Incomplete List Research Articles

Clarifications

The German Standing Vaccination Committee (Standige Impfkommission, STIKO) at the Robert Koch Institute welcome the fact that the authors draw attention to gaps in vaccination and to vaccination requirements in patients with chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), especially if they receive treatment with immunosuppressants. These patients quite often do not get protective vaccines although they are of particular importance for them. However, cursory reading may prompt readers to misunderstand the recommendations made by the STIKO. The STIKO therefore wish to clarify the following facts: Table 1 of the article might create the impression that the STIKO have issued general vaccination recommendations explicitly for patients with IBD. However, this is not the case. Regarding vaccination against hepatitis A and hepatitis B, the authors correctly point out that the vaccination recommendation in this context relates to patients with disorders of the liver or those that involve the liver, which may—or may not—be the case in IBD. According to the cited STIKO recommendations (Epidemiologisches Bulletin of the Robert Koch-Institute 30/2010) immunizations against influenza and pneumococci are indicated in case of congenital or acquired immunodeficiencies (for example, pharmacological immunosuppression) or in case of an increased health risk due to an underlying disease. IBD is not mentioned on the incomplete list of exemplary underlying diseases. It therefore requires individual medical assessment to establish whether an increased health risk is present. The statements concerning the meningococcal and Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) vaccinations exceed the STIKO recommendations. In the cited remarks these vaccinations are termed as “indicated” for patients with immunodeficiency in analogy to the (conjugated) pneumococcal -vaccine. However, the STIKO explicitly mentioned the unsatisfactory data situation and existing licensing restrictions. The paper of Teich et al. might lead to the incorrect impression that these remarks are formal STIKO recommendations.

Modeling loosely annotated images using both given and imagined annotations

In this paper, we present an approach to learn latent semantic analysis models from loosely annotated images for automatic image annotation and indexing. The given annotation in training images is loose due to: 1. ambiguous correspondences between visual features and annotated keywords; 2. incomplete lists of annotated keywords. The second reason motivates us to enrich the incomplete annotation in a simple way before learning a topic model. In particular, some keywords are poured into the incomplete annotation through measuring similarity between keywords in terms of their co-occurrence. Then, both given and imagined annotations are employed to learn probabilistic topic models for automatically annotating new images. We conduct experiments on two image databases (i.e., Corel and ESP) coupled with their loose annotations, and compare the proposed method with state-of-the-art discrete annotation methods. The proposed method improves word-driven probability latent semantic analysis (PLSA-words) up to a comparable performance with the best discrete annotation method, while a merit of PLSA-words is still kept, i.e., a wider semantic range.

First Home Buyers’ Support Schemes in Australia

Government policy to encourage home ownership has a long history in Australia. In 1918, for example, the War Service Homes Act made provision for 45 year loans to ex‐service personnel to facilitate home purchase. Since then, home ownership has been encouraged by a variety of measures. A short and incomplete list includes the non‐taxation of imputed rent on owner‐occupied houses, exemption from capital gains tax, provision of incentives to financial institutions to finance construction of owner‐occupied homes, employer‐provided incentives for home ownership as part of salary packages, and schemes directed towards disadvantaged socio‐economic groups.

The B-cell antigen receptor signals through a preformed transducer module of SLP65 and CIN85

Spleen tyrosine kinase Syk and its substrate SLP65 (also called BLNK) are proximal signal transducer elements of the B-cell antigen receptor (BCR). Yet, our understanding of signal initiation and processing is limited owing to the incomplete list of SLP65 interaction partners and our ignorance of their association kinetics. We have now determined and quantified the in vivo interactomes of SLP65 in resting and stimulated B cells by mass spectrometry. SLP65 orchestrated a complex signal network of about 30 proteins that was predominantly based on dynamic interactions. However, a stimulation-independent and constant association of SLP65 with the Cbl-interacting protein of 85 kDa (CIN85) was requisite for SLP65 phosphorylation and its inducible plasma membrane translocation. In the absence of a steady SLP65/CIN85 complex, BCR-induced Ca(2+) and NF-κB responses were abrogated. Finally, live cell imaging and co-immunoprecipitation experiments further confirmed that both SLP65 and CIN85 are key components of the BCR-associated primary transducer module required for the onset and progression phases of BCR signal transduction.

