Superfluous Information Research Articles

Innovations in Cardiovascular Care: A Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists’ Monograph

Innovations in Cardiovascular Care: A Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists’ Monograph Cook DJ, ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006. ISBN 1-58255-529-X. DVD-ROM, $99.00. For the busy practitioner, it can be difficult to keep pace with rapidly advancing technical innovations and the expanding body of pertinent literature. For those still in training, getting “up to speed” may seem even more daunting. This monograph distills a vast body of literature and presents a focused and comprehensive update on selected aspects of cardiovascular medicine. Innovative technologies are approached in the context of pertinent pathology and evidence based practices. The organization of this disc is well thought out and executed. The presentation software utilizes HTML formatting to provide a cross-platform document that is compatible on both Windows and Macintosh computers. In the age of digital technology, it is tempting to overwhelm the reader with superfluous information or to frustrate them by making it cumbersome to scan or “flip through the pages” quickly. However, in this case, the organization of the information content is intuitive and navigation and exploration of this disk is facile. Each section is edited into a flowing, logical format. References for each section are current, with many seemingly available only months before the publication of this monograph. Accompanying photos and videos are generally relevant and informative. Images load refreshingly quickly and are of high quality and resolution. Although several industry-generated video animations and illustrations are included, they significantly enhance the reader’s understanding of current and developing technologies. The editor has assembled a number of well-qualified contributors to provide an up-to-date review of the literature and a structured approach to understanding a broad reach of cardiovascular interventions. As with any monograph written in this multiauthored format, there is significant variability in style and comprehensiveness. Regardless, each topic is reviewed from a historical perspective, giving the reader a context in which to place the current state of the art. The authors try to adhere to the principles of evidenced-based medicine, educating the reader to the “alphabet soup” of surgical and cardiology trials. In addition, the authors frequently discuss the anesthetic requirements for performance of a procedure, as well as the implications of our medications and anesthetic technique. The monograph includes 13 chapters that are divided into four sections; 12 of the chapters are devoted to several major issues in cardiac and vascular medicine and the final chapter addresses future challenges. Section I entitled “New Devices in Interventional Cardiology” reviews percutaneous valve replacement and nonsurgical treatment for mitral valve disease. A thorough review of research pertaining to drug eluting stents also appears in this section. Section II, “Innovations in Electrophysiology,” begins with the basics of cardiac pacing and goes on to detail implantable cardiac defibrillators and pacemakers. Electrical therapies, such as catheter ablation and cardiac resynchronization, are discussed here. Perioperative care of patients with these devices is also reviewed. Section III, “Cardiac Surgery,” examines the engineering innovations in ventricular assist devices, mechanical hearts, and intraaortic balloon pumps. After reading this section, one comes away with a detailed understanding of both short- and long-term assist devices as well as their effectiveness, complications, and anesthetic implications. Section IV, ”Vascular Surgery,” updates the reader on the materials, technical considerations, and anesthetic management of endovascular techniques for the aorta and carotid arteries. The chapter discussing carotid stenting presents the trials and literature starting with the studies comparing medical management versus carotid endarterectomy and continues on to endarterectomy versus stenting. The chapter concludes by introducing embolic protection devices. A particularly comprehensive chapter describes the unique physiology and technology of ventricular assist devices. Each of the currently available assist devices is discussed with regard to the history of its development, clinical use, and effectiveness. Accompanying diagrams and animations clearly illustrate in vivo function. An interesting discussion of ongoing innovation and development of total artificial heart technology also appears in this section. In summary, Innovations to Cardiovascular Care is a very readable introduction to a broad sweep of new technological interventions for the cardiac and vascular patient. It is useful as a reference because of its comprehensive discussion of the critical aspects of pathophysiology and evidenced approach to current medical trials and investigations. This monograph aids perioperative cardiovascular physician in integrating their knowledge base and facilitating discussions of overall management issues of cardiac disease with cardiology and surgical colleagues. Dr. Cook and his coauthors have produced a current, thorough, and readable reference that is indeed a “State of the Art Review” and a welcome addition to my library. John Fisher, MD Fellow in CT Anesthesia Stuart J. Weiss, MD, PhD Associate Professor Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA [email protected] [email protected]

