Important Items Of Information Research Articles

A State of the Art Review of Systems of Linear Inequalities and Related Observability Problems

This work is a short review of the state of the art aiming to contribute to the use, disclosure, and propagation of systems of linear inequalities in real life, teaching, and research. It shows that the algebraic structure of their solutions consists of the sum of a linear subspace, an acute cone, and a polytope, and that adequate software exists to obtain, in their simplest forms, these three components. The work describes, based on orthogonality and polarity, homogeneous and complete systems of inequalities, the associated compatibility problems, and their relations with convex polyhedra and polytopes, which are the only possible solution for bounded problems, the most common in real practice. The compatibility and the observability problems, including their symbolic forms, are analyzed and solved, identifying the subsets of unknowns with unique solutions and those unbounded, important items of information with practical relevance in artificial intelligence and automatic learning. Having infinitely many solutions of a given problem allows us to find solutions when some of the assumptions fail and unexpected constraints come into play, a common situation for engineers. The linear programming problem becomes trivial when the set of all solutions is available and all solutions are obtained, contrary to the case of standard programs that provide only one solution. Several examples of applications to several areas of knowledge are presented, illustrating the advantages of solving these systems of inequalities.

Evaluation of drug information from carton boxes, leaflets and pharmacy personnel: situation analysis in Myanmar.

This study assessed how Myanmar consumers received drug information from the drug products and dispensers of community pharmacies. Content analysis was used to evaluate drug information attached to 3 drug categories of 30 drug samples, and simulated patient studies at 247 pharmacies of selected townships in Yangon region were performed. Descriptive statistics and independent t-test were used for data analysis. Among 30 proxy drug products, more than 80% provided information in English language both on the carton boxes and on leaflets. About 86.7% of leaflets were intended only for healthcare professional uses and not understandable for lay consumers. The simulated patient study found that overall drug information provided by dispensers was limited as confirmed by information providing mean score of 4.25 ± 2.06 out of a total of 18 points. Many other important information items such as drug name, concomitant drugs use, common side effects and when to stop taking medicine were rarely provided. None of the simulated patients received carton box or leaflet. This study proved that Myanmar consumers did not receive enough drug information from both the products and dispensers, and thus the provision of understandable drug information for patients is required to improve patients' safe use of medications.

Important clinician information needs about family members in the intensive care unit

PurposeClinicians often lack key information regarding intensive care unit (ICU) families. Our objective was to identify (1) important information for clinicians to know about ICU families when making decisions and (2) important information for families to know about patients from clinicians. Materials and methodsWe identified important information items through a literature review and semistructured interviews. A separate cohort of family members, nurses, and physicians from 2 ICUs in a single institution were asked to prioritize the identified information as necessary for decision making. ResultsWe identified 21 items important for clinicians to know about families and 32 items important for families to know about patients from clinicians. Themes important for clinicians to know about family members included family background, questions, understanding, goals, concerns, well-being, and requests for additional help. Themes important for families to know about the patient included diagnosis, treatments, prognosis, clinical status, schedule, comfort, goals of care, medical team, and family participation. ConclusionsThrough qualitative and quantitative analysis, we identified important information for ICU clinicians to know about family members and for family members to know about patients. The identified information can be used to guide strategies and tools to improve assessment of and communication with families.

Situational awareness for supporting building fire emergency response: Information needs, information sources, and implementation requirements

Building fire emergencies are big threats to safety of building occupants and first responders, and they can result in significant property losses. During building fire emergency response operations, establishment and utilization of situational awareness are of essential importance, enabling first responders, especially incident commanders, to better assess changing on-scene situations and make informed decisions. The paper uses an interactive card game to guide first responders to establish situational awareness about an imaginary building fire emergency, and examines the information items needed by first responders in this process. An evaluation of the importance of each information item is performed. The results show that location and status of occupants and first responders, and status and development of fire and smoke are the foremost important information items. Information items in the “at emergency scene” category were updated on average five times more frequently than information items in other categories. In order to investigate sources for obtaining the above information, and examine requirements for better implementing situational awareness at emergency scenes, a nationwide survey was conducted with first responders in the United States. The results point out a discrepancy between current and desired information sources for establishing situational awareness at building fire emergency scenes. The paper also reports detailed implementation requirements, including type of assistance, level of details and format of representation for establishing situational awareness, and illustrates statistical impacts of location, years of experience and job title on the requirements.

Information transfer to out-of-hours co-operatives: a survey of general practitioners’ views in relation to palliative patients

BackgroundIn Ireland, weekend and night medical cover for community based patients is largely provided by general practice co-operatives. Doctors working in this service do not have direct access to patients’...

