Tag: nevin manimala

Health Serv Res. 2022 Apr 15. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.13988. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To assess changes in local economic outcomes before and after rural hospital closures.

DATA SOURCES: Rural hospital closures from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2018 were obtained from the Sheps Center for Health Services Research. Economic outcomes from this same period were obtained from Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Quarterly Workforce Indicators, U.S. Federal Reserve Economic Data, RAND Corporation state statistics database, U.S. Social Security Administration, and U.S. Census Bureau.

DESIGN: Difference-in-differences study of 2,094 rural counties.

DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION: The primary exposure was county-level rural hospital closures. The primary outcomes were county-level unemployment rates; employment-population ratios; labor force participation-population ratios; per capita income; total jobs; health care sector jobs; disability program participation-population ratios; percent of population with subprime credit scores; total filings for bankruptcies per 1,000 population; and population size.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A total of 104 rural counties experienced a hospital closure, compared to 1,990 rural counties that did not. Rural hospital closures were associated with significant reductions in health care sector employment (-13.8%; 95% CI: -22%, -5.6%; p<0.001), but not with changes in any other economic measure. For unemployment rates, employment-population ratios, per capita income, disability program participation-population ratios, and total jobs, we found evidence of adverse trends preceding hospital closures. Findings were robust to adjusting for county-specific time trends, specifying exposure at the commuting zone-level, and using alternate definitions of rurality to define sample counties.

CONCLUSION: With the exception of a decline in jobs within the health care sector, there was no association between rural hospital closures and county-level economic outcomes. Instead, economic conditions were already declining in counties experiencing closures compared to those that did not.

PMID:35426125 | DOI:10.1111/1475-6773.13988

Int J Gynaecol Obstet. 2022 Apr 15. doi: 10.1002/ijgo.14218. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of a previous pregnancy and delivery on perineal trauma rates in the subsequent vaginal birth.

METHODS: Retrospective cohort study. The perineal outcomes of secundiparous women with history of previous (first) delivery in one of three categories: failed operative vaginal delivery (FOVD) and second stage emergency caesarean section (EmCS); elective caesarean section (ELCS), and vaginal delivery (VD) with intact perineum, were compared with a control primiparous group.

RESULTS: The percentage OASIs at first vaginal delivery after prior FOVD+EmCS was 17.3%(n=9), 12.9%(n=18) after previous ELCS, and 0.6%(n=9) after prior VD maintaining an intact perineum, compared with 6%(n=1193) in the control primiparous group of women. Multivariate regression analysis demonstrated prior FOVD+EmCS and ELCS were associated with a statistically significant increased risk of OASIs of 180% and 110% when compared to control (odds ratio (OR): 2.80; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.35-5.78 and OR: 2.10; 95%CI: 1.27-3.48) respectively. Prior VD with intact perineum was associated with a statistically significantly reduced risk of OASIs (OR: 0.09; 95%CI: 0.04-0.17).

CONCLUSIONS: Previous FOVD+EmCS and ELCS were associated with increased risk of OASIs in subsequent vaginal delivery compared to control, whilst previous VD with intact perineum was associated with decreased risk.

PMID:35426118 | DOI:10.1002/ijgo.14218

Biometrics. 2022 Apr 15. doi: 10.1111/biom.13679. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Multivariate time-series (MTS) data are prevalent in diverse domains and often high dimensional. We propose new random projection ensemble classifiers with high-dimensional MTS. The method first applies dimension reduction in the time domain via randomly projecting the time-series variables into some low dimensional space, followed by measuring the disparity via some novel base classifier between the data and the candidate generating processes in the projected space. Our contributions are two-fold: (i) we derive optimal weighted majority voting schemes for pooling information from the base classifiers for multiclass classification, and (ii) we introduce new base frequency-domain classifiers based on Whittle likelihood (WL), Kullback-Leibler divergence (KL), Eigen-Distance (ED) and Chernoff divergence (CH). Both simulations for binary and multiclass problems, and an EEG application demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methods in constructing accurate classifiers with high-dimensional MTS. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID:35426119 | DOI:10.1111/biom.13679

Atten Percept Psychophys. 2022 Apr 14. doi: 10.3758/s13414-022-02475-6. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

