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Variability in working memory (WM) task selection likely contributes to heterogeneity in effect size estimates of deficiencies in youth with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This has resulted in the development of brief, easy to administer assessments such as the NIH List Sorting Working Memory (LSWM) task from the NIH Cognitive Toolbox in hopes of standardizing measurement of this construct. Unfortunately, substantial questions persist regarding the specific constructs being evaluated by this task (e.g., visuospatial [VS] or phonological [PH] WM) as well as the ability of this task to detect WM deficits in previously identified impaired groups (e.g., ADHD). The current study examines the extent to which the LSWM task is associated with VS and PHWM performance as well as symptoms of ADHD. Additionally, we examined the magnitude of differences between ADHD and Typically Developing (TD) youth on this task relative to empirically derived WM tasks utilized in the past. Forty-six children (25 ADHD, 21 TD) completed multiple WM tasks. The LSWM task was moderately associated with PHWM and demonstrated relatively weaker associations with VSWM. Symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity were unrelated to the LSWM task; whereas tasks assessing PH and VSWM were moderately associated with inattention and weakly associated with hyperactivity (VSWM only). No significant between-group differences in performance emerged on the LSWM task; however, significant large-magnitude group differences were observed on both the PH and VSWM tasks. These findings suggest that the LSWM task may lack the ability to detect WM difficulties in youth with ADHD.

Bu çalışma, çocuk ve ergen psikiyatrlarının Türkiye'de özel gereksinimi değerlendirme sürecinde Entellektüel Yeti Yitimi ve Bilşsel Gelişim Geriliği’ni raporlamada karşılaştıkları zorlukları tespit etmeyi amaçlamıştır. Yüz beş çocuk ve ergen psikiyatrist çalışmaya katılmayı kabul etti. Katılımcılardan, bu çalışma için hazırlanan çevrimiçi bir anketi doldurmaları istendi. Katılımcılar, sürecin kendileri için en büyük zorluğunun gereksinimin ciddi olup olmadığının belirlenmesi olduğunu belirtiler. Öte yandan, katılımcıların bu süreçte en fazla zorluk yaşadığı yaş aralığı okulöncesi idi. Sonuç olarak, çocuk ve ergen psikiyatristleri Entellektüel Yeti Yitimi ve Bilişsel Gelişim Geriliği tanılı çocukları değerlendirirken önemli zorluklarla karşılaşmıştır. Çözüm olarak, gereksinim düzeyini ve gereksinimin şiddetli olup olmadığını belirlemek için tıbbi tanı ve işlevsellik birlikte değerlendirilmesi gereklidir., This study aimed to identify the challenges faced by child and adolescent psychiatrists on reporting Intellectual & Developmental Disability during the disability evaluation process in Turkey, and whether the approach to this process differs among academics and specialists of child and adolescent psychiatrists. One hundred five child and adolescent psychiatrists agreed to participate in the study. We asked them to complete an online questionnaire that was prepared for this study. The major challenge of the process was determining whether the disability is severe or not. On the other hand, the age range that the participants had the most difficulty in the process was preschool. Child and adolescent psychiatrist had essential difficulties while evaluating children with Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities. As a solution, medical diagnosis and functionality should be evaluated together in order to determine the disability level and whether disability severe or not.

Provision of small “sensory” fidget toys during group activities is a low-effort intervention that may be used during group activities to encourage attendance and engagement by children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the noncontingent provision of fidget toys during a group activity. Research activities occurred at a summer camp designed to improve social skills for young children with ASD. The impact of fidgets was compared with a baseline condition and contingent provision of tokens using a single case alternating treatments design. Results suggest contra-therapeutic effects or decreased engagement over time for the fidget condition. Practitioners should consider using evidence-based alternatives to improve engagement or should engage in careful data-based decision-making when fidgets are used with the intent to improve engagement in group activities.

This research develops a walking promotion device. The device is worn by user’s forearm and leads to increase arm swing. The device’s motion principle is based on parametric excitation. The Authors manufactured the prototype named “linear motion device”, and evaluated amplification of arm swing in previous paper. The device could increase the arm swing by 10°. In this paper, the authors experimented whether the device can increase the stride and walking speed. First, the participants wore the device on the right forearm. Afterwards, the authors measured at left thigh angle for stride and gait cycle. Comparing two states of disable with enable, the stride and walking speed were not increased. Second, they wore the device on the both forearms. As a result, the stride was increased 0.13 m, and the walking speed was increased 0.20 m/s. Therefore, the effectiveness of this device in walking promotion was confirmed.