Relationship between Religious Coping and Silver Lining Tendencies among Cancer Patients

Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body. In categorizing neoplasms, 3 most important items of information are the location of tumor (site, topography), histological or cytological appearance and the behavior of the tumor (benign, malignant). Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer death among females, accounting for 23% of the total cancer cases and 14% of cancer deaths. Lung cancer is the leading cancer site in males; comprising 17% of the total cancer cases and 23% of the total cancer deaths (GLOBOCAN, 2008). Symptoms of cancer depend on the type, location of the cancer. Some symptoms that can occur with most cancers are chills, fever, loss of appetite, night sweats, weight loss, etc. Though the cause of many types of cancer is unknown, some of the common causal factors are benzene and other chemicals, drinking excess alcohol, environmental toxins like poisonous mushrooms and a type of poison that can grow on peanut plants (aflatoxins), excessive sunlight exposure, genetic problems, obesity, radiation, viruses, age (the incidence of most cancers with age), sex (most cancers are more frequent in men than in women), race (some nasopharyngeal cancers occur more among Chinese and in some regions of USA, while prostate cancer is almost twice as common among Africans as Americans/Europeans) place of residence certain cancers (lung, breast), etc (Morris etal., 1988).Treating the cancer patients involves multistages and the approach is also multifolded. The most common mainstream cancer treatments include suigery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. These therapies may be used either alone or in combination with other therapies and approaches. One important consideration in treating cancer patients, being the victim of a life threatening disease is religious means of coping. More than 85% of the world's population adhere to some religion, including Christianity with around 2 billion and Islam with more than 1 billon (Adherents, 2003), each, with its own doctrines, attitudes and practices. Thus, religiosity is part of our culture, and it plays an important role in determining many aspects of our lives, which includes coping with illness.Spirituality is more concerned with direct experience of latent higher consciousness within one's self, i.e. the internal space, and religion is an institutionalized set of beliefs, practices, and guidelines that an individual adopts and follows. Positive religious coping methods, such as prayer and benevolent religious appraisals of negative situations, reflect the perception of a secure relationship with God, a belief in a benevolent purpose to life, and a sense of connectedness with a religious community. In contrast, negative religious coping methods, such as attributions of situations to a punishing God and feelings of abandonment by God, reflects a struggle that grows out of a perception of a tenuous relationship with God, a more ominous view of life, and a sense of disconnectedness with a religious community. Empirical studies have demonstrated that many people turn to religion as a resource in their efforts to understand and deal with the most difficult times of their lives. In several studies, religion has been consistently found to be an important coping resource for those with life threatening illnesses. Positive religious coping among patients seem to be associated with enhanced Quality of Life (Tarakeshwar et al., 2006). Similar studies have been done by Mytko and Knight (1999) and Farell, Smith et al (2003) which show the importance of religion in coping with illness. Quite on the contrary, it seems that younger women with more advanced disease, who used more negative spiritual coping, had a greater tendency towards depression and that the use of negative coping was associated with greater anxiety scores (Boscaglia et al., 2005). Among cancer patients, there is more response to chemotherapy when the patient's faith score is higher (Lissoni et al. …

Content, Accuracy and Quality of Warfarin Patient Information.

Background: Warfarin is a very common, narrow therapeutic index drug which requires clear understanding by patients in order to ensure its safe use. Patients are largely educated about warfarin through written information sheets provided by pharmacies. It is critical that these sheets provide all of the essential information about warfarin use in a format that is accurate and understandable.Objective: The goals of this study were to assess the content and accuracy of warfarin information sheets provided to patients by community pharmacies as well as to assess the reading level of each information sheet.Methods: A reference standard for warfarin patient information was developed, based on a formal survey of a national group of thrombosis health professionals. Warfarin patient information sheets, distributed by community pharmacies, were compared to the reference standard. Reading level was assessed using two standardized instruments, the Flesch-Kincaid scale and SMOG scale, and compared to the recommended Grade 5 to 6 level for patient information sheets. Patient information booklets, distributed by the producers of warfarin, were also evaluated.Results: Six different warfarin patient information sheets were distributed by 98% of the community pharmacies in Ontario. On average, these sheets included only 44% of the recommended essential or important knowledge items (range 20–52%), with considerable variability in the content of specific items. Each sheet also contained incorrect information. The average reading level of the information sheets was Grade 11 (range Grade 7 to above Grade 12). On average, the pharmaceutical booklets included 71% of the essential or important information items (range 58–84%).Conclusions: Patients prescribed warfarin are likely to receive information sheets from a community pharmacy that contain less than half of the information content important to their safe use of warfarin as well as statements that are misleading or incorrect. Furthermore, comprehension of these sheets is limited by a reading level substantially higher than recommended. All six of the information sheets reviewed were derived from an American drug information database and therefore, generalized applicability of these results exists. The information that patients receive about warfarin must be improved and we suggest that a national standard be used.

