TheScientificWorldJournal
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Big Data has gained much attention from the academia and the IT industry. In the digital and computing world, information is generated and collected at a rate that rapidly exceeds the boundary range. Currently, over 2 billion people worldwide are connected to the Internet, and over 5 billion individuals own mobile phones. ⋯ This study also proposes a data life cycle that uses the technologies and terminologies of Big Data. Future research directions in this field are determined based on opportunities and several open issues in Big Data domination. These research directions facilitate the exploration of the domain and the development of optimal techniques to address Big Data.
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TheScientificWorldJournal · Jan 2014
The societal impact of herpes zoster and postherpetic neuralgia on patients, life partners, and children of patients in Germany.
The aim of this study was to assess the impact of herpes zoster (HZ) and postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) on the daily activities of patients and family members who care for them. Some former patients and family members participated in face-to-face interviews or in a T-group meeting (qualitative phase) and some participated in telephone interviews (quantitative phase). They all expressed feelings of helplessness and frustration mixed with depression, sadness, or rage. ⋯ Although former patients appreciated the psychological and emotional support given by their family members, they underestimated the impact that their disease had on them. Former patients and their family never forgot this illness and its considerable impact on their lives, particularly when PHN occurred. We need to raise the awareness of the general public about the real life impact of HZ and PHN and their often severe, debilitating consequences and the potential benefits from vaccination.
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TheScientificWorldJournal · Jan 2014
Prognostic value of C-reactive protein, leukocytes, and vitamin d in severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Inflammatory biomarkers predict mortality and hospitalisation in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Yet, it remains uncertain if biomarkers in addition to reflecting disease severity add new prognostic information on severe COPD. We investigated if leukocytes, C-reactive protein (CRP), and vitamin D were independent predictors of mortality and hospitalisation after adjusting for disease severity with an integrative index, the i-BODE index. ⋯ Only leukocyte count was significantly associated with hospitalisation. Vitamin D was neither associated with mortality nor hospitalisation. Leukocytes and CRP add little information on prognosis and vitamin D does not seem to be a useful biomarker in severe COPD in a clinical setting.
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TheScientificWorldJournal · Jan 2014
Exploratory study on the methodology of fast imaging of unilateral stroke lesions by electrical impedance asymmetry in human heads.
Stroke has a high mortality and disability rate and should be rapidly diagnosed to improve prognosis. Diagnosing stroke is not a problem for hospitals with CT, MRI, and other imaging devices but is difficult for community hospitals without these devices. ⋯ In this technique, electrical impedance tomography (EIT) data measured from the undamaged craniocerebral hemisphere (CCH) is regarded as reference data for the remaining EIT data measured from the other CCH for difference imaging to identify the differences in resistivity distribution between the two CCHs. The results of SEIT imaging based on simulation data from the 2D human head finite element model and that from the physical phantom of human head verified this method in detection of unilateral stroke.
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TheScientificWorldJournal · Jan 2014
Approach for text classification based on the similarity measurement between normal cloud models.
The similarity between objects is the core research area of data mining. In order to reduce the interference of the uncertainty of nature language, a similarity measurement between normal cloud models is adopted to text classification research. On this basis, a novel text classifier based on cloud concept jumping up (CCJU-TC) is proposed. ⋯ Through the conversion from text set to text information table based on VSM model, the text qualitative concept, which is extraction from the same category, is jumping up as a whole category concept. According to the cloud similarity between the test text and each category concept, the test text is assigned to the most similar category. By the comparison among different text classifiers in different feature selection set, it fully proves that not only does CCJU-TC have a strong ability to adapt to the different text features, but also the classification performance is also better than the traditional classifiers.