Category: Statistics

PLoS One. 2022 Apr 13;17(4):e0266364. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266364. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 crisis forced many changes to occur within organizations, which were necessary to keep the continuance of the organization’s operations. Job performance seems to be an important factor determining such continuance, through its influence on the performance of entire organization. Shaping and keeping job performance in times of COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge for organizations, due to its negative impact on employees, causing their stress or lack of sense of security. There is a growing role of HRM specialists in appropriately shaping HRM strategies that can positively shape job-related attitudes, resulting in enhanced job performance during such difficult times. Therefore, this study aims to explain the role of COVID-19 oriented HRM strategies in shaping job performance through job-related attitudes such as work motivation, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment in a time of crisis occurring in the organization due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was conducted among 378 organizations operating in Poland during 2nd wave of COVID-19 pandemic. To verify the hypotheses, descriptive statistics were calculated using IBM SPSS and path analysis was performed using IBM AMOS. The result shows that combined set of “hard” HRM strategies related to the financial aspects and “soft” HRM strategies related to keeping employees’ wellbeing during the crisis gives the best results in shaping job performance through job-related attitudes and consequently strengthening organizational performance. This study contributes to the knowledge concerning the development of COVID-19 oriented HRM strategies, which may also have practical application.

PMID:35417468 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0266364

PLoS One. 2022 Apr 13;17(4):e0263872. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263872. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

Environmental challenges are as wide as the universe so that its different dimensions can be the subject of diverse studies. In this research, using 17 data from Asia-Pacific during the period 2000 to 2017, an attempt has been made to investigate the economic factors responsible for the ecological footprint in the fishing sector. The main contribution of the present study is to investigate the effects of nine economic freedom indicators along with other control variables on environmental pressure on the status of fishery resources. Based on the results, the Kuznets curve hypothesis was confirmed in the fishing grounds footprint, so that the growth of GDP per capita shows a positive and significant effect, while its squared form coefficient is negative. Other control variables including natural resource rents, urbanization, and energy intensity, do not show significant effects on the fishing footprint. The different components of economic freedom show different effects, while their cumulative effects in the form of the total economic freedom index have a positive effect on the footprint of fishing and lead to increased extraction from fishing resources. The results show that the Government Integrity, Tax Burden, Business Freedom, Monetary Freedom indices increase the fishing footprint, while the indices of trade freedom and investment freedom, by revealing the negative effects on the fishing footprint, have beneficial environmental effects in reducing the pressure on the aquatic resources of countries. The results of the present study reveal the need to examine how the various dimensions of economic freedom affect to provide the proper management of fishery resources.

PMID:35417457 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0263872

Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2022 Apr 13. doi: 10.1097/CORR.0000000000002212. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Strength testing of shoulder rotation is commonly used in clinical examinations of the shoulder. People prone to shoulder injury, such as overhead athletes and manual trade workers, place their shoulders under tremendous amounts of stress when the cervical spine is in nonneutral positions. If these nonneutral cervical spine positions result in decreased shoulder strength, it may help explain the etiology of the high prevalence of shoulder injuries in these populations. Given standard clinical strength assessments are performed with a neutral cervical spine, an investigation into the effects of cervical spine rotation is warranted.

QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: We sought to compare isokinetic shoulder rotation strength while in a neutral position with rotated cervical spine positions, specifically (1) with the cervical spine rotated contralaterally with the shoulder elevated in the frontal plane and (2) with the cervical spine rotated ipsilaterally and the shoulder elevated in the scapular plane.

METHODS: A convenience sample of 52 individuals (height 170 ± 10 cm; weight 73 ± 18 kg, age 21 ± 2 years; 18 males, 34 females), without shoulder or cervical spine pathology participated in this study. Participants were screened for eligibility via questionnaire. Concentric shoulder internal and external rotation torque was measured through a 90° arc on an isokinetic dynamometer with the shoulder elevated 90° in the frontal plane, and again 45° anterior to the frontal plane (scapular plane). Two repetitions were performed in a single testing session with the participant’s cervical spine in neutral in both planes, maximally rotated contralaterally in the frontal plane, and maximally rotated ipsilaterally with the shoulder in the scapular plane; the second repetition was used for analysis. The testing order was randomized. Data were imported into a platform for statistical parametric mapping analysis (a technique that allows data from the entire arc of motion to be compared with data from another arc to identify differences in the wave form) to compare strength between positions throughout 90° arc of motion.

