Digital Commons Network^™

Parents' Experiences Of Infant And Young Child Feeding During The Covid-19 Pandemic In Ireland, Elizabeth J. O'Sullivan, Aileen Kennedy

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Objective: The WHO has urged member states to develop preparedness plans for infant and young child feeding (IYCF) during emergencies. Ireland has no such plan. We aimed to identify the needs of caregivers in Ireland with regards IYCF during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design: Online survey conducted in May-June 2020. Setting: Ireland, during the first period of severely restricted movement due to COVID-19 (lockdown). Participants: Respondents (n 745) were primary caregivers of a child under 2 years; they were primarily well educated and likely of higher socio-economic status. Results: Among those who breastfed, being unable to access breast-feeding support groups and …

The Relationship Between Diet And Lifestyle Behaviours In A Sample Of Higher Education Students; A Cross-Sectional Study, Stephen Doak, John Kearney, Jacqueline M. Mccormack, Laura Keaver

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Transitioning into higher education (HE) impacts health behaviours. Poor dietary and lifestyle behaviours may correlate and increase risk of co-morbidities. The introduction of the Okanagan Charter detailed the important role of health promotion within a HE setting. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between dietary quality and lifestyle behaviours of students attending HE.

Adolescent Overweight And Obesity In Ireland—Trends And Sociodemographic Associations Between 1990 And 2020, Aoibhín Moore Heslin, Aisling O'Donnell, Laura Kehoe, Janette Walton, Albert Flynn, John Kearney, Breige Mcnulty

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Background: Overweight and obesity in adolescence is a growing issue and can have a range of both short- and long-term consequences on health. Objectives: To analyse trends in adolescent weight status in Ireland across a 30-year period and to examine the influence of sociodemographic factors on overweight/obesity in Irish adolescents over time. Methods: Body composition and body mass index weight status of Irish adolescents were compared using data from three nationally representative, cross-sectional Irish national food consumption surveys from 1990, 2006 and 2020. Adjusted analysis of associations between socio-demographic factors with the risk of adolescent overweight/obesity at each time point …

Development And Evaluation Of A Multifrequency Ultrafast Doppler Spectral Analysis (Mfudsa) Algorithm For Wall Shear Stress Measurement: A Simulation And In Vitro Study, Andrew Malone, Sean Cournane, Izabela Naydenova, James F. Meaney, Andrew J. Fagan, Jacinta Browne

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Cardiovascular pathology is the leading cause of death and disability in the Western world, and current diagnostic testing usually evaluates the anatomy of the vessel to determine if the vessel contains blockages and plaques. However, there is a growing school of thought that other measures, such as wall shear stress, provide more useful information for earlier diagnosis and prediction of atherosclerotic related disease compared to pulsed-wave Doppler ultrasound, magnetic resonance angiography, or computed tomography angiography. A novel algorithm for quantifying wall shear stress (WSS) in atherosclerotic plaque using diagnostic ultrasound imaging, called Multifrequency ultrafast Doppler spectral analysis (MFUDSA), is presented. …

Analog Holographic Wavefront Sensor For Defocus And Spherical Aberration Measurement Recorded In A Photopolymer, Emma Branigan, Suzanne Martin, Matthew Sheehan, Kevin Murphy

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An analog holographic wavefront sensor (AHWFS), for measurement of low and high order (defocus and spherical aberration) aberration modes has been developed as volume phase holograms in a photopolymer recording medium. This is the first time that high order aberrations such as spherical aberration can be sensed using a volume hologram in a photosensitive medium. Both defocus and spherical aberration were recorded in a multi-mode version of this AHWFS. Refractive elements were used to generate a maximum and minimum phase delay of each aberration which were multiplexed as a set of volume phase holograms in an acrylamide based-photopolymer layer. The …

Prevalence Of Refractive Errors In Nepalese Children And Adults: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis, Jeewanand Bist, Himal Kandel, Nabin Paudel, Dinesh Kaphled, Rajendra Gyawali, Sanjay Marasini, Rabindra Adhikaryg, Prakash Paudel

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Clinical relevance: Country-specific estimates of the prevalence of refractive errors are important to formulate national eye health policies for refractive care services. Background: The purpose of this study was to systematically synthesise available literature and estimate the prevalence of refractive errors in the Nepalese population. Methods: PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were systematically searched for articles on refractive errors and presbyopia published in English language until 27 September 2022. Population and school-based quantitative, cross-sectional prevalence studies and Rapid Assessment of Avoidable Blindness survey repository data were included. The quality of the included studies was assessed using the Newcastle …

