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This paper exposes the thematic relationship between politics and medicine which can be inferred from the Oedipus Tyranus by Sophocles. We can find the concept of excess (ὕβρις) as a common thread between both arts (τέχναι) as it is the cause of the wrecking plague in 430 BC Attica, just as it is formulated in the Tragic version of Oedipus̓ myth. We resort to the History of Thucydides to help us approaching Sophocles̓ tragedy from historiography and, thus, configurating Oedipus as a tyrant, conception linked to the theme of the aforementioned plague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers opportunities but also challenges for biomedical research and healthcare. This position paper shares the results of the international conference "Fair medicine and AI" (online 3–5 March 2021). Scholars from science and technology studies (STS), gender studies, and ethics of science and technology formulated opportunities, challenges, and research and development desiderata for AI in healthcare. AI systems and solutions, which are being rapidly developed and applied, may have undesirable and unintended consequences including the risk of perpetuating health inequalities for marginalized groups. Socially robust development and implications of AI in healthcare require urgent investigation. There is a particular dearth of studies in human-AI interaction and how this may best be configured to dependably deliver safe, effective and equitable healthcare. To address these challenges, we need to establish diverse and interdisciplinary teams equipped to develop and apply medical AI in a fair, accountable and transparent manner. We formulate the importance of including social science perspectives in the development of intersectionally beneficent and equitable AI for biomedical research and healthcare, in part by strengthening AI health evaluation. • Bias, discrimination and structural injustice for medical AI are an overlooked issue. • AI for biomedical research and healthcare should be beneficent and equitable. • Social science perspectives within AI for medicine development are essential. • Challenges are multifold and an agenda for future research is needed. • Qualitative, ethnographic and participatory approaches could help provide fairer AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lists titles of articles related to medicine that will be published in 'Traffic' periodical.

Reports developments related to medicine in Great Britain. Delay of the publication of the green paper report on general practice; Recommendation of the Social Services Select Committee for extra funding; Criticisms of the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme in the country.

Background. Despite substantial progress in the treatment of hepatitis C through the use of direct-acting antivirals which have been shown to cure the disease, complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) are popular among patients as a substitute or complement of allopathic medicines. This study aimed to explore the perspectives of patients and CAM practitioners on the use of CAM for the treatment of hepatitis C in Pakistan. Methods. A cross-sectional design was adopted. Participants (CAM practitioners and patients) were recruited from the capital and two provinces: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab of Pakistan. A survey using paper-based questionnaires, each specific for patients and CAM practitioners, was conducted to gather information pertaining to demography, disease status, treatment history, and participants' perspectives (about the disease, reasons to switch to CAM, and referring source). Results. A total of 417 respondents (n = 284 patients, n = 133 practitioners) were recruited. Of the total patients, 170 (59.9%) had started CAM during the previous three months. There were 168 (59.2%) of the total patients who had used allopathic treatments for hepatitis C prior to their use of CAM. The confidence in CAM (24.6%), high cost (19%), and unbearable side effects (52.1%) of allopathic medicines were the main reasons to switch to CAM treatment. Majority (49.3%) of the patients were referred to CAM on the recommendations of relatives or care givers (17.3%) whereas only 9.5% were referred by health care professionals. Out of 133 practitioners, 48 (36.1%) were practicing herbal medicines. From practitioners' perspectives, club-moss (Lycopodium clavatum) was the best treatment option for hepatitis C. The majority, 73 (54.9%), of the patients had chosen to use CAM because of the side effects of allopathic medicines. Patients who had previous "good experience" with CAM were the most common referral source (56.4%) for CAM use in hepatitis C. Conclusions. Patients' beliefs in CAM, side effects of allopathic therapy, high cost of allopathic medicines, and referrals from previous CAM users are key factors in the switching of hepatitis C patients to CAM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) as a field is based on such disciplines as computer science, biology, psychology, linguistics, mathematics, and mechanical engineering. AI uses algorithms, heuristics, pattern matching, rules, deep learning, and cognitive computing to approximate conclusions. With its ability to analyze complex medical data it can be used in the diagnosis, treatment, and predicting the outcome of many diseases. This paper presents the importance of AI in the healthcare system and by extension in our everyday lives. AI techniques have the potential to be applied in almost every field of medicine and every sphere of our life. AI has the possibility to help in areas with less hands-on healthcare. It is believed that geographically isolated areas can benefit from AIs which could replace physicians. Uzbekistan is one of the first countries in Central Asia which is enthusiastically moving towards digitalization. A group of scientists from Tashkent Pediatric Medical Institute (TPMI) created an AI system for diagnosing electrocardiogram (ECG) waveform outputted from the portable biometric sensor "Bitalino" in order to find out problems for introducing AI in the medical field in Uzbekistan. From this experience and the general literature, we conclude that the main barrier to mass use of AI in healthcare including in Uzbekistan may be two things: a huge amount of data for training, and personnel problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calcium carbonate is a chemical compound composed out of three elements; calcium, carbon and oxygen, and we can describe it with the chemical formula CaCO3. In natural form, it is found mostly in rocks in every part of the world, in shells of marine animals, snails, eggshells etc. Humans have used calcium carbonate since prehistory, and it is used today in various branches of human activity, including medicine and pharmacy. Calcium carbonate is nowadays used as a drug from a group of drugs that affect the alimentary tract and metabolism. It is used in the treatment of hyperacidity, heartburn and flatulence symptoms, as well as in the treatment of hyperphosphatemia in renal patients. It is also used in the form of a dietary supplement, most useful for calcium supplementation, in people with low levels of calcium or in people that are in the risk group. It is often found in food where it appears in the form of a food additive, where it serves as a dye, nutrient, acidity regulator. In addition, calcium carbonate is today widely used in the pharmaceutical industry as an adjuvant, enabling the formation of medicinal preparations. In this paper, the role of calcium carbonate in the preservation of human health and disease prevention will be elaborated through the presentation of its use in various preparations related to human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Creation and use of ontologies has become a mainstream activity in many disciplines, in particular, the biomedical domain. Ontology developers often disseminate information about these ontologies in peer-reviewed ontology description reports. There appears to be, however, a high degree of variability in the content of these reports. Often, important details are omitted such that it is difficult to gain a sufficient understanding of the ontology, its content and method of creation. Results: We propose the Minimum Information for Reporting an Ontology (MIRO) guidelines as a means to facilitate a higher degree of completeness and consistency between ontology documentation, including published papers, and ultimately a higher standard of report quality. A draft of the MIRO guidelines was circulated for public comment in the form of a questionnaire, and we subsequently collected 110 responses from ontology authors, developers, users and reviewers. We report on the feedback of this consultation, including comments on each guideline, and present our analysis on the relative importance of each MIRO information item. These results were used to update the MIRO guidelines, mainly by providing more detailed operational definitions of the individual items and assigning degrees of importance. Based on our revised version of MIRO, we conducted a review of 15 recently published ontology description reports from three important journals in the Semantic Web and Biomedical domain