An Investigation of User Costs and Benefits of Winter Road Closures, June 2005

This project explores the user costs and benefits of winter road closures. Severe winter weather makes travel unsafe and dramatically increases crash rates. When conditions become unsafe due to winter weather, road closures should allow users to avoid crash costs and eliminate costs associated with rescuing stranded motorists. Therefore, the benefits of road closures are the avoided safety costs. The costs of road closures are the delays that are imposed on motorists and motor carriers who would have made the trip had the road not been closed. This project investigated the costs and benefits of road closures and found that evaluating the benefits and costs is not as simple as it appears. To better understand the costs and benefits of road closures, the project investigates the literature, conducts interviews with shippers and motor carriers, and conducts case studies of road closures to determine what actually occurred on roadways during closures. The project also estimates a statistical model that relates weather severity to crash rates. Although, the statistical model is intended to illustrate the possibility to quantitatively relate measurable and predictable weather conditions to the safety performance of a roadway. In the future, weather conditions such as snow fall intensity, visibility, etc., can be used to make objective measures of the safety performance of a roadway rather than relying on subjective evaluations of field staff. The review of the literature and the interviews clearly illustrate that not all delays (increased travel time) are valued the same. Expected delays (routine delays) are valued at the generalized costs (value of the driver’s time, fuel, insurance, wear and tear on the vehicle, etc.), but unexpected delays are valued much higher because they result in interruption of synchronous activities at the trip’s destination. To reduce the costs of delays resulting from road closures, public agencies should communicate as early as possible the likelihood of a road closure.

Bit loading for MIMO with statistical channel information at the transmitter and ZF receivers

For single-user MIMO communication with uncoded and coded QAM signals, we propose bit and power loading schemes that rely only on channel distribution information at the transmitter. To that end, we develop the relationship between the average bit error probability at the output of a ZF linear receiver and the bit rates and powers allocated at the transmitter. This relationship, and the fact that a ZF receiver decouples the MIMO parallel channels, allow leveraging bit loading algorithms already existing in the literature. We solve dual bit rate maximization and power minimization problems and present performance resultsthat illustrate the gains of the proposed scheme with respect toa non-optimized transmission.

Intrauterine growth restriction and absent or reverse end-diastolic blood flow in umbilical artery (Doppler class II or III): A retrospective study of short- and long-term fetal morbidity and mortality.

OBJECTIVE: Absent or reverse end-diastolic flow (Doppler II/III) in umbilical artery is correlated with poor perinatal outcome, particularly in intrauterine growth restricted (IUGR) fetuses. The optimal timing of delivery is still controversial. We studied the short- and long-term morbidity and mortality among these children associated with our defined management. STUDY DESIGN: Sixty-nine IUGR fetuses with umbilical Doppler II/III were divided into three groups; Group 1, severe early IUGR, no therapeutic intervention (n = 7); Group 2, fetuses with pathological biophysical profile, immediate delivery (n = 35); Group 3, fetuses for which expectant management had been decided (n = 27). RESULTS: In Group 1, stillbirth was observed after a mean delay of 6.3 days. Group 2 delivered at an average of 31.6 weeks and two died in the neonatal period (6%). In Group 3 after a mean delay of 8 days, average gestational age at delivery was 31.7 weeks; two intra uterine and four perinatal deaths were observed (22%). Long-term follow-up revealed no sequelae in 25/31 (81%) and 15/18 (83%), and major handicap occurred in 1 (3%) and 2 patients (11%), respectively, for Groups 2 and 3. CONCLUSION: Fetal mortality was observed in 22% of this high risk group. After a mean period of follow-up of 5 years, 82% of infants showed no sequelae. According to our management, IUGR associated with umbilical Doppler II or III does not show any benefit from an expectant management in term of long-term morbidity.

Towards a User-Friendly Platform for Building Language Resources based on Web Services

This paper presents the platform developed in the PANACEA project, a distributed factory that automates the stages involved in the acquisition, production, updating and maintenance of Language Resources required by Machine Translation and other Language Technologies. We adopt a set of tools that have been successfully used in the Bioinformatics field, they are adapted to the needs of our field and used to deploy web services, which can be combined to build more complex processing chains (workflows). This paper describes the platform and its different components (web services, registry, workflows, social network and interoperability). We demonstrate the scalability of the platform by carrying out a set of massive data experiments. Finally, a validation of the platform across a set of required criteria proves its usability for different types of users (non-technical users and providers).

Towards a user-friendly webservice architecture for statistical machine translation in the PANACEA project

This paper presents a webservice architecture for Statistical Machine Translation aimed at non-technical users. A workfloweditor allows a user to combine different webservices using a graphical user interface. In the current state of this project,the webservices have been implemented for a range of sentential and sub-sententialaligners. The advantage of a common interface and a common data format allows the user to build workflows exchanging different aligners.

End of Life Conversations, October 2003

A short course designed for adult study groups Prepared by the Curriculum Task Force of the End-of-Life Care Coalition of Central Iowa

Apprima't

Proyecto final de carrera sobre el desarrollo de una aplicación móvil para plataformas Android, conteniendo fragmentos, actividades y manejos de bases de datos.Se utiliza también el API de Google Maps para mostrar la posición del usuario y puntos precargados desde la base de datos.

