Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Improving Follow-Up Of Abnormal Cancer Screens Using Electronic Health Records: Trust But Verify Test Result Communication, Hardeep Singh, Lindsey Wilson, Laura A Petersen, Mona K Sawhney, Brian Reis, Donna Espadas, Dean F Sittig

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Early detection of colorectal cancer through timely follow-up of positive Fecal Occult Blood Tests (FOBTs) remains a challenge. In our previous work, we found 40% of positive FOBT results eligible for colonoscopy had no documented response by a treating clinician at two weeks despite procedures for electronic result notification. We determined if technical and/or workflow-related aspects of automated communication in the electronic health record could lead to the lack of response.

METHODS: Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, we evaluated positive FOBT communication in the electronic health record of a large, urban facility between May 2008 and March 2009. …

An Introduction To Dezert-Smarandache Theory (Dsmt), Jean Dezert, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

The management and combination of uncertain, imprecise, fuzzy and even paradoxical or highly conflicting sources of information has always been, and still remains today, of primal importance for the development of reliable modern information systems involving artificial reasoning. In this introduction, we present a survey of our recent theory of plausible and paradoxical reasoning, known as Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT), developed for dealing with imprecise, uncertain and conflicting sources of information. We focus our presentation on the foundations of DSmT and on its most important rules of combination, rather than on browsing specific applications of DSmT available in literature. Several simple …

Nonlinear Dynamics Of Infant Sitting Postural Control, Joan E. Deffeyes

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Sitting is one of the first developmental milestones that an infant achieves. Thus measurements of sitting posture present an opportunity to assess sensorimotor development at a young age, in order to identify infants who might benefit from therapeutic intervention, and to monitor the efficacy of the intervention. Sitting postural sway data was collected using a force plate from infants with typical development, and from infants with delayed development, where the delay in development was due to cerebral palsy in most of the infants in the study. The center of pressure time series from the infant sitting was subjected to a …

When To Spray: A Time-Scale Calculus Approach To Controlling The Impact Of West Nile Virus, Diana Thomas, Marion Weedermann, Lora Billings, Joan Hoffacker, Robert Washington-Allen

Department of Mathematics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

West Nile Virus (WNV) made its initial appearance in the New York City (NYC) metropolitan area in 1999 and was implicated in cases of human encephalitis and the extensive mortality in crows (Corvus sp.) and other avian species. Mosquitoes were found to be the primary vectors and NYC’s current policy on control strategies involved an eradication program that depends on the synchronicity of the summer mosquito population’s increases with the occurrence of cases in humans. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether this is the most effective control strategy because past mathematical models assumed discrete behavior that …

Ontology Driven Integration Platform For Clinical And Translational Research, Parsa Mirhaji, Min Zhu, Mattew Vagnoni, Elmer V. Bernstam, Jiajie Zhang, Jack W. Smith

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Semantic Web technologies offer a promising framework for integration of disparate biomedical data. In this paper we present the semantic information integration platform under development at the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (CCTS) at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHSC-H) as part of our Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program. We utilize the Semantic Web technologies not only for integrating, repurposing and classification of multi-source clinical data, but also to construct a distributed environment for information sharing, and collaboration online. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is used to modularize and distribute reusable services in a …

Contribution Of A Portable Air Plasma Torch To Rapid Blood Coagulation As A Method Of Preventing Bleeding, S. P. Kuo, O. Tarasenko, J. Chang, S. Popovic, C. Y. Chen, H. W. Fan, A. Scott, M. Lahiani, P. Alusta, J. D. Drake, M. Nikolic

Physics Faculty Publications

The effectiveness and mechanism of a low temperature air plasma torch in clotting blood are explored. Both blood droplets and smeared blood samples were used in the tests. The treated droplet samples reveal how blood clotting depends on the distance at which the torch operated, and for how long the droplets have been exposed to the torch. Microscopy and cell count of smeared blood samples shed light on dependencies of erythrocyte and platelet counts on torch distance and exposure time. With an increase of torch distance, the platelet count of treated blood samples increases but is less than that of …

Complete Identification Of Permissible Sampling Rates For First-Order Sampling Of Multi-Band Bandpass Signals, Yan Wu, Daniel F. Linder

Biostatistics: Faculty Publications

The first-order sampling of multi-band bandpass signals with arbitrary band positions is considered in this paper. Gaps between the spectral sub-bands are utilized to achieve lower sampling rates than the Nyquist. The lowest possible sampling rate along with other permissible sampling rates is identified via a unique partition of the frequency axis. With the complete identification of all the permissible sampling rates, a necessary and sufficient sampling theorem for multi-band bandpass signals is presented in terms of a series of csinc-interpolators.

