Set Of Preferences Research Articles

Preference towards HIV Self-Testing above Other Testing Options in a Sample of Men Who Have Sex with Men from Five European Countries.

We analyzed men who have sex with men (MSM) from Denmark, Germany, Greece, Portugal and Spain to identify who would choose HIV self-testing as their preferred testing method and assessed their preferred setting to acquire a self-testing kit and to confirm a reactive result. In 2016, we recruited an online sample of 3725 HIV-negative MSM. We used Poisson regression to identify factors associated with choosing self-testing as the preferred testing option. For those choosing it as their preferred option, we assessed the preferred settings to acquire a self-testing kit and to confirm a reactive result. Not being open about one’s sexual behaviors with men was associated with choosing self-testing as the preferred option, except in Greece; older age in Greece and Spain; reporting condomless anal intercourses (CAI) in Germany and Portugal; reporting one previous test in Greece; between 2 and 5 in Spain and with having been tested ≥ 12 months ago in Germany, Portugal and Spain. The internet (32.8%) was the preferred place to acquire a self-testing kit and primary care (34.0%) for confirmation purposes. Self-testing was highly valued, especially among individuals who were not open about their sexual behaviors with men. In certain countries, it was also associated with older age, CAI and being undertested.

The physical characteristics of children’s preferred natural settings in Australian primary school grounds

Children have less opportunity for contact with nature in our increasingly urbanised lifestyle yet natural environments play an important role in children’s health and development. Children spend considerable amount of their daily time at school hence school grounds are recognised as crucial settings that can increase children’s interaction with nature. However, little is known about the children’s preferences for the physical characteristics of various natural settings in schools. This qualitative study used walking tours, focus groups and behaviour mapping to identify the types of natural settings that primary school children preferred in three Australian school grounds. The study also documented children’s age and gender and the differences and similarities between the ways they used these settings. Thematic analysis revealed multiple physical characteristics of natural settings preferred by children in the school environments. These characteristics include physical features of different plant species, spatial location of the natural settings, their physical boundaries, and their condition. The results showed that children’s preferred natural settings featured elements that offered affordances to their play; were located along the playground edges; were often marked with boundaries that defined their play areas; and were well-maintained. This paper argues that vegetation in school grounds is important, but its presence is not enough to boost children’s interaction with natural environments. The type, context, and condition of natural settings should also be considered for children’s increased engagement with nature and be taken into account in the design and management of school grounds.

Rate-Adapted Decentralized Learning Over Wireless Networks

This paper proposes a communication strategy for decentralized learning in wireless systems that employs adaptive modulation and coding capability. The main objective of this work is to address a critical issue in decentralized learning based on the cooperative stochastic gradient descent (C-SGD) over wireless systems: the relationship between the transmission rate and the network density influences the runtime performance of learning. We first present that a dense network topology does not necessarily benefit the iteration performance of learning than a sparse one. However, it tends to degrade the runtime performance because the dense network topology requires a low-rate transmission. Based on these findings, a communication strategy is proposed in which each node optimizes its transmission rate to minimize communication time during the C-SGD under the constraints of network density. We perform numerical simulations of an image classification task under both independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) and non-i.i.d. settings. The simulation results reveal that the preferred setting for the network density depends on the channel conditions and the biases in the training samples. Furthermore, numerical simulations of an automatic modulation classification task indicate that the preferred setting is almost the same even if the training task is different.

Reduction in Hospital System Opioid Prescribing for Acute Pain Through Default Prescription Preference Settings: Pre-Post Study.