and analysed them for compliance with the MIRO guidelines. We found that only 41.38% of the information items were covered by the majority of the papers (and deemed important by the survey respondents) and a large number of important items are not covered at all, like those related to testing and versioning policies. Conclusions: We believe that the community-reviewed MIRO guidelines can contribute to improving significantly the quality of ontology description reports and other documentation, in particular by increasing consistent reporting of important ontology features that are otherwise often neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial determinations that lead to race-based treatments and mistreatments have many harmful social effects. When used in the practice of medicine, can racial determinants lead to good outcomes? This is an emerging question in medical ethics. It is undoubtedly true that some individuals are more genetically prone to some diseases than others. However, should one rush to judgment with the belief that race may be a valid indicator in identifying diseases an individual is susceptible to? Furthermore, should race be considered in prescribing treatment? Illnesses such as sickle cell-anemia and Tay Sachs disease have long been thought to have a racial origin. This assumption is challenged in this paper. There have also been attempts to prescribe specific drugs for specific racial groups; but this is approach call for further inquiry. Belief in the presupposition that disease is a bio-psycho-social process implies that genetic predispositions are only one factor among many others that relate to the way things are socially constructed. This paper seeks to critique one's view of the use of race as a criterion of medicine to prescribe treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the medical journals published in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH) in the period from 1878 to 1945. The first medical journal in BIH may be deemed to be Jahrbuch des Bosnisch-Hercegowinischen Landesspittales in Sarajevo (The Yearbook of the National Hospital of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo). In a special part of this journal, doctors from Austro-Hungary serving in Sarajevo wrote scholarly articles about their patients' various ailments. Up to 1945 seven more medical journals were published in BIH: Trezvenost - Organ Jugoslavenskog Saveza Trezvenosti (Temperance - the Journal of the Yugoslav Temperance Society), Zdravlje - Lekarske pouke o zdravlju i bolesti (Health, Medical lessons on Health and Disease), Glasnik Lekarske komore za Bosnu, Hercegovinu, Dalmaciju i Crnu Goru (The Journal of the Chamber of Physicians of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia and Montenegro) Glasnik Lekarske komore Vrbaske banovine (Journal of the Chamber of Physicians of Vrbaska banovina, Glasnik Lekarske komore Drinske banovine (Journal of the Chamber of Physicians of Drinska banovina), Vjesnik Zavoda za suzbijanje endemijskog sifilisa u Bosni i Hercegovini (Journal of the Institute for Combatting Endemic Syphilis in Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Časopis za medicinu i biologiju (Journal for Medicine and Biology). Conclusion. Medical journals published in BIH in the period from 1878 to 1945 were published in times marked by specific political and social circumstances in BIH, in the time when BIH was not independent, and was under the influence of the health culture of the ruling regimes. Most of the authors of the articles published in these journals were citizens of the occupying authorities, although the papers published were mainly the result of research undertaken in BIH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mixed methods bibliometric analysis was performed to ascertain the characteristic of scientific literature published in a 10-year period (2007-2016) regarding the application of remote sensing data in human health. A search was performed on the Scopus database, followed by manual revision using synthesis studies' techniques, requiring the authors to sort through more than 8000 medical concepts to create the query, and to manually select relevant papers from over 2000 documents. From the initial 2752 papers identified, 520 articles were selected for analysis, showing that the United States ranked first, with a total of 250 (48.1% of the total) documents, followed by France and the United Kingdom, with 67 (12.9% of the total) and 54 (10.4% of the total) documents, respectively. When considering authorship, the top three authors were Vounatsou P (22 articles), Utzinger J (19 articles), and Vignolles C (13 articles). Regarding disease-specific keywords, malaria, dengue, and schistosomiasis were the most frequent keywords, occurring 142, 34, and 24 times, respectively. For some infectious diseases and other highly pathogenic or emerging infectious diseases, remote sensing has become a very powerful instrument. Also, several studies relate different environmental factors retrieved by remote sensing data with other diseases, such as asthma exacerbations. Health-related remote sensing publications are increasing and this paper highlights the importance of these related technologies toward better information and, ideally, better provision of healthcare. On the other hand, this paper provides an overall picture of the state of the research regarding the application of remote sensing data in human health and identifies the most active stakeholders e.g., authors and institutions in the field, informing possible new collaboration research groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims Newly graduated doctors write a large proportion of prescriptions in UK hospitals but recent studies have shown that they frequently make prescribing errors. The prescribing safety assessment (PSA) has been developed as an assessment of competence in relation to prescribing and supervising the use of medicines. This report describes the delivery of the PSA to all UK final-year medical students in 2016 (PSA2016). Methods The PSA is a 2-hour online assessment comprising eight sections which cover various aspects of prescribing defined within the outcomes of undergraduate education identified by the UK General Medical Council. Students sat one of four PSA 'papers', which had been standard-set using a modified Angoff process. Results A total of 7343 final-year medical students in all 31 UK medical schools sat the PSA. The overall pass rate was 95% with the pass rates for the individual papers ranging from 93 to 97%. The PSA was re-sat by 261 students who had failed and 80% of those candidates passed. The internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) of the four papers ranged from 0.74 to 0.77 (standard error of measurement 4.13-4.24%). There was a statistically significant variation in performance between medical school cohorts (F = 32.6, P < 0.001) and a strongly positive correlation in performance for individual schools between PSA2015 and PSA2016 ( r = 0.79, 95% CI 0.61-0.90; P < 0.01). Conclusions PSA2016 demonstrated the feasibility of delivering a standardized national prescribing assessment online. The vast majority of UK final-year medical students were able to meet a prespecified standard of prescribing competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade, there have been several publications highlighting the need for consistent terminology in breastfeeding research. Standard terms and definitions are essential for the comparison and interpretation of scientific studies that, in turn, support evidence‐based education, consistency of health care, and breastfeeding policy. Inconsistent advice is commonly reported by mothers to contribute to early weaning. A standard language is the fundamental starting point required for the provision of consistent advice. LactaPedia (www.lactapedia.com) is a comprehensive lactation glossary of over 500 terms and definitions created during the development of LactaMap (www.lactamap.com), an online lactation care support system. This paper describes the development of LactaPedia, a website that is accessible free of charge to anyone with access to the Internet. Multiple methodological frameworks were incorporated in LactaPedia's development in order to meet the needs of a glossary to support both consistent health care and scientific research. The resulting LactaPedia methodology is a six‐stage process that was developed inductively and includes framework to guide vetting and extension of its content using public feedback via discussion forums. The discussion forums support ongoing usability and refinement of the glossary. The development of LactaPedia provides a fundamental first step towards improving breastfeeding outcomes that are currently well below World Health Organisation recommendations globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on the apparent decline in clinical medicine in Britain, one of Britain's traditional strengths. Analysis by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI); Clinicians staying out of research because of decline in salaries; Increase in `soft money' from drug companies and small charities accounting for drop in quality and jump in output, according to Edinburgh gastroenterologist Ian Bouchier.

