A framework for enhancing spatial and temporal granularity in report-based health surveillance systems

Background

Current public concern over the spread of infectious diseases has underscored the importance of health surveillance systems for the speedy detection of disease outbreaks. Several international report-based monitoring systems have been developed, including GPHIN, Argus, HealthMap, and BioCaster. A vital feature of these report-based systems is the geo-temporal encoding of outbreak-related textual data. Until now, automated systems have tended to use an ad-hoc strategy for processing geo-temporal information, normally involving the detection of locations that match pre-determined criteria, and the use of document publication dates as a proxy for disease event dates. Although these strategies appear to be effective enough for reporting events at the country and province levels, they may be less effective at discovering geo-temporal information at more detailed levels of granularity. In order to improve the capabilities of current Web-based health surveillance systems, we introduce the design for a novel scheme called spatiotemporal zoning.

Method

The proposed scheme classifies news articles into zones according to the spatiotemporal characteristics of their content. In order to study the reliability of the annotation scheme, we analyzed the inter-annotator agreements on a group of human annotators for over 1000 reported events. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation is made on the results including the kappa and percentage agreement.

Results

The reliability evaluation of our scheme yielded very promising inter-annotator agreement, more than a 0.9 kappa and a 0.9 percentage agreement for event type annotation and temporal attributes annotation, respectively, with a slight degradation for the spatial attribute. However, for events indicating an outbreak situation, the annotators usually had inter-annotator agreements with the lowest granularity location.

Conclusions

We developed and evaluated a novel spatiotemporal zoning annotation scheme. The results of the scheme evaluation indicate that our annotated corpus and the proposed annotation scheme are reliable and could be effectively used for developing an automatic system. Given the current advances in natural language processing techniques, including the availability of language resources and tools, we believe that a reliable automatic spatiotemporal zoning system can be achieved. In the next stage of this work, we plan to develop an automatic zoning system and evaluate its usability within an operational health surveillance system.     

O等位基因引起ABO基因型与表现型定型差异

保证输血时血清学方面的安全,首要的是对受血者与献血者ABO血型定型,血清学检查通常分两个步骤.正定型通常使用鼠源单克隆抗体检测红细胞表面是否存在A或B抗原.互补的实验即反定型,利用当红细胞上缺乏A或B抗原时,人群可天然产生相对应的抗体的原理,检测血清中是否存在抗-A或者抗-B抗体.确定了受血者红细胞表面的ABO抗原以及血浆中的抗体,便能确定血型,为其提供相合的血液.     

Treatment planning study for carcinoma of the esophagus: helium ions versus photons

Helium ion radiotherapy significantly reduces dose to adjoining critical structures in the treatment of carcinoma of the esophagus when the same treatment plan is compared with megavoltage photon therapy. A five-field 18 MV photon treatment plan, selected to minimize lung dose, is compared with helium ions using the same field configuration. Dose volume histograms show target coverage, as well as dose delivered to critical structures lung, heart, mediastinum, and spinal cord. Although both helium ions and photons deliver approximately the same lung dose for this treatment plan, radiation to the heart and spinal cord from this field arrangement is significantly reduced with the helium ion beam. The concentration of dose at the tumor site, while sparing surrounding normal tissue, is characteristic of charged particle therapy, particularly with light ions, which includes particles with Z from that of protons (Z = 1) through that of neon (Z = 10).     

Charged particle irradiation of chordoma and chondrosarcoma of the base of skull and cervical spine: the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory experience

Forty-five consecutive patients with chordoma or chondrosarcoma at the base of skull or cervical spine were treated at the University of California Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (UCLBL) and University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco (UCSF) between November 1977 and October 1986. All patients had undergone a subtotal surgical resection. Twenty-three patients were treated definitively with charged particles, 13 patients were treated with photons and particles, and 9 patients were treated for recurrent disease. Total doses ranged from 36 to 80 Gray equivalent (GyE). Thirty-three patients are alive with a minimum followup of 1 year. The actuarial survival and local control for all patients at 5 years is 62% and 59%, respectively. Patients treated for primary disease had a 78% actuarial local control rate at 2 years, whereas the rate for patients with recurrent disease was 33%. Patients with smaller visible tumor volumes (less than 20 cc) had a significantly better local control rate than patients with larger tumor volumes (80% vs 33% actuarial rate at 5 years). Patients with chondrosarcoma had the highest local control rate, as did patients treated with particles alone. Complications included 3 patients with unilateral visual loss, two patients who became blind, and 4 patients with radiation injury to the brainstem.     

New discoveries and directions for medical, dental and dental hygiene research: low temperature atmospheric pressure plasma

Abstract:  The study of plasma integrates physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering, and has recently engaged medicine and dental hygiene in research efforts. The study of plasma holds promise for a myriad of applications ranging from lasers and electronics, hazardous waste management, decontamination, sterilization and disinfection of foods, soil, water, instruments, to medical uses in wound healing and treating certain types of tumours and cancers. Plasma represents a new state-of-the-art sterilization and disinfection treatment for certain oral and enviornmental pathogens, heat-sensitive materials, contaminated medical waste, hard and soft surfaces, and ventilation systems may assist health care facilities in the management of various health concerns. The role that Low Temperature Atmospheric Pressure Plasma (LTAPP) could play in the inactivation of pathogenic microorganisms might prove to be a new, faster, noncorrosive, more economical alternative, as well as support green healthcare.     

Non-metric multidimensional performance indicator scaling reveals seasonal and team dissimilarity within the National Rugby League

Objectives

Analysing the dissimilarity of seasonal and team profiles within elite sport may reveal the evolutionary dynamics of game-play, while highlighting the similarity of individual team profiles. This study analysed seasonal and team dissimilarity within the National Rugby League (NRL) between the 2005 to 2016 seasons.

Einfluß der Ultraviolettbestrahlung auf die Malignitätsdisposition des Kaninchenkrebses

Zusammenfassung Faßt man die Ergebnisse beider oben geschilderten Versuche zusammen, so kommt man zu dem Schluß, daß durch UV.-Bestrahlung in einigermaßen vernünftiger Dosierung die Malignitätsdisposition des Kaninchensnicht gesteigert wird. Selbst wenn man zugibt, daß durch extremste Überdosierung unter Umständen Neoplasmen entstehen können, so zeigen doch die eigenen Versuche die Unschädlichkeit einer mäßigen Strahlendosierung. Wir glauben, diese beim Kaninchen gewonnenen Ergebnisse auch auf den Menschen übertragen zu dürfen: Die von einigen Autoren festgestellte Möglichkeit eines Höhensonnen-krebses ist für die Praxisohne jede Bedeutung.Weiterhin aber geht aus den geschilderten Versuchen hervor, daß durch UV.-Bestrahlung allein oder in Kombination mit Eisentherapie die Malignitätsdisposition des Kaninchens in keiner Weise verringert wird.Sieht man von der unter besonderen Versuchsbedingungen geglücktenErzeugung maligner Tumoren durch extreme Bestrahlung ab, kommt man zu dem Schluß:Ultraviolette Strahlen und Carcinomwachstum haben miteinander nichts zu tun.     

Allgemeine Therapie

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Allgemeine Therapie

Ohne Zusammenfassung