BackgroundThe United States is in an opioid epidemic. Passive decision support in the electronic health record (EHR) through opioid prescription presets may aid in curbing opioid dependence.ObjectiveThe objective of this study is to determine whether modification of opioid prescribing presets in the EHR could change prescribing patterns for an entire hospital system.MethodsWe performed a quasi-experimental retrospective pre–post analysis of a 24-month period before and after modifications to our EHR’s opioid prescription presets to match Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. We included all opioid prescriptions prescribed at our institution for nonchronic pain. Our modifications to the EHR include (1) making duration of treatment for an opioid prescription mandatory, (2) adding a quick button for 3 days’ duration while removing others, and (3) setting the default quantity of all oral opioid formulations to 10 tablets. We examined the quantity in tablets, duration in days, and proportion of prescriptions greater than 90 morphine milligram equivalents/day for our hospital system, and compared these values before and after our intervention for effect.ResultsThere were 78,246 prescriptions included in our study written on 30,975 unique patients. There was a significant reduction for all opioid prescriptions pre versus post in (1) the overall median quantity of tablets dispensed (54 [IQR 40-120] vs 42 [IQR 18-90]; P<.001), (2) median duration of treatment (10.5 days [IQR 5.0-30] vs 7.5 days [IQR 3.0-30]; P<.001), and (3) proportion of prescriptions greater than 90 morphine milligram equivalents/day (27.46% [10,704/38,976; 95% CI 27.02%-27.91%] vs 22.86% [8979/39,270; 95% CI 22.45%-23.28%]; P<.001).ConclusionsModifications of opioid prescribing presets in the EHR can improve prescribing practice patterns. Reducing duration and quantity of opioid prescriptions could reduce the risk of dependence and overdose.

EVALUATION OF THE INNOVATIVE VALUE PROPOSITION FOR THE RAIL FREIGHT TRANSPORT: AN INTEGRATED DEMATEL–ANP APPROACH

Freight transport represents a very dynamic and competitive market with high requirements for reliability, lead time, cost, flexibility and visibility of transport service. Rationalization of transport service, reduced travelling time and reliable delivery times represent the main prerequisites for lowering the costs and increasing the efficiency of entire transport chain. These performance indicators actually represent the main factors affecting the shipper’s mode choice. Improvement of these factors could be achieved by improved coordination between rail and non-rail-related stakeholders involved in freight transport service planning and realization. Since this solution requires a multi-stakeholder collaboration, it is needed to evaluate the interests of each of them in order to derive a preferred set of indicators, which will facilitate a collectively accepted solution and value alignment of all involved actors. In this paper, the preferred set of indicators was selected by using the DEcision MAking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) model technique integrated with the Analytic Network Process (ANP). DEMATEL is applied to analyse the causal relationships among the relevant dimensions and among the criteria within each dimension. The causal relationships are then used in ANP for determining the weights of the criteria. An empirical case study based on implementation of information sharing platform in rail intermodal transport chain is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Based on this study the attributes that belong to reliability (“departing / arriving on-time”, “cancelled services”), lead time (“idle time”) and investment cost (“organizational culture”, “business process redesign”) dimensions represent five the most critical factors for obtaining a collectively accepted solution. This effective evaluation model enables policy makers and stakeholders in transportation / logistics to understand and conduct appropriate actions towards fulfilling the objectives for greener transportation.

Electroconvulsive therapy practice in a general hospital in chile

IntroductionElectroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a current, relevant treatment for severe mental illness. In this article we describe our experience on ECT in a public hospital in Chile.ObjectivesDescribe a 34 patients’ cohort who received ECT and their outcomes.MethodsData was extracted from ECT records between 2018-2020, patients’ evaluations before and after ECT, and case files. Data was then analyzed and described.ResultsECT was received by 18 males and 16 females. Age ranged from 19 to 73 years (41 average). More than 75% had 12 or more years of education. Patients’ diagnoses and indications for ECT are shown in Figures 1-2The CGI-SI scale was applied to subjects before treatment, and 85% had a score of 5 or more. On average, patients received 8.7 ECT sessions. Right unilateral electrode placement (RUL) was preferred initially for 94% of patients. Brief pulse width (0.3ms) was most commonly used (76%). Seizure duration averaged in 29 seconds. Adverse reactions presented on 32%, most being mild. One treatment had to be stopped due to confusional symptoms post ECT. After ECT, 91% of patients improved according to CGI-GI scale. 55% were assessed CGI-GI 1 “very much improved”. MoCA scale was also evaluated, showing a 2,1 point gain.ConclusionsSchizophrenia and psychosis were the most frequent diagnosis and indication for ECT. RUL and brief pulse width were the preferred settings. This cohort suggests that ECT had an impact on markedly ill patients, based on CGI and MoCA scales.

