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PubMed1998

An association between the regular use of 3,4 methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (ecstasy) and excessive wear of the teeth.

AIMS: This study was established to determine if users of ecstasy had greater tooth wear than a comparison group of non-users. DESIGN: The study involved a direct comparison between two groups of young people gathered by a peer information network and divided by the response to the question "Do you take ecstasy?" SETTING: The information network was established at the Maryland Centre in Liverpool (UK). Besides offering advice on drug and sex-related problems this centre distributes free condoms and is therefore visited by many young people who would not consider themselves to have these problems. PARTICIPANTS: There were 30 users and 28 non-users with no significant difference in the gender ratio. Age was not recorded to maintain absolute confidentiality, but all the participants appeared to be of student age. MEASUREMENTS: Tooth wear was measured using the index of Smith & Knight. The social and drug-taking profile of the two groups was ascertained by questionnaire. FINDINGS: It was found that the mean (+/- STD) tooth wear score for the back teeth was 0.96 +/- 0.16 in the users compared with 0.12 +/- 0.08 for the comparison group. These values were significantly different (p < 0.001). The values for the front teeth were not significantly different. Many users were aware of clenching their teeth 12 or even 24 hours after taking the drug. CONCLUSION: Taking ecstasy results in an increased likelihood of tooth wear on the back teeth. This is likely to result from clenching the teeth in the acidic environment caused by carbonated (fizzy) drinks.

Drinking↗
PubMed1986

Aged blacks' choices for an informal helper network.

Research on the support networks of impaired elderly adults suggests that membership in sociodemographic subgroups influences use of specific informal helpers. This study explored the relationships of sociodemographic, health, and family factors to informal helper choice among a nationally representative sample (N = 581) of older (55 years and above) blacks (National Survey of Black Americans). Nine categories of helpers were examined: spouse, son, daughter, father, mother, brother, sister, friend, and neighbor. Logistic regression analyses revealed that marital status is important in selecting the categories of sister, friend, and neighbor. Presence of children decreased the likelihood that siblings and friends would be chosen. Perceived family closeness facilitated the selection of siblings but inhibited the choice of friends. Regional differences suggest a greater likelihood of selecting the categories of sister, friend, and neighbor among Southern residents.

Black or African American↗
PubMed2003

Does the use of 5-aminosalicylates in inflammatory bowel disease prevent the development of colorectal cancer?

OBJECTIVES: There is increased interest in determining whether 5-aminosalicylate (5-ASA) use can prevent the development of colorectal cancer (CRC) among patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The aim of this study was to determine whether use of 5-ASA was associated with a reduced risk of CRC in these patients. METHODS: We extracted from our population-based University of Manitoba Inflammatory Bowel Disease Epidemiology Database the number of patients with a new diagnosis of CRC between the years 1997 and 2000. From within our Inflammatory Bowel Disease Epidemiology Database we extracted a control group of IBD patients who did not develop CRC matched to the case group who did develop CRC by age, sex, diagnosis, year of diagnosis, and geographic area of residence. We linked cases and controls with Manitoba Health's Drug Program Information Network to study 5-ASA use within 2 yr before CRC diagnosis. The Drug Program Information Network database is a population-based database that was established in 1995 and that records all prescription drugs. RESULTS: There were 25 cases of IBD identified as having CRC. These were matched with 348 cases of IBD who did not develop CRC. CRC cases were more likely to be exposed to 5-ASA (odds ratio = 1.46; 95% CI = 0.58-3.73) but this result was not statistically significant. The mean total days of use was 400.9 days +/- 185.9 among CRC cases versus 420.2 days +/- 241.7 among non-CRC cases (p = 0.92). The prescribed daily dose was 2295 mg/day +/- 1041 mg among CRC cases and 1811 mg +/- 520 mg among controls (p = 0.21). CONCLUSIONS: These data do not support 5-ASA as protective in preventing CRC.

Aminosalicylic Acids↗
PubMed2005

Networks and cities: an information perspective.

Traffic is constrained by the information involved in locating the receiver and the physical distance between sender and receiver. We here focus on the former, and investigate traffic in the perspective of information handling. We replot the road map of cities in terms of the information needed to locate specific addresses and create information city networks with roads mapped to nodes and intersections to links between nodes. These networks have the broad degree distribution found in many other complex networks. The mapping to an information city network makes it possible to quantify the information associated with locating specific addresses.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2007

Uncovering sociocultural factors influencing the pathway to care of Chinese caregivers with relatives suffering from early psychosis in Hong Kong.

