Publications by authors named "Stephen Kwok"

The heterogeneity that exists across the global spectrum of livestock production means that livestock productivity, efficiency, health expenditure and health outcomes vary across production systems. To ensure that burden of disease estimates are specific to the represented livestock population and people reliant upon them, livestock populations need to be systematically classified into different types of production system, reflective of the heterogeneity across production systems. This paper explores the data currently available of livestock production system classifications and animal health through a scoping review as a foundation for the development of a framework that facilitates more specific estimates of livestock disease burdens.

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Aboriginal perinatal mothers are at a significant risk of experiencing mental health problems, which can have profound negative impacts, despite their overall resilience. This work aimed to build prediction models for identifying high psychological distress among Aboriginal perinatal mothers by coupling machine learning models with an innovative and culturally-safe screening tool. The original dataset of 179 Aboriginal mothers with 337 variables was obtained from twelve perinatal health settings at Perth metropolitan and regional centers in Western Australia between July and September 2022, using a specifically designed web-based rubric for the perinatal mental health assessment.

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The Global Burden of Animal Diseases programme is currently working to estimate the burden of animal health loss in Ethiopia. As part of this work, structured expert elicitation has been trialled to attribute the proportion of animal health losses due to three independent and exhaustive high-level causes (infectious, non-infectious, and external). Separate in-person workshops were conducted with eight cattle, nine small ruminant, and eight chicken experts.

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Objective: To evaluate the feasibility of the somatic acupressure (SA) for managing the fatigue-sleep disturbance-depression symptom cluster (FSDSC) among breast cancer (BC) survivors and its preliminary effects.

Methods: In this Phase II randomized controlled trial (RCT), 51 participants were randomised evenly into the true SA group, sham SA group, and usual care group. All the participants received usual care.

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Social media platforms such as Twitter are home ground for rapid COVID-19-related information sharing over the Internet, thereby becoming the favorable data resource for many downstream applications. Due to the massive pile of COVID-19 tweets generated every day, it is significant that the machine-learning-supported downstream applications can effectively skip the uninformative tweets and only pick up the informative tweets for their further use. However, existing solutions do not specifically consider the negative effect caused by the imbalanced ratios between informative and uninformative tweets in training data.

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The COVID-19 patient data for composite outcome prediction often comes with class imbalance issues, i.e., only a small group of patients develop severe composite events after hospital admission, while the rest do not.

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Background: We applied machine learning (ML) algorithms to generate a risk prediction tool [Collaboration for Risk Evaluation in COVID-19 (CORE-COVID-19)] for predicting the composite of 30-day endotracheal intubation, intravenous administration of vasopressors, or death after COVID-19 hospitalization and compared it with the existing risk scores.

Methods: This is a retrospective study of adults hospitalized with COVID-19 from March 2020 to February 2021. Patients, each with 92 variables, and one composite outcome underwent feature selection process to identify the most predictive variables.

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Aims: To measure nurses' compliance with standard precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic, compare findings with previous assessments and describe the barriers affecting nurses' compliance.

Background: Healthcare providers' compliance with standard precautions is still limited worldwide. Implementation of infection control policies in hospitals is needed internationally, especially during a pandemic.

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Aim: Student engagement is an important factor to the success of higher education. This study aimed to develop a Generic Student Engagement Scale (GSES) for face-to-face and online learning.

Design: This was a cross-sectional psychometric study.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study was conducted to investigate how Tai chi affects fatigue, sleep disturbances, and depression in breast cancer patients, involving 72 participants split into two groups: one practicing Tai chi and the other receiving standard care.
  • Results showed that the Tai chi group experienced significant improvements in fatigue, sleep quality, depression levels, and overall quality of life compared to the control group both immediately after the intervention and four weeks later.
  • The study concluded that incorporating Tai chi as a supplemental treatment could effectively reduce the symptoms of fatigue, sleep disturbances, and depression in breast cancer patients, while also enhancing their quality of life.
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HIV researchers use short messaging service (SMS)-based surveys to monitor health behaviors more closely than what would be possible with in-person assessment. Benefits are tempered by nonresponse to completing surveys. Understanding response patterns and their associated study participant characteristics would guide more tailored use of SMS-based surveys for HIV studies.

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The needs of the aging populations are putting increasing burden on healthcare particularly in the Western Pacific Region (WPR), which is the home of aging economies such as Hong Kong and Japan alongside rapid increases in older people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, little is known about the associations between sociodemographic factors, disease burden, and life expectancy in WPR. The current study conducted secondary analysis on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) estimates of populations aged 70 years and older in WPR countries between 1995 and 2019.

