What aspects of the scoliosis correction are most important to the teenager who has keyhole scoliosis correction surgery? A prospective series of 100 patients

Introduction. Surgical treatment of scoliosis is assessed in the spine clinic by the surgeon making numerous measurements on X-Rays as well as the rib hump. But it is important to understand which of these measures correlate with self-reported improvements in patients’ quality of life following surgery. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between patient satisfaction after thoracoscopic (keyhole) anterior scoliosis surgery and standard deformity correction measures using the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) adolescent questionnaire. Methods. A series of 100 consecutive adolescent idiopathic scoliosis patients received a single anterior rod via a keyhole approach at the Mater Children’s Hospital, Brisbane. Patients completed SRS outcomes questionnaires before surgery and again at 24 months after surgery. Multiple regression and t-tests were used to investigate the relationship between SRS scores and deformity correction achieved after surgery. Results. There were 94 females and 6 males with a mean age of 16.1 years. The mean Cobb angle improved from 52º pre-operatively to 21º for the instrumented levels post-operatively (59% correction) and the mean rib hump improved from 16º to 8º (51% correction). The mean total SRS score for the cohort was 99.4/120 which indicated a high level of satisfaction with the results of their scoliosis surgery. None of the deformity related parameters in the multiple regressions were significant. However, the twenty patients with the smallest Cobb angles after surgery reported significantly higher SRS scores than the twenty patients with the largest Cobb angles after surgery, but there was no difference on the basis of rib hump correction. Discussion. Patients undergoing thoracoscopic (keyhole) anterior scoliosis correction report good SRS scores which are comparable to those in previous studies. We suggest that the absence of any statistically significant difference in SRS scores between patients with and without rod or screw complications is because these complications are not associated with any clinically significant loss of correction in our patient group. The Cobb angle after surgery was the only significant predictor of patient satisfaction when comparing subgroups of patients with the largest and smallest Cobb angles after surgery.

Multi-modal summarization of key events and top players in sports tournament videos

To detect and annotate the key events of live sports videos, we need to tackle the semantic gaps of audio-visual information. Previous work has successfully extracted semantic from the time-stamped web match reports, which are synchronized with the video contents. However, web and social media articles with no time-stamps have not been fully leveraged, despite they are increasingly used to complement the coverage of major sporting tournaments. This paper aims to address this limitation using a novel multimodal summarization framework that is based on sentiment analysis and players' popularity. It uses audiovisual contents, web articles, blogs, and commentators' speech to automatically annotate and visualize the key events and key players in a sports tournament coverage. The experimental results demonstrate that the automatically generated video summaries are aligned with the events identified from the official website match reports.

Factors of process model comprehension : findings from a series of experiments

In order to make good decisions about the design of information systems, an essential skill is to understand process models of the business domain the system is intended to support. Yet, little knowledge to date has been established about the factors that affect how model users comprehend the content of process models. In this study, we use theories of semiotics and cognitive load to theorize how model and personal factors influence how model viewers comprehend the syntactical information of process models. We then report on a four-part series of experiments, in which we examined these factors. Our results show that additional semantical information impedes syntax comprehension, and that theoretical knowledge eases syntax comprehension. Modeling experience further contributes positively to comprehension efficiency, measured as the ratio of correct answers to the time taken to provide answers. We discuss implications for practice and research.

The rise of government in Early Childhood Education and Care following the Child Care Act 1972 : the lasting legacy of the 1990s in setting the reform agenda for ECEC in Australia

Less than twenty years on from the proclamation of the Child Care Act 1972, and introduction of funding for not-for-profit child care centres, a series of market-driven public policies paved the way for the emergence of Australia’s current ECEC quasi-market. Seeking to respond to increasing demand for work-related child care in the 1990s, and to manage associated costs, a succession of Australian Governments turned to market theory and New Public Management (NPM) principles to inform ECEC policy. Reflecting on an era of high policy activity within ECEC, this paper examines a series of policy events and texts that set the course for the reform agenda that was to ensue in ECEC.

A novel representation of bioacoustic events for content-based search in field audio data

Bioacoustic data can provide an important base for environmental monitoring. To explore a large amount of field recordings collected, an automated similarity search algorithm is presented in this paper. A region of an audio defined by frequency and time bounds is provided by a user; the content of the region is used to construct a query. In the retrieving process, our algorithm will automatically scan through recordings to search for similar regions. In detail, we present a feature extraction approach based on the visual content of vocalisations – in this case ridges, and develop a generic regional representation of vocalisations for indexing. Our feature extraction method works best for bird vocalisations showing ridge characteristics. The regional representation method allows the content of an arbitrary region of a continuous recording to be described in a compressed format.