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Update: January 2009, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2009

LSUHSC Dailly Facilities Updates from January 2009. These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: January 2009, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2009

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from January 16 and 30, 2009.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Parameter Optimization For Image Denoising Based On Block Matching And 3d Collaborative Filtering, Ramu Pedada, Emin Kugu, Jiang Li, Zhanfeng Yue, Yuzhong Shen, Josien P.W. Pluim (Ed.), Benoit M. Dawant (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Clinical MRI images are generally corrupted by random noise during acquisition with blurred subtle structure features. Many denoising methods have been proposed to remove noise from corrupted images at the expense of distorted structure features. Therefore, there is always compromise between removing noise and preserving structure information for denoising methods. For a specific denoising method, it is crucial to tune it so that the best tradeoff can be obtained. In this paper, we define several cost functions to assess the quality of noise removal and that of structure information preserved in the denoised image. Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2) …

Natural Medicine: Personal Responsibility And Self-Empowerment, Kimber Lopez

Pomona Senior Theses

Although most “alternative” medical practices have existed far longer than conventional healthcare, modern allopathic continues to be the dominant system of medicine used in the United States. Herbal medicine is one of the oldest healing practices known to humankind and continues to be practiced today despite the numerous challenges modern society poses. As Julie Stone and Joan Mathews illuminate in Complimentary Medicine and the Law, “Plant-based remedies have been the principal source of medicines in healing traditions around the world and, as the World health Organization is at pains to remind us, 80 percent of the world’s population still depends …

Computerized Provider Order Entry Adoption: Implications For Clinical Workflow, Emily M. Campbell, Kenneth P. Guappone, Dean F. Sittig, Richard H. Dykstra, Joan S. Ash

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

OBJECTIVE: To identify and describe unintended adverse consequences related to clinical workflow when implementing or using computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems. METHODS: We analyzed qualitative data from field observations and formal interviews gathered over a three-year period at five hospitals in three organizations. Five multidisciplinary researchers worked together to identify themes related to the impacts of CPOE systems on clinical workflow. RESULTS: CPOE systems can affect clinical work by 1) introducing or exposing human/computer interaction problems, 2) altering the pace, sequencing, and dynamics of clinical activities, 3) providing only partial support for the work activities of all types of …

Taxonomy Development And Knowledge Representation Of Nurses' Personal Cognitive Artifacts, Sharon Mclane, James P Turley

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Nurses prepare knowledge representations, or summaries of patient clinical data, each shift. These knowledge representations serve multiple purposes, including support of working memory, workload organization and prioritization, critical thinking, and reflection. This summary is integral to internal knowledge representations, working memory, and decision-making. Study of this nurse knowledge representation resulted in development of a taxonomy of knowledge representations necessary to nursing practice.This paper describes the methods used to elicit the knowledge representations and structures necessary for the work of clinical nurses, described the development of a taxonomy of this knowledge representation, and discusses translation of this methodology to the cognitive …

An Evaluation Of Lead Hazards In Pre-1978 Residental Housing Within Clark County, Nevada, Usa, Erika Raquel Torres

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Lead poisoning remains a public health concern due to leads persistence in the environment from anthropogenic uses. Initial efforts to address the impacts of lead on vulnerable communities have included secondary prevention measures which typically occur after a child has been poisoned. However, in recent years there has been a pragmatic shift toward primary prevention efforts.

