Inability of an "energy transfer diagnostician" to distinguish between fertile and infertile women.

CONTEXT: Various forms of "energy healing" have become popular in the United States. OBJECTIVE: To test the assertion that an energy healer can, without physical contact, distinguish the presence or absence of internal organ pathology in individuals who lack overt physical findings. DESIGN: Observational randomized study, in which we tested the assertion by a well-recognized alternative healer that he had particular skill in using energy transfer to detect the presence or absence of fertility disorders in women. PATIENTS: Convenience sample of 37 women, 28 of whom had documented pathology resulting in infertility, and 9 of whom were fertile. OUTCOMES: The healer was provided with no medical history and performed diagnostic evaluations without physical contact with the blindfolded, clothed, and silent subjects. We compared to random chance the ability of the healer to establish a diagnosis of fertility or fertility disorder. SETTING: Teaching hospital. MAIN RESULTS: The healer was unable to distinguish the presence or absence of fertility disorders in the study subjects. CONCLUSION: This study points to further need for fair yet rigorous assessment of claims that energy transfer can lead to accurate clinical diagnoses.

Neural-network front ends in unsupervised learning.

Proposed is an idea of partial supervision realized in the form of a neural-network front end to the schemes of unsupervised learning (clustering). This neural network leads to an anisotropic nature of the induced feature space. The anisotropic property of the space provides us with some of its local deformation necessary to properly represent labeled data and enhance efficiency of the mechanisms of clustering to be exploited afterwards. The training of the network is completed based upon available labeled patterns-a referential form of the labeling gives rise to reinforcement learning. It is shown that the discussed approach is universal and can be utilized in conjunction with any clustering method. Experimental studies are concentrated on three main categories of unsupervised learning including FUZZY ISODATA, Kohonen self-organizing maps, and hierarchical clustering.

Fuzzy clustering with partial supervision.

Presented here is a problem of fuzzy clustering with partial supervision, i.e., unsupervised learning completed in the presence of some labeled patterns. The classification information is incorporated additively as a part of an objective function utilized in the standard FUZZY ISODATA. The algorithms proposed in the paper embrace two specific learning scenarios of complete and incomplete class assignment of the labeled patterns. Numerical examples including both synthetic and real-world data arising in the realm of software engineering are also provided.

Vitamin E compared with other potential risk factor concentrations in patients with and without coronary artery disease: a case-matched study.

Thirty six individuals with angiographic evidence of coronary atherosclerosis and thirty six individuals without coronary disease, matched for a variety of cardiovascular risk factors including age, sex, smoking, hypertension, diabetes and family history, were evaluated for their serum concentrations of vitamin E, total cholesterol, triacylglycerols, high density lipoprotein-cholesterol, low density lipoprotein-cholesterol, apolipoprotein A-I, and apolipoprotein B. Apolipoprotein B, low density lipoprotein-cholesterol and total cholesterol concentrations were unequivocally higher in patients with coronary artery disease. Triacylglycerols were marginally higher in patients with disease. The antioxidant vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) was significantly higher in patients with atherosclerosis when compared with controls (35.1 +/- 17.0 mumol/l vs. 29.0 +/- 13.2 mumol/l, p = 0.017). However, alpha-tocopherol concentrations were strongly associated with lipid concentrations and normalization to the total cholesterol concentrations produced ratios which were not significantly different in the two groups. Logistic regression analysis revealed that the association of lipid risk factors with coronary stenosis was determined primarily by the difference in total cholesterol values. This study demonstrated that in this group of patients referred for angiography and matched for other risk factors, higher alpha-tocopherol concentrations were associated with patients with coronary disease and were not useful for assessing risk of coronary artery disease.

Clinical use of the antipsychotics.

Neuroleptics are the cornerstone for both the acute treatment and prevention of most schizophrenic episodes. The authors review the current practical information available for the clinical management of acute episodes and maintenance therapy, including dosage schedules, plasma level determinations, and side effects. All neuroleptics given in equivalent doses produce approximately the same degree of antipsychotic activity. The most common cause of treatment failure in acute psychosis is an inadequate dose, and the most common cause of relapse is patient noncompliance. Maintenance medication should be given at the lowest dose that will sustain improvement. The authors also discuss several new alternative drug treatments to neuroleptics.