I used a qualitative approach to explore the sociocultural factors influencing the pattern of the help-seeking pathway of Chinese caregivers with relatives suffering from early psychosis in Hong Kong. Analyses of the interview scripts of 58 caregivers revealed that they required an average of 5 months and 2.14 helpers before their ill relatives could receive formal psychiatric services. Drawing on Lin and Lin's model of the Chinese help-seeking pathway as a basis for discussion, this study finds that family caregivers engaged in intrafamilial coping and expanded in concentric circles to include relatives and friends as helpers in the help-seeking pathway. Contrary to Lin and Lin's view that informal network members might cause a delay in the help-seeking process, it is revealed that informal network members who possessed adequate knowledge of mental illness were able to encourage family caregivers to seek help from formal psychiatric services. The duration leading to extrafamilial coping was shorter than the one implied in Lin and Lin's model. Family caregivers were quite ready to seek help from professionals in the formal psychiatric services despite the fact that the ill relatives were reluctant to seek treatment due to psychiatric stigma. Finally, the findings of this study do not support the existence of the "rejection phase" of the help-seeking process proposed by Lin and Lin.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMedDate not supplied

MARVIN, multi-agent softbot to retrieve multilingual medical information on the Web.

The World-Wide Web is an unstructured, multimedia and multilingual information network. While most efforts have addressed the structuring issue, very few attempts have been proposed to provide support for multilingual information retrieval. Yet, medical information is now available all over the world. The MARVIN (Multi-Agent Retrieval Vagabond on Information Network) softbot and its associated medical search engine MedHunt (Medical Hunter) are a solution for helping people, who only understand a few languages, to access multilingual information.

Information Storage and Retrieval↗
PubMed2025

Stress-induced altered expression of hippocampal nuclear and mitochondrial encoded genes in rats and cross-species genetic associations reveal molecular links to depression.

BACKGROUND: Mitochondria play a pivotal role in energy production, and their dysfunction not only hampers cells' ability to meet energy requirements but also contributes to the impairment of neural plasticity, a critical feature of depressive disorders. In this study, mitochondrial cross-omics analysis was carried out in the hippocampus of restraint rats to understand the role of mitochondria in depression pathophysiology. METHODS: The expression profiles of hippocampal mitochondrial and nuclear-encoded genes in mitochondrial fractions from restraint and handled control rats were obtained using high-throughput RNA sequencing. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to identify the gene co-expression and pathways associated with the restraint phenotype. Mutual Information Network algorithm tools Arance, CLR, and MRNET were additionally used to screen the functional modules and hub genes and their similarity with the WGCNA-based network analysis. Finally, cross-species homology followed by gene association analysis was conducted to obtain SNPs and haplotypes related to depression phenotype. RESULTS: A significant proportion of mitochondrial and nuclear-encoded genes showed differential regulation in the hippocampus of restraint rats. WGCNA and Mutual Information Network analysis yielded distinct functional modules significantly related to restraint phenotype. Further network analysis revealed distinct co-expression patterns associated with differentially expressed genes associated with these modules. Cross-species analysis showed 39 significantly associated SNPs with the depression phenotype, where the most significant SNP, rs10899570, was located within the TENM4 gene. Further, rs1573529 and rs10899570 were distributed into the linkage disequilibrium block where SNPs were highly correlated. Subsequent haplotype analysis showed that rs1573529 and rs10899570 were significantly associated with depressive behavior. CONCLUSIONS: The study demonstrates a significant impact of restraint stress on mitochondrial functions and genetic association, suggesting their critical role in depression pathophysiology.

Animals↗
PubMed1994

Decoding cortical neuronal signals: network models, information estimation and spatial tuning.

We have studied the encoding of spatial pattern information by complex cells in the primary visual cortex of awake monkeys. Three models for the conditional probabilities of different stimuli, given the neuronal response, were fit and compared using cross-validation. For our data, a feed-forward neural network proved to be the best of these models. The information carried by a cell about a stimulus set can be calculated from the estimated conditional probabilities. We performed a spatial spectroscopy of the encoding, examining how the transmitted information varies with both the average coarseness of the stimulus set and the coarseness differences within it. We find that each neuron encodes information about many features at multiple scales. Our data do not appear to allow a characterization of these variations in terms of the detection of simple single features such as oriented bars.

Animals↗
PubMed2003

ARTMAP neural networks for information fusion and data mining: map production and target recognition methodologies.

The Sensor Exploitation Group of MIT Lincoln Laboratory incorporated an early version of the ARTMAP neural network as the recognition engine of a hierarchical system for fusion and data mining of registered geospatial images. The Lincoln Lab system has been successfully fielded, but is limited to target/non-target identifications and does not produce whole maps. Procedures defined here extend these capabilities by means of a mapping method that learns to identify and distribute arbitrarily many target classes. This new spatial data mining system is designed particularly to cope with the highly skewed class distributions of typical mapping problems. Specification of canonical algorithms and a benchmark testbed has enabled the evaluation of candidate recognition networks as well as pre- and post-processing and feature selection options. The resulting mapping methodology sets a standard for a variety of spatial data mining tasks. In particular, training pixels are drawn from a region that is spatially distinct from the mapped region, which could feature an output class mix that is substantially different from that of the training set. The system recognition component, default ARTMAP, with its fully specified set of canonical parameter values, has become the a priori system of choice among this family of neural networks for a wide variety of applications.

