Search results for "score"
showing 10 items of 852 documents
Effect of zinc on oropharyngeal mucositis in children with acute leukemia undergoing chemotherapy
2020
Background Oropharyngeal mucositis (OM) is one of the main side-effects of oncological therapy. There is no treatment to prevent its occurrence, but some zinc-based therapies have been proven to help in decreasing its intensity. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of zinc in OM in children with acute leukemia in the early stages of oncological treatment. Material and Methods This quasi-experimental study evaluated OM in 2 groups (control group: conventional hospital management, and experimental group: administration of 50 mg of zinc gluconate daily plus conventional hospital management). OM severity was recorded at a two-month follow-up. Results Forty-nine patients (26 i…
Estimation techniques to measure subjective quality on live video streaming in Cloud Mobile Media services
2018
Abstract The adoption of smart phones, the increased access to mobile broadband networks and the availability of public cloud infrastructures are aligning to the next generation of truly ubiquitous multimedia services, known as Cloud Mobile Media (CMM) services offering mobile video. Nevertheless, due to an inherit higher and variable end to end delay mainly as a result of the virtualization process, new challenges appear. One challenge is given by live video streaming applications when trying to keep a good Quality of Experience of the delivered video, measured in terms of a subjective video quality metric, named Mean Opinion Score (MOS). Our goal is to estimate and predict this subjective…
Using Factor Analysis Techniques to Find Out Objective Video Quality Metrics for Live Video Streaming over Cloud Mobile Media Services
2016
The increased adoption of smartphones, the access to mobile broadband networks and the availability of public Clouds allow new multimedia services, called Cloud Mobile Media Services. Under this new architecture the proliferation of live video streaming applications and the Quality of Experience (QoE) given by the final user are an issue, due to the higher and variable delay, as result of the virtualization methods used in the Clouds. Thus in this paradigm new challenges appear related to keep and estimate a good QoE in terms of a standarized subjective video quality called Mean Opinion Score (MOS). In this paper we analyze different approaches based on Factor Analysis techniques to estimat…
Investigating the possible impact of peritoneal tumor exposure amongst women with early stage cervical cancer treated with minimally invasive approac…
2021
Abstract Introduction Recent findings show a detrimental impact of the minimally invasive approach on patients with early stage cervical cancer (ECC). Reasons beyond these results are unclear. The aim of the present article is to investigate the possible role of peritoneal contamination during intracorporeal colpotomy. Methods patients with early stage cervical cancer were divided into 2 groups: no intraperitoneal exposure (N-IPE) intraperitoneal exposure (IPE) during minimally invasive surgery. Patients of the 2 groups were propensity-matched according to the major risk factors. Results 226 cases of the IPE group had a significant worst prognosis than the 142 cases of the N-IPE group (4.5-…
Rank scores tests of multivariate independence
2004
New rank scores test statistics are proposed for testing whether two random vectors are independent. The tests are asymptotically distribution-free for elliptically symmetric marginal distributions. Recently, Gieser and Randles (1997), Taskinen, Kankainen and Oja (2003) and Taskinen, Oja and Randles (2005) introduced and discussed different multivariate extensions of the quadrant test, Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho statistics. In this paper, standardized multivariate spatial signs and the (univariate) ranks of the Mahalanobis-type distances of the observations from the origin are combined to construct ranks cores tests of independence. The limiting distributions of the test statistics ar…
Determining a healthy reference range and factors potentially influencing PRO-C3 – A biomarker of liver fibrosis
2021
Background & Aims Progressive fibrosis has been identified as the major predictor of mortality in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Several biomarkers are currently being evaluated for their ability to substitute the liver biopsy as the reference standard. Recent clinical studies in NAFLD/NASH patients support the utility of PRO-C3, a marker of type III collagen formation, as a marker for the degree of fibrosis, disease activity, and effect of treatment. Here we establish the healthy reference range, optimal sample handling conditions for both short- and long-term serum storage, and robustness for the PRO-C3 assay. Methods PRO-C3 was measured in 269 healthy volunteers…
Genetic architecture of circulating lipid levels
2011
Serum concentrations of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), triglycerides (TGs) and total cholesterol (TC) are important heritable risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Although genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of circulating lipid levels have identified numerous loci, a substantial portion of the heritability of these traits remains unexplained. Evidence of unexplained genetic variance can be detected by combining multiple independent markers into additive genetic risk scores. Such polygenic scores, constructed using results from the ENGAGE Consortium GWAS on serum lipids, were applied to predict lipid levels in an independen…
How to standardize (if you must)
2017
In many situations we are interested in appraising the value of a certain characteristic for a given individual relative to the context in which this value is observed. In recent years this problem has become prominent in the evaluation of scientific productivity and impact. A popular approach to such relative valuations consists in using percentile ranks. This is a purely ordinal method that may sometimes lead to counterintuitive appraisals, in that it discards all information about the distance between the raw values within a given context. By contrast, this information is partly preserved by using standardization, i.e., by transforming the absolute values in such a way that, within the s…
Vitamin D 25OH Deficiency and Mortality in Moderate to Severe COVID-19: A Multi-Center Prospective Observational Study.
2022
IntroductionSeveral studies and meta-analyses suggested the role of vitamin D 25OH in preventing severe forms of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, the evidence on the clinical benefits of vitamin D 25OH adequacy in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 remain conflicting and speculative. We aimed to investigate the association between vitamin D 25OH serum levels and mortality in hospitalized patients with moderate to severe COVID-19.MethodThis prospective observational multicentre study included 361 consecutive patients with moderate to severe COVID-19 admitted to the Italian hospitals involved in the NUTRI-COVID19 trial from March to August 2020. For each patient, serum vitamin D …
Are "good guys" more likely to participate in local agriculture?
2015
Abstract In recent years a new form of food production and distribution organisation, as part of small-scale and local agriculture, has been gaining ground. Generically termed short supply chains (SSCs), this new model of food procurement comprises various forms such as community-supported agriculture, box schemes and solidarity purchase groups. Consumer participation in SSCs is dictated by deep motivations: while consumers are principally encouraged by the desire to preserve local producers, as well as the social and environmental aspects of farming, the attraction of SSCs is also tied to different and more complex ways of perceiving food quality. The quality issue in SSCs is not only seen…