Digital Commons Network^™

Fluoroscopic Demonstration Of Thoracic Tumor Immobilization With High Frequency Percussive Ventilation, Ina M Sala, Beverly Maurer, Cristian Solano, Ronald Levitin, Thomas M Guerrero

Articles

Purpose: The purpose of this first-in-man study is to directly measure thoracic tumor immobilization by high frequency percussive ventilation (HFPV).

Methods: In an IRB approved protocol (IRB # 2017-046) we screened patients with conspicuous lung tumors that exhibited motion >10 mm to undergo kV fluoroscopy with HFPV. Two sets of consecutive AP (anterior posterior) fluoroscopy frames were acquired during multiple breathing cycles for free- and HFPV- breathing. All images were acquired using our kV source/panel of the therapeutic linear accelerator. Percussions were delivered via the intrapulmonary percussive ventilation device (IPV-2C) and phasitron (Percussionaire Corp., Sagle, Idaho). The baseline settings for …

Data: The Good, The Bad And The Ethical, John D. Kelleher, Filipe Cabral Pinto, Luis M. Cortesao

Articles

It is often the case with new technologies that it is very hard to predict their long-term impacts and as a result, although new technology may be beneficial in the short term, it can still cause problems in the longer term. This is what happened with oil by-products in different areas: the use of plastic as a disposable material did not take into account the hundreds of years necessary for its decomposition and its related long-term environmental damage. Data is said to be the new oil. The message to be conveyed is associated with its intrinsic value. But as in …

Mathematical Model Of The Role Of Asymptomatic Infection In Outbreaks Of Some Emerging Pathogens, Nourridine Siewe, Bradford Greening Jr., Nina H. Fefferman

Articles

Preparation for outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases is often predicated on beliefs that we will be able to understand the epidemiological nature of an outbreak early into its inception. However, since many rare emerging diseases exhibit different epidemiological behaviors from outbreak to outbreak, early and accurate estimation of the epidemiological situation may not be straightforward in all cases. Previous studies have proposed considering the role of active asymptomatic infections co-emerging and co-circulating as part of the process of emergence of a novel pathogen. Thus far, consideration of the role of asymptomatic infections in emerging disease dynamics have usually avoided considering …

Do Greenhouse Gases Impact Our Respiratory System? A Study Of The Effect Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions On Respiratory Disease Related Mortality In Ireland, Anushree Priyadarshini, Christina Kenny

Articles

Respiratory-related deaths are one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality every year in the developed world. Previous research outlines that greenhouse gas emission levels have a negative effect on respiratory health and can cause worsening of symptoms. This study examines the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on respiratory disease related mortality in Ireland from 2007-2017 using Statbank data from Central Statistics Office, Ireland. Analysis shows that over the last decade, while greenhouse gases emissions in Ireland have reduced by 1.1%, respiratory disease related mortality has increased on an average by 2.1%. Results indicate that greenhouse gas emis- sions …

A Review Of Bleeding Risk With Impella-Supported High-Risk Percutaneous Coronary Intervention, George W. Vetrovec, Amir Kaki, Thom G. Dahle

Articles

Complex, high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (HR-PCI) is increasingly being performed, often with mechanical circulatory support (MCS), though to date, there are limited randomised data on the efficacy of MCS for HR-PCI. The majority of MCS is provided by intra-aortic balloon pumps, but increasingly Impella® (Abiomed, Danvers, MA, USA) heart pumps are being used. While the Impella pumps provide greater increases in cardiac output, these devices require large bore access, which has been associated with an increased risk of bleeding and vascular complications. Decisions regarding the use of Impella are often based on risk–benefit considerations, with Impella-related bleeding risk being a …

Covid-19 Reflections On Resilience And Reform In The Child Welfare System, Robert Latham, Kele Stewart

Articles

No abstract provided.

Feigned Consensus: Usurping The Law In Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma Prosecutions, Keith A. Findley, D. Michael Risinger, Patrick D. Barnes, Julie A. Mack, David A. Moran, Barry C. Scheck, Thomas L. Bohan

Articles

Few medico-legal matters have generated as much controversy--both in the medical literature and in the courtroom--as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), now known more broadly as Abusive Head Trauma (AHT). The controversies are of enormous significance in the law because child abuse pediatricians claim, on the basis of a few non-specific medical findings supported by a weak and methodologically flawed research base, to be able to “diagnose” child abuse, and thereby to provide all of the evidence necessary to satisfy all of the legal elements for criminal prosecution (or removal of children from their parents). It is a matter, therefore, in …

Taxes As Pandemic Controls, Ashley C. Craig, James R. Hines Jr.