Incompletely Written Prescribing Documents as a Basis for Drug Administration in Primary Health Care a Great Problem for the District Nurse

Objective.To investigate the quality of the written prescribing documents which form the basis for the district nurses' drug administration in primary care.Design.69 (77%) of the district nurses recorded data in the written prescribing documents for patients whom they saw during one week.Setting.16 primary-health-care centres in the southern part of Stockholm County, Sweden.Study object.935 written, prescribing documents.Results.More than half of the prescribing documents lacked one or more important items of information for the handling of the drugs and, in addition, 7,5% lacked these items altogether. Furthermore, about half of the prescribing documents with high pharmacological potency or high risk in the event of a missed dose lacked one or more items of information and 13,8% lacked these items altogether.Conclusion.A high percentage of qualitative shortcomings was discovered in the written prescribing documents handled by the district nurses. This cannot be considered to be compatible with the idea of good and safe treatment. The result also indicates an inefficient working situation for the health and medical staff involved and increased risk for the patient.

Surface‐Analytical Studies on Environmental and Geochemical Surface Processes

AbstractFor Abstract see ChemInform Abstract in Full Text.

Surface-analytical studies on environmental and geochemical surface processes.

The surface chemical compositions of solid samples from environmental and geological sources can differ from the bulk or average compositions, because of changes caused by adsorption, dissolution, oxidation, etc. Accordingly, analytical information on surface layers is important for a better understanding of the environmental chemistry involving solid surfaces. The rapid development of surface-analytical techniques has enabled us to probe the surface chemistry of environmental and geological solid samples of complex composition. This article demonstrates some examples of important items of information that can be obtained by applying surface-analytical techniques, such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry, to environmental and geological samples. The surface analysis of fly ashes, soils, sediments and weathered silicate minerals is reviewed.

Endoscopy reports, databases, and computers in 2001

Endoscopy reports, databases, and computers in 2001

Medical education for students in compulsory education: the conception of the preparation of three graded textbooks and preliminary evaluation of lectures using these textbooks

The school pharmacist in our hospital pharmacy used three graded textbooks about medicine for students at the Sukagawa School for the Health-Impaired (Fukushima Medical University Hospital Branch (H. I. school)). A revised textbook for 4th-6th grade elementary school students containing 12 important items of information about medicine, a new picture textbook for 1st-3rd grade elementary school students, and a new textbook containing practical data for junior high school students were prepared by supplementing original information with illustrations, simplified expression and large type face. Additionally, the pronunciation of Chinese characters was included in the textbook for the 1st-3rd grade elementary school students. In this study, 9 students from H. I. school and 37 students from Koyase junior high school took part in a questionnaire and an examination evaluating the usefulness of the lectures, and these textbooks, in regard to the student's recognition and understanding of medicine. Most students answered that the lectures and textbooks helped them to understand medicine. Furthermore, the results of the examination indicated that the students had a general understanding of medicine. In conclusion, we suggest that it is important for students in compulsory education to learn about medicine, and that according to the preliminary result of questionnaires and examinations, both the lectures and textbooks were useful to help the students to understand more about medicine.

Effects of Diagnostic Suggestion on the Clinical Judgments and Recall Memories of Autobiography

We hypothesized that diagnostic suggestion would significantly affect clinician-trainees' clinical judgment and recall of autobiographical information. Eighty volunteer clinician-trainees, assigned to two groups, read an autobiography written either by a depressed or a nondepressed person. Before reading one of the autobiographies, volunteer clinician-trainees were given one of two mental sets: (a) a diagnostic suggestion that the writer had been diagnosed as clinically depressed and is currently receiving individual therapy, or (b) no diagnostic suggestion. After reading the autobiography, participants rated the level of depression of the writer and wrote down any important items of information from the autobiography they could recall. A three week follow-up session repeating the rating of depression and recall was conducted. Results showed that giving no diagnostic information for the depressed person had no effect on recall of depression-consistent recall memories of the person. However, diagnostic sug...

A Logic-based Framework for Software Construction

This paper describes a framework for assisting the automatic construction of programs from separately designed and compiled modules. The framework has facilities to automatically extract many important items of information from source codes. It has also facilities to deduce new items from old ones. The framework also supports multiple versions, static, and dynamic selections of appropriate components. It supports graphical displays for system's components and their relationships.

Investigating Effect of Advanced Traveler Information on Commuter Tendency To Use Transit

A study of the effects of advanced transit information on commuter propensity to use transit is described. A computer-aided telephone interview was designed and conducted in Sacramento and San Jose, California. The most important information items that nontransit users seek about the transit services available to them is investigated. Using a customized stated preference choice sets, the likelihood that the commuters will use transit is explored. Commuter perceptions of transit and transit user satisfaction with the information currently available to them are studied. The results indicated that about 38 percent of the respondents who currently do not use transit might consider transit if the appropriate information is available. Analyses using the stated-preference technique and targeting this group of respondents indicated a promising effect of transit information systems in encouraging transit ridership if the desired information is provided. Using binary logit and ordered probit modeling produced resul...