Robust generalized Merton-type financial portfolio models with generalized utility

We include the notion of uncertainty and incomplete information within the classical Merton’s portfolio model. Incomplete information on the set of preferences is interpreted by means of a set-valued utility function. The model is formulated as set-valued optimization problems by construction. We provide scalarization techniques and equivalent formulations to reduce the complexity. The proposed models are robust with respect to noise induced by statistical estimation or data bias. Illustrative examples show how our new formulations work.

Sleep as a biological rhythm: clinical aspects

Insomnia is a widespread disorder affecting not only sleep quantity and quality, but also daytime well-being and performance, as well as having a negative impact on physical and mental health. Many people have problems falling asleep and maintaining sleep that do not reach the clinical criteria of insomnia. For all the prevalence of such sleep disorders, specialists often overlook a fundamentally important factor that affects sleep and wakefulness cycle, ease of falling asleep and daytime performance. These are circadian rhythms of the body under the control of the biological clock.This review highlights the specifics of the human biological clock and its relationship to insomnia and complaints of poor sleep. The phenomenon of the human chronotype as a set of individual preferences in sleep-wake rhythm is considered. Late chronotype, tat tends to wake up late and be active in the evening turns out to be the most vulnerable to the appearance of complaints of poor sleep and development of insomnia. This result is typical for different age groups. The reason for problems sleep for the late chronotype is the need to adjust to social demands and to fall asleep and wake up too early relative to the phase of one’s own circadian rhythm.Circadian rhythms may contribute to the formation and maintenance of insomnia. Both chronic and acute insomnia may have a chronobiological component that is not always considered. Late chronotype may be a factor further exacerbating the course of insomnia. The regularity of circadian rhythms may also be impaired in insomnia.The importance of the biological clock in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness also explains the successful approach to insomnia treatment with melatonin, which plays an important signaling role in the circadian regulation of the body.

Murky trade waters: Regional tariff commitments and non-tariff measures in Africa

In several African regions, economic integration has successfully reduced tariff protection by freezing the opportunity to raise applied tariffs against fellow integration partners above those promised. In this paper, we examine whether the regional tariff commitments on the continent have come at the expense of adverse side-effects on the prevalence of other – non-tariff – trade barriers. More specifically, regional tariff commitments have not only created large tariff overhangs – the difference between Most Favoured Nation (MFN) bound tariffs and effectively applied tariffs – for African WTO members, but they also sharply reduced their tariff policy space within Africa, thus leaving regulatory policies such as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBT) as one of the few legitimate options to level the playing field with market competitors. Comparing the effects of applied tariff overhangs towards all vis-a-vis African trading partners on SPS and TBT notifications of 35 African WTO members between 2001 and 2017, we find no overall relationship between tariff overhangs and import regulation in our preferred model setting. By contrast, larger tariff overhangs specific to intra-African trade relations have a significant share in increasing the probability of SPS measures and TBT. Our findings have important implications for future Pan-African integration under the recently launched African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in that success of fostering continental economic integration not exclusively depends on the realization of tariff liberalization, but similarly on a mindful coordination with non-tariff provisions.

Finding the most profitable candidate product by dynamic skyline and parallel processing

Given a set of existing products in the market and a set of customer preferences, we set a price for a specific product selected from a pool of candidate products to launch to market to gain the most profit. A customer preference represents his/her basic requirements. The dynamic skyline of a customer preference identifies the products that the customer may purchase. Each time the price of a candidate product is adjusted, it needs to compete with all of the existing products to determine whether it can be one of the dynamic skyline products of some customer preferences. To compute in parallel, we use a Voronoi-Diagram-based partitioning method to separate the set of existing products and that of customer preferences into cells. For these cells, a large number of combinations can be generated. For each price under consideration of a candidate product, we process all the combinations in parallel to determine whether this candidate product can be one of the dynamic skyline products of the customer preferences. We then integrate the results to decide the price for each candidate product to achieve the most profit. To further improve the performance, we design two efficient pruning strategies to avoid computing all combinations. A set of experiments using real and synthetic datasets are performed and the experiment results reveal that the pruning strategies are effective.

