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At least 1,423 records · Page 79Linked to original sources
PubMed2006

Does distance affect utilization of substance abuse and mental health services in the presence of transportation services?

Long travel times have been identified as a significant barrier to accessing mental health and other critical services. This study examines whether distance to treatment was a barrier to receiving outpatient mental health and substance abuse care for HIV-positive persons when transportation was provided. Data from a cohort of HIV-positive persons who participated in a year-long substance abuse and mental health treatment programme were examined longitudinally. Transportation, which included buses, taxis, and mileage reimbursement for private transportation, was provided free of charge for participants who needed this assistance. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of participants utilized the transportation services. No statistically significant differences in retention in, or utilization of, the mental health and substance abuse treatment programme were identified by distance to the treatment site. This analysis demonstrated that increased distance to care did not decrease utilization of the treatment programme when transportation was provided to the client when necessary. These results provide preliminary evidence that distance to substance abuse and mental health services need not be a barrier to care for HIV-positive individuals when transportation is provided. Such options may need to be considered when trying to treat geographically dispersed individuals so that efficiencies in treatment can be attained.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Modification of ionizing radiation clustered damage: estimate of the migration distance of holes through DNA via guanyl radicals under physiological conditions.

PURPOSE: Guanyl radicals are produced in DNA when it is subjected to oxidation or ionizing radiation. The sites at which stable products can be identified can be located dozens of base pairs away from the initial site of the electron loss. This migration will modify the spatial distribution of damage and tends to mitigate the clustering of initial damage generally associated with ionizing radiation. The migration distance is presumably a function of the lifetime of the intermediate guanyl radical, and we wished to quantify the relationship between them. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Aqueous solutions containing plasmid DNA and thiocyanate ions were treated with gamma-irradiation. These conditions result in the very efficient production of guanyl radicals in the plasmid. We quantified the formation of stable guanine oxidation products in the plasmid as strand breaks by using the E. coli base excision repair endonuclease formamidopyrimidine-DNA N-glycosylase (FPG). The effect of two additives on the yield of guanine oxidation, nitrite ions and the DNA binding ligand doxorubicin (adriamycin), were examined. RESULTS: The presence during irradiation of the DNA-binding ligand doxorubicin attenuated the yields of stable oxidized guanine products formed. The additional presence of nitrite decreased this effect of doxorubicin. CONCLUSION: Because doxorubicin binds strongly to DNA, its ability to attenuate guanine oxidation can be interpreted in terms of the migration distance of the intermediate guanyl radical. Because nitrite repairs these intermediate guanyl radicals by electron transfer, its presence during irradiation decreases their lifetime. Therefore, we derived an estimate of the migration distance of guanyl radicals as a function of their lifetime. The presence in cells of antioxidants such as glutathione sets an upper limit to the likely lifetime and, therefore, the migration distance of guanyl radicals. It was concluded that the migration of guanyl radicals may not decrease the clustering of DNA damage in vivo to a great extent.

Antineoplastic Agents↗
PubMed2005

Six-minute walk distance as a measure of functional exercise capacity in multiple sclerosis.

PURPOSE: We hypothesised that six-minute walk (6MWT) distance of patients with ambulatory multiple sclerosis (MS)would differ from age-matched healthy control subjects. We also investigated the contribution of demographic, physical and physiological factors to impaired functional capacity in MS. METHOD: Thirty MS patients and 30 healthy subjects participated in this study. Respiratory muscle strength was measured. Pulmonary function test and 6MWT were performed. The Barthel Index (BI) was used to assess activities of daily living, and the Modified Ashworth Scale was used to determine spasticity. Symptomatic fatigue was measured using the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS). RESULTS: Pulmonary function and respiratory muscle strength of ambulatory MS patients were significantly lower, and baseline heart rate and fatigue perception were significantly higher than were healthy controls (p < 0.05). MS patients reached a significantly higher exercise heart rate, and walked significantly shorter distance than did healthy subjects (p < 0.05). The BI score, baseline heart rate and FSS score together accounted for 81 percent variance in 6MWT distance of MS patients (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The shorter distance covered during a 6MWT is determined by the limitations in activities of daily living,resting heart rate and subjective symptomatic fatigue in ambulatory patients with MS. Respiratory muscle weakness, lung function and level of neurological impairment do not contribute to impaired functional exercise capacity in these patients.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2001

Distance indices and their hyper-counterparts: intercorrelation and use in the structure-property modeling.