GLP SOPs for equipment calibration and maintenance. Part 2: an organized approach to streamlining procedural documentation

AbstractAs anyone who has had to deal with a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) system can testify, managing these documents is a Herculean task, requiring full–time commitment. This article proposes an alternative and more efficient approach to building a manageable set of procedural/instructional documents that will help an organization meet its scientific and regulatory needs while alleviating the strain that a gargantuan SOP system can put on its personnel.Among the benefits of this approach are: (1) Documents are organized to follow the logical and chronological flow of the activities they describe. (2) Documents can be located quickly. (3) Users will find what they need to know, presented in a concise manner, without superfluous information. (4) Increased usability of the documents since there is a logical structure to delivered information; thus, users can control the level of detail based on their need. (5) Reduced effort for upkeep of individual documents. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ON TRANSLATING CHINESE PROSE PRESENTATIONS

Following the lead of Harman (2006), this is an analysis of the English prose translations of four Chinese university presentations on the Internet. Thanks to its spectacular progress in economics, China has gained worldwide attention. It is therefore no surprise that many Chinese universities feel that they must join the world competition in offering openings in higher education. The Internet is naturally their first choice for advertising their study programs and for enhancing their chances for international collaboration. This article argues that many English translations of the presentations are unlikely to fulfill the mission. They are fairly unreadable because there is too much superfluous information which is, furthermore, often culture-bound and “culturally unchanged”. The analysis is primarily intended to call attention to some of the features also noted by English translators in Chinese prose. In another perspective, it may help raise the awareness of Chinese translators of cultural differences, so as to make for smoother communication. The article briefly refers to the Skopos theory and questions concerning cultural values in the globalized world.

Bennie Zak, PhD (September 29, 1919–July 29, 2005)

Dr. Bennie Zak, whose career spanned the entire 50-year history of Clinical Chemistry , was a pioneer in our field and a beloved professor at Wayne State University School of Medicine, where he taught for more than 50 years. Bennie Zak was the second of 4 children born to Lithuanian immigrant parents. His mother wanted him to be named Bernard, but with her thick accent it sounded like Bennie to the doctor at the Women’s Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, so Bennie it was. After graduating from high school, Bennie was unable to afford college tuition, so he sold books to burlesque performers in Detroit while he tried to decide between boxing and comedy as career paths. The US Army Air Corps made his decision for him by drafting him in 1943. The Army trained Bennie as a navigator, an irony never lost on those of us who traveled—and became hopelessly lost—with him. When we reminded him of his training as a navigator, he countered that he was trained to navigate by the stars. I once opened my sunroof and said, “So navigate!” Bennie simply stated that the stars were different over Europe, where he had done his flying. That response was so typically Bennie: brief and to the point. Anything else would have been superfluous information and therefore not worth spending time on. Bennie spent 16 months as a prisoner of war and was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in an exploding aircraft. On receiving his honorable discharge and after a prolonged 2-week courtship, he proposed to and later married Doris Selby in 1946. Bennie and Doris became the proud parents of Steven, …

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Internet-Based Distance Education Materials: Does Writing Style Matter?

How can distance educators format materials so that they maximize usability and optimize learning? Several web-writing characteristics have been identified that address these questions. “Objective” writing, most analogous to educational text, presents information without exaggerations or boasting. “Concise” and “scannable” writing omit superfluous information and support visual scanning by highlighting key features, respectively. “Combined” writing aggregates characteristics from the objective, concise, and scannable styles. Previous research suggests that, in contrast to results from the commercial domain, these writing styles do not influence memory of distance education materials. This discrepancy is possibly due to measurement differences. To address this issue, the present study employed recognition (i.e., multiple-choice) and guided recall (i.e., fill-in-the-blank) tasks in order to assess the efficacy of the writing styles in a distance education context. The results, however, confirmed the earlier findings, i.e., regardless of the material's writing format, memory for web site content was unaffected.

A numerical approach for the determination of a missing boundary data in elliptic problems

We consider the problem of the recovery of an unknown transfer coefficient in the Robin boundary condition on an inaccessible part of the boundary of an elliptic boundary value problem. The physical process inside the domain is governed by a linear elliptic equation of second order. The unknown boundary data are determined from superfluous information on the accessible part of the boundary. We show that the inverse problem is equivalent to a system of direct problems. We design a numerical approach for thin domains. The method is tested by numerical experiments.