Strabismus And Amblyopia In Africa – A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Prince Kwaku Akowuah, Samuel Adade, Andrews Nartey, Ebenezer Owusu, Richard Donkor, Stephen Ankamah-Lomotey

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The objective of this review was to estimate the prevalence of strabismus and amblyopia in Africa. A systematic online literature search was conducted for articles on strabismus and amblyopia in Africa. Meta-analysis was performed, using the Freeman-Tukey double arcsine transformation, to estimate the prevalence of strabismus and amblyopia in Africa. Subgroup analyses were conducted according to age, gender, study year, and type of amblyopia. Meta-regression was used to evaluate the influence of predetermined factors on the prevalence of amblyopia. 8 (1 population-based & 7 school-based) and 21 (3 population-based & 18 school-based) studies on strabismus and amblyopia with sample sizes …

Subfoveal Choroidal Imaging In High Myopic Nepalese Cohort, Parash Gyawali, Ashutosh Jnawali, Anish Kharal, Manish Subedi, Sandeep Kandel, Prajjol Raj Puri, Nabin Paudel

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Current image captioning models produce fluent captions, but they rely on a one-size-fits-all approach that does not take into account the preferences of individual end-users. We present a method to generate descriptions with an adjustable amount of content that can be set at inference-time, thus providing a step toward a more user centered approach to image captioning.

Distribution Of Axial Length In Australians Of Different Age Groups, Ethnicities, And Refractive Errors, Vinay Kumar Nilagiri, Samantha Sze-Yee Lee, Gareth Lingham, Jason Charng, Seyhan Yazar, Alex W. Hewitt, Lynn R. Griffiths, Paul G. Sanfilippo, Tzu-Hsun Tsai, David A. Mackey

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Treatments are available to slow myopic axial elongation. Understanding normal axial length (AL) distributions will assist clinicians in choosing appropriate treatment for myopia. We report the distribution of AL in Australians of different age groups and refractive errors.

Review Of Recent Advances In Photosensitive Polymer Materials And Requirements For Transmission Diffractive Optical Elements For Led Light Sources, Michael Murray, Izabela Naydenova, Suzanne Martin

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Scattered light from outdoor LED sources is a major contributor to blue-spectrum light pollution which negatively impacts ecology and public health. Volume holographic diffractive optical elements (DOEs), made with low-cost photosensitive polymers, are proposed as a technological solution that can minimise this scattering. This review examines requirements needed for efficient operation of transmission-format DOEs with LEDs and implications for material choices. For such DOEs to have a single diffraction order and high efficiency there is a corresponding range of acceptable Δn. A survey of materials also found that many current materials satisfy the Δn requirements for single-element DOEs. It is …

The Association Of Adolescents' Smoking With The Physical Activity Levels Of Their Friends, R.A. Smit, M.A.G. Kuipers, B. Federico, Luke Clancy, J. Perlman, A.D. Rozema, A.E. Kunst

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Background: Smoking is inversely related to people's Physical Activity Level (PAL). As the behavior of friends may affect the choices and behavior of adolescents, having friends with a high PAL may potentially protect against adolescent smoking. This study aims to assess whether adolescents' smoking is associated with the PAL of their friends. Methods: SILNE-R survey data of 11.918 adolescents from 55 different schools in 7 European cities was used to determine weekly smoking, individual PAL, PAL of friends, school PAL, and smoking of friends. Multilevel, multivariable logistic regression analysis were used to assess the association between the PAL of friends …

The Effectiveness Of Allen Carr's Method For Smoking Cessation: A Systematic Review, Irene Possenti, Marco Scala, Alessandra Lugo, Luke Clancy, Sheila Keogan, Silvano Gallus

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Introduction: Allen Carr's (AC) method is a pharmacotherapy-free approach to quit smoking that is delivered through seminars, online courses, or in the form of a book. It has gained popularity, but its effectiveness remains controversial due to a lack of scientific evidence. This systematic review aims to provide an updated overview of the current evidence on the effectiveness of the AC method.

Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review of all epidemiological studies evaluating the effectiveness of the AC method for smoking cessation, published in PubMed/MEDLINE and Embase up to March 2023.