Articles

Tax policy can play important roles in limiting the spread of communicable disease and in managing the economic fallout of a pandemic. Taxes on business activities that bring workers or customers into close contact with each other offer efficient alternatives to broad regulatory measures, such as shutdowns, that have been effective but enormously costly. Corrective taxation also helps raise the revenue required to cover elevated government expenditure during a pandemic. Moreover, the restricted consumer choice that accompanies a pandemic reduces the welfare cost of raising tax revenue from higher-income taxpayers, making it a good time for deficit closure. Current U.S. …

The Life And Death Of Confederate Monuments, Jessica Owley, Jess Phelps

Articles

Confederate monuments have again received increased attention in the aftermath of George Floyd's tragic death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. Momentum and shifting public opinion are working toward the removal of these problematic monuments across the country. This Article seeks to provide insight for monument-removal advocates: specifically focusing on the legal issues associated with the "death" or removal of these monuments, how property law shapes and defines these efforts, and briefly examining what happens to these statues after removal. Our exploration of Confederate monuments reveals that some removal efforts occur outside of legally created processes. Both public and …

Lightgwas: A Novel Machine Learning Procedure For Genome-Wide Association Study, Ambrozio Bruno, Luca Longo, Lucas Rizzo

Articles

This paper proposes a novel machine learning procedure for genome-wide association study (GWAS), named LightGWAS. It is based on the LightGBM framework, in addition to being a single, resilient, autonomous and scalable solution to address common limitations of GWAS implementations found in the literature. These include reliance on massive manual quality control steps and specific GWAS methods for each type of dataset morphology and size. Through this research, LightGWAS has been contrasted against PLINK2, one of the current state-of-the-art for GWAS implementations based on general linear model with support to firth regularisation. The mean differences measured upon standard classification metrics, …

A Comparative Analysis Of Rule-Based, Model-Agnostic Methods For Explainable Artificial Intelligence, Giulia Vilone, Lucas Rizzo, Luca Longo

Articles

The ultimate goal of Explainable Artificial Intelligence is to build models that possess both high accuracy and degree of explainability. Understanding the inferences of such models can be seen as a process that discloses the relationships between their input and output. These relationships can be represented as a set of inference rules which are usually not explicit within a model. Scholars have proposed several methods for extracting rules from data-driven machine-learned models. However, limited work exists on their comparison. This study proposes a novel comparative approach to evaluate and compare the rulesets produced by four post-hoc rule extractors by employing …

Exploring The Potential Of Defeasible Argumentation For Quantitative Inferences In Real-World Contexts: An Assessment Of Computational Trust, Lucas Rizzo, Pierpaolo Dondio, Luca Longo

Articles

Argumentation has recently shown appealing properties for inference under uncertainty and conflicting knowledge. However, there is a lack of studies focused on the examination of its capacity of exploiting real-world knowledge bases for performing quantitative, case-by-case inferences. This study performs an analysis of the inferential capacity of a set of argument-based models, designed by a human reasoner, for the problem of trust assessment. Precisely, these models are exploited using data from Wikipedia, and are aimed at inferring the trustworthiness of its editors. A comparison against non-deductive approaches revealed that these models were superior according to values inferred to recognised trustworthy …

Labor Redemption In Work Law, Andrew Elmore

Articles

People with criminal records are not a protected class under Title VII, and many employers fear that hiring people with criminal records invites negligent hiring liability. Ban the Box privacy laws delay but may not deter overbroad criminal background checks. This Article challenges this standard account by shifting focus to the state in imposing arbitrary barriers to work. I expose a dignity interest in the removal of these unnecessary barriers, or "labor redemption." I find foundations of labor redemption in successful constitutional challenges to denials of public employment and occupational licenses. Labor redemption is also, increasingly, a statutory right, in …

