scholarly journals A Mixed Method with Effective Color Reduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (21) ◽  
pp. 7819
Author(s):  
María-Luisa Pérez-Delgado

This article presents a color quantization technique that combines two previously proposed approaches: the Binary splitting method and the Iterative ant-tree for color quantization method. The resulting algorithm can obtain good quality images with low time consumption. In addition, the iterative nature of the proposed method allows the quality of the quantized image to improve as the iterations progress, although it also allows a good initial image to be quickly obtained. The proposed method was compared to 13 other color quantization techniques and the results showed that it could generate better quantized images than most of the techniques assessed. The statistical significance of the improvement obtained using the new method is confirmed by applying a statistical test to the results of all the methods compared.

Author(s):  
Jean-Frédéric Morin ◽  
Christian Olsson ◽  
Ece Özlem Atikcan

This chapter highlights statistical significance. The key question in quantitative analysis is whether a pattern observed in a sample also holds for the population from which the sample was drawn. A positive answer to this question implies that the result is ‘statistically significant’ — i.e. it was not produced by a random variation from sample to sample, but, instead, reflects the pattern that exists in the population. The null hypothesis statistical test (NHST) has been a widely used approach for testing whether inference from a sample to the population is valid. Seeking to test whether valid inferences about the population could be made based on the results from a single sample, a researcher should consider a wide variety of approaches and take into the account not only p-values, but also sampling process, sample size, the quality of measurement, and other factors that may influence the reliability of estimates.


Author(s):  
Masrukin Masrukin ◽  
Hermanto Hermanto

Customer satisfaction is influenced by service quality factors, this study aims to find out and analyze how much influence the quality of service on customer satisfaction is felt by customers who use the service of Poor Rice (Raskin) at the Office of Public Companies Logistics Agency (Perum BULOG) in Sampit City Regency East Kotawaringin. The research method used in this study is the method of observation, questionnaire/questionnaire and documentation using a Likert scale and the method of determining the sample used is the error rate of 5% as many as 213 samples. Testing the hypothesis used is a statistical test with the formula "Product moment person". The results showed that there was a very strong correlation between Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction of the Office of Public Company of the Logistics Affairs Agency (Perum BULOG) in the District of East Kotawaringin. As much as 0.9968514278 based on the calculation of Pearson Product Moment value.


Author(s):  
Phillippa Carnemolla ◽  
Catherine Bridge

The multi-dimensional relationship between housing and population health is now well recognised internationally, across both developing and developed nations. This paper examines a dimension within the housing and health relationship – accessibility – that to date has been considered difficult to measure. This paper reports on the mixed method results of larger mixed-method, exploratory study designed to measure the impact of home modifications on Health-Related Quality of Life, supported by qualitative data of recipients’ experiences of home modifications. Data was gathered from 157 Australian HACC clients, who had received home modifications. Measurements were taken for both before and after home modifications and reveal that home modifications were associated with an average 40% increase in Health-Related Quality of Life levels. The qualitative results revealed that participants positively associated home modifications across six effect themes: increased safety and confidence, improved mobility at home, increased independence, supported care-giving role, increased social participation, and ability to return home from hospital. This exploratory research gives an insight into the potential for accessible architecture to impact improvements in community health and wellbeing.


2016 ◽  
pp. 120-127
Author(s):  
Dinh Toan Nguyen

Background: Dementia after stroke, particularly subacute period is often overlooked. Today the quality of human life is increasingly high, finding scales that have high value for detection of dementia in patients with stroke is increasingly interested. MoCA test is high sensitivity with mild dementia and identify more abnormalities of awareness caused by vascular, but MoCA have not been studied much in Vietnam. Objective: Assessing MoCA test in subacute stroke patients and compare MoCA versus MMSE in these patients. Subjects: 90 patients with subacute stroke period, these people are being treated at Department of cardiovascular internal medicine at Hue Central Hospital, from 7/2014 - 7/2015. Methods: cross-sectional description and analysis. Results: The mean age is 65.57 ± 13.38, accounting for 54.4% male and 45.6% female. Age, duration of illness has weak correlation with MoCA. The risk factors: hypertension, stroke ischemic transient, alcoholism, smoking, heart disease, diabetes, dyslipidemia related no statistical significance with MoCA. The proportion of dementia in subacute stroke according MoCA is 82.2%. The concordance between MoCA and MMSE was good (kappa = 0.684). Using DSM-IV criteria as the gold standard we found MoCA more valuable in the dementia diagnosis than MMSE (AUC 0.864 versus 0.774, p <0.05). Conclusion: The rate of dementia in stroke subacute period according MoCA is quite high. MoCA is valuable than MMSE in detecting dementia in patients with stroke subacute period, this scale is short, easy to implement so should put into using widely in clinical practice. Key words: MoCA test, subacute stroke, dementia