Erratum

Singh R, Hazarika P, Nayak DR, Thomas C. Implants in Medialization Thyroplasty: Silastic vs Gore-Tex. Otolaryngol Head and Neck Surg. 2010;143:P215-P216. (Original doi: 10.1016/j.otohns.2010.06.423) In the 2010 Program issue of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, there was an incomplete list of authors on p. 215. The full list of authors should have appeared as follows: Rohit Singh, MS, DNB; Produl Hazarika, MS, FRCS; Dipak Ranjan Nayak, MS; Christopher Thomas, MBBS

Image Gently: Partnerships to promote radiation protection for children worldwide

Strategies to promote radiation protection for children worldwide can be challenging to implement at a local level. On the other hand, partnerships among established agencies, scientific societies and other groups can have a far greater impact at the local level, effecting change more rapidly and broadly compared to each group acting alone. Through collaboration, there is less redundancy of effort and these groups can promote the unique strength of each organization. This paper reviews the different groups that have worked with the Image Gently campaign and discusses international approaches to achieve their desired outcome of radiation protection for children throughout the world. Image Gently is a social marketing campaign that was started in 2007 by the Society for Pediatric Radiology, the American Society of Radiologic Technologists, the American College of Radiology and the American Association of Physicists in Medicine to raise awareness, develop education materials and advocate for children in promoting radiation protection. This group founded the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging, which now has 62 members, 25 of them international. Fortunately for children worldwide, there are many active international groups, some with immense global reach, that have worked on this initiative for many years. This paper will review how the collaborative efforts among the groups have been instrumental in bringing attention to this issue, emphasizing the unique perspective of each organization as complementary strategies for outreach efforts to different audiences around the world. Some of the information below is taken from each organization’s website and these sources are gratefully acknowledged. The following is an incomplete list of the organizations that have contributed to this international effort. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (www.iaea.org) is a large worldwide organization centered in Vienna, Austria, that describes itself as “the world’s center of cooperation in the nuclear field.” Under the United Nations authority, it was created in 1957 as the “Atoms for Peace” organization in follow-up to World War II. According to its website, the agency works with its member nations and multiple partners worldwide to promote safe, secure and peaceful use of all facets of nuclear technology. Specifically, the Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging has worked with the Radiation Protection of Patients unit. This group is responsible for developing and directing multi-national projects on medical radiation protection, education and training and quality assurance activities in more than 60 countries. Steering committee members of the Disclaimer Authors have no financial interests, investigational or offlabel uses to disclose.

A Lower Bound Model for Multiple Record Systems Estimation with Heterogeneous Catchability

This work considers the estimation of the size N of a closed population using incomplete lists of its members. Capture histories are constructed by establishing the presence or the absence of each individual in all the lists available. Models for data featuring a heterogeneous catchability and list dependencies are considered. A log-linear model leading to a lower bound for the population size is derived for a known set of list dependencies and a latent catchability variable with an arbitrary distribution. This generalizes Chao’s lower bound to models with interactions. The proposed model can be used to carry out a search for important list interactions. It also provides diagnostic information about the nature of the underlying heterogeneity. Indeed, it is shown that the Poisson maximum likelihood estimator of N under a dichotomous latent class model does not exist for a particular set of LB models. Several distributions for the heterogeneous catchability are considered; they allow to investigate the sensitivity of the population size estimate to the model for the heterogeneous catchability.