The PLOS Medicine editors issue a call for papers on addressing global disparities in non-communicable diseases–CVD, cancer, COPD, asthma, diabetes, mental health disorders, and substance abuse–for 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety are quite common among stroke survivors and have great negative impacts on patients. Objective. To develop a care bundle through reviewing and integrating care strategies for psychological symptoms after stroke and then improve the bundle by Delphi study. Methods. A structured search of the literature was performed to identify studies evaluating interventions for stroke patients with psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety. Two trained researchers screened papers through the titles, abstracts, and full-texts independently. All studies complying with the eligibility criteria were appraised using quality assessment tools. Related interventions with evaluated evidence levels formed the preliminary bundle. Afterward, the Delphi study was carried out to improve the bundle, and the experts were contacted by e-mail. Ten clinical experts specialized in stroke and psychological rehabilitation were recruited. The reliability of experts was represented by the effective response rate and authority coefficient (Cr). The consensus was deemed to be reached when the mean score for item importance is all equal or above 3.50 and the coefficient of variation (CV) is all equal or below 0.20. The Kendall coefficient W test was adopted to evaluate the consensus on agreement among the experts as well. Data analysis was performed using SPSS V.22.0. Results. Through a systematic evidence summary and two-round Delphi study, the items that were given high scores and got consensus by experts were chosen for the bundle. The iDAME bundle consisted of five interventions eventually: maintaining Interaction, tailored Diet, Acupressure, mindfulness Meditation, and physical Exercise. Conclusion. The development of an evidence-based and consensus-based iDAME bundle which integrated western and traditional Chinese medicine intervention was described. Evidence summary made the bundle become scientific, while the Delphi study made it more maneuverable. Based on these results, the bundle would be potentially implemented in stroke patients for their psychological symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caulis Sargentodoxae prescription has been confirmed by the gynecological clinical observation to be effective in the treatment of endometriosis (EMs), and inflammatory cytokines were involved in EMs. In this paper, animal experiments were designed to explain anti-inflammatory mechanisms of Caulis Sargentodoxae prescription on endometriosis. The EMs model was established by autoplastic transplantation, and rats were randomly divided into seven groups: normal control group, model group, ovariectomized group, gestrinone (Western medicine) group, Caulis Sargentodoxae prescription (Chinese medicine) group, celecoxib (inhibitor) group, and combination (Chinese medicine + inhibitor) group. After oral administration for 21 days, the growth inhibitory rates of the ectopic endometria in treatment groups were evaluated, and the levels of inflammatory cytokines in the serum and peritoneal fluid were determined by ELISA, as well as the expression of prostaglandin endoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2) in the ectopic endometrial tissues was detected by real-time polymerase chain reaction, immunohistochemistry, and western blotting. The growth inhibitory rates of the ectopic endometria were significantly higher in the Caulis Sargentodoxae prescription group and gestrinone group, in comparison with the model group p < 0.05 . In the Caulis Sargentodoxae prescription group, the levels of inflammatory cytokines including IL-1, IL-2, IL-6, TNF-α, and PGE2 were all reduced in the serum and peritoneal fluid p < 0.05 . In addition, the specific expression of PTGS2 in the ectopic endometrial tissues significantly decreased in the Caulis Sargentodoxae prescription group and PTGS2 inhibitor celecoxib group both at mRNA and protein levels, but in the steroid hormone drug gestrinone group not at the mRNA level. So, Caulis Sargentodoxae prescription has a reliable therapeutic effect on the EMs by its comprehensive anti-inflammatory roles, possibly in a way different from gestrinone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the principle of historicism, system analysis, structural functionalism, dialectics and synergetics, the paper analyzes the charter and activity the of the Lviv Society of Halician Physicians, the first trade union organization in the medical sphere. Contemporary codition as well as development of historiography of the issue including the history of the medical and trade union movement, the names of the Society founders is shown. The crucial problem among physicians of the second half of the nineteenth century which was in line with the problems of all population segments is proved. This organization played a prominent role in the development of medicine in Halychyna. The activity of the Society was regulated by the charter. Each member, when joining the Society, assumed the obligation to comply with all the provisions of the charter and had to care for its growth and the glory of the organization. Acting members had to be present at scientific meetings and provide observations on the status of the medical case. That is, to provide statistics on the diseases and patients they have been treated, as well as to share the experience gained in practice. The purpose of the organization and its activities were primarily socio-economic and cultural-educational ones. Under its control, the Society kept a record of the movement of patients in Lviv hospitals (kept statistics of all cured patients), analyzed new methods in the treatment of fever, various pathologies and other issues. The members of the Society promised to meet every first Saturday of the month to participate in scientific meetings. They discussed major events in the life of the organization, read correspondence and planned work for the next month. Once a year, in December, the Society of Galician physicions held an annual meeting, which provided a full annual financial report, discussed the issues of new members and those who left the organization, announced the names of new honorary and advisory members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Searching for an answer whether medicine is a science or an art, especially in today's time when the emphasis is on the biotechnological aspects of treatment, the intention of this paper is to reflect on the outcomes of the encounter of medicine and art. Those that are recognised at least in the complementarity of the methodology, creating additional life values. By presenting authentic actions, this is a call for additional health improvement interventions, without allowing the biopsychosocial approach to human integrity to be forgotten. The inspiration for this view was the prestigious title of the European Capital of Culture that the Town of Rijeka was awarded for the year 2020. This city is also a kind of capital of health culture in many ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medicine and physicians in Dubrovnik during the last two centuries, i.e. in the period after the dissolution of the Republic of Dubrovnik by Napoleon's Army, have attracted less interest among medical historians. In this paper, the lives and medical careers of two physicians from Dubrovnik, father and son, Baldo and Ante Bibica, have been reconstructed from the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century by searching through the contemporary medical journals and newspapers as well as private archives of the members of family Bibica. Baldo Bibica graduated medicine in Vienna and spent the whole professional life as a municipal physician, at first, in the places in the vicinity of Dubrovnik and from 1903 in Gruž. Ante Bibica studied medicine in Graz and in Zagreb to become the first person from Dubrovnik promoted at the School of Medicine, Zagreb University. He specialized in dermatovenereology in Vienna and worked, as a specialist, in Dubrovnik. They both were active in the professional medical societies (at local and national levels) and were influential in the social life in Dubrovnik. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking previous research work into account, I intend to formulate the anthropological issue in the context of contemporary philosophy, as it has been challenged in the last decades by accomplishments of biomedicine, especially molecular genetics and bioengineering, in their medical applications and different uses with other aims. Particular attention is given to epistemic, ontological and ethical aspects, by emphasizing the capacity of different technologies, in the wake of the different equations of knowledge and power, to make and create things, authorizing philosophical speculations about the new demiurge and the geneticist "playing God". From another perspective, with the powers of technology, especially of biotechnologies, the contemporary philosophical debate is marked by intense discussions about the dangers and the menaces caused by more radical and ambitious technologies, like CRISPR and transgenics. These debates give rise to proposals such as moratoria and stricter rules for bioproducts and biohackers, leading Chinese authorities to banish two geneticists who edited the HIV-immune twins. This is the more polemical and dramatic face of contemporary moral philosophy, whose foundations will be discussed in this paper and developed in further studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to determine whether, and to what extent, the OA status and OA type of articles can predict their social media visibility, when controlling for a considerable number of important factors. Those factors, which previous research confirmed their positive association with altmetric counts, were journal impact, individual collaboration, research funding, number of MESH topics, topic, international collaboration, lay summary, being a mega journal, F1000 Score, and gender of first and last authors. The data for this study comprised 83,444 articles and reviews in the research area of Life Sciences and Biomedicine from 2012-2016, retrieved from Medline in November 2018. The results showed that the percentage of OA articles mentioned on altmetric platforms was significantly higher than those of the non-OA articles. Furthermore, Open Access was significantly associated with a higher probability of a paper being mentioned on the studied social media platforms. Compared to non-OA articles, the OA articles had a higher average of tweets, Facebooks posts, news posts, and blog posts. By increase of a unit in the OA status, the average number of tweets, Facebooks posts, news posts, and blog posts increased by 92.7%, 25.7%, 83.9% and 48.4%, respectively. Regarding the OA types (studied as Gold vs non-Gold), our findings showed that the Gold OA articles had a higher average number of Tweets and a higher probability of being mentioned in tweets and blogs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research on herpetofauna to be used as traditional medicine are still few compared to research on medicinal plants, especially in Indonesia. This paper discusses the characteristics of traders and consumers of medicine that derived from herpetofauna and also examines the perceptions of traders and consumers on herpetofauna conservation and their use as medicine. To compare whether there are different perceptions between consumers in Jakarta and Bandung, the Chi square test was used; and to find out whether there are influence of education and age on respondents' perceptions, the Spearman test was used. The results showed that most traders were dominated by men of productive age with a relatively low level of education. The traders are mostly Moslem, and originated from Betawi and Sundanese. Most traders have been in the business for more than 20 years.The consumers are also dominated by men and fairly even between Moslems and non Moslems. Consumers are generally Chinese and most of them are aged 35-39. The level of education of consumers is higher than the traders. No significant differences were found regarding the perception of traders and consumers in the two cities. There is a significant positive correlation between education level and perceptions regarding animal use regulations and animal protection regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical use cases for machine learning (ML) are growing exponentially. The first hospitals are already using ML systems as decision support systems in their daily routine. At the same time, most ML systems are still opaque and it is not clear how these systems arrive at their predictions. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of the taxonomy of explainability methods and review popular methods. In addition, we conduct a systematic literature search on PubMed to investigate which explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) methods are used in 450 specific medical supervised ML use cases, how the use of XAI methods has emerged recently, and how the precision of describing ML pipelines has evolved over the past 20 years. A large fraction of publications with ML use cases do not use XAI methods at all to explain ML predictions. However, when XAI methods are used, open-source and model-agnostic explanation methods are more commonly used, with SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) and Gradient Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM) for tabular and image data leading the way. ML pipelines have been described in increasing detail and uniformity in recent years. However, the willingness to share data and code has stagnated at about one-quarter. XAI methods are mainly used when their application requires little effort. The homogenization of reports in ML use cases facilitates the comparability of work and should be advanced in the coming years. Experts who can mediate between the worlds of informatics and medicine will become more and more in demand when using ML systems due to the high complexity of the domain. [Display omitted] • We estimate that only 16 % of the reported explainability methods could be understood by patients. • The distribution of data types for explainable ML applications for tabular | image | text | audio data is 51 % | 32 % | 3 % | 0 %. • The quality of the description of machine learning pipelines increased in recent years with more homogeneity. • The data and code sharing ratio stagnated in about one quarter. • Most popular explainability methods are SHAP, LIME, and Grad-CAM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, augmented reality (AR) has led to the rapid development of new interfaces in various fields of social and technological application domains. One such domain is medicine, and to a higher extent surgery, where these visualization techniques help to improve the effectiveness of preoperative and intraoperative procedures. Following this trend, this paper presents SLIMBRAIN, a real-time acquisition and processing AR system suitable to classify and display brain tumor tissue from hyperspectral (HS) information. This system captures and processes HS images at 14 frames per second (FPS) during the course of a tumor resection operation to detect and delimit cancer tissue at the same time the neurosurgeon operates. The result is represented in an AR visualization where the classification results are overlapped with the RGB point cloud captured by a LiDAR camera. This representation allows natural navigation of the scene at the same time it is captured and processed, improving the visualization and hence effectiveness of the HS technology to delimit tumors. The whole system has been verified in real brain tumor resection operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers call for updated valid evidence to monitor, prevent, and control of alarming trends of health problems. To respond to these needs, health researches provide the vast multidisciplinary scientific fields. We quantify the national trends of health research outputs and its contribution in total science products. Methods: We systematically searched Scopus database with the most coverage in health and biomedicine discipline as the only sources for multidisciplinary citation reports, for all total and health-related publications, from 2000 to 2014. These scientometrics analyses covered the trends of main index of scientific products, citations, and collaborative papers. We also provided information on top institutions, journals, and collaborative research centers in the fields of health researches. Results: In Iran, over a 15-year period, 237,056 scientific papers have been published, of which 81,867 (34.53%) were assigned to health-related fields. Pearson's Chi-square test showed significant time trends