439 results about "Prevalence" patented technology

The identification of mutations that are present in a small fraction of DNA templates is essential for progress in several areas of biomedical research. Though massively parallel sequencing instruments are in principle well-suited to this task, the error rates in such instruments are generally too high to allow confident identification of rare variants. We here describe an approach that can substantially increase the sensitivity of massively parallel sequencing instruments for this purpose. One example of this approach, called “Safe-SeqS” for (Safe-Sequencing System) includes (i) assignment of a unique identifier (UID) to each template molecule; (ii) amplification of each uniquely tagged template molecule to create UID-families; and (iii) redundant sequencing of the amplification products. PCR fragments with the same UID are truly mutant (“super-mutants”) if ≧95% of them contain the identical mutation. We illustrate the utility of this approach for determining the fidelity of a polymerase, the accuracy of oligonucleotides synthesized in vitro, and the prevalence of mutations in the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes of normal cells.

A search engine has a query server (50) arranged to receive a search query from a user and return search results, the query server being arranged to identify one or more of the content items relevant to the query, to access a record of changes over time of occurrences of the identified content items, and rank the search results according to the record of changes. This can help find those content items which are currently active, and to track or compare the popularity of content items. This is particularly useful for content items whose subjective value to the user depends on them being topical or fashionable. A content analyzer (100) creates a fingerprint database of fingerprints, to compare the fingerprints to determine a number of occurrences of a given content item at a given time, and to record the changes over time of the occurrences.

Locality indexes are presented for use with electronic maps and databases. Each geographic feature in a geographic database is associated with locality names from various locality name sources. Context-sensitive tokenizing, normalizing, optimizing and matching of locality names eliminate duplicate and variant locality names, while preserving meaningfully different names. A locality names table includes the parsed representation of each locality name and other associated information, and a primary token for indexing is identified. A main source mask is created by allocating a bit for each locality name source used in the method. A separate source mask is stored for each geographic feature associated with a locality, a bit set for each source in which the locality can be found. Locality names associated with each geographic feature are indexed in a table of geographic features in order of prevalence for use in a given application.

Embodiments of the present invention provide services that enable individuals to rent and/or purchase content over the Internet and to receive it electronically, referred to below as “EZTakes.” This content may include movies, TV shows, music, games and other information typically distributed on CD/DVD. EZTakes leverages high-speed broadband Internet connections, peer-to-peer networking, digital rights management (DRM) and the growing prevalence of home computers that now typically feature large hard drives (e.g. 180+gigabytes) and have the capability to “burn” (i.e. create) DVDs and/or CDs. EZTakes bridges the gap between the home computer and the living room by using standard technologies that consumers already own and are already familiar with: home computers, DVD media, DVD players and the Internet. EZTakes also promotes the interests of content owners (e.g. movie production companies) by expanding their revenue opportunities through enabling them to distribute their content assets over the Internet. EZTakes also includes technical control mechanisms, such as digital watermarking, that could not easily be exploited when using physical DVD/CD distribution channels.

A multi-stage filtering process and system for fraud detection is disclosed. The process includes one or more preliminary filtration stages followed by one or more additional filtration stages that provide for enhanced screening for fraudulent activity. Over a plurality of transactions, a portion of the transactions are cleared for processing (e.g., deemed not likely fraudulent or of too low value to continue processing) after each filtration stage. As such, acceptable transactions are not unnecessarily scrutinized. Another user of the multi-stage filtering process and system is to detect false positive fraud alerts produced by other systems. By reducing the prevalence of false positives, the process and system saves the financial institution costs associated with conducting expensive screening of valid transactions and saves the customers inconvenience and frustration of having valid transactions declined.

In a method, device and compute-readable medium for evaluating the prevalence of different postures of a patient, signals are sensed that indicate the posture of the patient during a monitoring period having a predetermined length, specific body postures of the patient are determined during this monitoring period from the sensed signals, the amount of time the patient spends in each of the specific postures is measured, information regarding each specific posture, and the associated amount of time spent in that posture, are stored, and the prevalence of the different postures of the patient is evaluated by classifying the stored information with respect to specific postures and the amount of time in each posture position.

