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Dna Methylation In Humans And Dogs: Evaluating The Impact Of Nutritional And Particulate Exposures, Luke Benjamin Montrose

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Asthma is among the most common chronic diseases in children, among the leading causes of hospitalization for children, and one of the leading causes of school absenteeism. Discovery of preventable factors and the underlying mechanisms that exacerbate asthma among prevalent cases is important for mitigating the health burden of this childhood disease. Environmental factors such as exposure to particulate matter (PM) or nutritional deficiencies can lead to poor respiratory health among susceptible children. Recent animal studies suggest that PM exposures and dietary nutrients may influence asthma pathways through epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetic modifications are heritable changes that can regulate gene activity …

Fret Detection Of Lymphocyte Function-Associated Antigen-1 Conformational Extension, Alexandre Chigaev, Yelena Smagley, Mark K. Haynes, Oleg Ursu, Cristian G. Bologa, Liliana Halip, Tudor Oprea, Anna Waller, Mark B. Carter, Yinan Zhang, Wei Wang, Tione Buranda, Larry A. Sklar

Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty Publications

Lymphocyte function-associated antigen 1 (LFA-1, CD11a/CD18, αLβ2-integrin) and its ligands are essential for adhesion between T-cells and antigen-presenting cells, formation of the immunological synapse, and other immune cell interactions. LFA-1 function is regulated through conformational changes that include the modulation of ligand binding affinity and molecular extension. However, the relationship between molecular conformation and function is unclear. Here fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) with new LFA-1-specific fluorescent probes showed that triggering of the pathway used for T-cell activation induced rapid unquenching of the FRET signal consistent with extension of the molecule. Analysis of the FRET quenching at rest revealed an …

Genome-Wide Scan For Methylation Profiles In Keloids, Lamont R. Jones, William Young, George W. Divine, Indrani Datta, Kang-Mei Chen, David M. Ozog, Maria Worsham

Otolaryngology Articles

Keloids are benign fibroproliferative tumors of the skin which commonly occur after injury mainly in darker skinned patients. Medical treatment is fraught with high recurrence rates mainly because of an incomplete understanding of the biological mechanisms that lead to keloids. The purpose of this project was to examine keloid pathogenesis from the epigenome perspective of DNA methylation. Genome-wide profiling used the Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip to interrogate DNA from 6 fresh keloid and 6 normal skin samples from 12 anonymous donors. A 3-tiered approach was used to call out genes most differentially methylated between keloid and normal. When compared to normal, …

Concordance Of Self-Report And Measured Height And Weight Of College Students, Virginia Quick, Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, Suzanne Shoff, Adrienne A. White, Barbara Lohse, Tanya Horacek, Kendra Kattelmann, Beatrice Phillips, Sharon L Hoerr, Geoffrey Greene

Health and Nutritional Sciences Faculty Publications

OBJECTIVE: This study examined associations between college students' self-report and measured height and weight.

METHODS: Participants (N = 1,686) were 77% white, 62% female, aged 18-24 years (mean ± SD, 19.1 ± 1.1 years), and enrolled at 8 US universities. Body mass index (BMI) was calculated for self-report (via online survey); trained researchers measured height and weight and categorized them as normal (18.5 to < 25), overweight (25 to < 30), obese (30 to < 35), and morbidly obese (≥ 35).

RESULTS: Concordance of self-report vs objectively measured BMI groups using chi-square revealed that 93% were accurate, 4% were underestimated, and 2.7% were overestimated. Pearson correlations and adjusted linear regression revealed significant associations between self-report and measured …

Methodological Considerations In Estimation Of Phenotype Heritability Using Genome-Wide Snp Data, Illustrated By An Analysis Of The Heritability Of Height In A Large Sample Of African Ancestry Adults, Fang Chen, Jing He, Jianqi Zhang, Gary K. Chen, Venetta Thomas, Christine B. Ambrosone, Elisa V. Bandera, Sonja I. Berndt, Leslie Bernstein, William J. Blot, Qiuyin Cai, John Carpten, Graham Casey, Stephen J. Chanock, Iona Cheng, Lisa Chu, Sandra L. Deming, W. Ryan Driver, Phyllis Goodman, Richard B. Hayes, Anselm J. M. Hennis, Ann W. Hsing, Jennifer J. Hu, Sue A. Ingles, Esther M. John, Rick A. Kittles, Suzanne Kolb, M. Cristina Leske, Robert C. Millikan, Kristine R. Monroe, Adam Murphy, Barbara Nemesure, Christine Neslund-Dudas, Sarah Nyante, Elaine A. Ostrander, Michael F. Press, Jorge L. Rodriguez-Gil, Benjamin A. Rybicki, Fredrick Schumacher, Janet L. Stanford, Lisa B. Signorello, Sara S. Strom, Victoria Stevens, David Van Den Berg, Zhaoming Wang, John S. Witte, Suh-Yuh Wu, Yuko Yamamura, Wei Zheng, Regina G. Ziegler, Alexander H. Stram, Laurence N. Kolonel, Loïc Le Marchand, Brian E. Henderson, Christopher A. Haiman, Daniel O. Stram