Intercorrelation between the Wiener index, hyper-Wiener index, Harary index, hyper-Harary index, detour index and hyper-detour index is studied on three sets of branched and unbranched alkanes and cycloalkanes with up to eight carbon atoms. First set (S-39) contains all alkanes from ethane to octane (39 molecules), the second set (S-139) 139 cyclic hydrocarbons from cyclopropane to branched and unbranched polycyclic octanes and the third set (S-178) is a combination of the first two sets (178 molecules). It is found that the pairs of distance indices and the corresponding hyper-counterparts are highly intercorrelated for all three sets. The use of the distance indices of both kinds in structure-boiling point modeling was analyzed. Distance indices and hyper-distance indices do not lead to particularly good models for any of the three sets. When used as composite indices they give much-improved models. However, they are most useful when combined with such indices as the number of carbon atoms in a hydrocarbon, Hosoya Z index and/or total walk count index. The following standard errors of estimate are obtained for the best models based on the combination of descriptors: 2.1 degrees C (S-39), 4.4 degrees C (S-139) and 4.1 degrees C (S-178). They compare favorably with the related models in the literature.

Alkanes↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Effect of rise distance on droplets generated from bubble bursting on the surface of chromic acid solutions.

In the processes of chromium electroplating, bursting bubbles are the major sources of chromium droplets that may lead to nasal septum disorders among workers. The gas bubbles form as a result of electrochemical reactions on the surfaces of pieces being plated, rise through the liquid, and then burst into droplets at liquid surfaces. The dimensions of the pieces being plated differ from piece to piece, and therefore the rise distance of the bubbles varies. This study is aimed at evaluating the effect of rise distance on the characteristics of droplets generated from bubbles bursting on the surface of chromic acid solutions by an experimental bubbling system. Two rise distances, 15 and 30 cm, were tested. An aerodynamic particle sizer was used to determine the droplet size distribution over the range of 0.8-30 microm. A Marple personal impactor was employed to collect droplet samples on polyvinyl chloride filters for Cr(VI) analysis. It was found that the Cr(VI) concentrations in droplets increased when the bubble rise distance increased. The result suggests that soluble ions such as Cr(VI) are scavenged by rising bubbles.

Aerosols↗
PubMed2006

Distance and ratio effects in the flanker task are due to different mechanisms.

When participants must respond to a relevant central target and ignore irrelevant flanking stimuli the flanking stimuli produce a compatibility effect, with increased response speed and accuracy on compatible as compared to incompatible trials. This flanker effect is larger when compatible trials are more frequent than incompatible trials (the ratio effect). A potential explanation of this ratio effect is that the occurrence of frequent incompatible trials causes the focus of spatial attention to be set narrower than when there are frequent compatible trials. The present investigation tests this hypothesis by comparing the flanker effect with near and far flankers. The hypothesis predicts that the flanker distance should modulate the ratio effect more when incompatible trials are frequent than when compatible trials are frequent. The results, however, show the opposite pattern: Distance effects are larger in conditions with frequent compatible trials. Moreover, the effect of distance but not the ratio effect was eliminated when flanker distance remained fixed across blocks of trials, and also when participants had to attend to flanker stimuli in a go-no-go task. These results suggest that the ratio effect does not result from an adjustment of the focus of spatial attention.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1999

Use of tablet tensile strength adjusted for surface area and mean interparticulate distance to evaluate dominating bonding mechanisms.