Análisis de las actitudes prejuiciosas: aplicaciones de una medida de prejuicio manifiesto

In this research has been applied a Blatant prejudice questionary to measure this type ofprejudice in our social and cultural context. Specifically, the aíms of this study were both to know the Blatant prejudice índex to the Maghribian immigrants and to analyse the factor structure ofthe questionary and the correlation matrix among the different scales. The sample included 142 subjects. Results show that the 14,6% ofthe sample presents lightly racist altitudes, or at least an attitude not really favourable to the immigrants integration. The factor structure is not coincident with the original study, but nevertheless the Ítems' distribution is more congruent. Finally, the correlation matrix indicates high and signifícant correlation indexes, although the different scales don't seem to provide redundant or superfluous information.

Performing Feeling Without Fear

Performing Feeling Without Fear

Bayesian selection of the neighbourhood order for Gauss–Markov texture models

Gauss–Markov random fields have been successfully used as texture models in a host of applications, ranging from synthesis, feature extraction, classification and segmentation to query by image content and information retrieval in large image databases. An issue that deserves special consideration is the selection of the neighbourhood order (model complexity), which should faithfully reflect the Markovianity of spatial interactions. Estimating the parameters for the wrong model will not capture the essential statistical properties of the texture in question: a lower order model will not be informative enough, while a higher order will clutter the description with superfluous information, fitting the noise rather than the data. We give a full Bayesian solution for estimating the model complexity, using an appropriate set of prior probabilities on the parameters. The closed-form decision criterion is derived by employing a Gaussian approximation of the posterior probability around the mode. The validity and benefits of this approach are demonstrated on two important problems arising in machine vision: texture replication and image classification.

BINARY ENCODING OF DISCERNIBILITY PATTERNS TO FIND MINIMAL COVERINGS

Rough set based methods have been applied successfully in many real world applications such as data mining, knowledge discovery, machine learning, and control. The rough set theory is used to deal with imperfect data and to eliminate dispensable, superfluous and redundant information as to obtain a simplified set of decision rules. Thus, several approaches and methods have been proposed to find minimal coverings, from which the decision rules can be induced. In many of these approaches, an improvement in the utilization of computational resources is encouraged. In this paper, a binary encoding for attribute sets and a discernibility matrix is proposed. Such a binary representation of sets and sets operations in the implementation of algorithms provides a machine-oriented approach to the utilization of computational memory and allow parallel processing among groups of attributes. The discernibility matrix is reduced to its minimal size through the identification of main patterns in order to eliminate redundancies. Bit-wise operations replace sets operations, thus the search for minimal coverings is performed in an efficient way. Resulting improvement is shown in the analysis of medium-sized data sets using two generic methods to obtain minimal coverings.

TEMPERATURE INFERENCE SYSTEM BY ROUGH-NEURO-FUZZY NETWORK

Rough set theory, suggested by Pawlak in 1982, has been useful in AI, machine learning, knowledge acquisition, knowledge discovery from databases, expert systems, inductive reasoning, etc. One of the main advantages of rough sets is that they do not need any preliminary or additional information about data and are capable to reduce superfluous information. However, their significant disadvantage in real applications is that inferences are not real values but disjoint intervals of real values. In order to overcome this difficulty, we propose a new approach in which rough set theory and neuro-fuzzy fusion are combined to obtain the optimal rule base from input/output data. These results are applied to the rule construction for inferring the temperature at specified points in a refrigerator.

The use of Neural Networks for the estimation of oceanic constituents based on the MERIS instrument

Artificial Neural Networks (NNs) are used in estimations of oceanic constituents from simulated data for the Mechron Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument system for Case II water applications. The simulation includes the effects of oceanic substances such as algal related chlorophyll, non-chlorophyllous suspended matter and DOM (dissolved organic matter). It is shown here that NNs can be used to estimate oceanic constituents based on simulated data which include the effects of realistic noise and variability models. The advantage of NNs is that they not only achieve higher retrieval accuracy than more traditional techniques such as band ratio algorithms, but they also allow the inclusion of usually superfluous or unused information, such as geometric parameters and atmospheric visibility.