The Literary Corpus of George of Laodicea

AbstractThis article deals with issues relating to the literary corpus of George of Laodicea. A brief description of the known contents of George’s corpus is provided at the outset in order to correct incomplete or inaccurate lists that appear elsewhere. Two topics are then discussed in more detail. First, reports about George’s lost anti-Manichaean treatise are examined in order to further our understanding of him and his place in the fourth-century Church. It is suggested that he is one of the founders of the Christian anti-Manichean tradition. Second, in response to recent denials of his authorship of the Homoiousian letter written in the summer of 359 on the part of Jeffrey Steenson, Winrich Löhr, and Xavier Morales, it is argued that George played the primary role in its composition.

Academician Andrey Mikaelian — the founder of waveguide ferrite technology

The full Member of Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Engineering, Professor, laureate of Lenin prize, State prize of the Russian Federation, State prize of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and Lomonosov prize, the chevalier of SPIE Gold Medal (the higher award of the International Society for Optical Engineering), A.S. Popov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences-such was the incomplete list of regalia and awards of A.L. Mikaelian, the Chief scientist of JSC "Radio Engineering Corporation "Vega".

Aggregating Incomplete Lists of Journal Rankings: An Application to Academic Accounting Journals*

AbstractWe introduce a branch‐and‐cut algorithm to aggregate published journal rankings based on subsets of the accounting literature in order to create a consensus ranking. The aggregate ranking allows specialist and regional journals, which may only be ranked in a limited number of studies, to be placed with respect to each other and with respect to the generalist journals that are usually included in ranking studies. The approach we develop is a significant advance over ad hoc approaches to aggregating journal rankings that have appeared in the literature and may provide a theoretically sound and replicable basis for further exploration of the concept of journal quality and the stability of journal rankings over time and ranking methods.

Capture-recapture analysis with a latent class model allowing for local dependence and observed heterogeneity

In epidemiology, capture-recapture models are commonly used to estimate the size of an unknown population based on several incomplete lists of individuals. The method operates under two main assumptions: independence between the lists (local independence) and homogeneity of capture probabilities of individuals. In practice, these assumptions are rarely satisfied. We introduce a multinomial latent class model that can account for both list dependence and heterogeneity. Parameter estimation is performed by maximizing the conditional likelihood function with the use of the EM algorithm. In addition, a new approach for evaluating the standard errors of the parameter estimates is discussed, which considerably reduces the computational burden associated with the evaluation of the variance of the population size estimate.

Size versus stability in the marriage problem

Given an instance I of the classical Stable Marriage problem with Incomplete preference lists ( smi), a maximum cardinality matching can be larger than a stable matching. In many large-scale applications of smi, we seek to match as many agents as possible. This motivates the problem of finding a maximum cardinality matching in I that admits the smallest number of blocking pairs (so is “as stable as possible”). We show that this problem is NP-hard and not approximable within n 1 − ε , for any ε > 0 , unless P=NP, where n is the number of men in I . Further, even if all preference lists are of length at most 3, we show that the problem remains NP-hard and not approximable within δ , for some δ > 1 . By contrast, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for the case where the preference lists of one sex are of length at most 2. We also extend these results to the cases where (i) preference lists may include ties, and (ii) we seek to minimize the number of agents involved in a blocking pair.

Sergios d’Akmonia, un nouvel évêque en Phrygie Capatienne

The article presents a first edition of an inscription from the ancient city of Akmonia in Capatian Phrygia, today Ahat Köy. This monument reveals the name of a formerly unknown bishop, Sergios, who is to be added to the very incomplete episcopal list of the city. Several internal elements, such as the mention of Capatian Phrygia, the term sticheros and particularities of language (extreme iotacisms and syntactical irregularities) lead us to date the bishop Sergios’s epitaph to the beginning of the tenth century.