Mathematical Information Retrieval (MIR) has been actively studied in recent years and many fruitful results have emerged. Among those, the Approach Zero system is one of the few math-aware search engines that is able to perform substructure matching efficiently. Furthermore, it has been deployed in ARQMath2020, the most recent community-wide MIR evaluation, as a strong baseline due to its empirical effectiveness and ability to handle structured math content. However, in order to implement a retrieval model that handles structured queries efficiently, Approach Zero is written in C from the ground up, requiring special pipelines for processing math content and queries. Thus, the system is not conveniently accessible and reusable to the community as a research tool. In this paper, we present PyA0, an easy-to-use Python toolkit built on Approach Zero that improves its accessibility to researchers. We introduce the toolkit interface and report evaluation results on popular MIR datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our toolkit. We have made PyA0 source code publicly accessible at https://github.com/approach0/pya0, which includes a link to a notebook demo.

Myiasis refers to the infestation of living humans and vertebrates with fly larvae that feed on necrotic or vital tissue of the host. Since the invasion of new fly species in Europe is currently being observed, which live obligatorily parasitically or are close relatives of such species, the aim of this study is to obtain a global overview of the distribution of myiasis-causing fly species in times of climate change and to assess the possible consequences for Western Europe. A systematic literature search was conducted using Pubmed/Medline for the years 1997 to 2017 and a total of 464 international case reports from 79 countries were evaluated. The described cases were caused by 41 different species. In 99.4% of the cases, it was a colonization by just one species, a maximum of three species were detected in a human. Casuistics from Western Europe mostly describe myiasis as a "holiday souvenir" from tropical regions. Reports of autochthonous cases are rare in comparison to other regions. With regard to rising temperatures and the invasion of new fly species, a noticeable increase in the number of cases in Western Europe is to be assumed, which could be an increasing problem in the clinical area and in care, which is why thorough monitoring for professional identification and treatment seems important in the future.

We report evaluation of 30 assays’ (17 rapid tests (RDTs) and 13 automated/manual ELISA/CLIA assay (IAs)) clinical performances with 2594 sera collected from symptomatic patients with positive SARS-CoV-2 rRT-PCR on a respiratory sample, and 1996 pre-epidemic serum samples expected to be negative. Only 4 RDT and 3 IAs fitted both specificity (> 98%) and sensitivity (> 90%) criteria according to French recommendations. Serology may offer valuable information during COVID-19 pandemic, but inconsistent performances observed among the 30 commercial assays evaluated, which underlines the importance of independent evaluation before clinical implementation. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10096-021-04232-3.

Background There is an increasing number of studies addressing nurses' perception of caring behaviours; however, on the issue of quality of care, it is important to understand why nurses focus more on certain elements of caring than others, and this needs to investigate influencing factors on, priorities, and predictors of caring behaviours. Aims The main goal of this study was to determine the predictors and priorities of nurses' caring behaviours in intensive care units to improve the quality of care and patient outcomes. Methods This is a cross-sectional survey of nurses working in adult and pediatric ICUs in Iran. The participants were 470 ICU nurses from eight hospitals in Iran. Data were collected over 6 months in 2018 using the Persian version of "Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-Care"; "Determinants of Nurse Caring Behaviors"; and a demographic data form. Results By broad descriptive and analytical analysis, thirteen items were recognized as predictors of caring behaviours. The most important individual predictors reported as "interest in the nursing profession," "moral obligation," and "job experience," respectively. The most important perceived nursing behaviours were, respectively, subscales of "accessible," "monitors/follow-through" and "explains/facilitates." Conclusion The results provide insight into new and context-specific predictors of nurses' caring behaviours. These findings suggest that nursing managers, besides selecting skilful staff for ICUs, may consider employing those of higher "interest in the nursing profession"; "moral obligation"; and "job experience." They, also, need to be aware that organizational culture, climate, and values have a great impact on the caring behaviours of nurses. This could help them to handle the complex issue of improving the quality of care more efficiently.

