PURPOSE To evaluate the interobserver reproducibility of two-dimensional shear wave elastography (2D-SWE) in measuring liver stiffness (LS) and to investigate factors related to liver 2D-SWE. MATERIALS AND METHODS A prospective study was conducted between August 2011 and August 2012 in rheumatoid arthritis patients who had been treated with methotrexate. Interobserver reproducibility of 2D-SW...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the quality of patient-clinician communication and shared decision making (SDM) when two disparate treatments for early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are discussed. METHODS We conducted a qualitative study to evaluate the experiences of 20 clinicians caring for patients with clinical Stage I NSCLC prior to treatment, focusing on communication practices. We use...

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to investigate the status of systems development methodologies (SDM) usage for developing web-based application in Malaysian organizations. In addition, it also seeks to investigate the use of techniques and tools for web-based application development. Design/methodology/approach – The study employed the use of a cross-sectional survey method with 200 quest...

Introducing cell breathing in cellular networks into wireless local area networks (WLANs) for load balancing is beneficial since no special modification of clients. However, fairness and effectiveness is quite challenging in cell breathing. In this paper, a supply-demand model (SDM) based on cell breathing technique is proposed to allocate continuous or discrete power to APs for fair and effect...

In an interprofessional approach to shared decision-making (IP-SDM), an interprofessional team collaborates in identifying best options and helps patients determine their preferences, enabling them to take more control over the treatment plan. However, little is known about fostering IP-SDM in Canada's healthcare system. Therefore, we sought to evaluate health professionals' intentions to engag...

BACKGROUND DECISION + 2, a training program for physicians, is designed to implement shared decision making (SDM) in the context of antibiotics use for acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs). We evaluated the impact of DECISION + 2 on SDM implementation as assessed by patients and physicians, and on physicians' intention to engage in SDM. METHODS From 2010 to 2011, a multi-center, two-arm...

In this issue of Academic Emergency Medicine, Schoenfeld et al. report a qualitative analysis of Shared decision-making (SDM) from the perspective of Emergency Department (ED) patients. Shared decision-making is "a collaborative process in which patients and providers make health care decisions together, taking into account the best evidence available, as well as the patient's values and prefer...

High-resolution digital audio systems currently embrace two forms of encoding. DVD-audio uses multi-level linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) while Super-Audio CD (SACD) uses sigma-delta modulation (SDM) in a scheme designated by Sony as direct stream digital (DSD) [1]. Debate has centred on their relative merits [2-7] where high-frequency quantization noise and the effectiveness of dither have...

This paper proposes a new consensus model in participatory decision making. The model employs advice centrality approach by electing a leader and recommender named as Supra Decision Maker (SDM). A SDM has a role as a decision bench-marker to other decision makers in evaluating each alternative with respect to given criteria. The weighting value for each alternative can be obtained by considerin...

In mobile communications, the channel consists of many resolvable paths with different time delays, resulting in a severely frequency-selective fading channel. The frequency-domain equalization (FDE) can take advantage of the channel selectivity and improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of the single-carrier (SC) transmission. Recently, multi-input multi-output (MIMO) multiplexing is gai...