In this study, tablet tensile strength has been adjusted for tablet surface area and the average distance between particles in compacts of different materials. The aim of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of using this concept to assess the dominating interparticulate bonding mechanisms. Adjustment of the tensile strength for both tablet surface area and mean pore radius gave similar bonding strength values for materials bonding mainly by weak distance forces (crystalline lactose, sucrose, and microcrystalline cellulose) almost independently of compaction pressure. However, particle size and other factors may still affect the compensated strength values. The bond strength was much higher and more varied for materials bonding also with solid bridges (potassium chloride, sodium chloride, and possibly also sodium bicarbonate and amorphous lactose). For these materials, particle size and compaction pressure had a substantial effect on the bond strength. It is probably the formation of continuous bridges between adjacent particles that is important in these materials rather than the surface properties and the average distance between particles positioned at some distance from each other. Hence, adjusting the tensile strength of compacts does not necessarily reflect all the dominating factors responsible for interparticulate bonding. Nonetheless, adjustment for tablet surface area and mean pore radius allowed discrimination between different dominating interparticulate bonding mechanisms in these compacted materials.

Chemistry, Pharmaceutical↗
PubMed2000

Clump Giant Distance to the Magellanic Clouds and Anomalous Colors in the Galactic Bulge.

I demonstrate that the two unexpected results in the local universe-(1) anomalous intrinsic (V-I&parr0;0 colors of the clump giants and RR Lyrae stars in the Galactic center, and (2) very short distances to the Magellanic Clouds (LMC, SMC) as inferred from clump giants-are connected with each other. The (V-I&parr0;0 anomaly is partially resolved by using the photometry from phase II of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) rather than phase I. The need for V- or I-magnitude-based change in the bulge (V-I&parr0;0 is one option to explain the remaining color discrepancy. Such a change may originate in a coefficient of selective extinction AV&solm0;E&parl0;V-I&parr0; smaller than typically assumed. Application of the (V-I&parr0;0 correction (independent of its source) doubles the slope of the absolute magnitude-metallicity relation for clump giants, so that MI&parl0;RC&parr0;=-0.23+0.19 [Fe/H]. Consequently, the estimates of the clump distances to the LMC and SMC are affected. Udalski's distance modulus of µLMC=18.18+/-0.06 increases to 18.27+/-0.07. The distance modulus to the SMC increases by 0.12 to µSMC=18.77+/-0.08. I argue that a more comprehensive assessment of the metallicity effect on MI&parl0;RC&parr0; is needed.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1998

Absorbed dose determination at short distance from 60Co and 192Ir brachytherapy sources.

This paper presents two methods for absorbed dose determination with ionization chambers at short distance from 60Co and 192Ir brachytherapy sources. The methods are modifications of the Bragg-Gray and large cavity principles given in the IAEA code of practice for high- and medium-energy photon beams. A non-uniformity correction factor to account for the non-uniform electron fluence in the air cavity is introduced into the methods. The absorbed dose rates were determined from ionization chamber measurements at distances between 1.5 and 5.0 cm from the brachytherapy sources. The agreement between the two methods is excellent in 60Co brachytherapy dosimetry. For 192Ir dosimetry, the difference is less than 2.5% at all distances. In absorbed dose rate calculations with the 60Co brachytherapy source, the ratios between calculated and experimentally determined absorbed dose rates are 0.987 and 0.994 depending on the method used for absorption and scatter correction. In 192Ir dosimetry, the large cavity principle gives almost identical values to those which can be obtained with the AAPM recommendations. Using the chambers according to the Bragg-Gray principle in 192Ir dosimetry, the agreement with AAPM calculated absorbed dose rates is within 2.5% at all distances. The uncertainty, expressed as one standard deviation, in the experimentally determined absorbed dose is estimated to be between 3 and 4%.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2004

Distance-driven projection and backprojection in three dimensions.

Projection and backprojection are operations that arise frequently in tomographic imaging. Recently, we proposed a new method for projection and backprojection, which we call distance-driven, and that offers low arithmetic cost and a highly sequential memory access pattern. Furthermore, distance-driven projection and backprojection avoid several artefact-inducing approximations characteristic of some other methods. We have previously demonstrated the application of this method to parallel and fan beam geometries. In this paper, we extend the distance-driven framework to three dimensions and demonstrate its application to cone beam reconstruction. We also present experimental results to demonstrate the computational performance, the artefact characteristics and the noise-resolution characteristics of the distance-driven method in three dimensions.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2000

Distance-based reconstruction of tree models for oncogenesis.

Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) is a laboratory method to measure gains and losses in the copy number of chromosomal regions in tumor cells. It is hypothesized that certain DNA gains and losses are related to cancer progression and that the patterns of these changes are relevant to the clinical consequences of the cancer. It is therefore of interest to develop models which predict the occurrence of these events, as well as techniques for learning such models from CGH data. We continue our study of the mathematical foundations for inferring a model of tumor progression from a CGH data set that we started in Desper et al. (1999). In that paper, we proposed a class of probabilistic tree models and showed that an algorithm based on maximum-weight branching in a graph correctly infers the topology of the tree, under plausible assumptions. In this paper, we extend that work in the direction of the so-called distance-based trees, in which events are leaves of the tree, in the style of models common in phylogenetics. Then we show how to reconstruct the distance-based trees using tree-fitting algorithms developed by researchers in phylogenetics. The main advantages of the distance-based models are that 1) they represent information about co-occurrences of all pairs of events, instead of just some pairs, 2) they allow quantitative predictions about which events occur early in tumor progression, and 3) they bring into play the extensive methodology and software developed in the context of phylogenetics. We illustrate the distance-based tree method and how it complements the branching tree method, with a CGH data set for renal cancer.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2001

On the structure of syntenic distance.

This paper examines some of the rich structure of the syntenic distance model of evolutionary distance, introduced by Ferretti et al. (1996). The syntenic distance between two genomes is the minimum number of fissions, fusions, and translocations required to transform one into the other, ignoring gene order within chromosomes. We prove that the previously unanalyzed algorithm given by Ferretti et al. (1996) is a 2-approximation and no better, and that, further, it always outperforms the algorithm presented by DasGupta et al. (1998). We also prove the same results for an improved version of the Ferretti et al. algorithm. We then prove a number of properties which give insight into the structure of optimal move sequences. We give instances in which any move sequence working solely within connected components is nearly twice optimal and prove a general lower bound based on the spread of genes from each chromosome. We then prove a monotonicity property for the syntenic distance, and bound the difficulty of the hardest instance of any size. We discuss the results of implementing these algorithms and testing them on real and simulated synteny data.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2004

Approximate multiple protein structure alignment using the sum-of-pairs distance.

An algorithm is presented to compute a multiple structure alignment for a set of proteins and to generate a consensus (pseudo) protein for the set. The algorithm is a heuristic in that it computes an approximation to the optimal multiple structure alignment that minimizes the sum of the pairwise distances between the protein structures. The algorithm chooses an input protein as the initial consensus and computes a correspondence between the protein structures (which are represented as sets of unit vectors) using an approach analogous to the center-star method for multiple sequence alignment. From this correspondence, a set of rotation matrices (optimal for the given correspondence) is derived to align the structures and derive the new consensus. The process is iterated until the sum of pairwise distances converges. The computation of the optimal rotations is itself an iterative process that both makes use of the current consensus and generates simultaneously a new one. This approach is based on an interesting result that allows the sum of all pairwise distances to be represented compactly as distances to the consensus. Experimental results on several protein families are presented, showing that the algorithm converges quite rapidly.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2006

Approximating subtree distances between phylogenies.

We give a 5-approximation algorithm to the rooted Subtree-Prune-and-Regraft (rSPR) distance between two phylogenies, which was recently shown to be NP-complete. This paper presents the first approximation result for this important tree distance. The algorithm follows a standard format for tree distances. The novel ideas are in the analysis. In the analysis, the cost of the algorithm uses a "cascading" scheme that accounts for possible wrong moves. This accounting is missing from previous analysis of tree distance approximation algorithms. Further, we show how all algorithms of this type can be implemented in linear time and give experimental results.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2004

Comparative evaluation of word composition distances for the recognition of SCOP relationships.

MOTIVATION: Alignment-free metrics were recently reviewed by the authors, but have not until now been object of a comparative study. This paper compares the classification accuracy of word composition metrics therein reviewed. It also presents a new distance definition between protein sequences, the W-metric, which bridges between alignment metrics, such as scores produced by the Smith-Waterman algorithm, and methods based solely in L-tuple composition, such as Euclidean distance and Information content. RESULTS: The comparative study reported here used the SCOP/ASTRAL protein structure hierarchical database and accessed the discriminant value of alternative sequence dissimilarity measures by calculating areas under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curves. Although alignment methods resulted in very good classification accuracy at family and superfamily levels, alignment-free distances, in particular Standard Euclidean Distance, are as good as alignment algorithms when sequence similarity is smaller, such as for recognition of fold or class relationships. This observation justifies its advantageous use to pre-filter homologous proteins since word statistics techniques are computed much faster than the alignment methods. AVAILABILITY: All MATLAB code used to generate the data is available upon request to the authors. Additional material available at http://bioinformatics.musc.edu/wmetric

Algorithms↗
PubMed2005

Divide-and-conquer approach for the exemplar breakpoint distance.

