Overconfidence, Time-on-Task, and Medical Errors: Is There a Relationship?

Background: Literature suggest that physicians' high level of confidence has a negative impact on medical decisions, and this may lead to medical errors. Experimental research is lacking; however, this study investigated the effects of high confidence on diagnostic accuracy.

Methods: Forty internal medicine residents from different hospitals in Saudi Arabia were divided randomly into two groups: A high-confidence group as an experimental and a low-confidence group acting as a control.

Enhanced Performance of Artificial-Neural-Network-Based Equalization for Short-Haul Fiber-Optic Communications.

This work proposes an efficient and easy-to-implement single-layer artificial neural network (ANN)-based equalizer with improved compensation performance. The proposed equalizer is used for effectively mitigating the distortions induced in the short-haul fiber-optic communication systems based on intensity modulation and direct detection (IMDD). The compensation performance of the ANN equalizer is significantly improved, exploiting an introduced advanced training scheme.

Prognostic markers in patients with COVID-19 requiring intensive care support.

Objectives: Several hematological and immunological markers, particularly neutrophil count, predict the severity of COVID-19. This study aimed at assessing hematological and coagulation parameters at different time points, to predict the complications or outcomes of patients with COVID-19 admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).

Methods: We conducted a prospective observational multicenter study in ICU departments.

Screening for polyomavirus nephropathy and viremia in children with renal transplantation.

Background: Polyomavirus, known as BK virus, is an important cause of allograft dysfunction in renal transplant patients, leading to BK virus nephropathy. The main study objectives were to assess the disease incidence and disease course in pediatric patients, and assess the diagnostic accuracy of BK screening for asymptomatic patients.

Methods: This is a single-center observational study, which included 81 pediatric renal allograft recipients that were transplanted and/or followed at King Fahad Specialist Hospital-Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

Adaptive digital back propagation exploiting adjoint-based optimization for fiber-optic communications.

This work proposes a novel and powerful adaptive digital back propagation (A-DBP) method with a fast adaption process. Given that the total transmission distance is known, the proposed A-DBP algorithm blindly compensates for the linear and nonlinear distortions of optical fiber transmission systems and networks, without knowing the launch power and channel parameters. An adjoint-based optimization (ABO) technique is proposed to significantly accelerate the parameters estimation of the A-DBP.