Do maternal demographics and prenatal history impact the efficacy of betamethasone therapy for threatened preterm labor?

Background: Betamethasone (BMZ) is used to accelerate fetal lung maturation in women with threatened preterm birth, but its efficacy is variable and limited by the lack of patient individualization in its dosing and administration. To determine sources of variability and potential opportunities for individualization of therapy, the objective of this study was to evaluate maternal factors associated with development of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) in a cohort of women who received betamethasone.

Methods: This study prospectively enrolled women, gestational ages 23-34 weeks, who received betamethasone for threatened preterm birth.

Comparison of the performance of inverse transformation methods from OSA-UCS to CIEXYZ.

The Optical Society of America's Uniform Color Scales (OSA-UCS) is one of the color spaces that most closely approximate a "true" uniform color space. Different techniques have been used to convert OSA-UCS-based color specification parameters, L, j, and g, to the CIE tristimulus values, X, Y, and Z. However, none of these methods provides a direct method of inverting OSA-UCS to CIEXYZ values.

Color device calibration: a mathematical formulation.

The mathematical formulation of calibrating color image reproduction and recording devices is presented. This formulation provides a foundation for future research in areas of characterization of devices and display of color images. The importance of calibration is demonstrated by real examples.

Optimal nonnegative color scanning filters.

In this correspondence, the problem of designing color scanning filters for multi-illuminant color recording is considered. The filter transmittances are determined from a minimum-mean-squared orthogonal tristimulus error criterion that minimizes the color error in estimates obtained from noisy recorded data. Nonnegativity constraints essential for physical realizability are imposed on the filter transmittances.

A "mutual update" training algorithm for fuzzy adaptive logic control/decision network (FALCON).

The conventional two-stage training algorithm of the fuzzy/neural architecture called FALCON may not provide accurate results for certain type of problems, due to the implicit assumption of independence that this training makes about parameters of the underlying fuzzy inference system. In this correspondence, a training scheme is proposed for this fuzzy/neural architecture, which is based on line search methods that have long been used in iterative optimization problems. This scheme involves synchronous update of the parameters of the architecture corresponding to input and output space partitions and rules defining the underlying mapping; the magnitude and direction of the update at each iteration is determined using the Armijo rule.