The invention encompasses methods, including computer-implemented methods, of defining a virtual patient population and mapping the virtual patient population to a population of real patients. The invention utilizes virtual measures from one or more virtual patients, and data representative of multiple real subjects in a sample population, such as data collected from patients in a clinical trial or epidemiological study of a real population. The invention includes evaluating the similarity between the virtual patients and the real subjects, and assigning prevalences to the virtual patients based on the evaluation. The similarity can be assessed using some or all of the virtual measures of the virtual patients and some or all of the data obtained for the real subjects. Any of various goodness-of-fit measures can be used to evaluate the similarity or to help identify prevalences. The virtual patient population is defined as the virtual patients according to their respective prevalences.

In a search system, document terms are weighted as a function of prevalence in a data set, the documents are scored as a function of prevalence and weight of the document terms contained therein, and then independently, the documents are ranked for a given search as a function of (a) their corresponding document scores and (b) the closeness of the search terms and the document terms. The steps can all be accomplished using matrices. Subsets of the documents can be identified with various collections, and each of the collections can be assigned a matrix signature. The signatures can then be compared against terms in the search query to determine which of the subsets would be most useful for a given search.

An evidence based cost modeling and predictive analysis system, and an incentives based plan to reduce healthcare costs are disclosed. An analytics system may generate incremental expenditures among overweight and obese individuals, predictive forecasts of future medical costs, and predictive forecast of cost reduction based on financial incentives to recipients. The forecasts may include statistical trends, prevalence of diseases based on body mass index, and medical evidence associated with specific illnesses. A computer based program may process and analyze dependent and independent variables in electronically stored information (for example insurance, health and medical records). A health insurance provider may provide an annual rebate on paid premiums to recipients based on a qualifying annual BMI as an incentive. The recipients may receive the rebates in a qualified health reimbursement account (HRA) managed by the recipients towards future healthcare related expenditures.

A system and method for normalizing and codifying divergent color systems into a single universal color system. The middleware engine receives a data feed comprising a plurality of color swatches or images from one or more merchant system and normalizes the data feed into a common format. The dominant processor extracts the product images from the normalized data, segments each product image into segments, determines a dominant color for each segment, and determines the dominant product color for each product image based on prevalence of the dominant product color in each segment. The matched color processor converts the determined dominant product color into a digital value of the universal color system based on the color component intensity values.

The present invention provides a method of identifying origin of a metastasis of unknown origin by obtaining a sample containing metastatic cells; measuring Biomarkers associated with at least two different carcinomas; combining the data from the Biomarkers into an algorithm where the algorithm normalizes the Biomarkers against a reference; and imposes a cut-off which optimizes sensitivity and specificity of each Biomarker, weights the prevalence of the carcinomas and selects a tissue of origin determining origin based on highest probability determined by the algorithm or determining that the carcinoma is not derived from a particular set of carcinomas; and optionally measuring Biomarkers specific for one or more additional different carcinoma, and repeating the steps for additional Biomarkers.

A method of data interpretation from a multiplex cancer assay is described. The aggregate normalized score from the assay is transformed to a quantitative risk score quantifying a human subject's increased risk for the presence of cancer as compared to the known prevalence of the cancer in the population before testing the subject.

Systems and methods for detecting deceptive opinion spam. Certain embodiments include a classifier with improved accuracy for detecting deceptive opinion entries. A feature analysis of learned models reveals a relationship between deceptive opinions and imaginative writing. By modeling deception in a generative framework, the prevalence of deception in two popular online review communities may be determined. Deceptive opinion spam is a rapidly growing and widespread problem, especially in review communities with minimal posting requirements.

