This paper presents a novel approach to determine structural similarity as guidance for adaptation in case based reasoning Cbr We advance structural similarity assessment which provides not only a single numeric value but the most speci c structure two cases have in common inclusive of the modi cation rules needed to obtain this structure from the two cases Our approach treats retrieval matchin...

BACKGROUND A spinal triage assessment service may impact a wide range of patient outcomes. Investigating potential predictors of success or improvement may reveal why some people improve and some do not, as well as help to begin to explain potential mechanisms for improvements. The objective of this study was to determine which factors were associated with improved short-term self-reported pain...

OBJECTIVES This review assessed current practice in the preparation of rapid reviews by health technology assessment (HTA) organizations, both internationally and in the Australian context, and evaluated the available peer-reviewed literature pertaining to the methodology used in the preparation of these reviews. METHODS A survey tool was developed and distributed to a total of fifty Internat...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to evaluate the analgesic effects of perioperative gabapentin on postoperative acute and chronic pain after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery with median sternotomy and internal mammary artery harvesting. DESIGN A double-blind randomized clinical study. SETTING A single-academic hospital. PARTICIPANTS Patients with ischemic heart disease ...

We propose that sorting be considered an important benchmark for both scientific and commercial applications of supercomputers. The purpose of a supercomputer benchmark is to exercise various system components in an effort to measure important performance characteristics. In the past numerous benchmarks have been defined in an effort to measure the performance issues associated with numeric com...

Automatic reading of numeric chains has been attempted in several application areas such as bank cheque processing, postal code recognition and form processing. Such applications have been very popular in handwriting recognition research, due to the possibility to reduce considerably the manual effort involved in these tasks. In this study we propose an off line system for the recognition of th...

Objectives: To develop an automated method for extracting and structuring numeric lab test comparison statements from text and evaluate the method using clinical trial eligibility criteria text. Methods: Leveraging semantic knowledge from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) and domain knowledge acquired from the Internet, Valx takes seven steps to extract and normalize numeric lab test e...

The number of states that have adopted numeric nutrient water-quality standards has increased to 23, up from ten in 1998. One state with both stream and reservoir phosphorus (P) numeric water-quality standards is Oklahoma. There were two primary objectives of this research: (1) determine if Oklahoma was meeting the stream and reservoir numeric water-quality standards in the Illinois River and E...