between published papers and their citations. Tehran University of Medical Sciences was responsible for 21.87% of knowledge productions share. The second and the third ranks with 11.15% and 7.28% belonged to Azad University and Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, respectively. In total fields, Iran had the most collaborative papers with the USA (4.17%), the UK (2.41%), and Canada (0.02%). In health-related papers, similar patterns of collaboration followed by 4.75%, 2.77%, and 1.93% of papers. Conclusions: Despite the ascending trends in health research outputs, more efforts required for the promotion of collaborative outputs that cause synergy of resources and the use of practical results. These analyses also could be useful for better planning and management of planning and conducting studies in these fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Medicine is an ever evolving field of knowledge, new practice, and research. There are various clinical research methodologies; the clinical researcher may actively collect patient information, or retrospectively obtain patient data from traditional datasets, such as hard-copy patient records. In more recent years, clinical research has seen the emergence of 'big data'. Big data are large electronic databases characterized by the four V's-volume, variety, veracity and velocity. The rise of big data suggests that there are advantages to its use. One advantage of big data is easy accessibility, which allows information to be obtained and analysed in a short period of time. However, there are shortcomings of using big data in clinical research, mainly with regards to sampling bias and validity. Nonetheless, big data are here to stay in today's digitised age of medicine, and the researcher must consider the appropriate contexts for the use of big data in clinical research. Aim: The aim of this paper was to define 'big data' in medicine and examine its use in clinical research. Methods: A literature review was conducted on Ovid MEDLINE to identify relevant literature. The PRISMA statement was used to screen and select articles that would be reviewed for the paper. Conclusion: The future of big data is promising, with the allure of low-cost, immediate, and comprehensive data, but it is important that clinical researchers understand how to utilise these well for research and knowledge translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines and shares the promising practices in promoting health and well-being that emerged from an innovative project, entitled "Feasting for Change". Taking place on Coast Salish territories, British Columbia, Canada, Feasting for Change aimed to empower Indigenous communities in revitalizing traditional knowledge about the healing power of foods. This paper contributes to a growing body of literature that illuminates how solidarities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities can be fostered to support meaningful decolonization of mainstream health practices and discourses. In particular, it provides a hopeful model for how community-based projects can take inspiration and continual leadership from Indigenous Peoples. This paper offers experiential and holistic methods that enhance the capacity for intergenerational, land-based, and hands-on learning about the value of traditional food and cultural practices. It also demonstrates how resources (digital stories, plant knowledge cards, celebration cookbooks, and language videos) can be successfully developed with and used by community to ensure the ongoing process of healthful revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Many problems in biomedicine and other areas of the life sciences can be characterized as control problems, with the goal of finding strategies to change a disease or otherwise undesirable state of a biological system into another, more desirable, state through an intervention, such as a drug or other therapeutic treatment. The identification of such strategies is typically based on a mathematical model of the process to be altered through targeted control inputs. This paper focuses on processes at the molecular level that determine the state of an individual cell, involving signaling or gene regulation. The mathematical model type considered is that of Boolean networks. The potential control targets can be represented by a set of nodes and edges that can be manipulated to produce a desired effect on the system. Results: This paper presents a method for the identification of potential intervention targets in Boolean molecular network models using algebraic techniques. The approach exploits an algebraic representation of Boolean networks to encode the control candidates in the network wiring diagram as the solutions of a system of polynomials equations, and then uses computational algebra techniques to find such controllers. The control methods in this paper are validated through the identification of combinatorial interventions in the signaling pathways of previously reported control targets in two well studied systems, a p53-mdm2 network and a blood T cell lymphocyte granular leukemia survival signaling network. Supplementary data is available online and our code in Macaulay2 and Matlab are available via http://www.ms.uky.edu/~dmu228/ControlAlg. Conclusions: This paper presents a novel method for the identification of intervention targets in Boolean network models. The results in this paper show that the proposed methods are useful and efficient for moderately large networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statistical analysis of patents in specific areas can be an important tool for the evaluation of trends and advancements in specific research fields. Patenting is generally considered to be steered by commercial needs; hence it primarily concentrates on research results that are expected to have an important economic value. Patent data can be utilized to conduct comparative studies and trend analysis. This paper examines the granted patents from the United States Patent and Trademark office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO), in regards to the creation and/or use of nanoporous materials. The patents found were categorized by subject, and those belonging in the areas of Medicine, Energy or Environment were further analysed. The study also includes statistics about quality/value indicators, such as forward and backwards citations and references, age, family and materials used, as well as statistical data on the occurrences in literature of the materials studied, as found via a Scopus database search. The goal of this paper is to identify current trends and opportunities in these areas, and try to find possible gaps between the current reality and important societal needs. The identified trends and opportunities could be used by the industry as well as researchers, in order to adjust investment strategies, improve and potentially commercialize the corresponding patented applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Daily or circadian rhythms are physiological and behavioural rhythms that occur over a roughly 24-hour period. • These bodily rhythms have been largely overlooked by historians of health and medicine. • How circadian rhythms are understood to affect health and disease varies across cultural and temporal contexts. • Henri Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis offers a methodology for new research in 'rhythmic history'. Rhythm characterizes life on Earth. Daily physiological rhythms of eating and fasting, sleeping and waking, moving and resting, are common to almost all life forms which evolved under the solar light–dark cycle. Despite their ubiquity, historians of health and medicine have yet to grapple with the lived experiences of these daily rhythms in the past. This paper presents a potential new research agenda in 'rhythmic history' that understands rhythmicity as something which lies between biology and culture. Thinking with rhythms offers exciting opportunities to unite previously disparate historical studies of daily rhythms like eating and sleeping and opens up a new way to view the enmeshed connections between body and environment. In this paper, I take inspiration from the scientific concept of the 'zeitgeber' ('time giver'), coined by the German chronobiologist Jürgen Aschoff, to frame a review of current literature relating to rhythms and explore Henry Lefebvre's notion of 'rhythmanalysis' as a methodological tool for historians