Results: Among 34 original studies identified through the …

Global Short-Term Mortality Risk And Burden Associated With Tropical Cyclones From 1980 To 2019: A Multi-Country Time-Series Study, Wenzhong Huang, Shansan Li, Thomas Vogt, Rongbin Xu, Shilu Tong, Tomas Molina, Pierre Masselot, Antonio Gasparrini, Ben Armstrong, Mathilde Pascal, Dominic Roye, Chris Fook Sheng Ng, Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera, Joel Schwartz, Eric Lavigne, Haidong Kan, Patrick J. Goodman, Ariana Zeka, Masahiro Hashizume, Magali Hurtado Dias, Cesar De La Cruz Valencia, Xerxes Seposo, Baltazar Nunes, Joana Madureira, Ho Kim, Whanhee Lee, Aurelio Tobias, Carmen Iniguez, Yue Leon Guo, Shih-Chun Pan, Antonella Zanobetti, Tran Ngoc Dang, Do Van Dung, Tobias Geiger, Christian Otto, Amanda Johnson, Simon Hales, Pei Yu, Zhengyu Yang, Elizabeth A. Ritchie, Yuming Guo

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The global spatiotemporal pattern of mortality risk and burden attributable to tropical cyclones is unclear. We aimed to evaluate the global short-term mortality risk and burden associated with tropical cyclones from 1980 to 2019.

A Novel Unidirectional Smart Charging Management Algorithm For Electric Buses, Nicolae Darii, Roberto Turri, Keith Sunderland, Fabio Bignucolo

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The difficulty of controlling the charging of electric buses (EBs) and their effects on network demand are discussed in this study. The solutions suggest a call for worldwide, complex infrastructures that manage EVs and EBs equally. Additionally, the Distribution Network (DN) must be prepared for an increased prevalence of reverse power flow caused by widespread distributed renewable generation. This paper focuses exclusively on EBs since they have higher capacity and predictable charging patterns, which makes them more significant for the DN in the context of a transition to complete vehicle electrification and technologies that are mature enough to be hosted. …

Design Of Event-Triggered Asynchronous H∞ Filter For Switched Systems Using The Sampled-Data Approach, Sheraz Shafique, Ghulam Mustafa, Nouman Ashraf, Owais Khan

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The design of networked switched systems with event-based communication is attractive due to its potential to save bandwidth and energy. However, ensuring the stability and performance of networked systems with event-triggered communication and asynchronous switching is challenging due to their time-varying nature. This paper presents a novel sampled-data approach to design event-triggered asynchronous H∞ filters for networked switched systems. Unlike most existing event-based filtering results, which either design the event-triggering scheme only or co-design the event-triggering condition and the filter, we consider that the event-triggering policy is predefined and synthesize the filter. We model the estimation error system as an …

Embedded Ai For Wheat Yellow Rust Infection Type Classification, Uferah Shafi, Rafia Mumtaz, Muhammad Deedahwar Mazhar Qureshi, Zahid Mahmood, Sikander Khan Tanveer, Ihsan Ul Haq, Syed Mohammad Hassan Zaidi

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Wheat is the most important and dominating crop in Pakistan in terms of production and acreage, which is grown on 37% of the cultivated area, accounting for 70% of the total production. However, wheat yield is highly affected by stripe rust, which is considered the most devastating fungal disease, causing 5.5 million tonnes of loss per year globally. In order to minimize this loss, the accurate and timely detection of rust disease is crucial instead of manual inspection. Towards this end, we propose a system to detect wheat rust disease and classify its infection types into four classes, including healthy, …

Adaptive Fuzzy Supplementary Controller For Ssr Damping In A Series-Compensated Dfig-Based Wind Farm, Mohamed Abdeen, Sayed Hosny Ahmed El-Banna, Sara Elgohary, Hend Mostafa, Nora Ghaly, Nourhan Adel, Zeinab Elkhwas, Mohamed Alahmady, Hossam Zawbaa, Salah Kamel

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Although using a series compensation technique in a long transmission line effectively increases the transmittable power; it may cause a sub-synchronous resonance (SSR) phenomenon. Gate-controlled series capacitor (GCSC) is an effective method for SSR damping by controlling the turn-off angle. In the previous studies, a constant supplementary damping controller (SDC) was used for controlling the turn-off angle, which can mitigate the SSR phenomenon. However, these methods can not capture the maximum transmittable power at different operating points. In this paper, a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is proposed to compute the gain of SDC based on the wind speed and the …

Distributed Intermittent Fault Diagnosis In Wireless Sensor Network Using Likelihood Ratio Test, Bhabani Sankar Gouda, Meenakshi Panda, Trilochan Panigrahi, Sudhakar Das, Bhargav Appasani, Omprakash Acharya, Hossam Zawbaa, Salah Kamel