Public Health Sciences Articles

Height has an extremely polygenic pattern of inheritance. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have revealed hundreds of common variants that are associated with human height at genome-wide levels of significance. However, only a small fraction of phenotypic variation can be explained by the aggregate of these common variants. In a large study of African-American men and women (n = 14,419), we genotyped and analyzed 966,578 autosomal SNPs across the entire genome using a linear mixed model variance components approach implemented in the program GCTA (Yang et al Nat Genet 2010), and estimated an additive heritability of 44.7% (se: 3.7%) for this …

Multi-Parametric Mri And Texture Analysis To Visualize Spatial Histologic Heterogeneity And Tumor Extent In Glioblastoma., Leland S Hu, Shuluo Ning, Jennifer M Eschbacher, Nathan Gaw, Amylou C Dueck, Kris A Smith, Peter Nakaji, Jonathan Plasencia, Sara Ranjbar, Stephen J Price, Nhan Tran, Joseph Loftus, Robert Jenkins, Brian P O'Neill, William Elmquist, Leslie C Baxter, Fei Gao, David Frakes, John P Karis, Christine Zwart, Kristin R Swanson, Jann Sarkaria, Teresa Wu, J Ross Mitchell, Jing Li

Neurosurgery

BACKGROUND: Genetic profiling represents the future of neuro-oncology but suffers from inadequate biopsies in heterogeneous tumors like Glioblastoma (GBM). Contrast-enhanced MRI (CE-MRI) targets enhancing core (ENH) but yields adequate tumor in only ~60% of cases. Further, CE-MRI poorly localizes infiltrative tumor within surrounding non-enhancing parenchyma, or brain-around-tumor (BAT), despite the importance of characterizing this tumor segment, which universally recurs. In this study, we use multiple texture analysis and machine learning (ML) algorithms to analyze multi-parametric MRI, and produce new images indicating tumor-rich targets in GBM.

METHODS: We recruited primary GBM patients undergoing image-guided biopsies and acquired pre-operative MRI: CE-MRI, Dynamic-Susceptibility-weighted-Contrast-enhanced-MRI, …

A Therapeutic Approach For Senile Dementias: Neuroangiogenesis, Charles T. Ambrose

Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics Faculty Publications

Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related senile dementias (SDs) represent a growing medical and economic crisis in this country. Apart from cautioning persons about risk factors, no practical, effective therapy is currently available. Much of the recent research in AD has been based on the amyloid cascade theory. Another approach assumes a vascular basis for SDs. This paper presents evidence from a score of studies that cerebral capillary density (CCD) declines during old age in animals and people as well as in AD. Neuroangiogenic (NAG) factors initiate and maintain capillaries in the brain. Thus a waning level of these factors and …

Enhanced Visual Statistical Learning In Adults With Autism., Matthew E. Roser, Richard N. Aslin, Rebecca Mckenzie, Daniel Zahra, József Fiser

School of Psychology

OBJECTIVE: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are often characterized as having social engagement and language deficiencies, but a sparing of visuospatial processing and short-term memory (STM), with some evidence of supranormal levels of performance in these domains. The present study expanded on this evidence by investigating the observational learning of visuospatial concepts from patterns of covariation across multiple exemplars. METHOD: Child and adult participants with ASD, and age-matched control participants, viewed multishape arrays composed from a random combination of pairs of shapes that were each positioned in a fixed spatial arrangement. RESULTS: After this passive exposure phase, a posttest …

Functional Local Renin-Angiotensin System In Human And Rat Periodontal Tissue, Carlos Ferreira Santos, Ana Carolina Morandini, Thiago José Dionísio, Flávio A. Faria, Marta C. Lima, Caio M. Figueiredo, Bella L. Colombini-Ishikiriama, Carla Renata Sipert, Rubens P. Maciel, Ana P. Akashi, Gabriela P. Souza, Gustavo P. Garlet, Camila O. Rodini, Sandra L. Amaral, Christiane Becari, Maria C. Salgado, Eduardo B. Oliveira, Isaac Matus, Daniela N. Didier, Andrew S. Greene

All Dugoni School of Dentistry Faculty Articles

The initiation or progression of periodontitis might involve a local renin-angiotensin system (RAS) in periodontal tissue. The aim of this study was to further characterize the local RAS in human and rat periodontal tissues between healthy and periodontally-affected tissue. Components of the RAS were investigated using in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo experiments involving both human and Wistar rat periodontium. Although not upregulated when challenged with P. gingivalis-lipopolysaccharide, human gingival and periodontal ligament fibroblasts expressed RAS components. Likewise, healthy and inflamed human gingiva expressed RAS components, some of which were shown to be functional, yet no differences in expression …

Posture Affects How Robots And Infants Map Words To Objects., Af Morse, Vl Benitez, T Belpaeme, A Cangelosi, Lb Smith