Non-perturbative solution of GME

A general non-perturbative method is used for the solution of the generalized master equation (GME) for a simple two-level model of the exciton-phonon system coupled to the termodynamic bath. The Argyres-Kelley projection superoperator is used to exclude superfluous information contained in the density matrix. A new partly analytic method of the solution of the generalized master equation is suggested and new analytical expressions for the memory functions are derived.

IMAGE CODING THROUGH PROGRESSIVE RESOLUTION TRANSFORMS

Abstract Visual information must be represented digitally to allow its processing by computer. This representation by means of a finite amount of digital data conveys an enormous amount of superfluous information that can be eliminated. We can consider two kinds of superfluous information: statistical redundant and subjective redundant. Discrete transform coding takes blocks of pixels and transforms them into another domain, the transform domain, prior to coding and transmission. An important property is that coefficients need not to be transmitted all in order to obtain good-quality reconstructions. We have applied a special nonor-thogonal transform in order to compress radiographic images.

The effect of superfluous information on children's solution of story arithmetic problems

Forty 6- to 7-year-old children were tested with single-step, addition/subtraction story problems with and without superfluous numerical information. Half of the children were allowed to find out the solution using objects and half were given pen and paper. Fewer problems with superfluous information than those without such information were solved accurately. Less than half of the problems were attempted with spontaneous modelling with objects and rarely were pen and paper used. In many cases, the use of objects could not facilitate solution of problems with superfluous information thus suggesting that in these cases children's failure to solve the problems could not be explained just by an increase in the cognitive demand for selective attention to, and memory of, the relevant information.

Children's Mathematics Learning: The Struggle to Link Form and Understanding

Children's Mathematics Learning: The Struggle to Link Form and Understanding

Arguments for Randomizing

I have organized my remarks about randomizing under four headings: computation, communication, causal Inference, and complexity. It Is hard to think of a wore controversial subject than that of randomization. My remarks are simpler and more extreme than they ought to be. I have put them in a rather bald and definite way in order to draw the lines more sharply and to make my message as clear as possible. I do not doubt that under extended debate it would be necessary to qualify some of the things I have to say, but I would insist on the point that I would be offering qualifications, not retractions.It is often said by pure Bayesians that once the likelihood function is available knowledge of any randomization scheme used is superfluous Information. It seems to me that this argument misses an Important point which I want to illustrate by a simple artificial example.

Composers of the World, De-Bow!

The History of modern notation is the history of the stupefaction of our musical world which, enriched by an ever greater number of unmusical people (listeners, performers, and composers), has come to need a proportionate amount of superfluous information—superfluous, that is, for anybody who understands the music in the first place. Complex and problematic cases apart, Bach was still able to rely on our insight to the extent of letting the sheer structure of a piece dictate its tempo—whereas nowadays, the not so musical amongst us are unhappy without metronome marks, while the rest of us are unhappy about them. Again, Mozart's dynamics are extremely economical; many a dynamic change is firmly implied without being notated, and if we confined ourselves to his notated dynamics, an impossible, underplayed performance would be the result—which, in due journalistic course, would be described as ‘stylish’ by our critics.

Requirements for improving the use of computers to support the development of policy decisions (abstract only)

Computer based information systems have been developed and used successfully for production and engineering and for lower level management tasks but they have yet to be widely applied to aiding management decision making at the higher policy making levels. Despite many attempts, the failures have been many and the successes few. This has resulted in large part from the fact that the technicians who have been engaged to design such systems have not correctly understood the nature of the problem environment with which they are dealing. Because they themselves have had no experience at the policy making levels, they have had a poor conception of the problems to be solved, and thus have made mistakes which they would not have made, had they been designing an information system for lower level tasks. In designing an inventory or process control system, for instance, the technicians have carefully studied the nature of the problems to be dealt with, and have decided which information is important and which not. They have not, in these cases, delivered reams of superfluous information to every point in the system. But when designing an information system to aid higher level decision making, they have tended to do the exact opposite. They have attempted to put every conceivable piece of information that could possibly be of the most remote interest at the fingertips of each and every policy maker -- each of whom is already suffering from a severe information overload. The decision maker could never possibly begin to digest all of this information, even if he found it useful, which, in general, he does not. This paper proposes methods for dealing with this crucial inhibiting problem.