Engineering undergraduate lab sections are often instructed by undergraduate or graduate teaching assistants (U/GTAs), who also grade lab reports and provide feedback. Although U/GTAs contribute extensively to the assessment of lab reports, their perspectives and understanding of writing pedagogy are largely unknown. U/GTAs are primarily trained as writers in engineering; however, they are often novices in writing knowledge and its pedagogy. The electrical engineering and mechanical engineering programs of Washington State University Vancouver have conducted professional development workshops for the U/GTAs (n=6) who instruct engineering lab courses and/or grade lab reports. The goal of the workshops was to enhance the U/GTAs’ knowledge of writing and lab report evaluation to support and improve engineering undergraduate students’ lab report writing. The workshop contents consisted of 1) lab instructors’ expectations, 2) the fundamentals of lab report writing (rhetorical features of lab reports), and 3) productive feedbacks. The workshops were offered to six U/GTAs from five courses (two sophomore, two junior, and one senior electrical engineering lab courses). In order to identify the overall effectiveness of the workshops, we conducted the survey and focus group with the U/GTAs to investigate their writing background, their understanding of audience awareness, their perspectives and understanding of writing instruction, and their lab report evaluation processes. We also collected the graded lab reports to investigate feedback comments. This paper discusses the U/GTAs’ perspectives and their practices of writing pedagogies in the lab courses. The knowledge generated from this study has provided a direction for refining the professional development workshops for U/GTAs in the present and future.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of caring behaviours on critical thinking and to examine whether self-reflection mediates the effect of caring on critical thinking. We also tested whether caring behaviours moderated the relationship between self-reflection and critical thinking.For this descriptive, correlational, cross-sectional study, we recruited 293 fifth-year nursing students from a junior college in southern Taiwan. Data were collected in 2014 on critical thinking, caring behaviours and self-reflection with insight using the Taiwan Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory, a Chinese version of the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort, and a Chinese version of the Self-Reflection and Insight Scale, respectively. Relationships among variables were analysed by structural equation modelling, with the partial least squares method and Sobel test.The results showed that caring behaviours significantly positively affected critical thinking (β = 0.56, t = 12.37, p0.001) and self-reflection with insight (β = 0.54, t = 11.99, p0.001). Self-reflection and insight significantly positively affected critical thinking (β = 0.34, t = 6.48, p0.001). Further, self-reflection and insight mediated the relationship between caring behaviours and critical thinking. Caring behaviours did not, however, moderate the relationship between self-reflection (β = 0.001, t = 0.021, p0.05) and critical thinking.Caring behaviours directly affect self-reflection with insight and critical thinking. In addition, caring behaviours also indirectly affect critical thinking through self-reflection and insight.

Compression of sentences in Facebook posts and Twitter is one of the important tasks for automatic summarization of social media text. The task can be formally defined as transformation of sentence into precise form by preserving the original meaning of the sentence. In this paper, we propose an approach for compressing sentences from Facebook English posts by dropping those words who contribute very less importance to the overall meaning of sentences. We develop one parallel corpus of Facebook English posts and corresponding compressed sentences for our research task. We also report evaluation result of our approach through experiments on develop dataset.

Online engineering is being used as one of the efficient ways of learning platform by students. Remote lab is also being used extensively for conducting experiments and it can also be an alternative to conventional lab as it can be accessed by students from anywhere, as many times required. The learning through remote lab will complete only when the user effectively conducts the experiments and submits a detailed report to the instructor/Professor for evaluation. This paper gives the overview of development of Report Evaluation Portal for Remote Lab useful for both user and the lab instructor.

The purpose of this research is to develop the wheelchair system for hemiplegic users. The proposed system is configured by the front wheel with active steering and hand rim for detecting user’s driving force. The user’s operational intention is distinguished by the sign and amplitude of force along the rotational axis of the hand rim. The steering angle of the front wheel is controlled by an actuator based on extracted intention from the hand rim. By proposed system, user can operate the wheelchair by using only single side hand rim. In particular, in this paper, we evaluate the designed hand rim by conducting some experiments.