Finding large stable matchings

When ties and incomplete preference lists are permitted in the stable marriage and hospitals/residents problems, stable matchings can have different sizes. The problem of finding a maximum cardinality stable matching in this context is known to be NP-hard, even under very severe restrictions on the number, size, and position of ties. In this article, we present two new heuristics for finding large stable matchings in variants of these problems in which ties are on one side only. We describe an empirical study involving these heuristics and the best existing approximation algorithm for this problem. Our results indicate that all three of these algorithms perform significantly better than naive tie-breaking algorithms when applied to real-world and randomly-generated data sets and that one of the new heuristics fares slightly better than the other algorithms, in most cases. This study, and these particular problem variants, are motivated by important applications in large-scale centralized matching schemes.

Thomas Paulay Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering University of Canterbury (1923–2009)

Thomas Paulay Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering University of Canterbury (1923–2009)

E-Prescribing: Clinical Implications for Patients with Diabetes

With the recent Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and stimulus package incentives for health information technology, many clinicians are expected to adopt or enhance their use of e-prescribing systems. E-prescribing has nearly eradicated medication errors resulting from prescriber handwriting interpretations, yet several other patient-care and workflow benefits still remain a promise. As prescribers select or update their e-prescribing systems (whether stand-alone or integrated with electronic health records), close attention is needed to the e-prescribing application features and level of clinical decision support to avoid clinical blind spots, including incomplete or inaccurate patient medication lists, poor drop-down menu or screen design, and lack of clinically relevant and actionable drug interaction and drug allergy alerts. This article presents three case studies that highlight common e-prescribing problems involving diabetes patients.

An improved approximation lower bound for finding almost stable maximum matchings

In the stable marriage problem that allows incomplete preference lists, all stable matchings for a given instance have the same size. However, if we ignore the stability, there can be larger matchings. Biró et al. defined the problem of finding a maximum cardinality matching that contains minimum number of blocking pairs. They proved that this problem is not approximable within some constant δ > 1 unless P = NP , even when all preference lists are of length at most 3. In this paper, we improve this constant δ to n 1 − ε for any ε > 0 , where n is the number of men in an input.

Is the German suspension of MON810 maize cultivation scientifically justified?

We examined the justifications invoked by the German government in April 2009 to suspend the cultivation of the genetically modified maize varieties containing the Bt insect-resistance trait MON810. We have carried out a critical examination of the alleged new data on a potential environmental impact of these varieties, namely two scientific papers describing laboratory force-feeding trials on ladybirds and daphnia, and previous data on Lepidoptera, aquatic and soil organisms. We demonstrate that the suspension is based on an incomplete list of references, ignores the widely admitted case-by-case approach, and confuses potential hazard and proven risk in the scientific procedure of risk assessment. Furthermore, we did not find any justification for this suspension in our extensive survey of the scientific literature regarding possible effects under natural field conditions on non-target animals. The vast majority of the 41 articles published in 2008 and 2009 indicate no impact on these organisms and only two articles indicate a minor effect, which is either inconsistent during the planting season or represents an indirect effect. Publications from 1996 to 2008 (376 publications) and recent meta-analyses do not allow to conclude on consistent effects either. The lower abundance of some insects concerns mainly specialized enemies of the target pest (an expected consequence of its control by Bt maize). On the contrary, Bt maize have generally a lower impact than insecticide treatment. The present review demonstrates that the available meta-knowledge on Cry1Ab expressing maize was ignored by the German government which instead used selected individual studies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11248-009-9297-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

AN INTERVIEW WITH HIROFUMI UZAWA

AN INTERVIEW WITH HIROFUMI UZAWA

Review of Hospital Preparedness Instruments for National Incident Management System Compliance

No standard exists by which to evaluate a hospital's compliance for the National Incident Management System (NIMS). The instruments available and in use today for the evaluation of hospital preparedness have variable adherence to the principles and elements set forth in NIMS. This is especially evident in the areas of command and management and communications and information management. The use of NIMS as a standard remains itself in question because of its lack of focus on the health care environment and incomplete list of pertinent elements.