Computer Simulation↗
PubMed1986

[Formal and informal assistance in the elderly. A study on the division of tasks among the elderly, informal support persons and homemaker services].

This article deals with the division of tasks between formal and informal networks of the elderly. Research has been done on the kind and degree of participation in the care of elderly by the elderly themselves, the role of the 'most important' persons in their social network as well as on the role of family home service. Sixty-seven clients of the '7 X 24-hours' home help in Velp were involved. The effect of household composition was also investigated. As regards to three different kinds of activities, the results indicate a division of tasks between formal and informal networks; clients themselves perform especially ADL-activities, informal caregivers supporting/supervising activities and the home help household activities. Furthermore it appears that of the total number of activities performed by home help nearly three quarters is neither performed by the elderly themselves nor by the 'most important' person in their social network.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2000

Mutual information relevance networks: functional genomic clustering using pairwise entropy measurements.

Increasing numbers of methodologies are available to find functional genomic clusters in RNA expression data. We describe a technique that computes comprehensive pair-wise mutual information for all genes in such a data set. An association with a high mutual information means that one gene is non-randomly associated with another; we hypothesize this means the two are related biologically. By picking a threshold mutual information and using only associations at or above the threshold, we show how this technique was used on a public data set of 79 RNA expression measurements of 2,467 genes to construct 22 clusters, or Relevance Networks. The biological significance of each Relevance Network is explained.

Computer Simulation↗
PubMed1986

[Automation: specter or aspiration for the large-animal practitioner?].

Automatic data processing in veterinary practices is rapidly progressing. Automation of the administration of practices was an important factor in starting these developments, and electronic processing of health and production data within the framework of a herd health and production service programme is enjoying considerable current interest. Information networks will be set up by agricultural branch organizations, the national and regional centres, the Stichting V-Data and commercial organizations. These will make the supply of information to and communication among animal owners, practitioners, advisers and other disciplines operational on a large scale. The data banks developed from information networks may be utilized, among other things, in epidemiological investigations and in taking well-founded decisions regarding management. The rapid advance of the technology of information in the animal production section will considerably affect the management of veterinary practices. The practitioner will have to be able to interpret his computer data and translate them into advice and measures to be adopted by animal owners. Epidemiological training will have to be an essential part of the activities of the veterinarian to enable him to interpret interactions of conditions and management on the one hand and the health status and state of production on the other. Establishing a merely clinical diagnosis in which interaction of host and pathogenic agent is central, will no longer suffice. Rather, an epidemiological diagnosis is required, in which the environment and its many vectors are also included. Apart from the variety of new possibilities to which entry is gained, the central co-ordinating position which can be occupied in the animal production section, will be considerably strengthened.

Animal Husbandry↗
PubMed1992

Informal caring networks among Chinese elderly with disabilities in Hong Kong.

Community care has been a major guiding policy in developing services for the elderly in Hong Kong. It has been assumed that Chinese families tend to have a large caring network to render care in the community. However, in a survey conducted in early 1991, it was found that such caring networks for disabled elderly people were very small and inconsequential. Quite a high proportion of Chinese disabled elderly are living alone in the community, and have a small network for emotional support. Effective measures to promote family care of disabled elderly people are discussed. Two pathways for integrating the formal and informal care sectors are examined in relation to promoting effective practice for the frail elderly living in the community.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1983

Acceptance of a volunteer first-responder system in rural communities: a field experiment.

This article describes a randomized control field experiment that was used to evaluate the impact of an organized volunteer-based emergency first-responder system in 36 rural, medically underserved communities in central Georgia. The system created an information network within communities, which allowed rapid contact with trained resident volunteers when emergencies occurred. The evaluation examined selected environmental variables related to creating an information network and their effect on the general public's willingness to use a first responder for medical emergencies. Measurements of community awareness and attitudes were made using a household telephone survey conducted immediately before project initiation, 3 months and 13 months after implementation. Willingness to use the system was greatest for individual respondents living in communities with less than 800 population and who were participants in the social network of the community. Implications for administrating this type of project through statewide EMS systems are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Learning teams and networks: using information technology as a means of managing work process development in healthcare organizations.

This article focuses on the introduction of team learning and shared knowledge creation using computer-based learning environments and teams as networks in the development of healthcare organizations. Using computer technology, care units can be considered learning teams and the hospital a network of those learning teams. Team learning requires that the healthcare workers' intellectual capital and personal competence be viewed as an important resource in developing the quality of action of the entire healthcare organization.

Computer-Assisted Instruction↗