Digital Commons Network^™

Improving Power In Group Sequential, Randomized Trials By Adjusting For Prognostic Baseline Variables And Short-Term Outcomes, Tianchen Qian, Michael Rosenblum, Huitong Qiu

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

In group sequential designs, adjusting for baseline variables and short-term outcomes can lead to increased power and reduced sample size. We derive formulas for the precision gain from such variable adjustment using semiparametric estimators for the average treatment effect, and give new results on what conditions lead to substantial power gains and sample size reductions. The formulas reveal how the impact of prognostic variables on the precision gain is modified by the number of pipeline participants, analysis timing, enrollment rate, and treatment effect heterogeneity, when the semiparametric estimator uses correctly specified models. Given set prognostic value of baseline variables and …

Water Security At Whiting Farm: 2016 Report, Emma Katz, Misha Copeland, Kate Cuthbert

Community Engaged Research Reports

This report provides an analysis of the current water use at Whiting Farm in Auburn, ME, and provides suggestions for implementing systems that will reduce water use, make Whiting Farm independent in water acquisition, and provide ways to try to ensure water security going into the future. Currently, Whiting Farm suffers from unreliable and unsustainable water use exacerbated by the drought that occurred in the past few months. The farm system as a whole uses an enormous amount of water every day, and is reliant on an insufficient source of water-- a hand dug well sourced from a seasonal irrigation …

E For Everyone: Implementation Guide, Lindsay Calcaterra, Kaela Fischer, Kelley Flahaven, Megan Witherow Quarles, Maria Stern, Christina Tilton

Physical Therapy Administration

‘E for Everyone’ is an innovative and unique inclusion program that equalizes the playing field among all people with and without disabilities by creating opportunities to build synergistic relationships through teamwork, fun, and physical activity. Created during the Fall 2016 semester, concurrent with the course Physical Therapy Administration, this implementation guide describes the step by step process for implementing the program.

Peer Influence: Mechanisms And Motivations, Barbara J. Costello, Christine Zozula

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Social science research on peer influence has focused on learning and reinforcement processes as potential explanations for the correlation between peer behavior and the individual’s behavior. These explanations assume that social ties can have either positive or negative effects on human behavior, depending on the nature of the groups to which the individual belongs. This view has been contested by those working in the control theory tradition in criminology, who argue that all social ties promote conformity. To shed new light on this debate, we ask a question that has not been addressed in previous research – why do youths …

The Massacre, John Bradshaw

Westview

No abstract provided.

Holy Cross Magazine, Vol. 51, No. 1, Winter 2017, College Of The Holy Cross

Holy Cross Magazine

Syllabus: Presidential Selection
with Donald Brand, professor of political science
By Meredith Fidrocki

The 2016 Sanctae Crucis Awards
Thomas H. Carey ’66, AnnMaura Connolly ’86, Cheryl A. Martin, Ph. D., ’84, Rev. James D. Mathews ’58 and Jonathan E. Racek ’95

The Path Forward
The Alumni Job Shadowing Program gives current Holy Cross students a chance to explore potential career paths before graduation, and allows alumni to give back to the next generation.

Child’s Play
Research shows that play benefits the social, emotional, cognitive and physical development of children. As the executive director of the Toy Industry Foundation, Jean Butler …

Kinder Ready: Exploring The Role Of Technology In Promoting School Readiness Among Low-Income Parents In A Clinic-Based Setting, Brenda Lu

Master's Projects and Capstones

The Stanford Pediatric Advocacy Program advocates to improve the health status of children in Silicon Valley and the surrounding community. This summer, I worked on a project called Kinder Ready, with the goal of evaluating the feasibility of technology use in promoting school readiness in children ages zero to five. We used a variety of qualitative research methods, including focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and surveys to collect feedback from the community on what their children need to transition into schools. Our local participatory research approach has paved the way for many new partnerships with local organizations, while strengthening existing ones. …

Falls Program On An Acute Psychiatric Unit, Joseph Hunter Rose

Master's Projects and Capstones

In the metropolitan hospital’s acute psychiatric unit there has been an increase in falls incidence as well as need for evaluation of the effectiveness of Schmid Fall Risk Assessment tool in its ability to properly identify those at risk. In the last fiscal year there were 45 falls among 28 patients on the acute psychiatric unit.Falls are harmful to the patients and can cause prolonged hospital stays with non-reimbursable costs to the hospital. Falls amongst psychiatric patients is an even greater challenge to address due to the nature of the mental health disease process. This project addresses general costs of …