Rapid scanning of spectrograms for efficient identification of bioacoustic events in big data

Acoustic sensing is a promising approach to scaling faunal biodiversity monitoring. Scaling the analysis of audio collected by acoustic sensors is a big data problem. Standard approaches for dealing with big acoustic data include automated recognition and crowd based analysis. Automatic methods are fast at processing but hard to rigorously design, whilst manual methods are accurate but slow at processing. In particular, manual methods of acoustic data analysis are constrained by a 1:1 time relationship between the data and its analysts. This constraint is the inherent need to listen to the audio data. This paper demonstrates how the efficiency of crowd sourced sound analysis can be increased by an order of magnitude through the visual inspection of audio visualized as spectrograms. Experimental data suggests that an analysis speedup of 12× is obtainable for suitable types of acoustic analysis, given that only spectrograms are shown.

WATER - a series of photographs by Louise Grayson

This body of photographic work has been created to firstly, explore a new approach to practice-led research that uses an “action genre” approach to reflective practice (Lemke) and secondly, to visually explore human interaction with the fundamental item in life - water. The first of these is based on the contention that to understand the meanings inherent in photographs we cannot look merely at the end result. It is essential to keep looking at the actions of practitioners, and the influences upon them, to determine how external influences affect the meaning potential of editorial photographs (Grayson, 2012). WATER therefore, provides an ideal platform to reflect upon the actions and influences involved in creating work within the photographic genre of photojournalism. It enables this practitioner to reflect on each stage of production to gain a better understanding of how external influences impact the narrative potential within images created. There are multi-faceted influences experienced by photographers who are creating images that, in turn, are part of constructing and presenting the narrative potential of editorial photographs. There is an important relationship between professional photographers and the technical, cultural, economic and institutional forces that impinge upon all stages of production and publication. What results is a greater understanding of technical, cultural, economic and institutional forces that impinge upon all stages of production and publication. Therefore, to understand the meanings inherent in photographs within WATER, I do not look merely at the end result. It provides a case study looking at my actions in the filed, and the influences upon me, to determine how external influences affect the meaning potential of these photographs (Grayson, 2012). As a result, this project adds to the body of scholarship around the definition of Photojournalism, how it has adapted to the current media environment and provides scope for further research into emerging new genres within editorial photography, such as citizen photojournalism. Concurrently, the photographs themselves were created to visually explore how there remains a humanistic desire to interact with the natural form of water even while living a modern cosmopolitan life around it. Taking a photojournalistic approach to exploring this phenomenon, the images were created by “capturing moments as they happened” with no posing or setting up of images. This serendipitous approach to the photographic medium provides the practitioner with at least an attempt to direct the subjectivity contained explicitly in photographs. What results is a series of images that extend the visual dialogue around the role of water within modern humanistic lifestyles and how it remains an integral part of our society’s behaviors. It captures important moments that document this relationship at this time of modern development. The resulting works were exhibited and published as part of the Head On Photo Festival, Australia's largest photo festival and the world's second largest festival in Sydney 20-24 May 2013. The WATER series of images were curated by three Magnum members; Ian Berry, Eli Reed and Chris Steele-Perkins. Magnum is a highly regarded international photographic co-operative with editorial offices in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo. There was a projection of the works as part of the official festival programme, presented to both members of the public and Sydney’s photography professionals. In addition, a sample of images from the WATER series was chosen for inclusion in the Magnum-published hardcover book. References Grayson, Louise. 2012. “Editorial photographs and patterns of practice.” Journalism Practice. Accessed: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17512786.2012.726836#.UbZN-L--1RQ Lemke, Jay. 1995. Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics. London: Taylor & Francis.

Impact of cognitive behaviour therapy via mail for cessation of benzodiazepine use : a series of case reports

Benzodiazepines are widely prescribed to manage sleep disorders, anxiety and muscular tension. While providing short-term relief, continued use induces tolerance and withdrawal, and in older users, increases the risk of falls. However, long-term prescription remains common, and effective interventions are not widely available. This study developed a self-managed cognitive behaviour therapy package for cessation of benzodiazepine use delivered to participants via mail (M-CBT) and trialled its effectiveness as an adjunct to a general practitioner (GP)-managed dose reduction schedule. In the pilot trial, participants were randomly assigned to GP management with immediate or delayed M-CBT. Significant recruitment and engagement problems were experienced, and only three participants were allocated to each condition. After immediate M-CBT, two participants ceased use, while none receiving delayed treatment reduced daily intake by more than 50%. Across the sample, doses at 12 months remained significantly lower than baseline, and qualitative feedback from participants was positive. While M-CBT may have promise, improved engagement of GPs and participants is needed for this approach to substantially impact on community-wide benzodiazepine use.