A plethora of sensors embedded in wearable, mobile, and infrastructure devices allow us to seamlessly capture large parts of our daily activities and experiences. It is not hard to imagine that such data could be used to support human memory in the form of automatically generated memory cues, e.g., images, that help us remember past events. Such a vision of pervasive "memory-augmentation systems", however, comes with significant privacy and security implications, chief among them the threat of memory manipulation: without strong guarantees about the provenance of captured data, attackers would be able to manipulate our memories by deliberately injecting, removing, or modifying captured data. This work introduces this novel threat of human memory manipulation in memory augmentation systems. We then present a practical approach that addresses key memory manipulation threats by securing the captured memory streams. Finally we report evaluation results on a prototypical secure camera platform that we built.

This study examined the potential of the short form of the Quantitative Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (Q-CHAT-10) to identify autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in a high-risk sibling cohort. High-risk (HR; siblings of children diagnosed with ASD) and low-risk (LR; no family history of ASD) toddlers were assessed prospectively at 18 and 24 months of age using the Q-CHAT-10 and underwent blind diagnostic assessment for ASD at 36 months of age. The results indicated that at 18 and 24 months, total score differentiated between HR toddlers subsequently diagnosed with ASD from other HR and LR toddlers. The sensitivity at both time points was acceptable; however, the specificity was below the level recommended for clinical application.

It was brought to the authors' attention that a citation within the published article was cited incorrectly.

We report evaluation findings and best practices from a morning of research with senior class students at an all-Spanish-origin, secondary school in the southwest United States. We found a jump in interest toward science for the women who self-identified as humanities students, and over the morning, surprisingly, this affected their remembrance of previous attitudes. Our results for this and other evaluations corroborate that experiential activities involving one-to-one or group activities are useful in attracting high school and college students to the sciences, especially young women. These results also pointed toward best practices.

In this paper, we report evaluation of thin stretched thread lengths in spinnability simulations. There are many previous studies related to viscoelastic fluid, however, there are few studies that represent "spinnability", which is a feature that the material is stretched thin and long. Although some studies represented thread-forming property, they did not evaluate the stretched length of the material. We also tried to represent spinnability of viscoelastic fluid, however, the simulation results were not similar to a real material. Therefore, we try to perform spinnability simulations with three kinds of models, and evaluate stretched thread lengths by comparison of simulation results with a literature datum.

When we use code repositories, each commit should include code changes for only a single task and code changes for a single task should not be scattered over multiple commits. There are many studies on the former violation-often referred to as tangled commits- but the latter violation has been out of scope for MSR research. In this paper, we firstly investigate how much and what kinds of inappropriately partitioned commits in Java projects. Then, we propose a simple technique to detect such commits automatically. We also report evaluation results of the proposed technique.

Student response systems (SRSs) have been proven useful for enhancing student engagement and improving learning outcomes. Although many previous studies have found that both instructors and students generally hold positive attitudes toward technology which can increase classroom interaction, continuously maintaining student attention and interest remains a key challenge. The Center for Teaching and Learning Development at National Taiwan University has proactively promoted the use of an SRS since 2011. Two major approaches have been successfully implemented to assist professors in applying the SRS in their classrooms: the adoption of the Zuvio multimedia online interactive system and the implementation of a faculty SRS development group. Based on qualitative data gathered from the faculty SRS development group, this study elucidates four crucial teaching practices of the SRS: (1) designing pre- and post-instruction content comprehension assessments, (2) ensuring participatory learning through guided classroom discussions, (3) combining theory and practice, and (4) implementing group report evaluation participation.