Bullying Experiences And Resilience In Lgbtq Youth, Melinda Mccormick

Dissertations

Many young LGBTQ people are experiencing bullying which can lead to increased risk of suicide, drug abuse, and depression, as well as an increased risk of out-of-home placements in either foster care or homeless shelters. As a result of this, LGBTQ young adults are often framed as being at risk. Although this has been helpful in the past in order to raise awareness of the challenges experienced by LGBTQ young people, there is also evidence that they show resilience in response to those challenges. In order to advance the social work value of being strengths-based, this research looked for examples …

Seaweed And Seagrass Mapping In Thailand Measured Using Landsat 8 Optical And Textural Image Properties, Satomi Kakuta, Wataru Takeuchi, Anchana Prathep

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Seaweed and seagrass beds are an important ecosystem in coastal zones. However, they are degrading because of various causes, such as the anthropogenic impacts of coastal development, aquaculture, overharvesting, and climate change. To contribute to the research related to coastal blue carbon and marine biodiversity as well as conservation and sustainable management of natural resources in coastal regions, the spatial distribution of benthic cover derived from satellite images can be the most practical tool for monitoring seaweed and seagrass beds. This study aimed at mapping the latest distribution of seaweed and seagrass in Thailand using Landsat 8 images. Thus, we …

Instantaneous Shoreline Mapping From Worldview-2 Satellite Images By Using Shadow Analysis And Spectrum Matching Techniques, I-Chieh Lee

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Shoreline mapping and monitoring are crucial in heavily eroding coastal areas. Frequently monitoring shoreline changes in eroding areas can help government agencies to understand the causes and formulate plans to protect the shoreline; however, the cost of data sources and human labor involved can be prohibitive. To address this problem, this research proposes a cost-effective and semiautomatic shoreline delineation procedure that uses WorldView-2 satellite images as the data source. The advantages of the proposed procedure are the use of shadow and spectrum information, as well as the application of objectoriented classification. The classification process incorporates new bands from WorldView-2 to …

Global Surface And Subsurface Geostrophic Currents From Multi-Mission Satellite Altimetry And Hydrographic Data, 1996-2011, Chi-Hung Chang, Chung-Yen Kuo, C.K Shum, Yuchan Yi, Ashraf Rateb

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Climate indices have been shown to be correlated with changes of absolute ocean current velocities. Yet there has been a lack of available estimates of accurate surface and subsurface current velocities with adequate data span to afford a detailed study. Here, we combined multiple mission satellite altimetry alongtrack sea surface heights (SSHs), the Gravity field and steadystate Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) time-wise solution generated geoid model, and in situ hydrographic data, to estimate global surface and subsurface absolute geostrophic currents, 1996-2011. We used the profile approach to process satellite altimetry data, mitigating the negative impact of omission errors resulting from …

Design Of A Clinical Competency Committee To Maximize Formative Feedback., Anthony A. Donato, Richard Alweis, Suzanne Wenderoth

Reading Hospital Internal Medicine Residency

BACKGROUND: As the next phase in the roll-out of Next Accreditation System, US residency programs are to develop Clinical Competency Committees (CCCs) to formally implement outcome-based medical education objectives in the resident assessment process. However, any changes to an assessment system must consider balancing formative and summative tensions, flexibility and standardization tensions, fairness and transparency to learners, and administrative burden for faculty.

OBJECTIVES/METHODS: In this article, one program discusses the approach one internal medicine residency took to create a developmental model CCC. In this model, a learner's mentor presents the argument for competence to the CCC, while a second reviewer …

The Role Of Liberian Community Organizations In The Integration Of Liberian Immigrants: A Case Study Of Immigrants In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Solomon M. Muin

Capstone Collection

Immigrants that settled in a dominant new culture face challenges during the process of acculturation. Though minority culture is always at the disadvantaged end of acculturation in most cases, most research done on acculturation in the West mostly focused on the impact of immigrants on their societies, or on ways of strengthening integration in the host countries. As this continues, the dominant culture role and importance of the majority culture is what influence most narratives and not much is seeing from the minority culture. Most research on acculturation in the United States, for example, placed more emphasis on the Hispanic …

