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Concept: Acronym and initialism

174

Ever since the interest in organic environmental contaminants first emerged 50years ago, there has been a need to present discussion of such chemicals and their transformation products using simple abbreviations so as to avoid the repetitive use of long chemical names. As the number of chemicals of concern has increased, the number of abbreviations has also increased dramatically, sometimes resulting in the use of different abbreviations for the same chemical. In this article, we propose abbreviations for flame retardants (FRs) substituted with bromine or chlorine atoms or including a functional group containing phosphorus, i.e. BFRs, CFRs and PFRs, respectively. Due to the large number of halogenated and organophosphorus FRs, it has become increasingly important to develop a strategy for abbreviating the chemical names of FRs. In this paper, a two step procedure is proposed for deriving practical abbreviations (PRABs) for the chemicals discussed. In the first step, structural abbreviations (STABs) are developed using specific STAB criteria based on the FR structure. However, since several of the derived STABs are complicated and long, we propose instead the use of PRABs. These are, commonly, an extract of the most essential part of the STAB, while also considering abbreviations previously used in the literature. We indicate how these can be used to develop an abbreviation that can be generally accepted by scientists and other professionals involved in FR related work. Tables with PRABs and STABs for BFRs, CFRs and PFRs are presented, including CAS (Chemical Abstract Service) numbers, notes of abbreviations that have been used previously, CA (Chemical Abstract) name, common names and trade names, as well as some fundamental physico-chemical constants.

Concepts: Chemical reaction, Chemistry, Fire retardant, Chlorine, Acronym and initialism, CAS registry number, Abbreviation, Abbreviations

1

Over the last fifty years, cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) has been firmly established as an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality. Mounting evidence supports a strong and inverse association between baseline CRF and the risk of developing hypertension (HTN) and dyslipidemia. Accumulating evidence also suggests that improving or maintaining a certain level of CRF over time leads to lower incidence of HTN and dyslipidemia and improves survival. These findings are promising with significant public health importance and warrant further evaluation to elucidate the role of longitudinal changes in CRF during the lifespan on CVD -morbidity and mortality, as well as all-cause survival. ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS.

Concepts: Public health, Health, Epidemiology, Disease, Medical statistics, The Canon of Medicine, Acronym and initialism, Abbreviations

0

Acronyms and abbreviations are frequently used in otorhinolaryngology and other medical specialties. CO2 laser-assisted transoral surgery of the pharynx, the larynx and the upper airway is a family of commonly performed surgical procedures termed transoral laser microsurgery (TLM). The abbreviation TLM can be confusing because of alternative modes of delivery. Classification and definition of the different types of procedures, performed transorally or transnasally, are proposed by the Working Committee for Nomenclature of the European Laryngological Society, emphasizing the type of laser used and the way this laser is transmitted. What is usually called TLM, would more clearly be defined as CO2 laser transoral microsurgery or CO2 TOLMS or CO2 laser transoral surgery only (with a handpiece) would be defined as CO2 TOLS. KTP transnasal flexible laser surgery would be KTP TNFLS. Transoral use of the flexible CO2 wave-guide with a handpiece would be a CO2 TOFLS. One can argue that these clarifications are not necessary and that the abbreviation TLM for transoral laser microsurgery is more than sufficient. But this is not the case. Laser surgery, office-based laser surgery and microsurgery are frequently and erroneously interchanged for one another. These classifications allow for a clear understanding of what was performed and what the results meant.

Concepts: Medicine, Surgery, Laser, Plastic surgery, Laser surgery, Acronym and initialism, Abbreviation, Abbreviations

0

The Hypogonadism Impact of Symptoms Questionnaire Short Form (HIS-Q-SF) is a patient-reported outcome measurement designed to evaluate the symptoms of hypogonadism. The HIS-Q-SF is an abbreviated version including17 items from the original 28-item HIS-Q.

Concepts: Francis Galton, Acronym and initialism, Abbreviation

0

We should start as we mean to go on and try to avoid the confusion most of us experience when bombarded with acronyms with overstated significations. You will be familiar with the situation, you are in a seminar or a meeting and someone who has been using a set of acronyms for years, includes them in sentence after sentence that has you lost because you don’t know what some or most of them stand for. Even worse when scientists start making verbs out of them, CRISPR seems to have fallen into this category; how many of us have heard someone asking if a mutation can be CRISPRed! Does it matter though? We are all familiar with informal language in scientific talks and discussions which is replaced by more formal dialect when research is published or presented to the general public. However, when an ill-defined acronym slips outside of laboratory chatter and is widely recognised by the general public, we need to proceed with caution to avoid misinterpretation and misunderstandings.

