Search

Large middle cerebral artery (MCA) strokes remain a major cause for mortality and morbidity all over the world, and therefore early identification of patients with the highest risk for malignant cerebral edema is crucial for early intervention. Neutrophils to lymphocytes ratio (NLR) and peripheral total white blood cell (WBC) count are inflammatory markers done routinely for all patients, and this study evaluated the use of NLR and elevated white blood cell count within the first 24 h of MCA ischemic stroke onset, with the absence of significant hemorrhagic transformation, to predict malignant cerebral edema.A total of 156 patients with large MCA strokes were included. We collected demographic, clinical, radiological data, and NLR and WBCs within the first 24 h from admission.We excluded patients who had any underlying infections diagnosed 7 days before or within 72 h after admission. We used a body temp of 38 C or more, abnormal CXR or abnormal urine analysis within the first 72 h to exclude patients with possible infections.We excluded immune-compromised patients and patients on steroid therapy. We compared the NLR and WBC count in patients who developed malignant cerebral edema versus the patients who did not. NLR3.5 and3.5 was used for comparison. We then conducted multivariate logistic regression models to explore the relationship between cerebral edema, WBCs and NLR count simultaneously.NLR, WBC, radiological involvement of more than 50% of MCA territory infarction on presentation, hyperdense MCA sign, and NIH stroke scale were all significantly higher in patients with malignant cerebral edema within the first 24 h. Using univariate logistic regression, NLR performs better than WBC when predicting the occurrence of malignant cerebral edema (AUC = 0.74 vs. 0.62). However, NIH stroke scale scores, and radiological involvement of more than 50% of MCA territory infarction on the first 24 h of presentation on CT scan both showed better discriminative performance for malignant cerebral edema than NLR (AUC = 0.84 and 0.76, respectively). When combined, NLR3.5 paired with the NIH stroke scale score had the best predictive performance (AUC = 0.87).NLR3.5 can be used for early prognostication in patients with large vessel MCA ischemic strokes with no significant hemorrhagic transformation within the first 24 h regardless if they had reperfusion therapy or not. Combining NLR of3.5 in addition to high NIHSS provided the best predictive model in our study. Further studies are needed to further develop the best predictive model in diverse populations.

Participation in and adding content to social tagging tools is important for these tools to achieve their purpose of classifying and organizing information. Users of social tagging tools are driven to participate and add tags by extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is dominating research as a main predictor of why users use information systems. Social tagging tools, as a subset of social media tools, are distinguished by their unique social aspect that makes intrinsic motivation a potential driver for users to add tags to content. Intrinsic motivation, when applied to social tagging tools, could entail many shades that represent different users’ motives for using such tools. In this paper, we add a rich concept of intrinsic motivation to include hedonism as a main predictor of users’ behavior on social tagging tools. We empirically validate a previously proposed theoretical model of three dimensional concepts of hedonism with three components describing individuals’ hedonic state when interacting with social tagging tools: explorability, curiosity, and enjoyment. After a robust and thorough data analysis using structured equation modeling, the results confirm our theoretical model and suggest using a richer concept of enjoyment to reflect a hedonic dimension when investigating intrinsic motivation with interactive social media tools. Our validated model could be the spark of new factors that have the potential to influence user acceptance of information systems in general and in social media tools. This research contributes to the development of attitude-behavior theories that could explain users’ acceptance of dynamic web

Companies are spending a large amount of money on Information Technology (IT) projects, with an objective to improve operational performance and gain competitive advantages. Despite such spending, many IT projects fail to meet their expectations either be finishing late, exceeding the allocated budget, or failing to deliver the project benefits. Many factors impact the success of an IT project. This study proposes a model for the factors that could help IT project succeed in meeting their expectation. Specifically, the paper proposes that senior leader perception of the project value, leaders’ perception of strategic consistency, and communicating the value of the project to end-users could facilitate the successful execution of the IT project. This study could help project managers understand the factors that contribute to the success or failure of IT projects to avert costs associated with project failures.

Web 2.0 had a great influence on the Web creating a collaborative environment where everyone can share his input resulting in an increase in invaluable information for web users. Social tagging tools are examples of the applications that enable users to build shared tagged content that works as a natural classification of relevant information. This paper highlights the difference between tags in different systems such as folksonomy, taxonomy. Further, the paper presents a brief survey of different techniques for creating natural folksonomies thus building precision in search and navigation. The paper explores the types of tags and their components with a detailed highlight of tag navigation and tag clouds.