Familiar in the Unfamiliar – Children's, Parents', and Healthcare Professionals' Experiences of Procedure-Related Anesthesia in the Pediatric Oncological Ward

PurposeTo explore children's, parents', and healthcare professionals', experiences of anesthesia related to pediatric oncological treatment performed at the pediatric oncology ward. Design and methodsThe study was a qualitative study. 11 children and 12 parents were recruited for individual or dyadic interviews and two focus groups with a total of 12 healthcare professionals were recruited through purposeful and convenience sampling procedures. ResultsThematic analysis generated one main theme, the familiar in the unfamiliar, and two subthemes, the room creates an atmosphere and relational continuity. ConclusionsChanging the physical environment and composition of the team positively influenced the experience of anesthesia in pediatric cancer treatment for both children, parents, and healthcare professionals. Familiarity was important for all involved and familiarity was associated with continuity related to the physical environment, as well as the relational and procedural professional continuity. Parents expressed that they never felt good about anesthesia as there were feelings of leaving your child's life into the hands of others. However, familiarity in trusting relationships with healthcare professionals helped to moderate these aspects. Practice implicationsFamiliarity should be considered important with continuity in trusting relations and collaborations between nurses and families, as well as between healthcare staff. Pediatric oncology ward is a preferred safe familiar setting for procedure-related anesthesia. Parents and children value individualized flexible nursing care, that takes the child's and parents habits and preferences into account during procedure-related anesthesia in pediatric oncological treatment.

On Pathology Laboratory Recruitment and Retention.

The specific aims of the study are to analyze relationships between the personality traits of laboratory professionals and choice of profession and preferred work settings. Data from practicing laboratory professionals were collected via a web-based survey tool to gather information about personality types, choice of profession, and work setting preferences among medical laboratory professionals. Results of the survey showed that INFJ (Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging) is the most common medical laboratory personality type across the various laboratory work settings and that there are no significant differences between the practitioners' personality type and the choice of profession within pathology. The study revealed laboratorians from higher-volume laboratories were 1.2 times more likely to prefer Judging than lower-volume laboratories, and younger medical laboratory practitioners were 2.3 times more likely to gravitate toward Perceiving than their older counterparts. The results of this study shed light on how employers can build on the personality preferences of the laboratory workforce to improve personal job satisfaction and laboratory productivity, quality, and work culture. The research implications are useful for laboratory recruitment and retention.

Tourism Destination Preference Prediction Based on Edge Computing

In view of the fact that the important characteristics of tourism destination selection preference are not considered in the current prediction methods of tourism destination selection preference, resulting in low prediction accuracy and comprehensive accuracy and long prediction time, a tourism destination selection preference prediction method based on edge calculation is proposed. This paper uses edge computing to construct the characteristics of tourism destination selection preference and uses a random forest algorithm to select important features and carry out preliminary estimation and ranking. Using the multiple logit selection model, the tourists’ preference sequence for tourism destination selection is obtained and sorted and the tourism destination selection preference model is obtained. By calculating the weight value of tourism destination selection preference, the weight set of tourism destination selection preference is determined and the tourism destination selection preference is determined according to the link prediction method to realize the tourism destination selection preference prediction. The experimental results show that the comprehensive accuracy of the proposed method is good, which can effectively improve the prediction accuracy of tourism destination selection preference and shorten the prediction time of tourism destination selection preference.

Designing online grocery stores to support healthy eating for weight loss.

The current study aimed to identify features to include in online grocery stores to support healthful food purchasing by those striving to lose weight. A Value Proposition Design approach was used to gain shopper insights, devise potential online grocery store features and obtain feedback on these features. Telephone interviews were conducted to gain insight into shoppers' needs and perceptions. Results were used by the research team to identify potential online grocery shopping features that may support healthful purchase decisions, and interviews were conducted with a different sample of shoppers to gather feedback on features. Insight (n 25) and feedback (n 25) interviews were conducted with convenience samples of adults trying to lose weight. Participants were primarily female, white, college educated and with obesity or overweight. Online grocery features devised by the research team based on findings from the insight interviews included (1) shopping cart nutrition rating tool; (2) healthy meal planning tool; (3) interactive healthy eating inspiration aisle and (4) healthy shopping preference settings option. Findings from the feedback interviews indicated that the healthy meal planning tool, healthy shopping preference settings option and shopping cart nutrition rating tool features were positively rated by most participants. There are multiple features grocers should consider including in their online stores to attract and support customers striving to eat healthy for weight loss.