WOS: 000339983000016 This report evaluation of the psychotropic drug usage in Turkey based on the data provided by Intercontinental Marketing Service (IMSHealth), Ministry of Health, Turkish Statistical Institute, Turkish Mental Health Profile. A total of 14.24 millions units of antidepressants were used in 2003. By increasing 162%, annual antidepressant usage reached 37.35 millions units by the end of 2012. Antipsychotic drug usage increased by 71% during the last 5 years, from 7.20 millions units in 2005 to 12.32 millions as of the end of 2012. The total number of prescriptions including an antidepressant was 18.14 millions in 2007, by increasing 50% in the last 5 years, it reached 26.60 millions in 2012. The total number of prescriptions including any antipsychotic drug increased from 3.92 millions in 2007 to 5.76 millions in 2012, increasing by 46.7%. In the worst case scenario considering concurrent psychiatric disorders, prevalence of disorders requiring antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs could be as high as 20% and 5%, respectively. The calculated frequency (prescription/population) was much higher than the worst case scenario estimates. In 2007, family physicans and practitioners, psychiatrists, neurologists, and specialists of other disciplines prescribed 33, 37, 20, and 11% of all antidepressants, respectively. In 2012, they prescribed 48, 31, 14, and 7% of all antidepressants, respectively. The first time antidepressant prescriptions in 2012 were done at the rate of 37, 34, 19, and 11% by above mentioned specialists, respectively. In 2007, family physicans and practitioners, psychiatrists, neurologists, and specialists of other disciplines prescribed 18, 67, 13, and 3% of all antipsychotics, respectively. In 2012, the same set of specialisations prescribed 21, 63, 14, and 2% of antipsychotics, respectively. The "first time" antipsychotics were prescribed at the rate of 6, 73, 19, and 3% by above mentioned order of specialists, respectively. In conclusion, the data suggest that there was an unnecessary and/or excessive prescribing of psychotropic agents. The increase is not related to increased population and/or prevalance of psychiatric disorders. The numbers of first time prescriptions suggest that non-psychiatrists diagnose and initiate treatment for psychiatric disorders. This requires re-evaluation of authorization to presribe psychotropic agents.

We have shown previously that technical performance score (TPS) is strongly associated with early mortality and major postoperative adverse events in a diverse group of patients. We now report evaluation of the validity of TPS in predicting late outcomes in the same group of patients.Patients who underwent surgery between June 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006 were included. The TPS were assigned based on discharge echocardiograms and certain clinical criteria as previously described. Follow-up data for up to 4 years were retrospectively collected. Cox proportional hazards models were used for analysis.A total of 679 patients were included in the analysis. One hundred twenty-three (18%) were neonates, 213 (31%) infants, 291 (435) children, and 52 (8%) adults. Four hundred ninety-one (72%) were in low-risk adjustment in congenital heart surgery (RACHS; 1 to 3), 109 (16%) in high risk (4 to 6), and 27 (4%) were less than 18 years and could not be assigned a RACHS score. Three hundred thirty-one (48%) had an optimal TPS, 283 (42%) adequate, 61 (9%) inadequate, and 4 (1%) could not be scored. There were 34 (5%) late deaths and 149 (22%) late unplanned reinterventions. By univariate analysis, age, RACHS-1 categories, and TPS were all significantly associated with late reintervention (p0.001 for all), while TPS and RACHS-1 were significant factors for mortality (p0.001). On multivariable modeling, inadequate TPS was strongly associated with both late mortality (p = 0.001; HR [hazard ratio] 3.8, CI [confidence interval] 1.7 to 8.4) and late reintervention (p = 0.002, HR 2.1, CI 1.3 to 3.3) after controlling for RACHS-1 and age.The TPS has a strong association with late outcomes across a wide range of age and disease complexity and may serve as a tool to identify patients who are at a higher risk for late reintervention or mortality.

Signal amplification techniques are commonly used to boost diagnostic signals. We have recently developed a new approach for exponential signal amplification obtained through a distinctive dendritic chain reaction. Here we report evaluation of the effect of the self-immolative dendritic amplifier component on the signal amplification. Four dendrons with various numbers of end-units were evaluated for the ability to produce exponential signal amplification through self-immolative disassembly pathways. The dendron composed of a first-generation platform with three end-units exhibited the best characteristics with rapid disassembly rate and good stability under aqueous conditions. This study demonstrates the efficiency of molecules based on dendritic structures.

Minimally invasive surgical implant placement has numerous advantages over conventional open flap technique. A series of cases is described here explaining the use of the tissue punch with discussion of the complications and management.

