Leveling Up: A Review of Machine Learning Models in the Cardiac ICU.

Machine learning has emerged as a significant tool to augment the medical decision-making process. Studies have steadily accrued detailing algorithms and models designed using machine learning to predict and anticipate pathologic states. The cardiac intensive care unit is an area where anticipation is crucial in the division between life and death.

HIV treatment in a conflict setting: outcomes and experiences from Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Providing HIV care in conflict settings involves additional obstacles to those generally encountered in other resource-limited settings, say Heather Culbert and colleagues.

Decreased Carbon and Nutrient Input to Boreal Lakes from Particulate Organic Matter Following Riparian Clear-Cutting.

The plankton communities of oligotrophic Canadian Shield lakes are strongly regulated by the allochthonous supply of total phosphorus (TP) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC), a proportion of both of which originate from particulate organic matter. Although decreased inputs of allochthonous leaf litter have been documented for small streams whose riparian forests have been removed, no such data exist for boreal lakes. Through estimates of airborne litter input from forested and clear-cut shorelines and laboratory measurements of concentrations released from leaf leachate, we determined that riparian deforestation resulted in reductions of DOC from 17.

Acute toxicity during external-beam radiotherapy for localized prostate cancer: comparison of different techniques.

Purpose: The chronic and acute toxicities associated with conventional radiotherapy of localized prostate cancer are well documented. However, the degree and incidence of toxicities with conformal techniques are not known. Studying side effects associated with modern radiotherapeutic techniques is more important now since there has been a general trend to use computerized tomography-based techniques in recent years; beam's eye view-based conformal techniques are also becoming more commonplace.

Beams eye view-based photon radiotherapy I.

Geographic miss, dosimetric miss (underdosing), and proximity of the tumor to sensitive normal tissues are some of the causes of inadequate radiation dose delivery; this is one of many causes of failure after radiotherapy. In the past decade, computerized tomography (CT)-based treatment planning has helped to overcome some of these problems. Beam's eye view (BEV)-based radiotherapy planning is an improvement over CT-based treatment planning that may further increase the therapeutic ratio.

The neutron dose and energy spectrum outside a 20-MV accelerator treatment room.

A maze design is discussed for a Therac 20 linear accelerator (manufactured by Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd.) which reduces the flux of neutrons at the door to permissible levels in controlled areas. The L-shaped design allows for a relatively light door at the end of the maze, consisting of 5.

A shaping device for irregular electron fields for the Therac-20 accelerator.

A device for shaping electron fields from a Therac-20 accelerator is described. The considerable advantage of continuously variable field sizes is enhanced when the shaping device is placed on the lower trimmer bars of the shorter set of electron trimmers, which remain fully adjustable. Cerrobend blocks of 1-cm thickness are sufficient for a 5% attenuation level with 20-MeV electrons and large field sizes.