Digital Commons Network^™

Apathy, Cognitive Impairment, And Social Support Contribute To Participation In Cognitively Demanding Activities Poststroke, Amy Ho, Marjorie L. Nicholas, Chaitali Dagli, Lisa Tabor Connor

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Mr-Guided Adaptive Radiotherapy For Bladder Cancer, Adham Hijab, Boris Tocco, Ian Hanson, Hanneke Meijer, Christina Junker Nyborg, Anders Smedegaard Bertelsen, Robert Jan Smeenk, Gillian Smith, Jeff Michalski, Brian C Baumann, Shaista Hafeez

Open Access Publications

Radiotherapy has an important role in the curative and palliative treatment settings for bladder cancer. As a target for radiotherapy the bladder presents a number of technical challenges. These include poor tumor visualization and the variability in bladder size and position both between and during treatment delivery. Evidence favors the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as an important means of tumor visualization and local staging. The availability of hybrid systems incorporating both MRI scanning capabilities with the linear accelerator (MR-Linac) offers opportunity for in-room and real-time MRI scanning with ability of plan adaption at each fraction while the patient …

The Dystonia Coalition: A Multicenter Network For Clinical And Translational Studies, Gamze Kilic-Berkmen, Laura J Wright, Joel S Perlmutter, Cynthia Comella, Mark Hallett, Jan Teller, Sarah Pirio Richardson, David A Peterson, Carlos Cruchaga, Codrin Lungu, H A Jinnah

Open Access Publications

Dystonia is a movement disorder characterized by sustained or intermittent muscle contractions causing abnormal postures, repetitive movements, or both. Research in dystonia has been challenged by several factors. First, dystonia is uncommon. Dystonia is not a single disorder but a family of heterogenous disorders with varied clinical manifestations and different causes. The different subtypes may be seen by providers in different clinical specialties including neurology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, and others. These issues have made it difficult for any single center to recruit large numbers of subjects with specific types of dystonia for research studies in a timely manner. The Dystonia Coalition …

4Β-Hydroxycholesterol Is A Prolipogenic Factor That Promotes Srebp1c Expression And Activity Through The Liver X Receptor, Ofer Moldavski, Peter-James H. Zushin, Charles A. Berdan, Robert J. Van Eijkeren, Xuntian Jiang, Mingxing Qian, Daniel S. Ory, Douglas F. Covey, Daniel K. Nomura, Andreas Stahl, Ethan J. Weiss, Roberto Zoncu

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Tms-Eeg Biomarkers Of Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment Due To Alzheimer's Disease: A Proof-Of-Concept Six Years Prospective Study, Florinda Ferreri, Andrea Guerra, Luca Vollero, David Ponzo, Sara Määtta, Mervi Könönen, Fabrizio Vecchio, Patrizio Pasqualetti, Francesca Miraglia, Ilaria Simonelli, Maurizio Corbetta, Paolo Maria Rossini

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Perlecan In Pericellular Mechanosensory Cell-Matrix Communication, Extracellular Matrix Stabilisation And Mechanoregulation Of Load-Bearing Connective Tissues, Farshid Guilak, Anthony J Hayes, James Melrose

Open Access Publications

In this study, we review mechanoregulatory roles for perlecan in load-bearing connective tissues. Perlecan facilitates the co-acervation of tropoelastin and assembly of elastic microfibrils in translamellar cross-bridges which, together with fibrillin and elastin stabilise the extracellular matrix of the intervertebral disc annulus fibrosus. Pericellular perlecan interacts with collagen VI and XI to define and stabilize this matrix compartment which has a strategic position facilitating two-way cell-matrix communication between the cell and its wider extracellular matrix. Cues from the extracellular matrix are fed through this pericellular matrix back to the chondrocyte, allowing it to perceive and respond to subtle microenvironmental changes …

Approaches For Ending Ineffective Programs: Strategies From State Public Health Practitioners, Emily Rodriguez Weno, Peg Allen, Stephanie Mazzucca, Louise Farah Saliba, Margaret Padek, Sarah Moreland-Russell, Ross C Brownson

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Pattern And Degree Of Individual Brain Atrophy Predicts Dementia Onset In Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer's Disease, Ophir Keret, Randal J Bateman, Tammie L S Benzinger, John C Morris, Beau M Ances, Nelly Joseph-Mathurin, Richard J Perrin, Brian A Gordon, Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network, Et Al

Open Access Publications

Introduction: Asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic dominantly inherited Alzheimer's disease mutation carriers (DIAD-MC) are ideal candidates for preventative treatment trials aimed at delaying or preventing dementia onset. Brain atrophy is an early feature of DIAD-MC and could help predict risk for dementia during trial enrollment.