Stereotactic Radiosurgery For Hemorrhagic Symptomatic Cerebral Cavernous Malformations: An International Multicenter Study, Hideyuki Kano, Rachel Jacobs, Huai-Che Yang, Cheng-Chia "Justin" Lee, Ahmed Nabeel, Khaled Abdelkarim, Reem Emad, Amr El-Shehaby, Wael Reda, Sameh Tawadros, Piettar Khalil, Roman Liscak, Khumar Guseynova, Charles Touchette, David Mathieu, Lydia Ren, Jason P Sheehan, Nasser Mohammed, Herwin Speckter, Muayad Almahariq, Inga Grills, Caleb E Feliciano, Rafael Rodriguez-Mercado, L Dade Lunsford

Articles

INTRODUCTION: Stereotactic radiosurgery has been used for treating cavernous malformation. METHODS: Between 1988 and 2018, Gamma KnifeR SRS was performed in 762 evaluable patients with symptomatic CCMs There were 262 (34%) CCM in the brainstem, 148 (19%) in basal ganglia or thalamus, and 372 (49%) in lobar locations. Most patients had experienced 2 or more hemorrhages associated with new neurological deficits. The median CM volume was 1.2 cm3 (range, 0.01-28.9), and the median margin dose was 14.0 Gy. RESULTS: After SRS, 158 patients (21%) had an imaging confirmed new hemorrhage at a median follow-up of 49 months. The hemorrhagefree survival …

Populist Nationalism Threatens Health And Human Rights In The Covid-19 Response, Caitlin R. Williams, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Benjamin Mason Meier

Articles

COVID-19 demands international cooperation, yet populist nationalism is resurgent, threatening public health, human rights, and global governance. In responding to the pandemic, populist nationalism and global solidarity represent distinct paths, with enduring consequences for health and human rights.

Recording Of Endoscopy And Fluoroscopy Of The Vocal Tract With Sound (Or Its Absence): A Disappointment, Robert J Shprintzen, Pablo Antonio Ysunza

Articles

There is an old say: “The devil knows more for being old than for being the devil”. One of the advantages of being old and observing clinical practice and clinical research advance is that successful procedures and methods can be selected and put into practice. Indeed, it is possible to define when practices we thought could be used by our peers simply by being reported in the literature have proven to be doubtful hopes that leave us trying to find out what went wrong. Such is the case with imaging procedures of the vocal tract during speech tasks.

Association Of Metabolomic Biomarkers With Sleeve Gastrectomy Weight Loss Outcomes, Wendy Miller, Kathryn Ziegler, Stewart Graham, Michael Maddens, Matthew Sims

Articles

Background: Factors influencing weight loss variability following sleeve gastrectomy (SG) are not well understood. We evaluated the correlation of metabolomic biomarkers with weight loss outcomes. Methods: This prospective study evaluated the metabolomic profile of feces and serum prior to SG and three months post-SG, along with weight loss outcomes at three months post-SG (N=45). Serum and fecal samples were quantitatively profiled using a combination of 1H NMR and DI-LC-MS/MS (AbsoluteIDQ P180 kit (Biocrates, Innsbruck)). Results: Percent total weight loss (%TWL) for the lowest versus the highest weight loss tertiles (T1 vs T3) was 11.1 + 0.8% and 17.0 + 1.3%, …

A Reference Data Set For Image Registration Of The Pelvis Using Combinatorial Rigid Registration Optimization (Corro)., Afua A Yorke, David Solis Jr, Thoas Guerrero

Articles

Purpose Clinical image pairs provide the most realistic test data for image registration evaluation. However, the optimal registration is unknown. Using combinatorial rigid registration optimization (CORRO) we demonstrate a method to estimate the optimal alignment for rigid-registration of clinical image pairs.