Influence of water repellent on the property of solid waste based sulfoaluminate cement paste and its application in lightweight porous concrete

• It is feasible to use water repellents reduce the water absorption of LPC based on SW-CSA cement. • The effect of water repellents on the properties of SW-CSA cement paste was presented. • Using calcium stearate as the water repellent doesn’t affect the hydration of SW-CSA cement. Solid waste-based calcium sulfoaluminate (SW-CSA) cement is a type of low carbon cement that uses solid waste as raw material. It is usually used to prepare lightweight porous concrete (LPC) due to its short setting time. However, high water absorption of LPC based on SW-CSA cement limits its extensive application. Water repellent can be mixed into binder material to reduce the water absorption of LPC, but it may affect the hydration properties of SW-CSA cement paste, which influences the performance of LPC correspondingly. Calcium stearate (CS), sodium oleate (SO) and sodium methyl siliconate (SMS) are three familiar commercial water repellents. To find the suitable internal mixing water repellent for LPC based on SW-CSA cement, the effects of three CS, SO and SMS on the water absorption, hydration, compressive strength, fluidity, and setting time of SW-CSA cement paste were explored. Besides, the properties of LPC with CS and SO added were also studied. The results indicated that using CS as the water repellent could reduce the 1 day water absorption of SW-CSA cement paste by 45.9% and the water absorption of LPC by 33.0%. It also reduced the setting time of SW-CSA cement paste and increased the final compressive strength of LPC, which was conducive to the preferred rapid setting and high compressive strength of LPC. The hydrophobicity of SW-CSA cement paste with SO was better than that of SW-CSA cement paste with CS. But using SO and SMS as the water repellent retarded the early hydration of SW-CSA cement and prolonged the setting time of SW-CSA cement and reduced the final compressive strength of SW-CSA cement paste. Therefore, SO and SMS can’t be used as the internal mixing water repellent of LPC based on SW-CSA cement, while CS is a promising internal mixing water repellent of SW-CSA cement to prepare LPC.

A sustainability-oriented framework for the application of industrial byproducts to the base layers of low-volume roads

Roadway engineering works typically rely on the utilization of natural aggregates as building materials. However, growing pressures for sustainable roads are highlighting the importance of replacing virgin materials with industrial byproducts. Constructors worldwide are trying to select optimum soil-byproduct mixtures that have a fair trade-off between engineering properties, environmental impacts and material costs. This requires a multi-objective analysis to explore feasible mixtures that honor a set of preferences to mathematically identify the best compromised soil-byproduct mixture. In this paper, a sustainability-oriented framework is proposed for selecting optimum soil-byproduct proportions for unbound base layers of unpaved roads. A compromise programming tool is implemented to select a mixture that is statistically preferred over mixtures with different byproduct contents. The method is illustrated using technical, economic and environmental indicators that are easily measurable. Investigations are performed for different decision-making perspectives including the constructor’s, contractor’s and the environment’s viewpoints. Two byproducts from the steel industry are mixed in different proportions from 50% to 80% by weight with a clayey soil. The optimum mixture was obtained at a proportion of 70% byproduct and 30% clay. Monte Carlo simulations and sensitivity analysis of transport scenarios further supported this conclusion. Results demonstrate that mixture selection based only on strength properties provides inadequate optimum from a sustainable standpoint. The proposed framework can help road constructors incorporate environmentally-friendly materials in a cost-effective way, while maintaining the technical quality of base layers.

