In this paper we question the status of TEGR, the Teleparallel Equivalent of General Relativity, as a gauge theory of translations. We observe that TEGR (in its usual translation-gauge view) does not ...seem to realize the generally admitted requirements for a gauge theory for some symmetry group G : namely it does not present a mathematical structure underlying the theory which relates to a principal G -bundle and the choice of a connection on it (the gauge field). We point out that, while it is usually presented as absent, the gauging of the Lorentz symmetry is actually present in the theory, and that the choice of an Erhesmann connection to describe the gauge field makes the translations difficult to implement (mainly because there is in general no principal translation-bundle). We finally propose to use the Cartan Geometry and the Cartan connection as an alternative approach, naturally arising from the solution of the issues just mentioned, to obtain a more mathematically sound framework for TEGR.
Oral mucositis is one of the serious complications of chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy that significantly affects the quality of patients' life. The Oropharyngeal Mucositis-Specific Quality-of-Life ...questionnaire (OMQoL) is an acceptable instrument for measuring the quality of life in these patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Persian version of OMQoL questionnaire.
This study was a cross-sectional and multi-centric research. After translation from English to Persian, back translation, and cultural adaptation, the Persian version of the questionnaire was prepared. One hundred forty-four patients suffering from oral mucositis referred to three different university affiliated hospitals related to Zahedan, Kerman and Tehran Universities of Medical Sciences, were participated in this study. Then the questionnaire was completed by trained interviewers. The reliability was assessed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient, and validity was measured through factor analysis, and construct validity (including discriminant validity, and convergent validity) methods.
Cronbach's alpha in all dimensions was higher than 0.9 that indicated a perfect internal consistency. The results of factor analysis indicated that the dimensions specified in the Persian version were the same as the original version (Factor loading of all items > 0.4). The correlation coefficient for all items was more than 0.75, and the convergence validity was 100% in all dimensions.
The results of this study showed that the reliability, and validity of Persian version of OMQoL were acceptable, which can be used to measure the quality of life in patients with oral mucositis.
Abstract
Background
Validated measures of patient-reported experiences are essential for assessing and improving the quality of mental health services and interventions. In Norwegian mental ...healthcare settings, the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8) is increasingly being used for this purpose, but the validity and reliability of the Norwegian translation have not been investigated.
Methods
We examined the factor structure and internal consistency of a digitally administrated Norwegian translation of the CSQ-8 in a sample of 338 patients recruited from outpatient treatment. The relationship between satisfaction scores and the change in symptom severity during treatment, measured by the Patient Health Questionnaire-4, was also investigated.
Results
The Norwegian CSQ-8 showed a clear unidimensional structure with one factor explaining 74% of the variance. Internal consistency was very high, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.95. Satisfaction showed a small-to-moderate negative relationship with change in symptom severity. Satisfaction scores were negatively skewed, and the presence of ceiling effects is discussed.
Conclusion
Our results support the use of the Norwegian CSQ-8 as a valid and reliable measure of satisfaction with mental healthcare services. Further studies are needed to determine the test-retest reliability of the questionnaire, its sensitivity to change, and to assess its propensity to ceiling effects.
The authors of a recent study identified noncanonical peptides (NCP) presented by cancer cells' HLA and observed lack of reactivity to these antigens by endogenous tumor-reactive T cells. In vitro ...sensitization generated NCP-reactive T cells that recognized epitopes shared by a majority of cancers tested, providing opportunities for novel therapies to shared antigens. See related article by Lozano-Rabella et al., p. 2250.
Fatigue is emerging as a major public health problem that is highly associated with poor health-related quality of life and disability. Among adults, fatigue has become increasingly common because of ...workload or lifestyle changes. This study aimed to cross-culturally adapt the Chalder Fatigue Scale (CFS) into Turkish, to investigate its psychometric properties, and to establish normative data in healthy adults by age and gender.
The validity of the CFS was tested with a total sample of 476 healthy adults aged 20-40 years (264 males and 212 females) and test-retest/measurement error analyses were performed with 161 participants (94 males and 67 females). The test-retest reliability was examined using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and internal consistency was determined using Cronbach's α-coefficient. Predictive validity was assessed using the Receiver Operating Characteristic to validate the cut-off value of the CFS for non-fatigued and fatigued participants. Factor analyses and hypothesis testing were conducted to assess construct validity. Hypothesis testing examined convergent and known-group validity by testing 14 predefined hypotheses.
The mean (SD) and median (25-75%) CFS scores were 10.7 (4.9) and 11 (7-14) for the total sample (n = 476). The cut-off point for CFS was set at ≥ 12 with a sensitivity of 65.8% and a specificity of 85.9%. The CFS provided evidence of excellent fit of the two-factor structure (CFI = 0.963, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMR = 0.02). There was evidence of strong internal consistency demonstrated by Cronbach's α = 0.863 and good test-retest reliability by ICC = 0.76. Thirteen out of 14 hypotheses (92.9%) were confirmed and the scale showed low to moderate correlation with other measurement instruments (r = 0.31-0.51).