RESULTS: Rotating the cervical spine contralaterally with the shoulder in the frontal plane resulted in a decrease in external (2.24 Nm or 12% average difference; p < 0.001) and internal (2.22 Nm or a 6% average difference; p = 0.02) rotation strength with the forearm within 15° and 20° of the vertical position. Rotating the cervical spine ipsilaterally with the shoulder in the scapular plane resulted in a decrease in external rotation strength (1.27 Nm or a 6% average difference; p < 0.001) throughout nearly all the motion, with peaks approximately 20° and 60° from the horizontal position, and internal rotation strength (1.78 Nm or 5% average difference; p < 0.001) the last 60° towards the horizontal position.

CONCLUSION: Patient populations who require strenuous use of their shoulders in altered cervical spine positions may be at increased risk for injury from decreased shoulder rotator strength.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Clinicians should assess shoulder strength in the position the patient requires to use their shoulder because cervical spine position may cause weakness that would be missed in standard testing positions.

PMID:35417438 | DOI:10.1097/CORR.0000000000002212

Am J Gastroenterol. 2022 Apr 13. doi: 10.14309/ajg.0000000000001774. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Outcomes and safety of budesonide maintenance therapy in microscopic colitis (MC) are not well known.

METHODS: Adult residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota diagnosed with MC (2002-2019) and treated with budesonide were identified using the Rochester Epidemiology Project. Response was assessed at 12 +/- 4 weeks after initiation of therapy and defined as complete (resolution of diarrhea), partial (≥50% improvement in number of bowel movements), nonresponse (<50% improvement), and intolerance (discontinued due to side-effects). For safety outcomes, cases (budesonide maintenance) and MC controls (no budesonide therapy) were matched by gender and age at diagnosis (+/-2 years).

RESULTS: A total of 450 patients were identified, of which 162 (36.0%) were treated with budesonide for induction of clinical remission [median age 67 (23-91) years and 126 (77.8%) female]. Clinical outcomes for induction were as follows: 130 (80.2%) complete response, 22 (13.6%) partial response, 8 (4.9%) no response, and 2 (1.2%) intolerance. After induction, 96 (63.2%) had recurrence after discontinuation; 27 (28.1%) required further budesonide induction treatment without maintenance, 56 (58.3%) required long-term budesonide maintenance, and 13 (13.5%) were treated with other therapies. Of those receiving budesonide maintenance, all responded [55 (98.2%) complete, 1 (1.8%) partial]. No patient stopped maintenance from adverse events. The median duration of follow-up was 5.6 years (0.3-18.9). There was no significant difference between cases and controls in the incidence of osteopenia/ osteoporosis, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, glaucoma, or cataracts.

CONCLUSION: The long-term use of budesonide in MC appears to be effective and generally well tolerated with limited adverse effects.

PMID:35417427 | DOI:10.14309/ajg.0000000000001774

JBJS Rev. 2021 Sep 9;9(9):e20.00074-7. doi: 10.2106/JBJS.RVW.20.00074.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Customized total knee arthroplasty (C-TKA) systems are becoming increasingly popular in patients with end-stage knee arthritis. Manufactured with use of patient data derived from computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging, these systems aim to restore the individual bone anatomy of the patient by providing customized fit and geometries. This retrospective study investigated implant survivorship, patient satisfaction, and functional outcomes following C-TKA with a cruciate-retaining prosthesis.

METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed data from 540 knees in 433 patients who underwent C-TKA performed by a single surgeon at a single institution. Patient demographics, surgical variables, complications, and reoperations were evaluated. Follow-up evaluations were performed via a single telephone call to assess patient satisfaction, functional outcomes according to the Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score for Joint Replacement (KOOS-JR) questionnaire, and implant survivorship following C-TKA. Descriptive statistics were analyzed.

RESULTS: At the time of C-TKA, the mean age was 71.8 years and the mean body mass index was 29.1 kg/m2. The mean follow-up was 2.8 years. Patient satisfaction was high, with 89% of C-TKA patients being either satisfied or very satisfied. The mean KOOS-JR was 82. There were 8 revisions (1.5%) at an average of 0.7 years after the index C-TKA; hence, there was an implant survivorship of 98.5%.

CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this was the largest retrospective study to date to report on patient satisfaction, functional outcomes, and implant survivorship following C-TKA. We observed a high satisfaction rate, satisfactory functional outcomes, and high implant survivorship at midterm follow-up.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic Level IV. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

PMID:35417432 | DOI:10.2106/JBJS.RVW.20.00074

Anesth Analg. 2022 Apr 13. doi: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000006042. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Two trials reported that a high inspiratory oxygen fraction (Fio2) does not promote myocardial infarction or death. Observational studies can provide larger statistical strength, but associations can be due to unobserved confounding. Therefore, we evaluated the association between intraoperative Fio2 and cardiovascular complications in a large international cohort study to see if spurious associations were observed.

METHODS: We included patients from the Vascular events In noncardiac Surgery patIents cOhort evaluatioN (VISION) study, who were ≥45 years of age, scheduled for overnight hospital admission, and had intraoperative Fio2 recorded. The primary outcome was myocardial injury after noncardiac surgery (MINS), and secondary outcomes included mortality and pneumonia, all within 30 postoperative days. Data were analyzed with logistic regression, adjusted for many baseline cardiovascular risk factors, and illustrated in relation to findings from 2 recent controlled trials.

RESULTS: We included 6588 patients with mean age of 62 years of whom 49% had hypertension. The median intraoperative Fio2 was 0.46 (5%-95% range, 0.32-0.94). There were 808 patients (12%) with MINS. Each 0.10 increase in median Fio2 was associated with a confounder-adjusted increase in odds for MINS: odds ratio (OR), 1.17 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.12-1.23; P < .0001). MINS occurred in contrast with similar frequencies and no significant difference in controlled trials (2240 patients, 194 events), in which patients were given 80% vs 30% oxygen. Mortality was 2.4% and was not significantly associated with a median Fio2 (OR, 1.07; 95% CI, 0.97-1.19 per 0.10 increase; P = .18), and 2.9% of patients had pneumonia (OR, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.95-1.15 per 0.10 increase; P = .34).

CONCLUSIONS: We observed an association between intraoperative Fio2 and risk of myocardial injury within 30 days after noncardiac surgery, which contrasts with recent controlled clinical trials. Fio2 was not significantly associated with mortality or pneumonia. Unobserved confounding presumably contributed to the observed association between Fio2 and myocardial injury that is not supported by trials.

PMID:35417425 | DOI:10.1213/ANE.0000000000006042

JMIR Res Protoc. 2022 Mar 16. doi: 10.2196/35971. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Social distancing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce spread of COVID-19 infection in the UK have led to substantial changes in delivering ongoing care for patients with chronic conditions, including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Clinical guidelines for management and prevention of complications for people with T2DM delivered in primary care services advise ‘routine annual reviews’ and were developed when face-to-face consultations were the norm. The shift in consultations from face-to-face to remote consultations caused a reduction in direct clinical contact and may impact on the process of care for people with T2DM.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to explore the impact of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic on the monitoring of people with T2DM using ‘routine annual reviews’ from a national primary care perspective in England.

METHODS: A retrospective cohort study of adults with T2DM will be performed using routinely collected primary care data from the Oxford-Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Research and Surveillance Centre (RSC). We will describe the change in the rate of monitoring of glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) between the first year of the COVID pandemic (2020) and the preceding year (2019). We will also report any change in the eight checks that compose the components of these reviews. The change in glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) monitoring rates will be determined using a multi-level logistic regression model, adjusting for patient and practice characteristics and similarly, the change in a composite measure of the completeness of all eight checks will be modelled using ordinal regression. The models will be adjusted for the following patient level variables: age, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, COVID-19 shielding status, duration of diabetes, comorbidities; then at practice-level: urban versus rural, practice size, Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) achievement, NHS Region and proportion of face-to-face consultations. Ethical approval was provided by the University of Oxford Medical Sciences Interdivisional Research Ethics Committee (2nd September 2021, Reference: R77306/RE001).

RESULTS: The analysis of the data extract will include 3.96 million T2DM patients across 700 practices, which is 6% of the available Oxford-RCGP RSC adult population. The preliminary results will be submitted to a conference under the domain of primary care. The resulting publication will be submitted to a peer-review journal on diabetes and endocrinology.

CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on the delivery of care but little is known on the process of care of people with T2DM. This study will report the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these processes of care.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT: DERR1-10.2196/35971.

PMID:35417404 | DOI:10.2196/35971

IEEE Trans Cybern. 2022 Apr 13;PP. doi: 10.1109/TCYB.2022.3162957. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Various domain adaptation (DA) methods have been proposed to address distribution discrepancy and knowledge transfer between the source and target domains. However, many DA models focus on matching the marginal distributions of two domains and cannot satisfy fault-diagnosed-task requirements. To enhance the ability of DA, a new DA mechanism, called deep joint distribution alignment (DJDA), is proposed to simultaneously reduce the discrepancy in marginal and conditional distributions between two domains. A new statistical metric that can align the means and covariances of two domains is designed to match the marginal distributions of the source and target domains. To align the class conditional distributions, a Gaussian mixture model is used to obtain the distribution of each category in the target domain. Then, the conditional distributions of the source domain are computed via maximum-likelihood estimation, and information entropy and Wasserstein distance are employed to reduce class conditional distribution discrepancy between the two domains. With joint distribution alignment, DJDA can achieve domain confusion to the highest degree. DJDA is applied to the fault transfer diagnosis of a wind turbine gearbox and cross-bearing with unlabeled target-domain samples. Experimental results verify that DJDA outperforms other typical DA models.

PMID:35417368 | DOI:10.1109/TCYB.2022.3162957

Medicina (B Aires). 2022;82(2):217-222.

ABSTRACT

Uncertainty is present in every medical activity and its inadequate management may have negative consequences. The Physicians’ Reactions to Uncertainty (PRU) scale is used to quantify tolerance to uncertainty in medical doctors. Our objective was to carry out the translation into Spanish, cultural adaptation and validation of the PRU scale. The second objective was to compare the results in the PRU scale according to gender, years since graduation and specialty (surgical vs. clinical). The steps followed were: translation into Spanish, review by the committee, back translation, review of the back translations and conduct of the pilot test. The study population was chosen randomly. The Student’s T test was used to compare the scores in the sub-groups, considering of statistical significance a p value of = 0.05. The a-Cronbach was calculated to establish its reliability. Of 116 physicians, 106 answered the survey (91%). No meaningful difference was found in any of the subscales according to gender. Physicians with less than 10 years since graduation showed significantly greater reluctance to disclose mistakes to physicians (p = 0.0001). Surgical specialty physicians got significantly greater scores in the subscale Reluctance to disclose uncertainty to patients (p = 0.0047). The a-Cronbach average value was 0.78. These findings indicate that younger physicians and surgical specialists have greater reluctance to disclose uncertainty and mistakes. Having this information and a validated tool can be helpful to study uncertainty in medical doctors in Latin America and drive strategies to appropriately deal with it.

PMID:35417385

IEEE Trans Cybern. 2022 Apr 13;PP. doi: 10.1109/TCYB.2022.3155875. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

One of the important issues associated with real-life high-dimensional data analysis is how to extract significant and relevant features from multiview data. The multiset canonical correlation analysis (MCCA) is a well-known statistical method for multiview data integration. It finds a linear subspace that maximizes the correlations among different views. However, the existing methods to find the multiset canonical variables are computationally very expensive, which restricts the application of the MCCA in real-life big data analysis. The covariance matrix of each high-dimensional view may also suffer from the singularity problem due to the limited number of samples. Moreover, the MCCA-based existing feature extraction algorithms are, in general, unsupervised in nature. In this regard, a new supervised feature extraction algorithm is proposed, which integrates multimodal multidimensional data sets by solving maximal correlation problem of the MCCA. A new block matrix representation is introduced to reduce the computational complexity for computing the canonical variables of the MCCA. The analytical formulation enables efficient computation of the multiset canonical variables under supervised ridge regression optimization technique. It deals with the “curse of dimensionality” problem associated with high-dimensional data and facilitates the sequential generation of relevant features with significantly lower computational cost. The effectiveness of the proposed multiblock data integration algorithm, along with a comparison with other existing methods, is demonstrated on several benchmark and real-life cancer data.

PMID:35417362 | DOI:10.1109/TCYB.2022.3155875