Role Of A Plausible Nuisance Contributor In The Declining Obesity-Mortality Risks Over Time., Tapan Mehta, Nicholas M. Pajewski, Scott W. Keith, Kevin Fontaine, David B. Allison

Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Faculty Papers

CONTEXT: Recent analyses of epidemiological data including the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) have suggested that the harmful effects of obesity may have decreased over calendar time. The shifting BMI distribution over time coupled with the application of fixed broad BMI categories in these analyses could be a plausible "nuisance contributor" to this observed change in the obesity-associated mortality over calendar time.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the extent to which observed temporal changes in the obesity-mortality association may be due to a shifting population distribution for body mass index (BMI), coupled with analyses based on static, broad BMI categories. …

Assessing The Vulnerability Of Fishery Villages Influenced By Climate Change And Anthropogenic Activity In The Coastal Zone Of The Tamsui River, Sheng-Yuan Teng, Ming-An Lee, Jhen Hsu, Tzu-Ping Lin, Yu-Chen Lin, Yi Chang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Coastal zones located in populated and rapidly developing areas face high risks of natural and anthropogenic disasters. In this study, a framework was developed to determine the indicators of vulnerability to natural and anthropogenic disasters in Chuwei and Tamsui, two northern Taiwanese fishing villages in the coastal zone of the Tamsui River. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) was used to determine the vulnerability indices of the locations, with experts evaluating the weights assigned to a range of criteria, namely hydrological data (such as sea surface temperature and sea level), stakeholder perceptions, and fishery data. These two villages have a considerably …

An Increased Remote Sensing Observation By Goci Daily Composite Image, Hyun Yang, Wonkook Kim, Kwangseok Kim, Young-Je Park, Hee-Jeong Han, Joo-Hyung Ryu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Opaque masses (e.g., cloud and haze) are the main obstacles interrupting remote observations of ocean color using optical sensors. We performed a statistical analysis for 1 year of ocean color data derived from the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI), which performs eight observations per day. We discovered that the valid ranges of the data vary depending on the local times and the seasonal characteristics and are related to the pattern of solar altitudes to a certain degree. Here, it is shown that multiple ocean color scenes observed on a given day can be merged to recover the contaminated areas. However, …

Frisbey, The Power Of Suicide: Muriel Rukeyser's Poetic Responses To Sylvia Plath, Arica Frisbey

Ruke Blog

No abstract provided.

Is There Moral Hazard In The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (Hipc) Initiative Debt Relief Process?, Joshua C. Hall, Serkan Karadas, Minh Tam T. Schlosky

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) were created by the IMF and World Bank to help low-income countries reduce their debt burden and to facilitate reaching the Millennium Development Goals. After entering the decision point of the HIPC Initiative stage, countries receive interim aid while following a strategic path to improve their macroeconomic stability via structural reforms. Many countries reached the completion point of the HIPC Initiative stage within a few years, receiving a substantial amount of debt re- lief. Other countries remained in the interim period for almost a decade. We …

Extension Of L1 Adaptive Control With Applications, Jiaxing Che

Doctoral Dissertations

Adaptive control is the control method used by a controller which adapt to a system with unknown or varying parameters. As a newly developed technique, L1 adaptive control has drawn increased attention in past decades. The key feature of L1 adaptive control architecture is guaranteed robustness in the presence of fast adaptation. With L1 adaptive control architecture, fast adaptation appears to be beneficial both for performance and robustness, while the trade-off between the two is resolved via the selection of the underlying filtering structure. The latter can be addressed via conventional methods from classical and robust control. Moreover, the performance …

The Interaction Of Mercury And Methylmercury With Reduced Sulfur: Implications For The Transformation Of Mercury And Methylmercury In The Environment, Nashaat M. Mazrui

Doctoral Dissertations

Archival abstract submitted

Passive Radio Frequency Identification (Rfid) And Museum Collections, Owen Kinser

Master's Projects and Capstones

Keeping a collection organized and accounted for is a never-ending struggle for museums of every type. New to museums and the collections management field, Radio Frequency Identification is a growing technology that museums can implement to keep track of the location, status, condition, and movement of their objects. Objects are labeled with RFID “tags” which enable them to communicate custom information to a reader and ultimately a database. This implementation would save time, money, and stress among collections staff members. Using the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas, as my subject museum, I propose implementing a pilot …

Soundboard Scholar No. 2: Editor's Letter, Thomas Heck

Soundboard Scholar

An introduction to the contents of this issue.