Resource theory of quantum coherence with probabilistically nondistinguishable pointers and corresponding wave-particle duality

One of the fundamental features of quantum mechanics is the superposition principle, a manifestation of which is embodied in quantum coherence. Coherence of a quantum state is invariably defined with respect to a preferred set of pointer states, and there exist quantum coherence measures with respect to deterministically as well as probabilistically distinguishable sets of quantum state vectors. Here we study the resource theory of quantum coherence with respect to an arbitrary set of quantum state vectors, that may not even be probabilistically distinguishable. Geometrically, a probabilistically indistinguishable set of quantum state vectors forms a linearly dependent set. We find the free states of the resource theory, and analyze the corresponding free operations, obtaining a necessary condition for an arbitrary quantum operation to be free. We identify a class of measures of the quantum coherence, and in particular establish a monotonicity property of the measures. We find a connection of an arbitrary set of quantum state vectors with positive operator valued measurements with respect to the resource theory being considered, which paves the way for an alternate definition of the free states. We notice that the resource theory of magic can be looked upon as a resource theory of quantum coherence with respect to a set of quantum state vectors that are probabilistically indistinguishable. We subsequently examine the wave-particle duality in a double-slit set-up in which superposition of probabilistically indistinguishable quantum state vectors is possible. Specifically, we report a complementary relation between quantum coherence and path distinguishability in such a set-up.

Impact of ablation index settings on pulmonary vein reconnection.

Ablation index (AI) is a radiofrequency lesion quality marker. The AI value that allows effective and safe pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) is still debated. We evaluated the incidence of acute and late PV reconnection (PVR) with different AI settings and its predictors. The Ablation Index Registry is a multicenter study that included patients with paroxysmal/persistent atrial fibrillation (AF) who underwent first-time ablation. Each operator performed the ablation using his preferred ablation catheter (ThermoCool® SmartTouch or Surround Flow) and AI setting (380 posterior-500 anterior and 330 posterior-450 anterior). We divided the study population into two groups according to the AI setting used: group 1 (330-450) and group 2 (380-500). Incidence of acute PVR was validated within 30 min after PVI, whereas the incidence of late PVR was evaluated at repeat procedure. Overall, 490 patients were divided into groups 1 (258) and 2 (232). There was no significant difference in the procedural time, fluoroscopy time, and rate of the first-pass PVI between the two study groups. Acute PVR was observed in 5.6% PVs. The rate of acute PVR was slightly higher in group 2 (64/943, 6.8%, PVs) than in group 1 (48/1045, 4.6% PVs, p = 0.04). Thirty patients (6%) underwent a repeat procedure and late PVR was observed in 57/116 (49%) PVs (number of reconnected PV per patient of 1.9 ± 1.6). A similar rate of late PVR was found in the two study groups. No predictors of acute and late PVR were found. Ablation with a lower range of AI is highly effective and is not associated with a higher rate of acute and late PVR. No predictors of PV reconnection were found.

Assessing Linear Urban Landscape from dynamic visual perception based on urban morphology

As an essential part of the urban landscape, linear urban landscape (LUL) is the interaction between humans and nature, which is closely associated with daily life and brings multiple characteristics to visual perception. Current studies focus on complex models that describe visual perception using static viewpoints, but lossing the continuous and dynamic features of visual perception. This paper provides a general framework that can quantify dynamic visual perception based on urban morphology and improves accuracy in the descriptions of LUL linear spatial characteristics. Based on Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal (Hangzhou urban section), the proposed framework combines the indicators of multiple dimensions to quantify dynamic visual perception and emphasizes the continuity of LUL. To represent the dynamic visual perception and the spatial pattern characteristics of LUL, different evaluation criteria of indicators are set according to landscape scales. To minimize subjectivity and uncertainty caused by subjective cognition and fulfill the landscape pattern under different urban development policies, we set up distinct scenario preference patterns. With appropriate fine-tuning of scenario preference patterns and setting of movement types, the proposed method can be adapted to other LUL projects and aspires to provide a general methodology and scientific guidance for urban planning and landscape management.

The internal geography of services value‐added in exports: A Latin American perspective

AbstractWe estimate the contents of services value‐added incorporated in goods exports in different countries in Latin America, exploring the local dimension of the results. We use inter‐regional input–output analysis to trace and map domestic value‐added embedded in those countries' exports. We add to the discussion of global value chains the internal, within‐country geography of trade in value‐added, since the set of locational preferences that help understanding the spatial patterns of natural resource‐intensive activities differ dramatically from that for services.