2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (6) ◽  
pp. 548-552

Objective: To predict the quality of anticoagulation control in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) receiving warfarin in Thailand. Materials and Methods: The present study retrospectively recruited Thai AF patients receiving warfarin for three months or longer between June 2012 and December 2017 in Central Chest Institute of Thailand. The patients were classified into those with SAMe-TT₂R₂ of 2 or less, and 3 or more. The Chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test was used to compare the proportion of the patients with poor time in therapeutic range (TTR) between the two groups of SAMe-TT₂R₂ score. The discrimination performance of SAMe-TT₂R₂ score was demonstrated with c-statistics. Results: Ninety AF patients were enrolled. An average age was 69.89±10.04 years. Most patients were persistent AF. An average CHA₂DS₂-VASc, SAMe-TT₂R₂, and HAS-BLED score were 3.68±1.51, 3.26±0.88, and 1.98±0.85, respectively. The present study showed the increased proportion of AF patients with poor TTR with higher SAMe-TT₂R₂ score. The AF patients with SAMe-TT₂R₂ score of 3 or more had a larger proportion of patients with poor TTR than those with SAMe-TT₂R₂ score of 2 or less with statistical significance when TTR was below 70% (p=0.03) and 65% (p=0.04), respectively. The discrimination performance of SAMe-TT₂R₂ score was demonstrated with c-statistics of 0.60, 0.59, and 0.55 when TTR was below 70%, 65% and 60%, respectively. Conclusion: Thai AF patients receiving warfarin had a larger proportion of patients with poor TTR when the SAMe-TT₂R₂ score was higher. The score of 3 or more could predict poor quality of anticoagulation control in those patients. Keywords: Time in therapeutic range, Poor quality of anticoagulation control, Warfarin, SAMe-TT₂R₂, Labile INR


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aneta Bac ◽  
Magdalena Wróbel ◽  
Katarzyna Ogrodzka-Ciechanowicz ◽  
Edyta Michalik ◽  
Anna Ścisłowska-Czarnecka

Abstract The assessment of the six-week influence of Kinesio Taping combined with a rehabilitation on selected ultrasonography measurements, the level of disability, and the quality of life in patients with rotator cuff lesions. 60 participants were randomly assigned into a taping group (KT combined with a six-week rehabilitating protocol) and a control group (only rehabilitation protocol). In all patients the following assessments were performed twice: USG, UEFI and NHP questionnaires. In the examination of the subacromial space and the subacromial bursa in the taping group, no statistical significance was observed. A statistically significant change in the thickness of the muscles was obtained only for the thickness of the infraspinatus in the taping group. A statistically significant change was obtained in the assessment of tendinopathy only for the supraspinatus muscle in both groups. Within both groups a statistically significant difference was observed in the average UEFI and NHP scores; however, the differences in the scores obtained between the groups were not statistically significant. The use of KT with a rehabilitation program did not yield statistically significantly better results in the improvement of selected shoulder region indicators, the function of the upper limb and the quality of life.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 096368972110360
Author(s):  
Daniel Lysak ◽  
Michaela Brychtová ◽  
Martin Leba ◽  
Miroslava Čedíková ◽  
Daniel Georgiev ◽  
...  

Cryopreserved haematopoietic progenitor cells are used to restore autologous haematopoiesis after high dose chemotherapy. Although the cells are routinely stored for a long period, concerns remain about the maximum storage time and the possible negative effect of storage on their potency. We evaluated the effect of cryopreservation on the quality of peripheral stem cell grafts stored for a short (3 months) and a long (10 years) period and we compared it to native products.The viability of CD34+ cells remained unaffected during storage, the apoptotic cells were represented up to 10% and did not differ between groups. The clonogenic activity measured by ATP production has decreased with the length of storage (ATP/cell 1.28 nM in native vs. 0.63 in long term stored products, P < 0.05). Only borderline changes without statistical significance were detected when examining mitochondrial and aldehyde dehydrogenase metabolic activity and intracellular pH, showing their good preservation during cell storage. Our experience demonstrates that cryostorage has no major negative effect on stem cell quality and potency, and therefore autologous stem cells can be stored safely for an extended period of at least 10 years. On the other hand, long term storage for 10 years and longer may lead to mild reduction of clonogenic capacity. When a sufficient dose of stem cells is infused, these changes will not have a clinical impact. However, in products stored beyond 10 years, especially when a low number of CD34+ cells is available, the quality of stem cell graft should be verified before infusion using the appropriate potency assays.