The CFS has been shown to be a reliable and valid instrument that can be used in various populations for the assessment of fatigue.
Level II.
Arbitrary linear transformations are of crucial importance in a plethora of photonic applications spanning classical signal processing, communication systems, quantum information processing and ...machine learning. Here, we present a photonic architecture to achieve arbitrary linear transformations by harnessing the synthetic frequency dimension of photons. Our structure consists of dynamically modulated micro-ring resonators that implement tunable couplings between multiple frequency modes carried by a single waveguide. By inverse design of these short- and long-range couplings using automatic differentiation, we realize arbitrary scattering matrices in synthetic space between the input and output frequency modes with near-unity fidelity and favorable scaling. We show that the same physical structure can be reconfigured to implement a wide variety of manipulations including single-frequency conversion, nonreciprocal frequency translations, and unitary as well as non-unitary transformations. Our approach enables compact, scalable and reconfigurable integrated photonic architectures to achieve arbitrary linear transformations in both the classical and quantum domains using current state-of-the-art technology.
Isocitrate dehydrogenase (
) mutations in glioma patients confer longer survival and may guide treatment decision making. We aimed to predict the
status of gliomas from MR imaging by applying a ...residual convolutional neural network to preoperative radiographic data.
Preoperative imaging was acquired for 201 patients from the Hospital of University of Pennsylvania (HUP), 157 patients from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and 138 patients from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) and divided into training, validation, and testing sets. We trained a residual convolutional neural network for each MR sequence (FLAIR, T2, T1 precontrast, and T1 postcontrast) and built a predictive model from the outputs. To increase the size of the training set and prevent overfitting, we augmented the training set images by introducing random rotations, translations, flips, shearing, and zooming.
With our neural network model, we achieved IDH prediction accuracies of 82.8% (AUC = 0.90), 83.0% (AUC = 0.93), and 85.7% (AUC = 0.94) within training, validation, and testing sets, respectively. When age at diagnosis was incorporated into the model, the training, validation, and testing accuracies increased to 87.3% (AUC = 0.93), 87.6% (AUC = 0.95), and 89.1% (AUC = 0.95), respectively.
We developed a deep learning technique to noninvasively predict
genotype in grade II-IV glioma using conventional MR imaging using a multi-institutional data set.
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Breakthrough cancer pain should be properly assessed for better-personalized treatment plan. The Breakthrough Pain Assessment Tool is a 14-item tool validated in English developed for this purpose; ...no French version is currently available and validated. This study aimed to translate it in French and assess the psychometric properties of a French version of the Breakthrough Pain Assessment Tool (BAT-FR).
First, translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the 14 items (9 ordinal and 5 nominal) of the original BAT tool in French language was made. Second, assessments of validity (convergent, divergent and discriminant validity), factorial structure (exploratory factor analysis) and test-retest reliability of the 9 ordinal items were done with data of 130 adult cancer patients suffering from breakthrough pain in a hospital-academic palliative care center. Test-retest reliability and responsiveness of total and dimension scores derived from these 9 items were also assessed. Acceptability of the 14 items was also assessed on the 130 patients.
The 14 items had good content and face validity. Convergent and divergent validity, discriminant validity and test-retest reliability of the ordinal items were acceptable. Test-retest reliability and responsiveness of total and dimensions derived from ordinal items were also acceptable. The factorial structure of the ordinal items had two dimensions similar to the original version: "1-pain severity and impact" and "2-pain duration and medication". Items 2 and 8 had a low contribution to the dimension 1 they were assigned and item 14 clearly changed of dimension compared with the original tool. The acceptability of the 14 items was good.
The BAT-FR has shown acceptable validity, reliability and responsiveness supporting its use for assessing breakthrough cancer pain in French-speaking populations. Its structure needs nevertheless further confirmation.
We present an extension of the JHUGen and MELA framework, which includes an event generator and library for the matrix element analysis. It enables simulation, optimal discrimination, reweighting ...techniques, and analysis of a bosonic resonance and the triple and quartic gauge boson interactions with the most general anomalous couplings. The new features, which become especially relevant at the current stage of LHC data taking, are the simulation of gluon fusion and vector boson fusion in the off-shell region, associated ZH production at NLO QCD including the gg initial state, and the simulation of a second spin-zero resonance. We also quote translations of the anomalous coupling measurements into constraints on dimension-six operators of an effective field theory. Some of the new features are illustrated with projections for experimental measurements with the full LHC and HL-LHC datasets.
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