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School-based green space activities have been found to be beneficial to the physical activity level and lifestyle habits of adolescent students. However, their effects on green space use and satisfaction, mental health, and dietary behaviors required further investigation. This study aimed to investigate the effects of school-based hydroponic planting integrated with health promotion activities in improving green space use, competence and satisfaction, healthy lifestyle, mental health, and health-related quality of life (QoL) among early adolescent students in secondary schools.

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Risks attributed to chronic diseases, cancer, musculoskeletal discomfort, and infectious diseases among Indonesians were found to be associated with lifestyle behaviors, particularly in rural areas. The aim of this study was to examine the outcomes of a home-visiting lifestyle modification program on improving health risk behaviors among Indonesians living in rural areas. A total of 160 Indonesians living in rural hamlets in the Yogyakarta Region of Indonesia participated in the program in the period of June 21 to July 21, 2019.

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Background: COVID-19 is one of the greatest threats to human beings in terms of health care, economy, and society in recent history. Up to this moment, there have been no signs of remission, and there is no proven effective cure. Vaccination is the primary biomedical preventive measure against the novel coronavirus.

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Objective: This scoping review aims at exploring the effectiveness of nurse-led advanced practice for patients with cancer.

Methods: This review followed the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews. Randomised controlled trials on cancer nurse-led clinics for patient outcomes, costs, service utilisation and other outcomes were included.

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This review aimed to examine the effectiveness of unstructured play interventions on young children's physical, emotional and social wellbeing in various community settings. Eligibility criteria of articles included (1) studies which included young children aged three to seven years; (2) intervention studies which involved unstructured, free or loose parts play; (3) experimental or randomized controlled trial designs, with or without random allocation to groups; and (4) target variables of the study should include measurable physical, social or psychological constructs as modifiable outcomes. Electronic searches were conducted from June 2018 to March 2019 in ERIC, MEDLINE, PubMed, ProQuest, Sage Publications, Web of Science, Scopus, and Sociological Abstracts.

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Objective: To compare the effects of the simplified 5-step and the conventional 7-Step hand hygiene programme in a cluster randomized controlled trial among students with intellectual disabilities.

Method: A total of 472 Chinese students with intellectual disabilities were randomized to either simplified 5-step or conventional 7-step hand hygiene programme. Assessments included handwashing technique, cleanliness and sick leave days.

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Health-related behaviors during adolescence have lifelong impacts. However, there are unclear areas regarding the associations between health-related quality of life and demographic characteristics, as well as physical and psychosocial indicators. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between quality of life and body weight, sleep outcome, social support by age, and cohabitants, given that income, self-esteem, lifestyle, emotional, social and behavioral problems were taken into account among adolescents in East and Southeast Asia.

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In this study, we have proposed a novel solvent-based method using a specific concentration of 3M™ Novec™ HFE-72DE and 7200 solvents to untangle duct tape from porous article with minimal impact to the quality of latent fingerprint deposited on the sticky-side surface of duct tape. A series of experiments determined that a mixture of 30% HFE-72DE:7200 (v/v) was found to be the most effective to separate various brands of duct tape from different types of porous surface, including office copy paper, newspaper, cardboard, and tissue wipe, which had been stored for up to 30 days before untangling. Further studies also revealed that 30% HFE-72DE:7200 was compatible with three common fingerprint development methods for porous articles, namely ninhydrin, indanedione-zinc, and physical developer.

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: Given the risk of physical and psychosocial health that emerge in adolescents that are continuing into adulthood, identifying and addressing early signs of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) decline provides an opportunity to ensure that young people have a healthier progression through adolescence. : To investigate the association between demographic characteristics, lifestyle health behaviours, and HRQoL of adolescents who live in Asia Pacific region, including Hong Kong in China, Beijing in China, Akashi in Japan, Seoul in South Korea, and Bangkok in Thailand. : A cross-sectional self-reported survey carried out in a sample of 2296 adolescents that were aged 9-16 years (mean= 12.

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A middle-aged man presented with syncope and confusion. Neuroimaging revealed a third ventricular mass with obstructive hydrocephalus and bilateral convexity meningiomata. The masses were excised and pathology showed a colloid cyst and WHO grade 1 meningiomata respectively.

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Excessive electronic screen-based activities have been found to be associated with negative outcomes. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalences and patterns of smart device activities and the purposes and perceived outcomes related to smart device use, and the differences in patterns of smart device activities between adolescents who did and did not perceive these outcomes. The study was a cross-sectional survey of Hong Kong primary and secondary school students.

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Objective: The purpose of our study was to measure the radiation dose from ECG-gated CT coronary angiography in children and to estimate the cancer risk associated with the radiation dose.

Materials And Methods: Organ doses were measured with a 5-year-old pediatric phantom and thermoluminescent dosimeters on a 64-MDCT scanner. Four retrospectively ECG-gated CT coronary angiography protocols with four simulated heart rates and the corresponding pitches were studied.

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