Users' information seeking behavior is an important topic especially for organizations that seek to understand how users browse and search for information. Information nature is elusive and hard to describe given that different people use information for different purposes and different ways. This study aims at evaluating and reviewing information seeking models that have emerged in Information Retrieval (IR) literature. In this paper, the classic IR models are explicitly reviewed. Previous IR models are categorized into two main types reflecting its interactive and passive nature. A holistic model of IR is suggested to cover for missing points of previous models and to account for the interactive nature of today's social and dynamic information environment. The paper concludes with general observations on the current state of IR and how users' IR needs are changing with change in the IR environment

The idea of creating smart homes is not a new one, it has been around since the early 1900s. However, the need to have more automated, proactive, and sustainable smart home, requires a high dependency on the internet, which created a new challenge of information security issues in addition to physical security issues that should be solved recently. In this paper, we propose a prototype of smart home that ensures the physical and cyber security of the systems of the designed smart home. In our prototype, we support the design of open system where the owner can select multi-vendor of the smart home to deploy smart services and functions at home, while ensure the security using System Incident and Event Monitoring systems. Our prototype uses security intelligence to improve the responsive way to both physical and cyber security threats and risks. The requirements of the proposed system have been collected in collaboration with Dubai Electrical and Water Authority (DEWA).

It is widely accepted that modern technology has increasingly influenced higher educational institutions to deploy novel technology practices to achieve efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Cloud computing, offers various opportunities for higher education institutions including custom-made solutions to meet universities needs. This study aims at providing guidelines on how and when to deploy cloud computing in higher education. The study primarily focuses on UAE higher educational institutions. It discusses the potential strategic benefits of cloud computing in higher education and highlights its evolving trends. A case study of successful cloud computing implementation will be addressed to demonstrate the outcomes. The data was collected from a case study by means of an in-depth interview with IT experts working within the institution. The results of the case study reveals the effectiveness and substantial efficiency of cloud computing.

Although, the value of Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is increasing and it is receiving a substantial attention in the scientific and industrial communities, there is a paucity of research of users' adoption of this technology. In this paper, we propose a user acceptance model for mobile cloud computing based on the famous Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by highlighting factors that can contribute in predicting future use of MCC. This research has the potential to significantly contribute to the development of attitude-behavior theories that would better explain users' acceptance of MCC applications. The findings could also provide a structured and more systematic approach for mobile cloud service providers on how to build their services and promoting them to the market.

Although numerous studies have examined the crowdsourcing phenomenon, little consensus exists regarding the classification of distinct types of activities within crowdsourcing. In this study, we identify and classify 12 crowdsourcing initiatives that comprise the key categories of crowdsourcing: Crowdpedia, Fansourcing, Crowdnetworking, Crowdsharing, Crowdvoting, Crowdfunding, Ideation, Open Innovation, User Innovation, Scisourcing, Crowd-Relief, and Open Source Software. Our main objective is to establish the similarities and differences between basic crowdsourcing initiatives and develop a typology based on nine crowdsourcing dimensions that we develop. This crowdsourcing typology will provide a roadmap on which researchers can anchor their research and practitioners can make more informed decisions about which category of crowdsourcing they should seek. Copyright © 2016 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors influencing employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior on social tagging supported systems. Using the strong theoretical background of the well-known technology acceptance model (TAM), this paper proposes and empirically validates a model that fits the social and technical nature of social tagging tools within the public sector. The analyses in this paper were based on data collected from a large survey of more than 480 respondents working for two public organizations in the United States. The findings demonstrate a significant impact of the role of social presence in encouraging employees to create and share content. Further, there is a strong relationship between the benefits employees receive from using tagging tools and their creation and sharing of tagged content. Specifically, the following factors showed a significant impact on employees’ creation and sharing behavior, specifically their attitudes towards and intentions to create and share tags: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, social presence, and pro-sharing norms. For researchers, the paper offers an opportunity to further study knowledge-sharing behavior regarding social media technologies. The findings should motivate practitioners to inject these tools with a social aspect so that employees are encouraged to share content.

Designed to be intuitive with interactive character, tablets are becoming popular and trendy tools to enhance children's learning. Because of the novelty of tablet devices, research on the effectiveness of such tools in children' learning is still in its infancy. The aim of this study is to explore the positive and negative influence of tablets on children's learning within the UAE. A survey was distributed to parents of children aged five through ten to seek their input regarding the influence of tablets on their children learning. The results have shown positive insight in children's ability to learn from tablets. Specifically, features of tablets such as animation, interactivity, rotation, and touch screen have shown a significant contribution on children's capabilities to learn.