undertaking 'rhythmic histories'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is growing enthusiasm for the application of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to clinical research and practice. However, instructions on how to develop robust high-quality ML and AI in medicine are scarce. In this paper, we provide a practical example of techniques that facilitate the development of high-quality ML systems including data pre-processing, hyperparameter tuning, and model comparison using open-source software and data.Methods: We used open-source software and a publicly available dataset to train and validate multiple ML models to classify breast masses into benign or malignant using mammography image features and patient age. We compared algorithm predictions to the ground truth of histopathologic evaluation. We provide step-by-step instructions with accompanying code lines.Findings: Performance of the five algorithms at classifying breast masses as benign or malignant based on mammography image features and patient age was statistically equivalent (P > 0.05). Area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUROC) for the logistic regression with elastic net penalty was 0.89 (95% CI 0.85 - 0.94), for the Extreme Gradient Boosting Tree 0.88 (95% CI 0.83 - 0.93), for the Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline algorithm 0.88 (95% CI 0.83 - 0.93), for the Support Vector Machine 0.89 (95% CI 0.84 - 0.93), and for the neural network 0.89 (95% CI 0.84 - 0.93).Interpretation: Our paper allows clinicians and medical researchers who are interested in using ML algorithms to understand and recreate the elements of a comprehensive ML analysis. Following our instructions may help to improve model generalizability and reproducibility in medical ML studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mass digitization of books is changing the way information is created, disseminated and displayed. Electronic book readers (e-readers) generally refer to two main display technologies: the electronic ink (E-ink) and the liquid crystal display (LCD). Both technologies have advantages and disadvantages, but the question whether one or the other triggers less visual fatigue is still open. The aim of the present research was to study the effects of the display technology on visual fatigue. To this end, participants performed a longitudinal study in which two last generation e-readers (LCD, E-ink) and paper book were tested in three different prolonged reading sessions separated by - on average - ten days. Results from both objective (Blinks per second) and subjective (Visual Fatigue Scale) measures suggested that reading on the LCD (Kindle Fire HD) triggers higher visual fatigue with respect to both the E-ink (Kindle Paperwhite) and the paper book. The absence of differences between E-ink and paper suggests that, concerning visual fatigue, the E-ink is indeed very similar to the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports developments related to medicine in Great Britain. Uses of a plastic drip set; Usefulness of waste papers; Preference to live in Africa.

Unsupervised ensemble, or consensus clustering, consists in finding the optimal combination strategy of individual clusterings that is robust with respect to the selection of an algorithmic clustering pool. Recently an approach was proposed based on the concept of consensus graph that has profound advantages over its predecessors. Despite its robust properties this approach assigns the same weight to the contribution of each clustering to the final solution. In this paper, we propose a weighting policy for this problem that is based on internal clustering quality measures and compare against other popular approaches. Results on publicly available datasets show that weights can significantly improve the accuracy performance while retaining the robust properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Models for diagnosis aid may provoke distrust among practitioners and patients. • The development of models for diagnosis aid falls under data mining concerns. • The survey raises an expert-aware approach for suitable diagnosis aid. • Interpretability is a major concern for the acceptance of diagnosis aid models. • The recourse to data mining for diagnosis aid poses many technical challenges. Abstract Data mining continues to play an important role in medicine; specifically, for the development of diagnosis aid models used in expert and intelligent systems. Although we can find abundant research on this topic, clinicians remain reluctant to use decision support tools. Social pressure explains partly this lukewarm position, but concerns about reliability and credibility are also put forward. To address this reticence, we emphasize the importance of the collaboration between both data miners and clinicians. This survey lays the foundation for such an interaction, by focusing on the specifics of diagnosis aid, and the related data modeling goals. On this regard, we propose an overview on the requirements expected by the clinicians, who are both the experts and the final users. Indeed, we believe that the interaction with clinicians should take place from the very first steps of the process and throughout the development of the predictive models, thus not only at the final validation stage. Actually, against a current research approach quite blindly driven by data, we advocate the need for a new expert-aware approach. This survey paper provides guidelines to contribute to the design of daily helpful diagnosis aid systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major cause of end-stage renal disease. In order to palliate renal function impairment and reduce kidney related mortality, it is crucial to treating DN patients at the early stage. This study aims to assess the efficacy and safety of conventional therapy combined with safflower yellow versus conventional therapy alone in early DN patients. Methods. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials that compared safflower yellow plus conventional therapy with conventional therapy alone in early DN patients was conducted. Papers were searched using the electronic databases and reference lists. Two reviewers working independently extracted relevant data and carried out risk-of-bias assessments. Statistical analysis was undertaken in Review Manager 5.3. Results. Fourteen trials (1,072 patients) were included in the meta-analysis. Conventional therapy combined with safflower yellow was associated with a higher effective rate (RD, 0.24; 95% CI, 0.17 to 0.30) and a greater decline in urinary albumin excretion rates (SMD, -1.34; 95% CI, -1.77 to -0.92), fasting blood glucose (MD, -0.57; 95% CI, -0.98 to -0.16), serum creatinine (MD, -12.36; 95% CI, -14.66 to -10.06), and blood urea nitrogen (SMD, -0.93; 95% CI, -1.13 to -0.73) in the subgroup with a follow-up time > 15 days. The incidence of adverse events did not differ significantly between these two regimens (RD, -0.01; 95% CI, -0.03 to 0.01). Findings were similar in the subgroup with a follow-up time < 15 days. Conclusions. Conventional therapy combined with safflower yellow had a more beneficial effect than conventional therapy alone in early DN patients. There were significant differences in effective rate, urinary albumin excretion rates, fasting blood glucose, serum creatinine, and blood urea nitrogen between the two regimens and no significant difference in adverse events. More randomized controlled research using standardized protocols would be needed in the future to compare these two regimens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Academic discourse is characterised by being 'enormously diverse' (Hyland, 2004) because of its different disciplines and genres. Authors of academic texts are influenced by their disciplines, and by the 'discourse formats' (Fløttum et al., 2006) of what they are writing. However, genres exist across disciplines. For instance, research articles and PhD theses are found in different disciplines, namely medicine and sociology. Added to that, Systemic Functional Linguistics proposes that lexicogrammatical choices are activated by the context, which is, in this case, multiple. This paper seeks to study how the different parameters of context might influence the choices of PPs. A corpus of PhD theses and research articles from medicine and sociology is collected, and a sample is extracted and annotated via CorpusTool. The result revealed that certain choices reveal that while research articles are more similar across the disciplines, PhD theses are less restricted and disciplinary and personal differences are prominent. Highlights • Linguistic choices of Prepositional Phrases can be related to the different parameters of context in academic writing. • Certain lexico-grammatical choices are global: they reveal features of the field of academic writing, in general. • Other choices distinguish the different types of context: the genres and disciplines studied. • The boundary between genre and discipline is not fixed; it depends on the genre itself, as certain genres (Research Articles) have more restrictions than others (PhD Theses). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge and influence of predatory journals in the field of dermatology in Austria. A total of 286 physicians (50.5% men) completed a questionnaire. The vast majority of subjects read scientific articles (n = 281, 98.3%) and took them into consideration in their clinical decisionmaking (n = 271, 98.5% of participants that regularly read scientific literature). Open access was known by 161 (56.3%), predatory journals by 84 (29.4%), and the Beall's list by 19 physicians (6.7%). A total of 117 participants (40.9%) had been challenged by patients with results from the scientific literature, including 9 predatory papers. Participants who knew of predatory journals had a higher level of education as well as scientific experience, and were more familiar with the open-access system (p < 0.001). These results indicate that the majority of dermatologists are not familiar with predatory journals. This is particularly the case for physicians in training and in the early stages of their career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last third of the nineteenth century, Buenos Aires physicians dealt extensively with hysterical pathology, especially among the female population. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the various theoretical fabrications elaborated by those professionals about the disease. After recognizing a first set of writings in which a certain morbid autonomy was not granted to the condition, the theoretical frameworks prevailing in the subsequent works are described in detail. Special attention is paid to clinical devices used by doctors in their practice, since it is assumed that those devices had a clear impact on the ways the pathology was understood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The psychological demands placed upon the emergency medical services, assures them of their place amongst High Responsib- ility Organizations. A high pressure to act and an irreversibility of situ- ations are integral features of their workplaces. After the emergency services' job profiles were restructured in Germany, the practical stage of paramedic training is now undertaken in these conditions. That is, they are trained by a supervising instructor whilst caring for critically ill patients. This paper aims to describe the requisite skills for such an instructor, formulate the associated competences as learning objectives, and develop a quality-measuring instrument for the description of training situations. Methods: The compilation of a competence catalogue was done via a two-step process: following a Delphi survey with an expert panel of practical trainers and trainees, a large cohort of parameters were valid- ated in terms of their relevance. Those factors that formed scales to- gether were identified. Results: After validating the results of the Delphi analysis, six scales (composed of 25 items in toto) were defined. They included the areas of "Training during times of action", "Training during periods of calm", "Background and practical relevance", "Character and personality traits", "Pedagogical competencies" and "Organizational behaviour". Conclusion: For the first time, a competency catalogue has been developed for instructors working in the emergency medical services from German-speaking countries. The catalogue focuses upon clinical training during the acute care of critically ill patients. The scales and items can be used for training-the-trainers, and also quality monitoring. Further research needs to focus on the application of the catalogue in clinical practice and evaluate the need for situational customization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Radiochemical purity (RCP) is a routine quality control test carried out at nuclear medicine to determine the concentration of various chemical species present in the radiopharmaceuticals (RPs). The present work describes three years of experience in a single institute for the measurement of these impurities in the RPs preparations. Methods: The RCP of different cold kit preparations were performed by chromatographic methods. Specifically, a small drop of the aliquot was spotted on the specific paper acting as the stationary phase and then developed in different solvents as mobile phases. The developed chromatograms were then quantified for various chemical species by Mini TLC scanner or well type counter. Results: The retention factor (Rf) values for the different chemical species in the labeling of RP were measured by using single, double or triple solvent systems. It was observed that 2.70% of the kits had RCP less than the acceptable limit whereas 97.30% kits were found within the permissible levels. Conclusion: Chromatographic techniques used for the assessment of RCP offer sufficiently good results for identification and separation of different chemical impurities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. General Practice/Family Medicine includes approaches to the biological, technological, behavioural, sociological and anthropological domains. Objectives. To document the domains addressed in the final assignments of the Integrated Master's Degree in Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, in the area of GP/FM. Material and methods. Observational study of the titles of final assignments, between 2008 and 2017, granted by the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra. A domain analysis using as codes the International Classification in Primary Care-2 and the Q-Codes, a context classification in Primary Care, year of elaboration and gender of author was carried out for each title of final assignment. A descriptive and inferential analysis was performed through parametric and nonparametric tests. Results. 169 papers were analysed, 23.1% written by male students, with a positive overall growth dynamics (Δ = +7) between 2008 and 2017. Q-Codes were registered 276 times, while the ICPC-2 codes were used 133 times. Under the Q-Codes, "doctor's issues" is the most frequently addressed (n = 112; 67.2%), and under the International Classification in Primary Care-2 classifications, the chapter "Psychological" was predominant (n = 35; 21%). Under the Q-Codes, subcategories "primary care setting" (n = 26; 15.6%), "health issue management" (n = 23; 13.8%) and "unable to code, unclear" (22; 13.2%) were dominant. Within the International Classification in Primary Care-2, the subcategories "diabetes noninsulin dependent" (n = 22; 13.2%), "depressive disorder" (8, 4.8%) and "hypertension uncomplicated" (8; 4.8%) were predominantly focused on. Conclusions. The 3CGP may become a professional tool, allowing for more precise identification of final works, for a better communication method in medical activity and for avoiding the loss of previously developed works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper brings forward some of many achievements of women scientists in the 20th and 21st century medicine. Their essential contributions changed the medical specialities to the present day. The first and perhaps best known laureate is Marie Sklodowska-Curie, who is also the only scientist to win two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. In total, there were twelve women honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Some of them also showed interest in other fields, like ethics. The most remarcable traits of these female Nobel laureates were ambition, open-mindedness and patience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm has become one of the popular optimization metaheuristics and has been proven to perform better than many state-of-the-art algorithms for dealing with complex multiobjective optimization problems. However, the multiobjective artificial bee colony (MOABC) algorithm has not been integrated into the common