Aim and objective: To validate the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort questionnaire in the residential aged-care setting. Based on this determination, to conclude with what degree of confidence the questionnaire can be used to determine the ranking of the importance of caring behaviours amongst aged-care nurses and residents in residential aged-care. Background: Perceptions of caring may be context specific. Caring in residential aged-care may stand in contrast to the sense of caring understood and practiced in other settings. Design: Self-administered survey. Methods: Residents from three not-for-profit aged-care facilities, across both high-care (nursing-home) and low-care (hostel care) were surveyed relying on the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort questionnaire. A sub-sample of registered and enrolled nurses working in residential aged-care and registered with the Nurses & Midwives e-cohort study completed the same survey. Results: Although the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort questionnaire showed good internal consistency for the sample of nurses, the results for the residents were more erratic. Both groups displayed large ranges for the inter-item correlations. The results of the Mann–Whitney U-test indicated that the nurses rated the Comforts, Anticipates and Trusting relationship as significantly more important than the residents. Both groups rated the Explains and facilitates subscale as least important. All subscales, however, received median scores greater than, or equal to, six (seven-point, Likert scale) indicating that all were considered important overall. Conclusion: Based on poor Cronbach's alpha coefficients, negative inter-item correlations and qualitative observations, without further development within the residential aged-care facility the free response format version of the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort may not be an appropriate measure to use with residential aged-care residents. More research needs to be conducted into how residents and nurses are interpreting the items in the Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort. Relevance to clinical practice: There will always remain a need for nurses to enact behaviours that are meaningful to residents (and patients generally).

Accurate indoor localization has long been an objective of the ubiquitous computing research community, and numerous indoor localization solutions based on 802.11, Bluetooth, ultrasound and infrared technologies have been proposed. This paper presents the first accurate GSM indoor localization system that achieves median within floor accuracy of 4 m in large buildings and is able to identify the floor correctly in up to 60% of the cases and is within 2 floors in up to 98% of the cases in tall multi-floor buildings. We report evaluation results of two case studies conducted over a course of several years, with data collected from 6 buildings in 3 cities across North America. The key idea that makes accurate GSM-based indoor localization possible is the use of wide signal-strength fingerprints. In addition to the 6-strongest cells traditionally used in the GSM standard, the wide fingerprint includes readings from additional cells that are strong enough to be detected, but are too weak to be used for efficient communication. We further show that selecting a subset of highly relevant channels for fingerprinting matching out of all available channels, further improves the localization accuracy.

Objective : The aim of the study was to determine the effectiveness of a care workshop in improving caring behaviors and job involvement among nurses. Methods : A quasi-experimental designed study was used in which 338 nurses, on a hospital in Taiwan were surveyed before and after a care workshop. The intervention consisted: (1) formal educational sessions twice a week for six weeks, (2) a loving care mentorship activity, and (3) posts of exemplary caring behavior and stories. The socio-demographics, the Modified Caring Assessment Report Evaluation Q-sort, and the Modified Job Involvement Instrument were used. Descriptive statistics were analyzed to evaluate participant demographic characteristics. Paired t tests were used to determine the effects of a care workshop on caring behaviors and job involvement of nurses. Results : The participants’ ages ranged from 20 to 45 years, with a mean of 30.67 years (SD = 5.86). Nurse caring behavior and job involvement were negatively correlated on the pretest ( p < .01) and positively correlated on 6-week posttest ( p < .01). Nurses exhibited more caring behaviors after the intervention than did nurses before the intervention ( p < .001). Increased job involvement scores were observed after the intervention compared with the scores before the intervention ( p < .001). Conclusions : The findings of this study, suggest that a care workshop intervention focused at nurses can be effective in improving nurses caring knowledge and attitudes regarding patient-center care and in increasing job involvement among nurses. Further research is required to explore the long-term efficacy of the intervention in the organization.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a groundbreaking 2010 report, Evaluation of Biomarkers and Surrogate Endpoints in Chronic Disease. Key recommendations included a harmonized scientific process and a general framework for biomarker evaluation with three interrelated steps: (1) Analytical validation -- is the biomarker measurement accurate? (2) Qualification -- is the biomarker associated with the clinical endpoint of concern? (3) Utilization -- what is the specific context of the proposed use?

In the first part, this article review the accepted knowledge of type 1 diabetes, its physiopathology, the importance of cytokines and the induction of apoptosis and necrosis during its evolution. Throughout this work we describe in more detail the inhibition of this mechanism of cell destruction by acetyl-L-carnitine and nicotinamide. We also explain the complementary action of their association which gave support to the treatment. In the second part, we present the complete evolution of 8 children treated with the oral medication of 50 mg/Kg of acetyl-L-carnitine plus 25 mg/Kg of nicotinamide during 5 years. We published the first 2 years of evolution under treatment in these children (JPEM 26: 347, 2013). The children had positive auto-antibodies and were consanguineous of type 1 diabetic patients. The intravenous glucose tolerance test (IVGTT) showed a first phase of insulin release minor of 48 μU to enter in the protocol, and the same test was used for children evolution. Seven out eight children stopped the treatment because they normalized the metabolic parameters and no one became diabetic. All children increased the insulin response to IVGTT (between 1.44 to 5.69 times). Along the treatment, seven of these eight children turned their positive auto-antibodies into negatives.