Methods Expert selected landmark pairs were selected for each CT/CBCT image pair for six cases representing head and neck, thoracic, and pelvic anatomic regions. Combination subsets of a k number of landmark pairs (k-combination set) were generated without repeat to form a large set of k-combination sets (k-set) for k = 4,8,12. The rigid transformation between the image pairs …

Safety Of Vitamin D2 Mushroom Powder As A Novel Food Pursuant To Regulation (Eu) 2015/2283, John Kearney, Dominique Turck, Jacqueline Castenmiller, Stefaan De Henauw

Articles

Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods and Food Allergens (NDA) was asked to deliver a scientific opinion on vitamin D2 mushroom powder as a novel food (NF) pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2015/2283. The NF is an ingredient produced from Agaricus bisporus mushrooms that have been exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light to induce the conversion of provitamin D2 (ergosterol) to vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol). The NF contains concentrations of vitamin D provided by vitamin D2 in the ranges of 1,000–1,300 lg/g. The information provided on the manufacturing process, composition and specifications of the NF …

The Behavioral Effects Of (Unenforceable) Contracts, Evan Starr, Jj Prescott, Norman Bishara

Articles

Do contracts influence behavior independent of the law governing their enforceability? We explore this question in the context of employment noncompetes using nationally representative data for 11,500 labor force participants. We show that noncompetes are associated with reductions in employee mobility and changes in the direction of that mobility (i.e., toward noncompetitors) in both states that do and do not enforce noncompetes. Decomposing mobility into job offer generation and acceptance, we detect no evidence of differences in job search, recruitment, or offer activity associated with noncompetes. Rather, we find that employees with noncompetes—even in states that do not enforce them—frequently …

Towards An Urban Disability Agenda, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

The overwhelming majority of Americans with disabilities live in metropolitan areas. Yet those areas continue to contain significant barriers that keep disabled people from fully participating in city life. Although political and social debate has periodically turned its attention to urban issues or problems — or even the so-called “urban crisis” — during the past several decades, it has too rarely attended to the issues of disability access. When political debate has focused on disability issues, it has tended to address them in a nationally uniform way, without paying attention to the particular concerns of disabled people in cities. Even …

Unwaivable: Public Enforcement Claims And Mandatory Arbitration, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Articles

This essay, written for a conference on the “pathways and hurdles” that lie ahead in consumer litigation, is the first to examine the implications of California’s recent jurisprudence holding public enforcement claims unwaivable in standard-form contracts of adhesion, and the inevitable clash with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisional law interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act. With its rich history of rebuffing efforts to deprive citizens of public rights through private contract, California provides an ideal laboratory for exploring this escalating conflict.

A Hybrid Agent-Based And Equation Based Model For The Spread Of Infectious Diseases, Elizabeth Hunter, Brian Mac Namee, John D. Kelleher

Articles

Both agent-based models and equation-based models can be used to model the spread of an infectious disease. Equation-based models have been shown to capture the overall dynamics of a disease outbreak while agent-based models are able to capture heterogeneous characteristics of agents that drive the spread of an outbreak. However, agent-based models are computationally intensive. To capture the advantages of both the equation-based and agent-based models, we create a hybrid model where the disease component of the hybrid model switches between agent-based and equation-based. The switch is determined using the number of agents infected. We first test the model at …

Riluzole Attenuates Glutamatergic Tone And Cognitive Decline In Aβpp/Ps1 Mice., Kevin N Hascup, Caleigh A Findley, Jesse Britz, Nahayo Esperant-Hilaire, Sarah O Broderick, Kristin Delfino, Shelley Tischkau, Andrzej Bartke, Erin R Hascup

Articles

We have previously demonstrated hippocampal hyperglutamatergic signaling occurs prior to plaque accumulation in AβPP/PS1 mice. Here, we evaluate 2-Amino-6-(trifluoromethoxy) benzothiazole (riluzole) as an early intervention strategy for Alzheimer's disease (AD), aimed at restoring glutamate neurotransmission prior to substantial Beta amyloid (Aβ) plaque accumulation and cognitive decline. Male AβPP/PS1 mice, a model of progressive cerebral amyloidosis, were treated with riluzole from 2-6 months of age. Morris water maze, in vivo electrochemistry, and immunofluorescence were performed to assess cognition, glutamatergic neurotransmission, and pathology, respectively, at 12 months. Four months of prodromal riluzole treatment in AβPP/PS1 mice resulted in long-lasting procognitive effects and …

Comparing Variable Importance In Prediction Of Silence Behaviours Between Random Forest And Conditional Inference Forest Models., Stephen Barrett Dr, Geraldine Gray Dr, Colm Mcguinness Dr, Michael Knoll Dr.

