BACKGROUND Neisseria meningitidis causes 500 000 cases of septicemia and meningitis worldwide annually, with approximately 200 cases in Canada each year. Previous studies describe a case-fatality rate of 5%-15% and up to 20% of survivors suffering from long-term disability. METHODS This study was performed in Canada between 2002 and 2011; the study area included >50% of the country's populati...

BACKGROUND Middle gastrointestinal bleeding (MGIB) risk has not been fully investigated due to its extremely rare occurrence and the need for multiple endoscopies to exclude upper and lower gastrointestinal bleeding. This study investigated whether MGIB is associated with the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), low-dose aspirin (LDA), thienopyridines, anticoagulants, and prot...

BACKGROUND There is continued and significant debate regarding the salient etiologies associated with graft loss and racial disparities in kidney transplant recipients. METHODS This was a longitudinal cohort study of all adult kidney transplant recipients, comparing patients with early graft loss (<5 years) to those with graft longevity (surviving graft with at least 5 years of follow-up) acr...

BACKGROUND Alcohol and other drugs use is a problem among adolescents leading to numerous physical, social, and educational damages. OBJECTIVE For determining the prevalence of alcohol and other substance use as well as the factors associated with the experience of alcohol use in adolescents. PATIENTS AND METHODS This is a population-based and cross-sectional study, which was conducted in A...

BACKGROUND Before hospital discharge, newborn infants should be assessed for the risk of excessive hyperbilirubinemia. We determined maternal and obstetric risk factors for hyperbilirubinemia in infants born at term (gestational age ≥37 weeks) to form an individualized risk assessment tool for clinical use. METHODS This was a population-based study with data from the Swedish Medical Birth Reg...

‎in this paper‎, ‎we propose two preconditioned aor iterative methods to solve systems of linear equations whose coefficient matrices are z-matrix‎. ‎these methods can be considered as improvements of two previously presented ones in the literature‎. ‎finally some numerical experiments are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed preconditioners‎.‎

agent oriented software engineering (aose) is an emerging field in computer science  and  proposes some systematic ideas for multi agent systems analysis, implementation and maintenance. despite the various methodologies introduced in the agent-oriented software engineering, the main challenges are defects in different aspects of methodologies. according to the defects resulted from weaknesses ...

The aim of this study were to assess bullying and its associated factors in school-going adolescents in Thailand. Using data from the Thailand Global School-Based Student Health Survey (GSHS) 2008, the prevalence of being bullied and its associated factors among adolescents (N=2758) was assessed. The study found an overall prevalence of being bullied on one or more days during the past 30 days ...

Using data from a longitudinal surveillance study from rural South Africa, we investigated the odds of sexual debut, pregnancy and HIV infection of 15- to 19-year-old adolescents by parental survival. Using descriptive statistics and logistic regressions, we examine the relative risk of orphans compared with non-orphans to have ever had sex, being pregnant and being HIV infected, adjusting for ...

BACKGROUND Heart failure is a common Emergency Department (ED) presentation but whether ED volume influences patient outcomes is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS Retrospective cohort of all adults presenting to 93 EDs between 1999 and 2009 with a most responsible diagnosis of heart failure (n=44 925 ED visits; mean age, 76.4 years). Cases seen in low-volume EDs had less comorbidities and were les...