Morning report is an important conference for medical education, but direct comparisons of approaches to morning report have only rarely been reported.During the 2003 to 2004 academic year, we conducted both our traditional single-learner-level morning report and a new highly interactive multiple-learner-level format. Attendees were rotating students, residents, and faculty on the inpatient general medicine services.We conducted anonymous surveys of participants to record their evaluations of the morning report formats. We received evaluations from 293 (60%) of 490 students, residents, and faculty. Students, 1st-year residents, and faculty preferred the mixed-learner model significantly more than did senior residents. Overall, more than 80% of participants rated the interactive multilevel format as good or very good when asked about content, discussion quality, level, and usefulness.An interactive morning report involving learners across multiple levels was well-received and has several educational benefits, with a greater emphasis on collaborative case discussion and active learning. Education leaders should remain open to experimenting with even the most well-established institutional traditions as they continuously reevaluate the effectiveness of teaching conferences.

Transliteration is used to phonetically translate proper names and technical terms especially from languages in Roman alphabets to languages in non-Roman alphabets such as from English to Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. Because transliterations are usually representative index terms for documents, proper handling of the transliterations is important for an effective information retrieval system. However, there are limitations on handling transliterations depending on dictionary lookup, because transliterations are usually not registered in the dictionary. For this reason, many researchers have been trying to overcome the problem using machine transliteration. In this paper, we propose a method for improving machine transliteration using an ensemble of three different transliteration models. Because one transliteration model alone has limitation on reflecting all possible transliteration behaviors, several transliteration models should be complementary used in order to achieve a high-performance machine transliteration system. This paper describes a method about transliteration production using the several machine transliteration models and transliteration ranking with web data and relevance scores given by each transliteration model. We report evaluation results for our ensemble transliteration model and experimental results for its impact on IR effectiveness. Machine transliteration tests on English-to-Korean transliteration and English-to-Japanese transliteration show that our proposed method achieves 78-80% word accuracy. Information retrieval tests on KTSET and NTCIR-1 test collection show that our transliteration model can improve the performance of an information retrieval system about 10-34%.

The accuracy of a lead screening questionnaire in predicting elevated blood lead levels was examined in a pediatric practice in a rural part of New York state. A retrospective chart review was used to collect data on children ages 9 to 24 months who presented for well-child visits. Children with both questionnaire and lead level results available in the chart were included in the study (n = 171). The mean blood lead level among all children was 1.6 microg/dl (median = 2.0 microg/dl, range 0 to 24 microg/dl). Four children (2.3%) had elevated lead levels (greater than 10 microg/dl), with levels for two of these children being greater than 20 microg/dl. Although our lead screening questionnaire was expanded from the standard 1991 CDC questionnaire by the inclusion of six additional items, it was not especially useful in predicting elevated blood lead levels above 10 microg/dl. However, the questionnaire exhibited some utility in predicting marked elevations in blood lead levels (over 20 microg/dl). Although results in other geographic areas might differ, the lead questionnaire may have value by enhancing parents' awareness of potential lead hazards in their children's environment and may prove to be more useful in areas of high risk to lead exposure.

A time-division-multiplexing passive optical network (TDM-PON) accommodating a time-division duplex (TDD)-based mobile fronthaul (MFH) contributes to the realization of a low-cost network. However, there are two issues with the TDM-PON. The first is the limited number of optical network units (ONUs) that can be accommodated because the statistical multiplexing effect is weaker than with the accommodation of a conventional MFH. The other issue is the discovery process for registering new ONUs. While operating the discovery process, the signals of the registered ONUs cannot be forwarded in the optical link, and a huge latency is added to the registered ONUs. We have proposed a technique for the effective utilization of unallocated intervals, which certainly occur in optical links. Secondary service signals are forwarded in the unallocated intervals to increase the number of ONUs. The discovery process also operates in the unallocated intervals to avoid any latency increase. In this paper, we report evaluation results obtained using the numerical simulations.