Evaluation Of The Nutritional Options For Wellness (Now) Program: Mitigating Cardiovascular Disease And Type 2 Diabetes Through Food Pantries, Sarah L. Henning

Masters Theses

Individuals with a lower socioeconomic status are at higher risk for chronic disease diagnosis and complications (Gerteis et al., 2014). The NOW Program is a social service program that was created in order to relieve some of the burden placed on these individuals utilizing the charitable food system. The purpose of the study was to perform a quantitative program evaluation on the NOW Program which is administered by pantry coordinating organization. The NOW Program connects chronically ill, low income members of Kent County with local food pantries that offer diet specific food and health education about their specific chronic disease …

Differentiating Instruction Through Math Stations And Literacy Centers, Olivia Bates

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Differentiating instruction based on students’ readiness, interests, and learning profiles is essential for creating effective and meaningful learning activities. Identifying these characteristics allows teachers to meet students’ needs and engage them in learning. By differentiating instruction, educators target specific students’ strengths and challenges in developing lessons to support their understanding of content. Two useful strategies for differentiating math and literacy instruction include stations and centers. In stations and centers, students work on specific skills catered to their educational needs while rotating activities in flexible groups. This guide supports teachers in identifying strategies and understanding the benefits of differentiating math and …

Slavery, Migration, And Local Development In The Western Us, Colin Q. Sharpe

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the effects of migration from eastern slave states in the 19th century on the subsequent development of counties in the Western US. I find that increased migration from slave states has a large, statistically significant negative effect on 2010 income, and no significant effect on racial inequality or overall income inequality. These findings are robust to a variety of specifications, including controls for geographic factors, state fixed effects, and various county level social and economic conditions. Data on individual migrants suggest that the cause of the negative income effect is the lower average human capital endowment of …

Global Citizenship Certificate Program, Alison C. Meighan

Capstone Collection

In today’s highly globalized and increasingly interconnected world, we face many pressing world problems including poverty, social inequalities, and climate change, to name a few. Reflecting this stark reality and acknowledging that these problems are indeed borderless, it has become vital to rethink education and provide the next generation of worldwide change-makers with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to solve these problems and make our world more equitable and sustainable. One avenue for achieving this shift in education and fostering these global problem-solving skills and attitudes, is global citizenship. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon corroborates this point, stating, …

Contributors, Westview Staff

Westview

No abstract provided.

Getting Road Expansion On The Right Track: A Framework For Smart Infrastructure Planning In The Mekong, Andrew Balmford, Huafeng Chen, Ben Phalan, Mingcheng Wang, Christine S. O'Connell, Cath Tayleur, Jianchu Xu

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

The current unprecedented expansion of infrastructure promises to enhance human wellbeing but risks causing substantial harm to natural ecosystems and the benefits they provide for people. A framework for systematically and proactively identifying the likely benefits and costs of such developments is badly needed. Here, we develop and test at the subregional scale a recently proposed global scheme for comparing the potential gains from new roads for food production with their likely impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Working in the Greater Mekong—an exceptionally biodiverse subregion undergoing rapid development—we combined maps of isolation from urban centres, yield gaps, and the …

Preliminary Study Of Internal Solitary Wave Amplitude Off The East Coast Of Korea Based On Synthetic Aperture Radar Data, Dan-Bee Hong, Chan-Su Yang, Kazuo Ouchi

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

This paper presents a method of retrieving the amplitude of oceanic internal solitary wave (ISW), from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data, and preliminary results obtained in the East/ Japan Sea off the east coast of Korean Peninsula. The retrieval algorithms include the small perturbation method (SPM) for microwave backscatter, the action balance equation (ABE) for describing the interaction between wind-generated ocean waves and varying surface current, and also the Korteweg-deVries (KdV) (non-linear partial differential) equation for describing the surface current variation induced by an internal soliton. The radar cross section (RCS) was computed, and the ISW amplitude was estimated by …