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In current days, sensor nodes are deployed in hostile environments for various military and commercial applications. Sensor nodes are becoming faulty and having adverse effects in the network if they are not diagnosed and inform the fault status to other nodes. Fault diagnosis is difficult when the nodes behave faulty some times and provide good data at other times. The intermittent disturbances may be random or kind of spikes either in regular or irregular intervals. In literature, the fault diagnosis algorithms are based on statistical methods using repeated testing or machine learning. To avoid more complex and time consuming repeated …

Intelligent Beam Steering For Wireless Communication Using Programmable Metasurfaces, Nouman Ashraf, Taqwa Saeed, Hamidreza Taghvaee, Sergi Abadal, Vasos Vasos, Christos Liaskos Christos Liaskos, Andreas Pitsillides, Marios Lestas Marios Lestas

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Future generations of wireless communications are envisioned to provide several Gbps data rates per user for billions of users simultaneously [1]. The proliferation of billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in various industries has pushed wireless networks to their limits in terms of the required capacity to effectively communicate the vast amounts of data that are generated [2]. Moreover, the increasing number of IoT devices is changing mobile communication services from interpersonal communication to smart interconnection among billions of devices. 6G is expected to fulfill the requirements of a fully connected world and provide ubiquitous wireless connectivity for all …

Metaheuristic Optimization Techniques Used In Controlling Of An Active Magnetic Bearing System For High-Speed Machining Application, Suraj Suraj, Pabitra Kumar Biswas Pabitra Kumar Biswas, Sukanta Debnath, Anumoy Ghosh, Thanikanti Sudhakar Babu, Hossam Zawbaa, Salah Kemal

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Smart control tactics, wider stability region, rapid reaction time, and high-speed performance are essential requirements for any controller to provide a smooth, vibrationless, and efficient performance of an in-house fabricated active magnetic bearing (AMB) system. In this manuscript, three pre-eminent population-based metaheuristic optimization techniques: Genetic algorithm (GA), Particle swarm optimization (PSO), and Cuckoo search algorithm (CSA) are implemented one by one, to calculate optimized gain parameters of PID controller for the proposed closed-loop active magnetic bearing (AMB) system. Performance indices or, objective functions on which these optimization techniques are executed are integral absolute error (IAE), integral square error (ISE), integral …

Local Electricity Market Operation In Presence Of Residential Energy Storage In Low Voltage Distribution Network: Role Of Retail Market Pricing, Aziz Saif, Shafi K. Khadem Shafi K. Khadem, Michael Conlon, Brian Norton

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Local Electricity Market (LEM) appears as a promising consumer-centric market-based approach that extends the self-consumption method, widely implemented in residential households, to collective self-consumption in the local energy communities, enabled through peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions. To facilitate the integration of LEM in the wholesale electricity market (WEM), it is paramount to comprehend the synergy of retail electricity pricing on the LEM operation hosted in the low-voltage distribution network (LVDN). The paper presents a co-simulation framework consisting of a local electricity market model coupled with a three-phase distribution network simulator to perform a holistic case study for a smart energy community in …

Analysis And Design Of Secure Sampled-Data Control Subject To Denial-Of-Service Attacks, Hira Sana, Ghulam Mustafa, Owais Khan, Nouman Ashraf, Abdul Qayyum Khan, Muhammad Abid, Haroom Ur Rashid Khan

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This study addresses the issue of secure control design for cyber-physical systems (CPS) against denial of service (DoS) attacks. We take into account a continuous-time linear system with a convex quadratic performance measure and a sampled linear state feedback control. DoS attacks impose constraints on the CPS, where packets may be jammed between the sensor and controller by a malicious entity, potentially resulting in system instability and performance degradation. We assume that the attacker can perform DoS attacks with a limited time and frequency due to energy restrictions. We devise an efficient procedure using the linear matrix inequality approach to …

Nipuna: A Novel Optimizer Activation Function For Deep Neural Networks, Golla Madhu, Sandeep Kautish, Khalid Abdulaziz Alnowibet, Hossam Zawbaa, Ali Wagdy Mohamed

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In recent years, various deep neural networks with different learning paradigms have been widely employed in various applications, including medical diagnosis, image analysis, self-driving vehicles and others. The activation functions employed in deep neural networks have a huge impact on the training model and the reliability of the model. The Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) has recently emerged as the most popular and extensively utilized activation function. ReLU has some flaws, such as the fact that it is only active when the units are positive during back-propagation and zero otherwise. This causes neurons to die (dying ReLU) and a shift in …