This study evaluates lead hazards identified through primary prevention activities in residential housing within Clark County, Nevada, USA. It is the first study to systematically address and evaluate pre-1978 housing in Southern Nevada. Risk assessments were conducted in 81 dwellings built prior to 1979 …

Second-Hand Smoke Exposure In Cars And Respiratory Health Effects In Children, Patrick J. Goodman, Z. Kabir, Luke Clancy, P.J. Manning, J. Holohan, S. Keogan

Articles

We examined potential associations of ever asthma, and symptoms of wheeze (past 12 months), hay fever, eczema and bronchitis (cough with phlegm) among school children exposed to second-hand smoke (SHS) in cars, using a modified Irish International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) protocol. 2,809 children of 13–14 yrs old and who selected randomly from post-primary schools throughout Ireland completed the 2007 ISAAC self-administered questionnaire. Adjusted OR (adjusted for sex, active smoking status of children interviewed and their SHS exposure at home) were estimated for the associations studied, using multivariable logistic regression techniques. Overall, 14.8% (13.9% in young …

Text Mining In Radiology Reports, Tianxia Gong, Chew Lim Tan, Tze-Yun Leong, Cheng Kiang Lee, Boon Chuan Pang, C. C. Tchoyoson Lim, Qi Tian, Suisheng Tang, Zhuo Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Medical text mining has gained increasing interest in recent years. Radiology reports contain rich information describing radiologist's observations on the patient's medical conditions in the associated medical images. However as most reports are in free text format, the valuable information contained in those reports cannot be easily accessed and used, unless proper text mining has been applied. In this paper we propose a text mining system to extract and use the information in radiology reports. The system consists of three main modules: a medical finding extractor a report and image retriever and a text-assisted image feature extractor In evaluation, the …

A Small Sample Correction For Estimating Attributable Risk In Case-Control Studies, Daniel B. Rubin

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

The attributable risk, often called the population attributable risk, is in many epidemiological contexts a more relevant measure of exposure-disease association than the excess risk, relative risk, or odds ratio. When estimating attributable risk with case-control data and a rare disease, we present a simple correction to the standard approach making it essentially unbiased, and also less noisy. As with analogous corrections given in Jewell (1986) for other measures of association, the adjustment often won't make a substantial difference unless the sample size is very small or point estimates are desired within fine strata, but we discuss the possible utility …

Spatial Misalignment In Time Series Studies Of Air Pollution And Health Data, Roger D. Peng, Michelle L. Bell

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

Time series studies of environmental exposures often involve comparing daily changes in a toxicant measured at a point in space with daily changes in an aggregate measure of health. Spatial misalignment of the exposure and response variables can bias the estimation of health risk and the magnitude of this bias depends on the spatial variation of the exposure of interest. In air pollution epidemiology, there is an increasing focus on estimating the health effects of the chemical components of particulate matter. One issue that is raised by this new focus is the spatial misalignment error introduced by the lack of …

Friends Of The Library Mcnair Scholarship Awards, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Message From The Vice President For Research And Federal Relations, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Acknowledgements, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Mentor Profile, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Notes From The Director, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Mcnair Scholars Program, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Graduate Scholar Profile, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: December 2008, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2008

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from December 5 and 19, 2008.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Update: December 2008, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2008

LSUHSC Dailly Facilities Updates from December 2008. These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Threat Perception As A Determinant Of Pro-Environmental Behaviors: Public Involvement In Air Pollution Abatement In Cache Valley, Utah, Joshua D. Marquit

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Threat perception related to environmental issues such as air pollution may be a determinant of pro-environmental behaviors. Among the potential threats of air pollution, include the perceived impacts on the psychological, social, and economic wellbeing of a community. Because of rapid increases in population growth, urbanization, and the mountainous landscapes, the American West is extremely susceptible to the adverse impacts of air pollution.

A secondary data analysis was conducted using data from the Air Quality Perception Survey conducted in Cache County, Utah. The survey focused on the public perception of air pollution in Cache County and perceived impact on personal …

Inaugural Conference Of The Mosakowski Institute For Public Enterprise- Program, Jim Gomes

Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise

Program for University Research and the American Agenda: Discovering Knowledge, Enabling Leadership. The Inaugural Conference of the Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise.