Brief advice and active referral for smoking cessation services among community smokers: a study protocol for randomized controlled trial

Abstract Background Most smokers do not use smoking cessation (SC) services although it increases successful quits. Passive referral providing SC information to smokers is commonly used in SC studies. Little was known about active referral in the community setting. This study aims to motivate community smokers to quit by brief SC advice using a validated AWARD model (Ask, Warn, Advise, Refer and Do-it-again) that adjunct with active referral of smokers to various SC services in Hong Kong. Methods/Design This is a single-blinded, parallel three-armed cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) with two treatment groups of (1) brief SC advice using the AWARD model, active referral to SC services plus a referral card and a health warning leaflet (active referral group) and (2) brief SC advice using AWARD model and health warning leaflet (brief advice group) and a control group receives general very brief advice with a self-help booklet. A total of 1291 smokers will be recruited from 66 clusters (recruitment sessions) with 22 will be allocated to each of the two intervention and one control groups. SC ambassadors will be trained for delivering the interventions and conducting telephone follow-up. The primary outcomes are self-reported 7-days point prevalence (PP) abstinence at 3 and 6 months follow-up. Intention-to-treat principle and multi-level regressions will be used for data analysis. Discussion This is the first RCT on assessing a model combining brief advice and active referral to SC services among community smokers. The results will inform the practices of SC services and intervention studies. Trial registration NCT02539875 (ClinicalTrials.gov registry; registered retrospectively on 22 July 2015

A hybrid noise suppression filter for accuracy enhancement of commercial speech recognizers in varying noisy conditions

Commercial speech recognizers have made possible many speech control applications such as wheelchair, tone-phone, multifunctional robotic arms and remote controls, for the disabled and paraplegic. However, they have a limitation in common in that recognition errors are likely to be produced when background noise surrounds the spoken command, thereby creating potential dangers for the disabled if recognition errors exist in the control systems. In this paper, a hybrid noise suppression filter is proposed to inter-face with the commercial speech recognizers in order to enhance the recognition accuracy under variant noisy conditions. It intends to decrease the recognition errors when the commercial speech recognizers are working under a noisy environment. It is based on a sigmoid function which can effectively enhance noisy speech using simple computational operations, while a robust estimator based on an adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system is used to determine the appropriate operational parameters for the sigmoid function in order to produce effective speech enhancement under variant noisy conditions.The proposed hybrid noise suppression filter has the following advantages for commercial speech recognizers: (i) it is not possible to tune the inbuilt parameters on the commercial speech recognizers in order to obtain better accuracy; (ii) existing noise suppression filters are too complicated to be implemented for real-time speech recognition; and (iii) existing sigmoid function based filters can operate only in a single-noisy condition, but not under varying noisy conditions. The performance of the hybrid noise suppression filter was evaluated by interfacing it with a commercial speech recognizer, commonly used in electronic products. Experimental results show that improvement in terms of recognition accuracy and computational time can be achieved by the hybrid noise suppression filter when the commercial recognizer is working under various noisy environments in factories

Seroepidemiology of coxsackievirus A6, coxsackievirus A16, and Enterovirus 71 infections among children and adolescents in Singapore, 2008-2010

10.1371/journal.pone.0127999PLoS ONE105e012799

Polygenic risk scores for prediction of breast cancer risk in Asian populations.

PURPOSE: Non-European populations are under-represented in genetics studies, hindering clinical implementation of breast cancer polygenic risk scores (PRSs). We aimed to develop PRSs using the largest available studies of Asian ancestry and to assess the transferability of PRS across ethnic subgroups. METHODS: The development data set comprised 138,309 women from 17 case-control studies. PRSs were generated using a clumping and thresholding method, lasso penalized regression, an Empirical Bayes approach, a Bayesian polygenic prediction approach, or linear combinations of multiple PRSs. These PRSs were evaluated in 89,898 women from 3 prospective studies (1592 incident cases). RESULTS: The best performing PRS (genome-wide set of single-nucleotide variations [formerly single-nucleotide polymorphism]) had a hazard ratio per unit SD of 1.62 (95% CI = 1.46-1.80) and an area under the receiver operating curve of 0.635 (95% CI = 0.622-0.649). Combined Asian and European PRSs (333 single-nucleotide variations) had a hazard ratio per SD of 1.53 (95% CI = 1.37-1.71) and an area under the receiver operating curve of 0.621 (95% CI = 0.608-0.635). The distribution of the latter PRS was different across ethnic subgroups, confirming the importance of population-specific calibration for valid estimation of breast cancer risk. CONCLUSION: PRSs developed in this study, from association data from multiple ancestries, can enhance risk stratification for women of Asian ancestry

European polygenic risk score for prediction of breast cancer shows similar performance in Asian women

Abstract: Polygenic risk scores (PRS) have been shown to predict breast cancer risk in European women, but their utility in Asian women is unclear. Here we evaluate the best performing PRSs for European-ancestry women using data from 17,262 breast cancer cases and 17,695 controls of Asian ancestry from 13 case-control studies, and 10,255 Chinese women from a prospective cohort (413 incident breast cancers). Compared to women in the middle quintile of the risk distribution, women in the highest 1% of PRS distribution have a ~2.7-fold risk and women in the lowest 1% of PRS distribution has ~0.4-fold risk of developing breast cancer. There is no evidence of heterogeneity in PRS performance in Chinese, Malay and Indian women. A PRS developed for European-ancestry women is also predictive of breast cancer risk in Asian women and can help in developing risk-stratified screening programmes in Asia

Free cash flow model : a first evaluation of Singapore stocks, 1994-1998.

Using the Free Cash Flow Model to evaluate the overprice or underpricing of the companies listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX).This project aims to evaluate the feasibility of the model as another tool to be used for financial analysis over and above the existing valuation models

Effectiveness of a small cash incentive on abstinence and use of cessation aids for adult smokers: A randomized controlled trial

© 2016 Elsevier LtdBackground Large amount of financial incentive was effective to increase tobacco abstinence, but the effect of small amount is unknown. Purpose We evaluated if a small amount of cash incentive (HK$500/US$64) increased abstinence, quit attempt, and use of cessation aids. Methods A three-armed, block randomized controlled trial recruited 1143 adult daily smokers who participated in the Hong Kong “Quit to Win” Contest. Biochemically validated quitters of the early-informed (n = 379, notified about the incentive at 1-week and 1-month follow-up) and the late-informed incentive group (n = 385, notified at 3-month follow-up) received the incentive at 3 months. The validated quitters of the control group (n = 379) received the incentive at 6 months without prior notification. All subjects received brief advice, a self-help education card and a 12-page booklet. The outcomes were self-reported 7-day point prevalence of abstinence, quit attempt (intentional abstinence for at least 24 h) and use of cessation aids at 3-month follow-up. Results By intention-to-treat, the early-informed group at 3-month follow-up reported a higher rate of quit attempt (no smoking for at least 24 h) than the other 2 groups (44.1% vs. 37.4%, Odds ratio (OR) = 1.32, 95% CI 1.03–1.69, p = 0.03), but they had similar abstinence (9.2% vs. 9.7%, OR = 0.95, 95% CI 0.62, 1.45). The early- and late-informed group showed similar quitting outcomes. The early-informed group reported more quit attempts by reading self-help materials than the other 2 groups (31.4% vs. 25.3%, OR = 1.56, 95% CI 1.12–2.18, p < 0.01). Conclusions The small cash incentive with early notification increased quit attempt by “self-directed help” but not abstinence. Future financial incentive-based programmes with a larger incentive, accessible quitting resources and encouragement of using existing smoking cessation services are needed.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

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