A method and system for medical analytics implemented on a computer and designed to aid a medical professional in diagnosing one or more diseases afflicting a patient. In contrast to prior art, the present method is based on using clinical data (m) that excludes subjective qualities of and also excludes prevalence of the one or more diseases (i). The method uses a knowledge base that contains disease (i) models exhibiting clinical data (m). Clinical data present (j) in the patient are input into the computer. Then, clinical data present (j) are matched with clinical data (m) in the knowledge base to enable the computer to compose a differential diagnosis list of ruled in diagnoses (k), where k=1 . . . n, for each of the disease (i) models that exhibits at least one clinical datum (m) that matches at least one clinical datum present (j) in the patient. In a key step, the computer computes a probability P(k) for each of the ruled in diagnoses (k) with the aid of a mini-max procedure that overcomes prior art limitations of the Bayes formulation and permits the analytics method to consider concurrent and competing diagnoses (k). Furthermore, the method composes pairs of clinical data present (j) and absent (r) in the patient to aid the medical professional in evaluating diagnoses and determining the most cost-effective clinical data to collect for conducting an effective and rapid diagnostic quest.

Given two heterogeneous entities, the prevalence of text data provides rich co-occurrence information for them. However, the co-occurrence only is noisy—not only may the co-occurrence just imply an accidental writing, but also it may just reflect the domain-specific common words. Only those strong relevance between entities supported by rich relevance contexts in data can indicate meaningful entity relationships. Strong relevance between heterogeneous entities are mined from their co-occurrences. Drug-disease therapeutic relationships are used as the example to demonstrate an application of this work.

System and method for detecting malicious activity in a computer network that includes hosts and connectors between the hosts. Network pathways to a plurality of investigated hosts are explored. A graph is formed based on results of the exploring of the network pathways. The graph represents topology of explored portions of the computer network, including connectors (e.g., communication links) between the investigated hosts and intermediary hosts situated along explored pathways that include the investigated hosts, and an indication of a prevalence of connectors in pathways to each of the investigated hosts. The prevalence of connectors along pathways to each of the investigated hosts is compared against a threshold, and any suspicious host situated along pathways to a common investigated host that is associated with a connector having a low prevalence that is below the prevalence threshold is identified. An access restriction can be associated with the suspicious host.

Embodiments of the invention include a method of collecting and reporting quality of life data from a patient. A patient may participate in a collection of surveys during the course of disease treatment that are automatically tailored to the patient's disease state using multidimensional tools to generate quality of life metrics. Reports are generated from the aggregate data to aid in treatment of the patient by enhancing patient/healthcare provider communications, patient education and by giving the healthcare provider reports on quality of life metrics correlated to the prescribed treatments, comorbid diseases, disease specific and medication specific review of systems and patient compliance with the prescribed treatments. Further, data from multiple patients are aggregated for reports that can provide evaluations of the effect of prescribed treatments, reasons for patient non-compliance with prescribed treatments and the prevalence and effect of off-label use of medications.

Methods for constructing multivariate predictive models for diagnosing diseases for which test methods are individually inadequate, including: (a) performing laboratory tests on a statistically significant test population of individuals; (b) generating a score function from a linear combination of test panel results;

• • (c) performing a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) regression or alternative regression technique of the score function using those tests and β coefficients calculated simultaneously to maximize the area under the curve (AUC) of the function and chosen simultaneously to generate the largest area below that portion of the ROC curve for the (1−t₀) quantile of individuals without disease, where t₀ represents the maximum acceptable false-positive rate; (d) calculating individual pre-test disease odds; generating a diagnostic likelihood ratio of disease by determining the frequency of each individual's test score in the diseased population relative to the control population; and multiplying pre-test odds by the likelihood ratio to determine individual post-test disease odds; (e) converting a set of posttest odds into posttest probabilities for each potential multivariate methodology and creating an ROC curve for each methodology by altering posttest probability cutoff values; (f) comparing partial ROC areas generated by one or more regression techniques to determine the optimal methodology; and (g) dichotomizing the optimal methodology by finding that point on the ROC curve tangent to a line with slope (1−p) C/p·B, where p is population prevalence of disease, B is regret associated with failing to treat patients with disease and C is regret associated with treating a patient without disease.

