BACKGROUND Shared decision-making (SDM) is at the core of patient-centered care. We examined whether young adults with type 1 diabetes perceived the clinician groups they consulted as practicing SDM. METHODS In a web-based survey, 150 Australians aged 18-35 years and with type 1 diabetes rated seven aspects of SDM in their interactions with endocrinologists, diabetes educators, dieticians, an...

BACKGROUND Many national and institutional family planning policies explicitly include fertility awareness-based methods among the method options that should be made available, but these methods are often not offered for a variety of reasons. After testing the efficacy of the Standard Days Method (SDM), which is a fertility awareness-based method that identifies Days 8-19 of the menstrual cycle...

Vertebrate sex-determining mechanisms (SDMs) are triggered by the genotype (GSD), by temperature (TSD), or occasionally, by both. The causes and consequences of SDM diversity remain enigmatic. Theory predicts SDM effects on species diversification, and life-span effects on SDM evolutionary turnover. Yet, evidence is conflicting in clades with labile SDMs, such as reptiles. Here, we investigate ...

PURPOSE Leading-edge therapeutic laser technologies are not available at every medical facility; therefore, alternative approaches incorporating novel advances in digital and laser technology into more readily available conventional methods have generated significant research interest. Using a rabbit model, this study investigated whether the algorithm used in the Endpoint Management (EM) softw...

The concepts of spatial-division multiplexing (SDM) technology were first proposed in the telecommunications industry as an indispensable solution to reduce the cost-per-bit of optical fiber transmission. Recently, such spatial channels and modes have been applied in optical sensing applications where the returned echo is analyzed for the collection of essential environmental information. The k...

Plant analysis is a very promising diagnostic tool for assessment of crop nitrogen (N) requirements in perspectives of cost effective and environment friendly agriculture. Diagnosing N nutritional status of rice crop through plant analysis will give insights into optimizing N requirements of future crops. The present study was aimed to develop a new methodology for determining the critical nitr...

Although schizophrenia alters the sense of personal identity, little is known about the impact of illness-related autobiographical events on patients' self-representation. We investigated self-defining memories (SDM) in 24 patients with schizophrenia and 24 controls to explore how illness-related SDM were integrated into the self at both the cognitive (how participants are able to give a meanin...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Shared decision making (SDM) is part of a larger movement for patient-centered approaches to care. SDM can be facilitated through the use of decision aids (DA), which are evidence-based tools designed to transmit information on topics suitable for SDM. They are intended to facilitate the process of patients arriving at an informed, values-based choice in partnership wi...

Many computer vision problems (e.g., camera calibration, image alignment, structure from motion) are solved with nonlinear optimization methods. It is generally accepted that second order descent methods are the most robust, fast, and reliable approaches for nonlinear optimization of a general smooth function. However, in the context of computer vision, second order descent methods have two mai...

BACKGROUND The feasibility of shared decision making (SDM) for patients with schizophrenia remains controversial due to the assumed inability of patients to cooperate in treatment decision making. This study evaluated the feasibility and efficacy of SDM in patients upon first admission for schizophrenia. METHODS This was a randomized, parallel-group, two-arm, open-label, single-center study c...