Improving the performance of nutrition screening through a series of quality improvement initiatives

Background Nutrition screening identifies patients at risk of malnutrition to facilitate early nutritional intervention. Studies have reported incompletion and error rates of 30-90% for a range of commonly used screening tools. This study aims to investigate the incompletion and error rates of 3-Minute Nutrition Screening (3-MinNS) and the effect of quality improvement initiatives in improving the overall performance of the screening tool and the referral process for at risk patients. Methods Annual audits were carried out from 2008-2013 on 4467 patients. Value Stream Mapping, Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle and Root Cause Analysis were used in this study to identify gaps and determine the best intervention. The intervention included 1) implementing a nutrition screening protocol, 2) nutrition screening training, 3) nurse empowerment for online dietetics referral of at-risk cases, 4) closed-loop feedback system and 5) removing a component of 3-MinNS that caused the most error without compromising its sensitivity and specificity. Results Nutrition screening error rates were 33% and 31%, with 5% and 8% blank or missing forms, in 2008 and 2009 respectively. For patients at risk of malnutrition, referral to dietetics took up to 7.5 days, with 10% not referred at all. After intervention, the latter decreased to 7% (2010), 4% (2011) and 3% (2012 and 2013), and the mean turnaround time from screening to referral was reduced significantly from 4.3 ± 1.8 days to 0.3 ± 0.4 days (p < 0.001). Error rates were reduced to 25% (2010), 15% (2011), 7% (2012) and 5% (2013) and percentage of blank or missing forms reduced to and remained at 1%. Conclusion Quality improvement initiatives are effective in reducing the incompletion and error rates of nutrition screening, and led to sustainable improvements in the referral process of patients at nutritional risk.

Plasma-enabled graded nanotube biosensing arrays on a Si nanodevice platform : catalyst-free integration and in situ detection of nucleation events

Low-temperature plasmas in direct contact with arbitrary, written linear features on a Si wafer enable catalyst-free integration of carbon nanotubes into a Si-based nanodevice platform and in situ resolution of individual nucleation events. The graded nanotube arrays show reliable, reproducible, and competitive performance in electron field emission and biosensing nanodevices.

Interpreting and comparing risks in the presence of competing events

Competing events are common in medical research. Ignoring them in the statistical analysis can easily lead to flawed results and conclusions. This article uses a real dataset and a simple simulation to show how standard analysis fails and how such data should be analysed

Decision support for the efficient annotation of bioacoustic events

Acoustic sensors allow scientists to scale environmental monitoring over large spatiotemporal scales. The faunal vocalisations captured by these sensors can answer ecological questions, however, identifying these vocalisations within recorded audio is difficult: automatic recognition is currently intractable and manual recognition is slow and error prone. In this paper, a semi-automated approach to call recognition is presented. An automated decision support tool is tested that assists users in the manual annotation process. The respective strengths of human and computer analysis are used to complement one another. The tool recommends the species of an unknown vocalisation and thereby minimises the need for the memorization of a large corpus of vocalisations. In the case of a folksonomic tagging system, recommending species tags also minimises the proliferation of redundant tag categories. We describe two algorithms: (1) a “naïve” decision support tool (16%–64% sensitivity) with efficiency of O(n) but which becomes unscalable as more data is added and (2) a scalable alternative with 48% sensitivity and an efficiency ofO(log n). The improved algorithm was also tested in a HTML-based annotation prototype. The result of this work is a decision support tool for annotating faunal acoustic events that may be utilised by other bioacoustics projects.

Optical Characterization of the Hole Polaron in a Series of Diketopyrrolopyrrole Polymers Used for Organic Photovoltaics

Abstract: A strategy that is often used for designing low band gap polymers involves the incorporation of electron-rich (donor) and electron-deficient (acceptor) conjugated segments within the polymer backbone. In this paper we investigate such a series of Diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP)-based co-polymers. The co-polymers consisted of a DPP unit attached to a phenylene, naphthalene, or anthracene unit. Additionally, polymers utilizing either the thiophene-flanked DPP or the furan-flanked DPP units paired with the naphthalene comonomer were compared. As these polymers have been used as donor materials and subsequent hole transporting materials in organic solar cells, we are specifically interested in characterizing the optical absorption of the hole polaron of these DPP based copolymers. We employ chemical doping, electrochemical doping, and photoinduced absorption (PIA) studies to probe the hole polaron absorption spectra. While some donor-acceptor polymers have shown an appreciable capacity to generate free charge carriers upon photoexcitation, no polaron signal was observed in the PIA spectrum of the polymers in this study. The relations between molecular structure and optical properties are discussed. Keywords: organic solar cell; organic photovoltaic; diketopyrrolopyrrole; chemical doping; spectroelectrochemistry; photoinduced absorption; hole polaron

A process mining-based investigation of adverse events in care processes

This paper proposes the Clinical Pathway Analysis Method (CPAM) approach that enables the extraction of valuable organisational and medical information on past clinical pathway executions from the event logs of healthcare information systems. The method deals with the complexity of real-world clinical pathways by introducing a perspective-based segmentation of the date-stamped event log. CPAM enables the clinical pathway analyst to effectively and efficiently acquire a profound insight into the clinical pathways. By comparing the specific medical conditions of patients with the factors used for characterising the different clinical pathway variants, the medical expert can identify the best therapeutic option. Process mining-based analytics enables the acquisition of valuable insights into clinical pathways, based on the complete audit traces of previous clinical pathway instances. Additionally, the methodology is suited to assess guideline compliance and analyse adverse events. Finally, the methodology provides support for eliciting tacit knowledge and providing treatment selection assistance.