Patient Satisfaction and Ultrasound Use During Pregnancy

Use, number, and frequency of ultrasounds women receive during pregnancy vary widely in practice. Current evidence suggests that women presenting with pregnancy complications benefit from additional ultrasounds, although excessive ultrasound use in low risk pregnancies may be unnecessary, costly and potentially harmful. However, evidence also finds that the use of ultrasound technology is associated with mothers’ feelings of security and satisfaction with care; health care organizations are incentivized to promote these feelings of patient satisfaction, especially when clinical risk is considered low. Here, we examine the impact of ultrasound use on satisfaction during pregnancy among women in the Northeast who have recently given birth through an online retrospective survey. Contrary to expectations, findings suggest that ultrasound use is not a significant driver of satisfaction with pregnancyrelated care. Efforts to enhance patient satisfaction during pregnancy using ultrasounds may increase resource use and cost, but do little to enhance patient experience overal

The 2010 Nuclear Security Summit: A Status Update

Highlights progress made in improving nuclear material security since the April 2010 summit, including in implementation of national commitments to secure or end production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium and to convert or shut down reactors

A vector quantization approach to universal noiseless coding and quantization

A two-stage code is a block code in which each block of data is coded in two stages: the first stage codes the identity of a block code among a collection of codes, and the second stage codes the data using the identified code. The collection of codes may be noiseless codes, fixed-rate quantizers, or variable-rate quantizers. We take a vector quantization approach to two-stage coding, in which the first stage code can be regarded as a vector quantizer that “quantizes” the input data of length n to one of a fixed collection of block codes. We apply the generalized Lloyd algorithm to the first-stage quantizer, using induced measures of rate and distortion, to design locally optimal two-stage codes. On a source of medical images, two-stage variable-rate vector quantizers designed in this way outperform standard (one-stage) fixed-rate vector quantizers by over 9 dB. The tail of the operational distortion-rate function of the first-stage quantizer determines the optimal rate of convergence of the redundancy of a universal sequence of two-stage codes. We show that there exist two-stage universal noiseless codes, fixed-rate quantizers, and variable-rate quantizers whose per-letter rate and distortion redundancies converge to zero as (k/2)n -1 log n, when the universe of sources has finite dimension k. This extends the achievability part of Rissanen's theorem from universal noiseless codes to universal quantizers. Further, we show that the redundancies converge as O(n-1) when the universe of sources is countable, and as O(n-1+ϵ) when the universe of sources is infinite-dimensional, under appropriate conditions

The Astronomy of the Kamilaroi People and their Neighbours

The Kamilaroi people and their neighbours, the Euahlayi, Ngemba, and Murrawarri, are an Aboriginal cultural grouping located in the northwest and north central of New South Wales. They have a rich history, but have been missed in much of the literature concerned with sky knowledge in culture. This study collected stories, some of which have not previously been reported in an academic format, from Aboriginal people practicing their culture, augmented with stories from the literature, and analysed the data to create a database of sky knowledge that will be added to the larger body of Aboriginal cultural knowledge in Australia. We found that there is a strong sky culture reflected in the stories, and we also explored the stories for evidence of an ethnoscientific approach to knowledge of the sky.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figure

Weighted universal image compression

We describe a general coding strategy leading to a family of universal image compression systems designed to give good performance in applications where the statistics of the source to be compressed are not available at design time or vary over time or space. The basic approach considered uses a two-stage structure in which the single source code of traditional image compression systems is replaced with a family of codes designed to cover a large class of possible sources. To illustrate this approach, we consider the optimal design and use of two-stage codes containing collections of vector quantizers (weighted universal vector quantization), bit allocations for JPEG-style coding (weighted universal bit allocation), and transform codes (weighted universal transform coding). Further, we demonstrate the benefits to be gained from the inclusion of perceptual distortion measures and optimal parsing. The strategy yields two-stage codes that significantly outperform their single-stage predecessors. On a sequence of medical images, weighted universal vector quantization outperforms entropy coded vector quantization by over 9 dB. On the same data sequence, weighted universal bit allocation outperforms a JPEG-style code by over 2.5 dB. On a collection of mixed test and image data, weighted universal transform coding outperforms a single, data-optimized transform code (which gives performance almost identical to that of JPEG) by over 6 dB

Data expansion with Huffman codes

The following topics were dealt with: Shannon theory; universal lossless source coding; CDMA; turbo codes; broadband networks and protocols; signal processing and coding; coded modulation; information theory and applications; universal lossy source coding; algebraic geometry codes; modelling analysis and stability in networks; trellis structures and trellis decoding; channel capacity; recording channels; fading channels; convolutional codes; neural networks and learning; estimation; Gaussian channels; rate distortion theory; constrained channels; 2D channel coding; nonparametric estimation and classification; data compression; synchronisation and interference in communication systems; cyclic codes; signal detection; group codes; multiuser systems; entropy and noiseless source coding; dispersive channels and equalisation; block codes; cryptography; image processing; quantisation; random processes; wavelets; sequences for synchronisation; iterative decoding; optical communications

Reinventing Central Office

This report presents a provocative description of a school system where resources, authority, and accountability reside primarily at the school level

Exploring the Affective Nature of Creativity

This project was about exploring and expanding my creative self; it explored how the creative process involved in artistic self-expression can help one reduce stress, increase self-awareness, achieve insight and break down barriers that hinder creativity. The project is based on creativity models and a few art therapy techniques. It contains tangible products of my artwork which include: a visual log, a series of photographs, a note book, a „writing therapy‟ booklet, drawings and a collage. I used a wide variety of materials such as brushes, water color, crayons, chalk pastels, oil pastels, coloring pencils, markers, sketch book, construction paper, tissue paper, newspaper, food labels, spices, etc. The intangible outcomes are discussed in the „Key Learnings‟ sectio

An iterative joint codebook and classifier improvement algorithm for finite-state vector quantization

A finite-state vector quantizer (FSVQ) is a multicodebook system in, which the current state (or codebook) is chosen as a function of the previously quantized vectors. The authors introduce a novel iterative algorithm for joint codebook and next state function design of full search finite-state vector quantizers. They consider the fixed-rate case, for which no optimal design strategy is known. A locally optimal set of codebooks is designed for the training data and then predecessors to the training vectors associated with each codebook are appropriately labelled and used in designing the classifier. The algorithm iterates between next state function and state codebook design until it arrives at a suitable solution. The proposed design consistently yields better performance than the traditional FSVQ design method (under identical state space and codebook constraints)