Methods: We created a dementia risk score by entering standardized gray-matter volumes from 231 DIAD-MC into a logistic regression to classify participants with and without dementia. The score's predictive utility was assessed using Cox models and receiver operating curves on a separate group of 65 DIAD-MC followed longitudinally.

Results: Our risk score separated asymptomatic versus demented …

Autophagy Of Mucin Granules Contributes To Resolution Of Airway Mucous Metaplasia, J.M. Sweeter, K. Kudrna, K. Hunt, P. Thomas, B. F. Dickey, S. L. Brody, J. D. Dickinson

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Adherence Of Internet-Based Cancer Risk Assessment Tools To Best Practices In Risk Communication: Content Analysis, Erika A Waters, Jeremy L Foust, Laura D Scherer, Amy Mcqueen, Jennifer M Taber

Open Access Publications

BACKGROUND: Internet-based risk assessment tools offer a potential avenue for people to learn about their cancer risk and adopt risk-reducing behaviors. However, little is known about whether internet-based risk assessment tools adhere to scientific evidence for what constitutes good risk communication strategies. Furthermore, their quality may vary from a user experience perspective.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to understand the extent to which current best practices in risk communication have been applied to internet-based cancer risk assessment tools.

METHODS: We conducted a search on August 6, 2019, to identify websites that provided personalized assessments of cancer risk or the likelihood of …

A Clustering And Treemap-Based Approach For Query Reuse And Visualization In Large Data Repositories, Yousra Harb, Surendra Sarnikar, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

No abstract provided.

Fake News Detection On The Web: An Lstm-Based Approach, Piyush Vyas, Jun Liu, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

The acceptance and popularity of social media platforms for the dispersion and proliferation of news articles have led to the spread of questionable and untrusted information (in part) due to the ease by which misleading content can be created and shared among the communities. While prior research has attempted to automatically classify news articles and tweets as credible and non-credible. In this work, we complement such research by proposing an approach that utilizes the amalgamation of natural language processing (NLP) and deep learning techniques such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). We used publicly available datasets that contain labeled news articles …

Empathizing With Mhealth App Users In Application Design: Early-Stage Persona Development Through Social Media Data Mining, Martinson Ofori, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

The pervasiveness of mobile technologies has led to the paradigm known as mHealth. Research has shown that mHealth is useful for self-management of chronic conditions but is plagued by usability issues. Design approaches such as Design Thinking advise the use of “personas” to represent real users and aid the design of user-centered and empathy-oriented mHealth applications. The current study develops three representative personas that could inform the development of a diabetes-management mobile application using about 1.35 million social media posts that represent about 40.81% of diabetes-related conversations on Twitter. This study demonstrates that social media could be useful in human-centered …

The Role Of Privacy Within The Realm Of Healthcare Wearables' Acceptance And Use, Thomas Jernejcic, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

While there are definite benefits attributed to wearables, there are also notable risks, especially in the realm of security where personal information and/or activities are often accessible to third parties. Users weigh the benefits with the risks (Privacy Calculus) and often opt for the wearable device despite concern that their information may or will be disclosed (Privacy Paradox). While past research has focused on specific technologies, the paradox of disclosure despite concern for privacy has not been the primary focus, particularly regarding the manifestation of the paradox specific to the acceptance and use of healthcare wearables. The purpose of this …

Explainable Artificial Intelligence In The Medical Domain: A Systematic Review, Shuvro Chakrobartty, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

The applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques in different medical fields is rapidly growing. AI holds great promise in terms of beneficial, accurate and effective preventive and curative interventions. At the same time, there is also concerns regarding potential risks, harm and trust issues arising from the opacity of some AI algorithms because of their un-explainability. Overall, how can the decisions from these AI-based systems be trusted if the decision-making logic cannot be properly explained? Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) tries to shed light to these questions. We study the recent development on this topic within the …

Agile Project Management: A Systematic Literature Review Of Adoption Drivers And Critical Success Factors, Cherie Noteboom, Ofori Martinson, Kruttika Sutrave, Omar El-Gayar

Research & Publications

No abstract provided.