The invention relates to a penaeus vannamei boone ecological culturing system, which comprises a high level intensive culturing area, a circulating water passage, a shellfish culturing area, a salt-resistant plant area and a water quality treatment area, wherein the high level intensive culturing area, the shellfish culturing area, the salt-resistant plant area and the water quality treatment area are communicated by the circulating water passage. Before the penaeus vannamei boone is put into the system, bdellovibrio bacteria liquid and nitrifying bacteria are added into water of the high level intensive culturing area. During culturing, the traditional Chinese medicine liquid is added into the high level intensive culturing area. The system has the advantages that a culturing water body can be recycled, so the drainage of sewage is reduced, and the pressure on the ecological environment is reduced; the body immunity of the penaeus vannamei boone is improved, and the possibility of the disease outbreak and prevalence of the penaeus vannamei boone is reduced; the shellfishes, aquatic plants, mangroves and seaweeds are put into the system, so the economic benefit of culturing is improved; the whole culturing process realizes the culturing production without using antibiotics, the green and environment-friendly effects of the produced penaeus vannamei boone are realized, the mouth feel is similar to the taste of wild shrimps, and the penaeus vannamei boone is popular in market.

The present invention relates to a system and method for electronic and algorithmic data mining of an individual physician's prescribing history to determine the approximate distribution of diseases within their practice population for optimizing pharmaceutical sales and marketing. Rapid and large-scale determination of specific clinical safety and efficacy attributes of a marketed drug which are most pertinent and relevant to a given physician, when compared to a competitor's drug, are defined and tabularized. Major clinical characteristics taken into account include a drug's safety, efficacy, cost, dosing convenience, formulary insurance coverage, side effect profiles, and FDA approval for the intended use. A symbolic representation of knowledge is employed in which the marketed drug and each competitor's drug are compared algorithmically against each other with a scoring system that is based upon machine analysis of each major clinical characteristic. The score is further refined according to the number and severity of safety interactions which are relevant to the comparison, and also based upon predicted prevalence of such interactions within a specific physician's practice.

The present invention relates to a cannula for femoral arterial bidirectional (a heart direction and a distal lower extremity direction) perfusion. The cannula, which has a cannula tube to be inserted into a blood vessel of the femoral artery, includes a perfusion guide channel formed as a concave part from a predetermined portion of an inner circumferential surface at an end of the cannula tube to the opposite end thereof in a length direction and further includes a through-hole provided at a boundary portion between the perfusion guide channel and the cannula tube in an end direction of the cannula tube, or includes a through-hole provided in a predetermined portion of to an inner circumferential surface of an end of the cannula tube and a guide cover provided at an upper portion of the through-hole to cover the upper portion of the through-hole and guide perfusion. During surgery, perfusion proceeds towards the distal limb and thus blood may be stably supplied, and thus ischemia prevalence of the distal limb may be significantly reduced. Accordingly, the cannula can replace conventional techniques used for distal limb perfusion and may stably perform femoral arterial cannulation without technical difficulties such as complications or breakage of blood vessels.

The invention relates to a method for ecological breeding of free-range chickens, and the method significantly increases immunity and disease resistance of the free-range chickens. In comparison with the free-range chickens bred by the prior art, a survival rate of the free-range chickens bred by the method increases by 25.8%; and a prevalence rate (excluding death) decreases by 39%. Meanwhile, the method increases production performance of the free-range chickens. In comparison with the free-range chickens bred by the prior art, among the free-range chickens bred by the method, an average weight of cocks increases by 15.4%; an average weight of hens increases by 14.6%; an annual egg yield of the hens increases by 11.3%; and an average egg weight increases by 7.3%.