evidence has been focused on exploring aspects of individual differences in the context of human factors and adherence to organisational information security. The present study aimed to extend this research by exploring three individual variables related directly to the individual's perceived control within the workplace, their commitment to current work identity, and the extent to which they are reconsidering commitment to work. A total 1003 participants aged between 18–65 (Mean = 40.29; SD = 12.28), who were in full or part-time employment took part in the study. The results demonstrated that work locus of control acted as a significant predictor for total scores on a measure of information security awareness. Those individuals who demonstrated more externality had weaker engagement in accepted information security within the workplace. The findings from the current study are discussed in the context of potential links to counterproductive work behaviours, as well as presenting possible practical routes for intervention strategies to help mitigate poor engagement in information security awareness

A multicriteria model for solving a real cutting layout problem in publishing industry.

A cutting layout problem is analyzed taking into account the need to use standard-sized sheets of material for printing patterns with different size, type and print run. In this paper a multicriteria model is proposed for cutting layout problem and for printing an additional print run in particular. The multicriteria formulation of the cutting layout problem is considered, where the material waste, the number of the nesting patterns and the cutting layout cost are minimized simultaneously. The paper provides an approach to solve the problem using the additive multicriteria estimation. The efficiency of the proposed multicriteria model is tested for a series of computational experiments

Multiobjective optimization of classifiers by means of 3-D convex Hull based evolutionary algorithms

The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and detection error tradeoff (DET) curves are frequently used in the machine learning community to analyze the performance of binary classifiers. Recently, the convex-hull-based multiobjective genetic programming algorithm was proposed and successfully applied to maximize the convex hull area for binary classification problems by minimizing false positive rate and maximizing true positive rate at the same time using indicator-based evolutionary algorithms. The area under the ROC curve was used for the performance assessment and to guide the search. Here we extend this research and propose two major advancements: Firstly we formulate the algorithm in detection error tradeoff space, minimizing false positives and false negatives, with the advantage that misclassification cost tradeoff can be assessed directly. Secondly, we add complexity as an objective function, which gives rise to a 3D objective space (as opposed to a 2D previous ROC space). A domain specific performance indicator for 3D Pareto front approximations, the volume above DET surface, is introduced, and used to guide the indicator -based evolutionary algorithm to find optimal approximation sets. We assess the performance of the new algorithm on designed theoretical problems with different geometries of Pareto fronts and DET surfaces, and two application-oriented benchmarks: (1) Designing spam filters with low numbers of false rejects, false accepts, and low computational cost using rule ensembles, and (2) finding sparse neural networks for binary classification of test data from the UCI machine learning benchmark. The results show a high performance of the new algorithm as compared to conventional methods for multicriteria optimization.info:eu-repo/semantics/submittedVersio

Real-time information security incident management : a case study using the IS-CHEC technique

Information security recognised the human as the weakest link. Despite numerous international or sector-specific standards and frameworks, the information security community has not yet adopted formal mechanisms to manage human errors that cause information security breaches. Such techniques have been however established within the safety field where human reliability analysis (HRA) techniques are widely applied. In previous work we developed Information Security Core Human Error Causes (IS-CHEC) to fill this gap. This case study presents empirical research that uses IS-CHEC over a 12 month period within two participating public and private sector organisations in order to observe and understand how the implementation of the IS-CHEC information security HRA technique affected the respective organisations. The application of the IS-CHEC technique enabled the proportions of human error related information security incidents to be understood as well as the underlying causes of these incidents. The study captured the details of the incidents in terms of the most common underlying causes, selection of remedial and preventative measures, volumes of reported information security incidents, proportions of human error, common tasks undertaken at the time the incident occurred, as well as the perceptions of key individuals within the participating organisations through semi-structured interviews. The study confirmed in both cases that the vast majority of reported information security incidents relate to human error, and although the volumes of human error related incidents pertaining to both participating organisations fluctuated over the 12 month period, the proportions of human error remained consistently as the majority root cause

Features of the uterine microvascular network in women with a sepatate uterus and reproductive disorders

The purpose: to study the features of the microvascular network of metroplastic samples of septa from women with septate uteri and reproductive disorders. Materila and methods: 64 women of reproductive age with septate uterus underwent hysteroresectoscopy, metroplasty, immunohistochemical study of the microvascular network of metroplastic septal samples. CD34 was determined. As a morphological control, 10 samples of uterine floor tissue were taken hysterectomically from the women under examination because of cervical cancer. The total vascular area / field of view in the septa of the uterus was (10 247,82 ± 95,94) μm2, while in the control - (12 155,79 ± 347,32) μm2 (p<0,01), which corresponded to the percentage area of the vessel (5.44 ± 0.05) % and (6.43 ± 0.18) %, respectively (p<0.01). The value of the F-circle (irregularity of microvessels) in the group with septal uteri was (0.629 ± 0.006) compared with (0.637 ± 0.017) for the control group (p<0.05). In addition, comparison of the value of the F-shape (deformation of microvessels) between the group with uterine septa and the control group also revealed a statistically significant difference - (0.532 ± 0.005) against (0.569 ± 0.016 (p<0.04)). Conclusion. The area of blood vessels of the uterine septum is significantly smaller than in a normal uterus, and their abnormal morphology is observed

Quadcriteria Optimization of Binary Classifiers: Error Rates, Coverage, and Complexity

This paper presents a 4-objective evolutionary multiobjective optimization study for optimizing the error rates (false positives, false negatives), reliability, and complexity of binary classifiers. The example taken is the email anti-spam filtering problem. The two major goals of the optimization is to minimize the error rates that is the false negative rate and the false positive rate. Our approach discusses three-way classification, that is the binary classifier can also not classify an instance in cases where there is not enough evidence to assign the instance to one of the two classes. In this case the instance is marked as suspicious but still presented to the user. The number of unclassified (suspicious) instances should be minimized, as long as this does not lead to errors. This will be termed the coverage objective. The set (ensemble) of rules needed for the anti-spam filter to operate in optimal conditions is addressed as a fourth objective. All objectives stated above are in general conflicting with each other and that is why we address the problem as a 4-objective (quadcriteria) optimization problem. We assess the performance of a set of state-of-the-art evolutionary multiobjective optimization algorithms. These are NSGA-II, SPEA2, and the hypervolume indicator-based SMS-EMOA. Focusing on the anti-spam filter optimization, statistical comparisons on algorithm performance are provided on several benchmarks and a range of performance indicators. Moreover, the resulting 4-D Pareto hyper-surface is discussed in the context of binary classifier optimization