The unabated plethora of research activities to augment multifarious mobile devices by leveraging cloud resources have created new research field called Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC). Recently, researchers have found Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) to be a promising venture combining the advantage of both the cloud and mobility in giving users available resources on the cloud wherever they are using their mobile phone. Despite its benefits, many challenges still remain with MCC. This paper addressed recent challenges ranging from limited computational capacity, connectivity, security, latency, and heterogeneity. Solutions for these challenges are suggested including mobile processes offloading, using HTML5 technologies to compensate for connectivity loss, SDN centralized control features for data security, utilizing the cloud for time consuming applications, and using cross platform applications neutralizes heterogeneous technologies. Finally, the paper concludes with an extracted list of new research idea for scholars to work on to further enhance MCC.

OBJECT.: Endovascular coiling and surgical clipping are viable treatment options of cerebral aneurysms. Outcome data of these treatments in children are limited. The objective of this study was to determine hospital mortality and complication rates associated with surgical clipping and coil embolization of cerebral aneurysms in children, and to evaluate the trend of hospitals' use of these treatments.The authors identified a cohort of children admitted with the diagnoses of cerebral aneurysms and aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage from the Kids' Inpatient Database for the years 1998 through 2009. Hospital-associated complications and in-hospital mortality were compared between the treatment groups and stratified by aneurysmal rupture status. A multivariate regression analysis was used to identify independent variables associated with in-hospital mortality. The Cochrane-Armitage test was used to assess the trend of hospital use of these operations.A total of 1120 children were included in this analysis; 200 (18%) underwent aneurysmal clipping and 920 (82%) underwent endovascular coiling. Overall in-hospital mortality was higher in the surgical clipping group compared with the coil embolization group (6.09% vs 1.65%, respectively; adjusted odds ratio [OR] 2.52, 95% CI 0.97-6.53, p = 0.05). The risk of postoperative stroke or hemorrhage was similar between the two treatment groups (p = 0.86). Pulmonary complications and systemic infection were higher in the surgical clipping population (p0.05). The rate of US hospitals' use of endovascular coiling has significantly increased over the years included in this study (p0.0001). Teaching hospitals were associated with a lower risk of death (OR 0.13, 95% CI 0.03-0.46; p = 0.001).Although both treatments are valid, endovascular coiling was associated with fewer deaths and shorter hospital stays than clip placement. The trend of hospitals' use of coiling operations has increased in recent years.

In this article, we propose a three dimensional hedonic model for intrinsic motivation that has the potential to enhance users acceptance to online social tagging tools and social media in general. Our multi-layered model includes curiosity, explorability, and enjoyment as potential predictors for users' attitude and intention to use online social tagging tools. This conceptual model is based on a modified version of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as well as on an extensive review of motivation theory literature. The model forms the foundation for future empirical work in this area.

Central etiologies of bilateral vocal cord paralysis leading to respiratory stridor are uncommon, as they require bilateral disruption of the laryngeal motor fibers. Here we present a young woman with multiple vascular risk factors, including ischemic stroke in the right medulla occurring 3 months prior, who presented with acute inspiratory stridor. All respiratory parameters were normal including arterial blood gas, and neck and pulmonary imaging. Direct laryngoscopy showed bilaterally bowed vocal cords, with decreased mobility and paradoxical adduction with each inspiratory cycle. On the third hospital day, neurological signs including a right hemiparesis became evident. Brain magnetic resonance imaging showed a diffusion restriction in the left medial pons likely disrupting the laryngeal motor fibers to the ponto-medullary neuronal network. In the absence of tracheobronchial obstruction, physicians should be alert to the central causes of stridor including ischemic stroke. Additionally, paradoxical movements of the vocal cords can be an ominous sign.