We examined how object categories and scene contexts act in conjunction to structure the acquisition and use of statistical regularities to guide visual search. In an exposure session, participants viewed five object exemplars in each of two colors in each of 42 real-world categories. Objects were presented individually against scene context backgrounds. Exemplars within a category were presented with different contexts as a function of color (e.g., the five red staplers were presented with a classroom scene, and the five blue staplers with an office scene). Participants then completed a visual search task, in which they searched for novel exemplars matching a category label cue among arrays of eight objects superimposed over a scene background. In the context-match condition, the color of the target exemplar was consistent with the color associated with that combination of category and scene context from the exposure phase (e.g., a red stapler in a classroom scene). In the context-mismatch condition, the color of the target was not consistent with that association (e.g., a red stapler in an office scene). In two experiments, search response time was reliably lower in the context-match than in the context-mismatch condition, demonstrating that the learning of category-specific color regularities was itself structured by scene context. The results indicate that categorical templates retrieved from long-term memory are biased toward the properties of recent exemplars and that this learning is organized in a scene-specific manner.

PMID:35426031 | DOI:10.3758/s13414-022-02475-6

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Apr 15. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-20120-5. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Greenhouse gas emissions have brought a serious challenge to the global environment and climate. Efficient and accurate prediction of carbon emissions is essential for the decision-making sectors to control growth and formulate policies. Firstly, considering the economic, demographic, and energy factors, a novel nonlinear multivariate grey model (ENGM(1,4)) based on environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is proposed with respect to the data characteristics of the incomplete information of carbon emission of transportation sector. The model integrates the IPAT (“Influence = Population, Affluence, Technology”) equation and the extended atochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology model (STIRPAT). Secondly, the derivation method is used to solve the time response equation of the model and the quantum particle swarm optimization algorithm (QPSO) is designed to optimize the model parameters. Then, 18 years of carbon emission data from China, the USA, and Japan are selected as the validation set. Comparative analysis indicates that the prediction accuracy of the statistical models and the intelligent models depends on sufficient samples and complex variables, and has certain limitations in limited sample prediction. The calculation results show that the new model outperforms other models in various evaluation indicators, indicating that its prediction accuracy is higher. Finally, the projections show that in 2019-2025, the average increase in carbon emissions from the transport sector in China and the USA was 2.837% and 2.394%, respectively, while Japan shows a downward trend with an average decline rate of 1.2231%. The analyzed prediction results are consistent with current situation of the three countries and the transport sectors, demonstrating the high accuracy and reliability of the new model.

PMID:35426026 | DOI:10.1007/s11356-022-20120-5

Atten Percept Psychophys. 2022 Apr 14. doi: 10.3758/s13414-022-02489-0. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

It is well known that attentional selection is sensitive to the regularities presented in the display. In the current study we employed the additional singleton paradigm and systematically manipulated the probability that the target would be presented in one particular location within the display (probabilities of 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%). The results showed the higher the target probability, the larger the performance benefit for high- relative to low-probability locations both when a distractor was present and when it was absent. We also showed that when the difference between high- and low-probability conditions was relatively small (30%) participants were not able to learn the contingencies. The distractor presented at a high-probability target location caused more interference than when presented at a low-probability target location. Overall, the results suggest that attentional biases are optimized to the regularities presented in the display tracking the experienced probabilities of the locations that were most likely to contain a target. We argue that this effect is not strategic in nature nor the result of repetition priming. Instead, we assume that through statistical learning the weights within the spatial priority map are adjusted optimally, generating the efficient selection priorities.

PMID:35426029 | DOI:10.3758/s13414-022-02489-0

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Apr 15. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-20114-3. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The foundation for many solar energy uses as well as economic and environmental concerns is global solar irradiation information. However, due to solar irradiation and measurement variations, reliable worldwide statistics on solar irradiation are frequently impossible or challenging to acquire. In addition, more precise forecasts of solar irradiation play an increasingly important role in electric energy planning and management due to integrating photovoltaic solar systems into power networks. Hence, this paper proposes a new hybrid model for 1-h ahead solar irradiation forecasting called LGC-GMDH (local gravitational clustering-group method of data handling). The novel LGC-GMDH model is based on local clustering that adequately captures the underlying features of the solar irradiation time series. Each cluster is then forecasted using the GMDH method, which is a self-organized system capable of handling very complicated nonlinear problems. Finally, these local forecasts are reconstructed in order to obtain the global forecast. Comparative study between the proposed model and the traditional individual models such as backpropagation neural network (BP), supporting vector machines (SVM), long short-term memory (LTSM), and hybrid models such as BP-MLP, RNN-MLP, LSTM-MLP hybrid wavelet packet decomposition (WPD), convolutional neural network (CNN) with LSTM-MLP, and ANFIS clustering shows that the proposed model overcomes conventional model deficiencies and achieves more precise predicting outcome.