multiobjective optimization frameworks which provide the integrated environments for understanding, reusing, implementation, and comparison of multiobjective algorithms. Therefore, a unified, flexible, configurable, and user-friendly MOABC algorithm framework is presented which combines a multiobjective ABC algorithm named RMOABC and the multiobjective evolution algorithms (MOEA) framework in this paper. The multiobjective optimization framework aims at the development, experimentation, and study of metaheuristics for solving multiobjective optimization problems. The framework was tested on the Walking Fish Group test suite, and a many-objective water resource planning problem was utilized for verification and application. The experiment’s results showed the framework can deal with practical multiobjective optimization problems more effectively and flexibly, can provide comprehensive and reliable parameters sets, and can complete reference, comparison, and analysis tasks among multiple optimization algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper represents an innovative technique to cure some of the fatal diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and tumors by injected nano-size gold particles (gold salt in the veins through a hotted slim tube. In the proposed model large atomic number enables gold particles in attaining further heat and conveys medicine to the effected organs and erodes malign tissues or cells. The couple stress fluid is treated as blood inside the two coaxial tubes containing nanoparticles. The inner tube is considered to be rigid in configuration while the outer is elastic or flexible to eventuate a sinusoidal wave once the fluid passes within the gap of tubes. A set of nonlinear and coupled mathematical equations governing the flow model has been converted into a system of ordinary differential equations using suitable transformations prior to seeking an analytical solutions. A comprehensive parametric study has also been made to make the presented analysis more realistic to ensure that the presented study adheres with the physical phenomenon. Effects of velocity, temperature and concentration of the particles are examined corresponding to variate physical parameters contributing in the flow. Besides, highlighting graphically, the impact of each sundry parameters has been explained in detail at the end. It is worth mentioning that the results for Newtonian fluid can be obtained from the reported results by taking couple stress parameter is zero. Highlights • An innovative technique to cure fatal diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and tumors is proposed. • Nano-size gold particles (gold salt in the veins through a hotted slim tube) are injected. • The couple stress fluid as blood inside the two coaxial tubes is considered. • Results for Newtonian fluid can be obtained as a limiting case of the considered problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper brings forward some of many achievements of women scientists in the 20th and 21st century medicine. Their essential contributions changed the medical specialities to the present day. The first and perhaps best known laureate is Marie Sklodowska-Curie, who is also the only scientist to win two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. In total, there were twelve women honored with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Some of them also showed interest in other fields, like ethics. The most remarcable traits of these female Nobel laureates were ambition, open-mindedness and patience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses a bibliometric analysis explore citations trend of ethnomedicine and information management, and text mining algorithm of a total number of 8, 333 publications (n = 8,333) were conducted based on the title, abstract and keywords to find co-occurrence of key terms in indigenous medicine and information management. The objectives of this study were to first, analyze the authorship, outputs and citation trend and to find out if researchers have been able to establish a nexus between indigenous herbal use and the role of information management in promoting such use. Second, to establish if there is an already link in the information management research through collaboration as a nexus to promoting indigenous use of herbal medicine to enhance public healthcare delivery systems in the continent. A computation synthesis of the data was performed using R programming statistical analysis and VOS bibliometric software to visualize the analyzed data. Based on the R programming output, the total author sample size were 35,970 (n = 35,970), and their total publications outputs were n= 8,333 and the total outputs parameters was as follows: Min = 5.00 Max = 71.00, µ = 10.59. The average citation per items was 4.74 (ACP = 4.74) h-index=60, sum of times cited (STC = 39,572), citing articles (CA = 32,749) without self-citations (n =36,042) and it's citing articles (CA= 30,777). The findings suggested that researchers were yet to establish the nexus between information management and its impact in promoting indigenous use of natural remedies within the public healthcare delivery to promote its efficacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Diabetic cognitive impairment (DCI), a serious complication of diabetes mellitus (DM), is gaining more acceptance and attention. The learning and memory function of diabetics always decreases. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been demonstrated to be effective in treating the symptoms in China, and thereinto Chinese medicinal herbs (CMH) are the most widely used. The objective of the present study was to review and analyze the existing data about reducing the symptoms in CMH treatment for DCI. Methods. Electronic literature databases (PubMed, EMBASE, CNKI, SinoMed, and Wan fang) were searched for randomized controlled trials conducted in China, comparing CMH with western medicines in the treatment of DCI, up to April 1, 2018. We applied standard meta-analytic techniques to analyze data from papers that reached acceptable criteria. Result. Nine randomized controlled trials (n = 576) on CMH were included. We found moderate evidence that CMH used alone or in combination with western medicines was more effective than western medicines alone in reliving the symptoms for DCI (total effective rate, odds radio (OR) = 4.64 (2.60, 8.29), and 95% confidence interval, P<0.00001). Besides, CMH along or in combination with western medicines showed more beneficial effects on Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scale (mean difference (MD) = 1.31(0.75, 1.87), P<0.00001), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scale (MD = 2.07 (0.86, 3.28), P<0.00001, and TCM symptom score (TCMSS) (MD = -4.89 (-8.44, -1.34), P = 0.007). Most of the included studies showed that there was not a significant difference in the adverse events. Conclusions. These findings demonstrated that CMH used alone or in combination with western medicines were apparently better than western medicines alone in the treatment of DCI. Because of the poor quality of the studies that were available for the present meta-analysis, further researches are still needed to support these early findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper compares 11 internal evaluation criteria for hierarchical clustering of categorical data regarding a correct number of clusters determination. The criteria are divided into three groups based on a way of treating the cluster quality. The variability-based criteria use the within-cluster variability, the likelihood-based criteria maximize the likelihood function, and the distance-based criteria use distances within and between clusters. The aim is to determine which evaluation criteria perform well and under what conditions. Different analysis settings, such as the used method of hierarchical clustering, and various dataset properties, such as the number of variables or the minimal between-cluster distances, are examined. The experiment is conducted on 810 generated datasets, where the evaluation criteria are assessed regarding the optimal number of clusters determination and mean absolute errors. The results indicate that the likelihood-based B1C1 and variability-based BK criteria perform relatively well in determining the optimal number of clusters and that some criteria, usually the distance-based ones, should be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]