MOTIVATION: A one-to-one correspondence between the sets of genes in the two genomes being compared is necessary for the notions of breakpoint and reversal distances. To compare genomes where there are paralogous genes, Sankoff formulated the exemplar distance problem as a general version of the genome rearrangement problem. Unfortunately, the problem is NP-hard even for the breakpoint distance. RESULTS: This paper proposes a divide-and-conquer approach for calculating the exemplar breakpoint distance between two genomes with multiple gene families. The combination of our approach and Sankoff's branch-and-bound technique leads to a practical program to answer this question. Tests with both simulated and real datasets show that our program is much more efficient than the existing program that is based only on the branch-and-bound technique. AVAILABILITY: Code for the program is available from the authors.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2006

The clinical implication of the vocal cords-carina distance in anaesthetized Chinese adults during orotracheal intubation.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have identified no strong correlation between patients' height and tracheal length in anaesthetized patients. We have attempted to compare vocal cords-carina distance (VCD) in Chinese patients with the dimensions of five commonly used tracheal tubes. In addition, we attempted to find a surface anatomy measurement that would identify patients with 'short tracheas'. METHODS: We measured VCD in 130 anaesthetized Chinese patients with a fibreoptic bronchoscope. Also measurements were obtained of the distal ends of five commonly used tracheal tubes. We undertook various surface anatomy measurements on the patients' chest and neck region to predict those patients with short tracheas. RESULTS: VCD averaged 12.6 (SD 1.4) cm. In seven patients (5%) this distance was particularly short (between 8.8 and 10.4 cm). Many of the commonly used tracheal tubes would be placed close to or beyond the carina when the black intubation guide mark(s) is (are) at the level of the vocal cords. The VCD of <or=11 cm (short trachea) could be predicted by patient height of <or=167.5 cm and a thyrosternal distance of <or=28.5 cm with limited reliability. CONCLUSIONS: A significant number of patients with short VCD in our study group could be at risk of endobronchial intubation with many of the tracheal tubes. Patient height and thyrosternal distance can be useful in predicting short tracheas.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

Homogenization of tandemly repeated nucleotide sequences by distance-dependent nucleotide sequence conversion.

Previous work revealed that recurrent mutations (= mutation occurring more than once) in the tandemly repeated arrays present in nontranscribed spacers (NTS) of ribosomal RNA genes (rDNA) are clustered, i.e., they most frequently occur in repeats with adjacent or alternate distribution. A possible explanation is that the likelihood of heteroduplex formation, a prerequisite of gene conversion, decreases with the distance between repeats. To test this possibility, evolution of an array of 11 initially homogeneous repeats was computer simulated using three models, two assuming that the likelihood of heteroduplex formation decreases with increasing distance between the repeats and one assuming that it is constant. Patterns of mutation distribution obtained in computer simulations were compared with the distribution of mutations found in the repeated arrays in the NTS of seven rDNA clones. The patterns of mutations generated by the models assuming that the likelihood of heteroduplex formation decreases as distance between the repeats increases agreed with the patterns observed in rDNA; the patterns generated by the model assuming that the likelihood is independent of distance between repeats disagreed with the patterns observed in the rDNA clones. The topology of the heteroduplex formed between DNA in adjacent repeats predicts that the most frequently occurring conversions in the NTS repeated arrays will be shorter than the length of the repeat. The topology of the heteroduplex also predicts that if the heteroduplex leads to crossing over a circular repeat is excised. It is speculated that the circle can transpose or can be amplified via rolling circle replication and subsequently transpose. It is also shown that homogenization of the NTS repeated arrays proceeds at different rates in different species.

Animals↗