Articles

This paper explores variable importance metrics of Conditional Inference Trees (CIT) and classical Classification And Regression Trees (CART) based Random Forests. The paper compares both algorithms variable importance rankings and highlights why CIT should be used when dealing with data with different levels of aggregation. The models analysed explored the role of cultural factors at individual and societal level when predicting Organisational Silence behaviours.

A Population-Based Analysis Of Outcomes In Patients With Enteropathy-Associated T-Cell Lymphoma (Eatl), Nwabundo Anusim, Bana Antonios, Ruby Gupta, Vishal Jindal, John Khoury, Ishmael Jaiyesimi

Articles

Background: EATL is very rare and accounts for less than 1 percent of all non-Hodgkin lymphomas. EATL occurs most commonly in patients with celiac disease and carries a uniformly poor prognosis. The optimal treatment for EATL is unclear and the data is limited to case reports and small retrospective studies.

Methods: ICD-O-3 (9717) histological code was used to identify cases of EATL from the population-based cancer registries of the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results program (SEER) between 2006 and 2016. Frequency, demographics, and survival data were assessed using SPSS statistical software.

Results: A total of 138 cases were found. The …

Investigation Of Surrogate Biomarkers Associated With Macular Pigment Status In A Group Of Older Irish Adults, Grainne Scanlon, John S. Butler, Daniel Mccartney, Ekaterina Lostutova, Rose Anne Kenny, James Loughman

Articles

SIGNIFICANCE: Macular pigment (MP) confers potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects at the macula; however, its optical density in the eye is not routinely measured in clinical practice.

PURPOSE: This study explored a range of surrogate biomarkers including anthropometric, clinical, and plasma measures that may be associated with lower MP optical density (MPOD).

METHODS: Two thousand five hundred ninety-four subjects completed a full MP assessment as part of wave 1 of The Irish Longitudinal Study of Aging. Macular pigment optical density was measured using customized heterochromatic flicker photometry. Clinical (blood pressure), plasma (lipoproteins, inflammatory markers), and anthropometric (waist, hip, height, weight) …

Uv Photo-Oxidation Of Polybenzimidazole (Pbi), Devon Shedden, Kristen M. Atkinson, Ibrahim Cisse, Shin Lutondo, Tyshawn Roundtree, Michilena Teixeira, Joel Shertok, Michael Mehan, Gregory K. Thompson, Surendra K. Gupta, Gerald A. Takacs

Articles

Since polybenzimidazole (PBI) is often used in the aerospace industry and in high temperature fuel cells, this research investigated the surface modification of PBI film with 253.7 and 184.9 nm UV photo-oxidation. As observed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), the oxygen concentration on the surface increased up to a saturation level of 20.2 ± 0.7 at %. With increasing treatment time, there were significant decreases in the concentrations of C-C sp2 and C=N groups and increases in the concentration of C=O, O-C=O, O-(C=O)-O, C-N, N-O, and N-C=O containing moieties due to 253.7 nm photo-oxidation of the aromatic groups of PBI …

Stop, Think, Check: Ireland's Be Media Smart Campaign, Philip Russell

Articles

‘Be Media Smart’ is an Irish public awareness campaign calling on people of all ages to ‘Be Media Smart’ and ‘Stop, Think, and Check’ that information they see, read or hear across any media platform is accurate and reliable. This national media literacy campaign was aimed at enhancing people’s understanding of, and engagement with, media, while also empowering them with the skills to evaluate content across all platforms.

There Will Be Floods: Armoring The People Of Florida To Make Informed Decisions On Flood Risk, Natalie N. Barefoot, Daniela Tagtachian, Abigail L. Fleming, Gabriela Falla, Bethany Blakeman, Natalie Cavellier

Articles

In Florida, a peninsula surrounded by water with the second-lowest mean elevation in the country, there will be floods.[1] A global study ranking cities most vulnerable to losses from flooding lists Miami first in the United States and sixth globally; Tampa-St. Petersburg is listed as 16th globally.[2] Yet there are no state statutes or regulations in Florida that require a seller or landlord to make flood-related disclosures to homebuyers and renters. In contrast, while varying in scope, 29 states require flood-risk disclosures in real estate transactions.[3] Though Florida should be leading in this arena, in an evaluation of nationwide flood …