2020 ◽  
pp. 097300522096468
Author(s):  
Rajesh Gupta ◽  
Piyush Kumar Sinha ◽  
Akash Sahu ◽  
Vandana Sood

Craft industry is as much the mainstay of the rural economy after agriculture. It provides occupation to a large section of population. However, it is characterised by fragmented individual artisans on one side and dispersed customers on the other. It also suffers from market separations. Urban haats were set up with the objective to present artisans and buyer on one platform and reduce these separations. In this study urban haats have been conceptualised as marketplaces that bring artisans and customers at one place to optimise their respective values. They also serve as a tool for disintermediation and a social distribution initiative and represent a retailing initiative in the inclusive entrepreneurship domain. This study focusses on identifying drivers of success of urban haats. Using a mixed method approach, data was collected from Haat officials and NGO members through personal interviews. The data from artisans and customers was collected through a survey using a structured response format. The study was conducted at 18 haats in 10 states. The study highlights the factors that drive satisfaction of artisans and customers and the role of administrators in making the marketplace a success. Customer consider diversity of the products, quality of the products, behaviour of the salesperson, price parity with other markets, buying experience, parking space and aesthetics of the stalls as major influencing factors for the recommendation of the haats to other customers. Most important attributes of the haats in driving artisan satisfaction were stall allotment system, haat location, advertisements, product promotion and monitoring. It is also found that while the infrastructure is necessary, it is not sufficient in enhancing the performance and sustainability of haats. Administration of these haats plays a defining mediating role. Based on these findings, an approach is proposed for success of urban haats.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjoy Debnath ◽  
Wasim Arif ◽  
Srimanta Baishya

AbstractNature inspired swarm based meta-heuristic optimization technique is getting considerable attention and established to be very competitive with evolution based and physical based algorithms. This paper proposes a novel Buyer Inspired Meta-heuristic optimization Algorithm (BIMA) inspired form the social behaviour of human being in searching and bargaining for products. In BIMA, exploration and exploitation are achieved through shop to shop hoping and bargaining for products to be purchased based on cost, quality of the product, choice and distance to the shop. Comprehensive simulations are performed on 23 standard mathematical and CEC2017 benchmark functions and 3 engineering problems. An exhaustive comparative analysis with other algorithms is done by performing 30 independent runs and comparing the mean, standard deviation as well as by performing statistical test. The results showed significant improvement in terms of optimum value, convergence speed, and is also statistically more significant in comparison to most of the reported popular algorithms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 09 (03) ◽  
pp. E378-E387
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Triantafyllou ◽  
Paraskevas Gkolfakis ◽  
Alexandros Skamnelos ◽  
Georgia Diamantopoulou ◽  
Athanasios Dagas ◽  
...  

Abstract Background and study aims Bowel preparation for colonoscopy is frequently inadequate in hospitalized patients. We explored the impact of specific verbal instructions on the quality of inpatients bowel preparation and factors associated with preparation failure. Patients and methods Randomized (1:1), two strata (mobilized vs. bedridden; 3:2) trial of consecutive inpatients from four tertiary centers, who received either specific, verbal instructions or the standard of care (SOC) ward instructions about bowel preparation. The rate of adequate bowel preparation (Boston Bowel Preparation Score [BBPS] ≥ 6, no segment < 2) comprised the primary endpoint. Mean BBPS score, good (BBPS score ≥ 7, no segment score < 2) and excellent (BBPS = 9) were among secondary endpoints. Results We randomized 300 inpatients (180 mobile) aged 71.7 ± 15.1 years in the intervention (49.7 %) and SOC (50.3 %) groups, respectively. Overall, more patients in the intervention group achieved adequate bowel preparation, but this difference did not reach statistical significance neither in the intention-to-treat [90/149 (60.4 %) vs. 82/151 (54.3 %); P = 0.29] nor in the per-protocol analysis [90/129 (69.8 %) vs. 82/132 (62.1 %); P = 0.19]. Overall BBPS score did not differ statistical significantly in the two groups, but the provision of specific verbal instructions was associated with significant higher rates of good (58.1 % vs. 43.2 %; P = 0.02) and excellent (31.8 % vs. 16.7 %; P = 0.004) bowel preparation compared to the SOC group. Administration of same-day bowel preparation and patient American Society of Anesthesiologists score > 2 were identified as risk factors for inadequate bowel preparation. Conclusions Provision of specific verbal instructions did not increase the rate of adequate bowel preparation in a population of mobilized and bedridden hospitalized patients.


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