THE IMPACT OF ADVANCED TRANSIT INFORMATION ON COMMUTERS' MODE CHANGING

Advanced transit information can contribute to the improvement of transit service levels by providing their users with information on several transit attributes. These systems might encourage non-transit users to use public transit if the desired information is provided. This paper presents a study into the effects of advanced transit information systems on commuters’ willingness to use transit and the market opportunities of such systems. To achieve the study's objectives, a computer-aided telephone interview (CATI) was conducted targeting two areas in Northern California (Sacramento and San Jose). The interview collected information on the most important information items that non-transit users seek to have about the transit services available to them. Then using an innovative customized stated preference design, commuters’ propensity to use transit in case their preferred transit information items were available was investigated. The survey also addressed commuters’ perceptions of transit, and transit ...

Investigating Effect of Advanced Traveler Information on Commuter Tendency to Use Transit

A study of the effects of advanced transit information on commuter propensity to use transit is described. A computer-aided telephone interview was designed and conducted in Sacramento and San Jose, California. The most important information items that nontransit users seek about the transit services available to them is investigated. Using a customized stated preference choice sets, the likelihood that the commuters will use transit is explored. Commuter perceptions of transit and transit user satisfaction with the information currently available to them are studied. The results indicated that about 38 percent of the respondents who currently do not use transit might consider transit if the appropriate information is available. Analyses using the stated-preference technique and targeting this group of respondents indicated a promising effect of transit information systems in encouraging transit ridership if the desired information is provided. Using binary logit and ordered pro-bit modeling produced results that show the significant effect of several commute and socioeconomic characteristics (such as travel time, car-pooling, and age) on the propensity of using transit.

Optimization of Fixturing Condition by Means of the Genetic Algorithm.

The fixturing process for holding and locating workpieces on machine tools is essential in manufacturing systems. This process is one of the important factors affecting machining accuracy and has sofar been carried out manually by skilled workers. In order to realize fully automated manufacturing systems in the near future, particularly in small-batch machining and assembly, it is necessary to automate the fixturing process. One of the key factors in realizing an automatic fixturing process is to develop a fixturing support system. This system provides several important items of information for fixturing such as positions of fixtures and fixturing forces. In this study, a new fixturing support system is proposed. The elastic deformation of the workpiece caused by the fixturing force is analyzed by the finite element method, and the optimum fixturing position which gives the minimum form error of the surface to be machined is determined. The genetic algorithm is applied to the optimization process of the fixturing condition.

The information needs of women newly diagnosed with breast cancer

Nurses can play a key role in patient education, including providing patients with useful and appropriate information. Rather than focusing on the process of education or information giving by nurses, this study places emphasis on the content of that information by taking the patients' perspective and asking the patients themselves what particular types of information are perceived as important at a specific point in time. The aim of the study was to explore what particular types of information were important to women newly diagnosed with breast cancer; to enable nurses and other health care professionals to utilize their time as effectively as possible and provide a high-quality service to individuals in their care. Women with breast cancer (a mean of 2.5 weeks from diagnosis) were interviewed and asked to compare items of information. The items of information were presented in pairs and the women stated a preference for one item in that pair. Thirty-six pairs were presented in total. The analysis involved the use of a Thurstone scaling model, which allowed rank orderings, or profiles of information needs, to be developed, reflecting the perceived importance of each item. Information about the likelihood of cure, the spread of the disease and treatment options were perceived as the most important items of information at the time of diagnosis. Other information needs, in order of descending priority, included information about the risk to family, side-effects of treatments, impact on family, self-care, effect on social life and sexual attractiveness. Profiles of information needs were produced to take account of differences in age, level of education and social class.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Evaluation of job candidates with missing information: Effects of attribute importance and interattribute correlation

AbstractHow do people make evaluations when important items of information are missing? In the context of personnel evaluations or product evaluations, researchers have proposed that decision makers may predict the missing attribute based on its assumed relationship to attributes that are present. In addition, some researchers have suggested that there is a penalty for missing information. An experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of the importance of the missing attribute on the hypothesized inference effect. Hypothetical job candidates were evaluated based on one or two attributes. The correlation between the attributes was varied between groups of subjects as was the importance of one of the attributes. The pattern of ratings of candidates with missing information varied significantly with the correlation condition when the missing attribute was very important, but did not vary as much when the missing attribute was less important. The results were generally consistent with the predictions of the Inferred Information Model (Johnson and Levin, 1985). On average, candidates with missing information were rated lower than comparable candidates with complete information and the missing attribute at an average level.