Concepts: Grammar, Dialect, Public, Grammatical number, Acronym and initialism, Formal, XML, Formal system

0

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are robust machine learning approaches for abbreviating a large set of variables into a shorter subset that maximally captures the variance in the original data. We employed a GA-based method to shorten the 62-item Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (MEAQ) by half without much loss of information. Experiential avoidance or the tendency to avoid negative internal experiences is a key target of many psychological interventions and its measurement is an important issue in psychology. The 62-item MEAQ has been shown to have good psychometric properties, but its length may limit its use in most practical settings. The recently validated 15-item brief version (BEAQ) is one short alternative, but it reduces the multidimensional scale to a single dimension. We sought to shorten the 62-item MEAQ by half while maintaining fidelity to its six dimensions. In a large nationally representative sample of Americans (N = 7884; 52% female; Age: M = 47.9, SD = 16), we employed a GA method of scale abbreviation implemented in the R package, GAabbreviate. The GA-derived short form, MEAQ-30 with five items per subscale, performed virtually identically to the original 62-item MEAQ in terms of inter-subscales correlations, factor structure, factor correlations, and zero-order correlations and unique latent associations of the six subscales with other measures of mental distress, wellbeing and personal strivings. The two measures also showed similar distributions of means across American census regions. The MEAQ-30 provides a multidimensional assessment of experiential avoidance whilst minimizing participant burden. The study adds to the emerging literature on the utility of machine learning methods in psychometrics.

Concepts: Algorithm, Dimension, Psychometrics, Machine learning, Learning, Acronym and initialism, Abbreviation, Abbreviations

0

The abbreviation EPIT is an accepted acronym for epicutaneous immunotherapy. However, a French intellectual property attorney acting on behalf of a company, which attempts to commercially develop one particular form of EPIT, currently sends legal notices to anybody who attempts to use the term EPIT in scientific publications. This is an attack on nothing less than the freedom of expression, which in science includes the extensive use of acronyms. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Abstract.

Concepts: Science, Law, Latin, Copyright, Intellectual property, Acronym and initialism, Abbreviation, Abbreviations

0

To determine the incidence of abbreviation use in electronic hospital discharge letters (eDLs) and general practitioner understanding of abbreviations used in eDLsDesign, setting and participants: Retrospective audit of abbreviation use in 200 sequential eDLs was conducted at Nepean Hospital, Sydney, a tertiary referral centre, from 18 December to 31 December 2012. The 15 most commonly used abbreviations and five clinically important abbreviations were identified from the audit. A survey questionnaire using these abbreviations in context was then mailed to 240 GPs in the area covered by the Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health District to determine their understanding of these abbreviations.

Concepts: Primary care, Questionnaire, 2012, Acronym and initialism, Abbreviation, Blue Mountains

0

Working memory (WM) is a cognitive system allowing short-term maintenance and processing of information. Maintaining information in WM consists, classically, in rehearsing or refreshing it. Chunking could also be considered as a maintenance mechanism. However, in the literature, it is more often used to explain performance than explicitly investigated within WM paradigms. Hence, the aim of the present paper was (1) to strengthen the experimental dialogue between WM and chunking, by studying the effect of acronyms in a computer-paced complex span task paradigm and (2) to formalize explicitly this dialogue within a computational model. Young adults performed a WM complex span task in which they had to maintain series of 7 letters for further recall while performing a concurrent location judgment task. The series to be remembered were either random strings of letters or strings containing a 3-letter acronym that appeared in position 1, 3, or 5 in the series. Together, the data and simulations provide a better understanding of the maintenance mechanisms taking place in WM and its interplay with long-term memory. Indeed, the behavioral WM performance lends evidence to the functional characteristics of chunking that seems to be, especially in a WM complex span task, an attentional time-based mechanism that certainly enhances WM performance but also competes with other processes at hand in WM. Computational simulations support and delineate such a conception by showing that searching for a chunk in long-term memory involves attentionally demanding subprocesses that essentially take place during the encoding phases of the task.

Concepts: Cognitive psychology, Cognition, Performance, Short-term memory, Long-term memory, Acronym and initialism, DVD, Acronyms

0

Some self-report measures of personality and personality disorders, including the widely used Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R), are lengthy and time-intensive. In recent work, we introduced an automated genetic algorithm (GA)-based method for abbreviating psychometric measures. In Study 1, we used this approach to generate a short (40-item) version of the PPI-R using 3 large-N German student samples (total N = 1,590). The abbreviated measure displayed high convergent correlations with the original PPI-R, and outperformed an alternative measure constructed using a conventional approach. Study 2 tested the convergent and discriminant validity of this short version in a fourth student sample (N = 206) using sensation-seeking and sensitivity to reward and punishment scales, again demonstrating similar convergent and discriminant validity for the PPI-R-40 compared with the full version. In a fifth community sample of North American participants acquired using Amazon Mechanical Turk, the PPI-R-40 showed similarly high convergent correlations, demonstrating stability across language, culture, and data-collection method. Taken together, these studies suggest that the GA approach is a viable method for abbreviating measures of psychopathy, and perhaps personality measures in general. (PsycINFO Database Record © 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Concepts: Algorithm, Psychometrics, Antisocial personality disorder, Personality disorders, Amazon.com, Acronym and initialism, Abbreviation, The Turk
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