An Lstm Based Approach For The Classification Of Customer Reviews: An Exploratory Study, Jun Liu, Akhilesh Chauhan, Piyush Vyas

Research & Publications

Significant research has been conducted to address the problem of identification and elimination of malicious content. The credibility of such information is always in question, especially in the E-commerce domain. This research proposes a classification model that automatically classifies customer reviews as credible or non-credible. This model encompasses a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) as a classification technique. The preliminary results have shown the potential of our model to classify customer reviews as credible/non-credible based on textual features.

Prediction Of Patient Willingness To Recommend Hospital: A Machine Learning-Based Exploratory Study, Jun Liu, Loknath Sai Ambati, Piyush Vyas, Giridhar Reddy Bojja, Martinson Ofori

Research & Publications

Health organizations are diligently working to achieve the zenith in service outcome and furtherance of patient satisfaction by embracing patient-centric policies. Patient recommendation is a critical indicator of patient satisfaction and hospital service quality. Evidence suggests that patient recommendation is the most valuable form of marketing. However, hospitals often encounter patients' unwillingness to recommend them. Prior studies mainly rely on patient survey data to determine factors that impact patients’ willingness to recommend hospitals. Our study aims to identify factors that are not readily available in the patient surveys but have significant impact on hospital recommendation. Our proposed Machine Learning (ML) …

Security Analytics, Tania Williams, Omar F. El-Gayar, Thomas H. Morris

Research & Publications

Security analytics, which separates malicious activity from normal usage patterns, leverages data analytics to assist with system security. The field encompasses analytic capabilities that enable the analysis of large quantities of structured and unstructured data across large infrastructures in a short amount of time, allowing monitoring and surveillance of activity such as network traffic, web transactions, network servers and nodes, and user credentialing to detect threats and to provide an overall picture of a system’s security posture.

Design Of A Virtual Cybersecurity Escape Room, Tania Williams, Omar F. El-Gayar

Research & Publications

As cybersecurity education and training methods endeavor to build a skilled workforce to meet the growing demands of government and industry, it is important to craft training exercises to build and assess a learner’s understanding of cybersecurity topics in a fun and meaningful way. To meet this need, we designed a concept map and virtual model of a collaborative, virtual cybersecurity escape room. Escape rooms, which are a form of serious games intended to increase knowledge and skills or measure learning outcomes, are scenario-based and interactive in nature. The artifacts described align the serious gaming elements with elements associated with …

Sacred Heart University Public Health Program Self-Study, Public Health, College Of Health Professions

News, Magazines and Reports

From the Introduction:

The public health program began in the fall, 2018. The public health program has only one degree offered, a master’s of public health (MPH) degree with a concentration in community health. The program was developed in response to an observed need. Specifically, Sacred Heart undergraduate students in both the Health Science and Exercise Science undergraduate programs were asking for an MPH program that they could matriculate into after graduating from their undergraduate studies. The current MPH program director, Dr. Anna Greer, was already working at SHU as a behavioral scientist within SHU’s Exercise Science program. Dr. Greer …

Sociological Perspectives On Climate Change And Society: A Review, Md Saidul Islam, Edson Kieu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Society is at an important intersection in dealing with the challenges of climate change, and this paper is presented at a critical juncture in light of growing recognition that the natural sciences are insufficient to deal with these challenges. Critical aspects of sociological perspectives related to climate change research are brought together in this review in the hope of fostering greater interdisciplinary collaboration between the natural and social sciences. We fervently argue for the need to inculcate interdisciplinary approaches that can provide innovative perspectives and solutions to the challenges we face from the impacts of climate change. As such, some …

Getting Undergraduates Ready For China’S Belt And Road Initiative (Bri) Through An Overseas Experiential Learning Project, China And The World: Ancient And Modern Silk Road, Andrew Chin, Thomas Menkhoff, Hans-Dieter Evers, Hoong Hui Daniel Gn, Kevin Koh, Chester Wey Lee, Patrick Loh, Linda Low, Sebastian Tan, Teng Seng Teo, Natalie Yap