Patients' knowledge of Diabetes five years after the end of an educational program

We present a cross-sectional study that aims to describe the sociodemographic and clinical conditions of individuals with diabetes mellitus and to analyze their knowledge of treatment five years after the end of an educational program in which they took part. In 2010, 40 individuals who had participated in a diabetes educational program for 12 months in 2005 at a primary care service were interviewed. A form was used for data collection that included their knowledge of the notion, physiopathology, and treatment of the disease; exercise; nutrition; foot care; self-monitoring of capillary blood glucose at home; hypoglycemia; chronic complications; special situations; and family support. The results showed that the volunteers incorporated the information about the notion, physiopathology, and treatment of the disease; exercise; foot care; self-monitoring; care associated with hypoglycemia; chronic complications; and special situations. In contrast, nutrition and family support require further reinforcement. It is concluded that five years after the end of the educational program, the participants kept most of the information provided.

How Much Chemotherapy Are Patients With Advanced Pancreatic Cancer Receiving at the End of Life?

Background: Advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma (APC) is a chemoresistant cancer with poor prognosis. We evaluated the use of chemotherapy in the last months of life.Methods: Retrospective analysis of patients with APC treated from 1993 to 2010 at the Oncology Institute of Southern Switzerland. Clinical and laboratory parameters starting from 28 days prior to the last administration of chemotherapy were recorded, including ECOG performance status, presence of ascites, haemoglobin (Hb), white blood cell (WBC) count, platelets, total bilirubin, albumin, LDH, C-reactive protein (C-rp) and Ca 19.9.Results: The characteristics of the 231 patients were: males/females 53%/47%; metastatic/locally advanced disease 80%/20%; median age 66 years (range 32−85). Median overall survival calculated from diagnosis was 6.1 months (95% CI: 5.1−7.2); death was due to disease progression in all cases. At last chemotherapy administration, ECOG performance status was 0−1 in 38% and 2−3 in 62%. Fifty-nine percent of pts received first-line chemotherapy only (gemcitabine in 70%; gemcitabine-based doublets or 5FU in 30%), whilst 32%, 8% and 1% had second- (5FU 37%; oxaliplatinbased doublets 57%; phase I trial 6%), third- and fourth-line therapy (single agent or phase I trial), respectively. The interval between last chemotherapy administration and death was <4 weeks in 24%, _4−12 weeks in 47% and >12 weeks in 29%. Table 1 summarizes the proportion of patients treated according to the interval between last chemotherapy and death refered to chemotherapy line. Median survival from last chemotherapy delivery to death was 7.5 weeks (95% CI 6.7−8.4). In univariate analysis, presence of ascites, elevated WBC, total bilirubin, LDH, C-rp and Ca 19.9, and reduced albumin were found to predict shorter survival (p < 0.05 for each). However, none of them was an independent predictor in the multivariate analysis.Conclusions: A significant proportion of patients with APC received chemotherapy in the last months of life. In our study, none of the clinical and laboratory parameters recorded 28 days priorto the last chemotherapy delivery were found to predict survival.

Factors influencing Intensive Care Units nurses in end-of-life decisions

OBJECTIVETo identify the factors that influence the Intensive Care Unit nurse in the decision-making process in end-of-life situations.METHODEthnographic case study, which used the theoretical framework of medical anthropology. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 nurses.RESULTSThe inductive thematic analysis enabled us to identify four themes:The cultural context of the Intensive Care Unit: decision-making in situations of end-of-life; Beliefs and subjectivity of care in end-of-life situations; Professional experience and context characteristics of end-of-life care situations; and Humanization practices in end-of-life situations: the patient and family centered care.CONCLUSIONProfessional maturity, the ability to transmit information and the ability to negotiate are directly related to the inclusion of nurses in the decision-making process.

MyHits: improvements to an interactive resource for analyzing protein sequences.

The MyHits web site (http://myhits.isb-sib.ch) is an integrated service dedicated to the analysis of protein sequences. Since its first description in 2004, both the user interface and the back end of the server were improved. A number of tools (e.g. MAFFT, Jacop, Dotlet, Jalview, ESTScan) were added or updated to improve the usability of the service. The MySQL schema and its associated API were revamped and the database engine (HitKeeper) was separated from the web interface. This paper summarizes the current status of the server, with an emphasis on the new services.

A user's guide to the encyclopedia of DNA elements (ENCODE).

The mission of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project is to enable the scientific and medical communities to interpret the human genome sequence and apply it to understand human biology and improve health. The ENCODE Consortium is integrating multiple technologies and approaches in a collective effort to discover and define the functional elements encoded in the human genome, including genes, transcripts, and transcriptional regulatory regions, together with their attendant chromatin states and DNA methylation patterns. In the process, standards to ensure high-quality data have been implemented, and novel algorithms have been developed to facilitate analysis. Data and derived results are made available through a freely accessible database. Here we provide an overview of the project and the resources it is generating and illustrate the application of ENCODE data to interpret the human genome.