Background Recent reports suggested better outcomes associated with the drip-and-ship paradigm for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) treated with thrombolysis. We hypothesized that a higher rate of stroke mimics (SM) among AIS treated in nonspecialized stroke centers that are transferred to comprehensive centers is responsible for such outcomes. Methods Consecutive patients treated with thrombolysis according to the admission criteria were reviewed in a single comprehensive stroke center over 1 academic year (July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012). Information on the basic demographic, hospital complications, psychiatric diagnoses, and discharge disposition was collected. We identified those patients who were treated at a facility and then transferred to the tertiary center (ie, drip-and-ship paradigm). In addition to comparative and adjusted analysis to identify predictors for SM, a stratified analysis by the drip-and-ship status was performed. Results One hundred twenty patients were treated with thrombolysis for AIS included in this analysis; 20 (16.7%) were discharged with the final diagnosis of SM; 14 of those had conversion syndrome and 6 patients had other syndromes (seizures, migraine, and hypoglycemia). Patients with SM were younger (55.6 ± 15.0 versus 69.4 ± 14.9, P = .0003) and more likely to harbor psychiatric diagnoses (45% versus 9%; P ≤ .0001). Eighteen of 20 SM patients (90%) had the drip-and-ship treatment paradigm compared with 65% of those with AIS ( P = .02). None of the SM had hemorrhagic complications, and all were discharged to home. Predictors of SM on adjusted analysis included the drip-and-ship paradigm (odds ratio [OR] 12.8, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.78, 92.1) and history of any psychiatric illness (OR 12.08; 95% CI 3.14, 46.4). Eighteen of 83 drip-and-ship patients (21.7%) were diagnosed with SM compared with 2 of 37 patients (5.4%) presented directly to the hub hospital ( P = .02). Conclusion The drip-and-ship paradigm and any psychiatric history predict the diagnosis of SM. None of the SM had thrombolysis-related complications, and all were discharged to home. These findings may explain the superior outcomes associated with the drip-and-ship paradigm in the treatment for AIS.

Background: Recent reports suggested better outcomes associated with the drip-and-ship paradigm for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) treated with thrombolysis. Alternative hypothesis is a higher rate of stroke mimics (SM) among AIS treated in a non-specialized stroke centers and then transferred to comprehensive centers. Methods: Consecutive patients treated with thrombolysis according to the admission criteria were reviewed in a single comprehensive stroke center over one academic year. Information on the basic demographic, hospital complications, psychiatric diagnoses, and discharge information were collected. We also identified those who were treated in outside facility and then transferred to the tertiary center (i.e. drip-and-ship paradigm). Comparative and adjusted analysis to identify predictors for stroke mimics was performed. Results: 120 patients were treated with thrombolysis for AIS included in this analysis; 20 (16.7%) were discharged with the final diagnosis of SM; 14 of those had conversion syndrome and 6 patients had other syndromes (seizures, migraine, and hypoglycemia). Patients with SM were younger (55.6 ± 15.0 versus 69.4 ± 14.9, P = 0.0003), had a slight female preponderance (55% versus 46%; P = 0.46); and more likely to harbor a psychiatric diagnosis (45% versus 9%; P = Conclusion: Drip-and-ship paradigm and the presence of any psychiatric history predict the diagnosis of SM. None of the SM had any thrombolysis related complication and all were discharged to home. These findings may explain the superior outcomes associated with the drip-and-ship paradigm in the treatment of AIS

Exploratory search offers users the privilege to take command of the search process by browsing, selecting, and navigating through the Web to locate targeted information resources. We introduce hedonic browsing as an enhancement for exploratory search. In this article, we propose and empirically validate a hedonic browsing model using social tagging tools. We introduce two hedonic components, namely Curiosity and Enjoyment, and measure their effect on the social tagging exploratory behavior. Our findings suggest that hedonic tag browsing exists and Curiosity with Enjoyment have a strong impact on exploratory browsing and search of social tags.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the social tagging phenomenon, including how it evolved and the debate surrounding its benefits and limitations. Further, social tagging's potential as a new tool for knowledge organization and resources discovery will be considered. Finally, some questions concerning social tagging will be presented for future research. The paper reflects an interdisciplinary overview of the technical aspect of social tagging along with a behavioural look at why and how it is used as a tool to discover and organize knowledge.

This paper proposes a conceptual model of the key factors that drive employees' effective participation with social tagging systems within the corporate environment. The proposed model is based on integrating and applying existing findings from various disciplines in a novel conceptualization to explain the motivations of participants in organizational social tagging systems.

Traumatic injuries of the carotid artery may result in severe morbidity and mortality. The most common location of carotid artery injury is the cavernous segment, which may result in fistulous connection to the cavernous sinus and ophthalmic veins, which in turn lead to pressure symptoms in the ipsilateral orbit. Unlike the commonly reported direct traumatic carotid-cavernous fistula, we describe an unusual case of a 38-year-old man presented with a traumatic brain injury led to a fistula connection between the cavernous carotid artery and the ipsilateral basal vein of Rosenthal, with eventual drainage to the straight and transverse sinuses. The basal vein of Rosenthal is usually formed from confluence of anterior and middle cerebral veins deep in the Sylvian fissure and drain the insular cortex and the cerebral peduncles to the vein of Galen. Immediate endovascular deployment of a covered stent in the cavernous carotid artery allowed sealing the laceration site. Three months follow up showed a non-focal neurological examination and healed carotid laceration over the covered stent.