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we explain how an experiential learning course and study tour to Gansu Province (People’s Republic of China) enabled undergraduates at the Singapore Management University (SMU) to acquire 21st-century competencies and higher-order thinking skills by analyzing and evaluating specific aspects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China–Singapore (Chongqing) Connectivity Initiative — New International Land–Sea Trade Corridor (CCI-ILSTC) with emphasis on developing viable Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies aimed at selling Gansu produce in four Southeast Asian markets. We share how the course was designed to support the attainment of key learning goals and discuss how we turned pedagogical …

Informal Executive Actions And Agency Guidance: Legal And Political Implications For Immigration And Other Policy Areas, Ihsan A. Alkhatib, James C. Clinger

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

This paper is a study of the use of various forms of informal executive actions used by presidents and cabinet officials to guide the policy implementation of federal agencies. Among these are policy manuals, guidance statements, statements of administration policy, and announcements of executive priorities. The recent executive action regarding immigration announced by President Obama is also an example of this kind of behavior. The paper will rely upon the analysis of legal scholars who have examined the causes and consequences of informal executive actions. We will examine the implications that these actions have for public participation, transparency, consistency in …

Fictional Foreign Policy: How Madam Secretary And House Of Cards Depict United States Foreign Policy., John Heyrman

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

This paper analyzes the ways that United States foreign policy is depicted in two prominent current television programs: House of Cards and Madam Secretary. Both of these programs have had frequent plots in which the fictional foreign policy of the U.S. deals with issues very similar to those that the United States has actually confronted in recent years. Examples include nuclear proliferation negotiations with Iran and U.S. concern over anti-gay legislation in Russia. Several of these fictional stories are analyzed here to consider how processes and policies of the U.S. are portrayed. Madam Secretary does much more to demonstrate …

Complete Issue - Volume 5, Number 1 (2021)

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

Complete Issue

Engaging Hotel Managers Through Managerial Support, Susan Gordon, Xiaolin Shi

ICHRIE Research Reports

The influence of varying levels of organizational support and managerial support on hotel managers’ psychological contract and work engagement was examined through a scenario-based experiment. Findings showed that lower managerial support is more detrimental and thus, recommendations are presented to help organizations foster managerial support of managers.

Teleneurology Based Management Of Infantile Spasms During Covid-19 Pandemic: A Consensus Report By The South Asia Allied West Syndrome Research Group, Priyanka Madaan, Jitendra Kumar Sahu, Jithangi Wanigasinghe, Kanij Fatema, Kyaw Linn, Mimi Lhamu Mynak, Nicolás Garófalo Gómez, Pauline Samia, Prakash Poudel, Prem Chand

Department of Paediatrics and Child Health

With telehealth services rescuing patients with chronic neurological disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need for simplified teleneurology protocols for neurological disorders in children. Infantile spasms is an epileptic encephalopathy where treatment lag is a significant predictor of outcome. It is one such condition where telemedicine can make a remarkable difference when in-person consultations are delayed or are not possible. However, the adverse effect profile of the first-line therapeutic options, the need for frequent follow-up, underdeveloped telemedicine services, lack of a rational protocol, poor awareness about infantile spasms, a lesser level of parental understanding, and scarcity of pediatric …

High Flow Nasal Cannula Therapy In Children With Acute Respiratory Insufficiency In The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Of A Resource-Limited Country: A Preliminary Experience, Bushra Saeed, Asim Azim, Anwar Ul Haque, Qalab Abbas

Department of Paediatrics and Child Health

A retrospective study was performed in children (aged one month - 16 years) receiving HFNC to determine the frequency, efficacy and adverse effects of high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) therapy in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), from January to December 2017. Treatment failure was defined as clinical deterioration on HFNC therapy such that mechanical ventilation (MV) was required. Clinical parameters before and after HFNC were assessed using repeated measures analysis of variance. A total of 120 patients received HFNC therapy (21% of total admissions). Primary diagnosis were respiratory disease (50%), central nervous system diseases (14.2%), sepsis (10.8%), and postoperative …

Dpemcc Media Release, Aviators Code Initiative

Designated Pilot Examiners Model Code of Conduct

February 14, 2021 – The Designated Pilot Examiners Model Code of Conduct (DPEMCC) was released today by the project’s Permanent Editorial Board. Developed by a team of aviation professionals, and drawing upon decades of research and experience, the Code offers recommendations to advance professionalism and safety in the conduct of practical tests.