PMID:35426023 | DOI:10.1007/s11356-022-20114-3

Ir J Med Sci. 2022 Apr 14. doi: 10.1007/s11845-022-02993-0. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: SARS-CoV-2 infection can affect other organs aside from those of respiratory system, particularly the kidney, heart, blood, digestive tract, and nervous system. COVID-19 renal compromise consists of different syndromes since proteinuria, hematuria, and acute kidney injury (AKI), until chronic kidney disease. Since COVID-19-induced renal tubular damage has been described as a potential antecedent condition to AKI installation, it was decided to evaluate how COVID-19 affects tubular function.

MATERIALS AND METHOD: Serum inflammatory parameters, urinalysis, and classical urinary indexes in COVID-19 admitted patients who had neither AKI nor chronic kidney disease (CKD) were evaluated. Statistical analysis was performed by applying Student t test.

RESULTS: Renal tubular function was evaluated in 41 COVID-19 admitted patients who had neither AKI nor CKD. Patients’ mean age was 56 years, males (79%), and with normal creatininemia (0.8 ± 0.2 mg/dL) and eGFR (105.7 ± 6.5 mL/min) values. It was found mild hypocalcemia and a relative increased fractional excretion (FE) of sodium, FE of calcium, FE of phosphorus, calcium-creatinine index, urinary osmolarity, and relative alkaline urine pH values.

CONCLUSION: Tubular dysfunction was documented in COVID-19 patients.

PMID:35426014 | DOI:10.1007/s11845-022-02993-0

Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Apr 14. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-20085-5. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Widespread contamination of the superficial, drinking, and groundwater by perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) was discovered in the Veneto Region (northeast of Italy) in 2013. Mothers from the contaminated area were concerned about the effects of PFAS on their own and their children’s health. We determined the factors that influenced the perceived risk of PFAS and the presence of self-reported diseases by conducting a study with 384 mothers of children aged 1-13 years living in the contaminated area (Red Zone, Veneto, Italy). Information on demography, the sources of exposure, and the health condition of the mothers was collected through an online survey. The serum PFAS concentration was recorded for some of the participants. We determined the factors influencing the perceived risk, risk of health outcomes, and serum PFAS levels through regression analyses. The PFAS perceived risk of the mothers increased with an increase in the trust in scientific institutions and social media, and when many friends were present, trust in politics and full-time employment had a protective effect. The PFAS perceived risk increased the occurrences of self-reported and autoimmune diseases. Longer residence (> 20 years) in the most exposed area (Red Zone A) increased the frequency of some health outcomes. Serum PFAS concentrations decreased with breastfeeding, but increased with tap water consumption, residence in Red Zone A, and residence time. The PFAS perceived risk of the mothers was associated with many factors that influenced reporting of health issues. The association between PFAS exposure and health outcomes needs further investigation.

PMID:35426015 | DOI:10.1007/s11356-022-20085-5

Clin Oral Investig. 2022 Apr 14. doi: 10.1007/s00784-022-04482-1. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: This retrospective study aimed to comprehensively delineate the epidemiological and 3-dimensional radiographic characteristics of non-third molar (non-M3) impacted teeth in a Chinese dental population.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Patients with impacted teeth except for the third molar (ITEM3) were retrospectively screened via cone-beam CT images from 75,021 patients treated at our institution from June 2012 to December 2018. Demographic and clinical data of patients with ITEM3 were retrieved from medical records. CBCT coupled with 3-dimensional reconstruction was employed to characterize the radiographic features of ITEM3. Associations between these epidemiological, clinical, and radiographic features were further statistically analyzed.

RESULTS: Among 1975 eligible patients, 2467 ITEM3s were identified with a prevalence of 2.63% (1975/75,021). Females slightly outnumbered males with a ratio of 1.12:1. The majority of ITEM3 was single (1577, 79.85%) in the maxilla. The maxillary canine teeth were the most frequently impacted (52.45%), followed by maxillary incisors. The mesioangular position was the most common orientation (43.8%), followed by vertical and buccal-lingual orientations. The most frequently associated lesion was external root resorption of the adjacent tooth, which was significantly correlated with the morphology and position of the impacted tooth.

CONCLUSION: Most ITEM3 was single, mesioangular, found at maxillary canines, sometimes associated with diverse complications. Our data advance the current understanding of ITEM3 and offer insights into the management of this dental abnormality.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE: These findings are useful for clinicians to comprehensively understand the prevalence, radiographic features, and complications of non-M3 impacted teeth.

PMID:35426001 | DOI:10.1007/s00784-022-04482-1