Collective Relaxation Processes In Nonchiral Nematics, Neelam Yadav, Yuri Panarin, Wanhe Jiang, Georg H. Mehl, Jagdish Vij

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Nematic–nematic transitions in a highly polar nematic compound are studied, in thick cells in which the molecules are aligned parallel to the substrates but perpendicular to the applied electric field, using dielectric spectroscopy in the frequency range 1 Hz to 10 MHz over a wide temperature range. The studied compound displays three nematic phases under cooling from the isotropic phase: ubiquitous nematic N; high polarizability NX; and ferroelectric nematic NF. Two collective processes were observed. The dielectric strength and relaxation frequency of one of the processes P2 showed a dependence on the thickness of the cell. The process P1 is …

Interpreting Energy Utilisation With Shapley Additive Explanations By Defining A Synthetic Data Generator For Plausible Charging Sessions Of Electric Vehicles, Prasant Kumar Mohanty, Gayadhar Panda, Malabika Basu, Diptendu Sinha Roy

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Electric vehicles (EVs) are an effective solution for reducing reliance on non-renewable energy sources. However, the lack of charging infrastructure and concerns over their range are some of the biggest hurdles to adopting EVs. Charging infrastructure for EVs is, however, on the rise. Proper planning of charging stations vis-`a-vis road networks and related points of interest such as transportation hubs, schools, shopping centres, etc., alongside such roads become vital to laying out a plan for such infrastructure, particularly for developing countries like India where EV adoption is relatively in a nascent stage. Synthetic datasets can help overcome these hurdles and …

Lightnet: A Novel Lightweight Convolutional Network For Brain Tumor Segmentation In Healthcare, Dongyuan Wu, Junyi Tao, Zhen Qin, Rao Asad Mumtaz, Jin Qin, Linfang Yu, Jane Courtney

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Diagnosis, treatment planning, surveillance, and the monitoring of clinical trials for brain diseases all benefit greatly from neuroimaging-based tumor segmentation. Recently, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have demonstrated promising results in enhancing the efficiency of image-based brain tumor segmentation. Most current work on CNNs, however, is devoted to creating increasingly complicated convolution modules to improve performance, which in turn raises the computing cost of the model. This work proposes a simple and effective feed-forward CNN, LightNet (Light Network). Based on multi-path and multi-level, it replaces traditional convolutional methods with light operations, which reduces network parameters and redundant feature maps. In the …

Laser Structure Based On An Erbium-Doped Fiber Ring And A Whispering Gallery Mode Microbottle Resonator, Anuradha Rout, Zhe Wang, Zhuochen Wang, Yuliya Semenova

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A novel fiber laser structure, to the best of our knowledge, based on an erbium-doped fiber ring (EDFR) and a silica microbottle resonator (MBR) is proposed and investigated experimentally. Two fiber laser samples based on MBRs with different geometries and diameters of 200 and 150 µm are fabricated, and their performance is studied experimentally. Periodic whispering gallery mode spectra of the MBRs are dependent on the position of the fiber taper used for coupling of light into the MBR, and this dependence is explored to achieve lasing at different wavelengths by moving the light coupling point along the axis of …

An Evaluation Study On The Analysis Of People's Domestic Routines Based On Spatial, Temporal And Sequential Aspects, Aitor Arribas Velasco, John Mcgrory, Damon Berry

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The concept of collecting data on people's domestic routines is not novel. However, the methods and processes used to decipher these raw data and transform them into useful and appropriate information (i.e., sequence, duration, and timing derived from monitoring domestic routines) have presented challenges and are the focus of numerous research groups. But how are the results of the decoded transposition received, interpreted and used by the various professionals (e.g., occupational therapists and architects) who consume the information? This paper describes the inclusive evaluation process undertaken, which involved a selected group of stakeholders including health carers, engineers and end-users (not …

A Tribute To R. Kent Greenawalt: Scholar-Teacher, Teacher-Scholar In Memoriam, Paul Horwitz

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No abstract provided.

Why Criminal Defendants Cooperate: The Defense Attorney's Perspective, Jessica A. Roth, Anna D. Vaynman, Steven D. Penrod

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Cooperation is at the heart of most complex federal criminal cases, with profound ramifications for who can be brought to justice and for the fate of those who decide to cooperate. But despite the significance of cooperation, scholars have yet to explore exactly how individuals confronted with the decision whether to pursue cooperation with prosecutors make that choice. This Article—the first empirical study of the defense experience of cooperation—begins to address that gap. The Article reports the results of a survey completed by 146 criminal defense attorneys in three federal districts: the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District …