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

For infants, the first problem in learning a word is to map the word to its referent; a second problem is to remember that mapping when the word and/or referent are again encountered. Recent infant studies suggest that spatial location plays a key role in how infants solve both problems. Here we provide a new theoretical model and new empirical evidence on how the body - and its momentary posture - may be central to these processes. The present study uses a name-object mapping task in which names are either encountered in the absence of their target (experiments 1-3, 6 …

Uncoupling Protein-2 Attenuates Palmitoleate Protection Against The Cytotoxic Production Of Mitochondrial Reactive Oxygen Species In Ins-1e Insulinoma Cells., Jonathan Barlow, Jensen V Hirschberg, Charles Affourtit

School of Biomedical Sciences

High glucose and fatty acid levels impair pancreatic beta cell function. We have recently shown that palmitate-induced loss of INS-1E insulinoma cells is related to increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) production as both toxic effects are prevented by palmitoleate. Here we show that palmitate-induced ROS are mostly mitochondrial: oxidation of MitoSOX, a mitochondria-targeted superoxide probe, is increased by palmitate, whilst oxidation of the equivalent non-targeted probe is unaffected. Moreover, mitochondrial respiratory inhibition with antimycin A stimulates palmitate-induced MitoSOX oxidation. We also show that palmitate does not change the level of mitochondrial uncoupling protein-2 (UCP2) and that UCP2 knockdown does not …

Acute Kidney Injury Risk Prediction In Patients Undergoing Coronary Angiography In A National Veterans Health Administration Cohort With External Validation, Jeremiah R. Brown, Todd A. Mackenzie, Thomas M. Maddox, James Fly, Thomas T. Tsai, Mary E. Plomondon, Christopher D. Nielson, Edward D. Siew, Frederic S. Resnic, Clifton R. Baker, John S. Rumsfeld, Michael E. Matheny

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background:

Acute kidney injury (AKI) occurs frequently after cardiac catheterization and percutaneous coronary intervention. Although a clinical risk model exists for percutaneous coronary intervention, no models exist for both procedures, nor do existing models account for risk factors prior to the index admission. We aimed to develop such a model for use in prospective automated surveillance programs in the Veterans Health Administration.

Methods and Results:

We collected data on all patients undergoing cardiac catheterization or percutaneous coronary intervention in the Veterans Health Administration from January 01, 2009 to September 30, 2013, excluding patients with chronic dialysis, end‐stage renal disease, renal …

Best Practices For Improving Flow And Care Of Pediatric Patients In The Emergency Department., Isabel Barata, Kathleen M. Brown, Laura Fitzmaurice, Elizabeth Stone Griffin, Sally K. Snow, American College Of Emergency Physicians Pediatric Emergency Medicine Committee, Emergency Nurses Association Pediatric Committee, Gregory P. Conners, American Academy Of Pediatrics Committee On Pediatric Emergency Medicine

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

This report provides a summary of best practices for improving flow, reducing waiting times, and improving the quality of care of pediatric patients in the emergency department.

Outcome Predictability Biases Learning., Oren Griffiths, Chris J. Mitchell, Anna Bethmont, Peter F. Lovibond

School of Psychology

Much of contemporary associative learning research is focused on understanding how and when the associative history of cues affects later learning about those cues. Very little work has investigated the effects of the associative history of outcomes on human learning. Three experiments extended the "learned irrelevance" paradigm from the animal conditioning literature to examine the influence of an outcome's prior predictability on subsequent learning of relationships between cues and that outcome. All 3 experiments found evidence for the idea that learning is biased by the prior predictability of the outcome. Previously predictable outcomes were readily associated with novel predictive cues, …

A Neural Reward Prediction Error Revealed By A Meta-Analysis Of Erps Using Great Grand Averages., Thomas D. Sambrook, Jeremy Goslin

School of Psychology

Economic approaches to decision making assume that people attach values to prospective goods and act to maximize their obtained value. Neuroeconomics strives to observe these values directly in the brain. A widely used valuation term in formal learning and decision-making models is the reward prediction error: the value of an outcome relative to its expected value. An influential theory (Holroyd & Coles, 2002) claims that an electrophysiological component, feedback related negativity (FRN), codes a reward prediction error in the human brain. Such a component should be sensitive to both the prior likelihood of reward and its magnitude on receipt. A …

Safety And Effectiveness Of A New Toric Presbyopia-Correcting Posterior Chamber Silicone Intraocular Lens., Jay S. Pepose, Jon Hayashida, John Hovanesian, James Davies, Phillips Kirk Labor, Jeffrey Whitman, Harvey Carter, Michael Colvard, Phillip J. Buckhurst, Omid Khodai, David Mittleman, Gregg Feinerman

School of Health Professions

PURPOSE: To evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the Trulign toric intraocular lens (IOL) in adults with cataract. SETTING: Eight private practices in the United States and 1 in Canada. DESIGN: Prospective randomized single-masked multicenter study. METHODS: A toric IOL (1.25 D, 2.00 D, or 2.75 D, determined by a toric calculator) was implanted in eligible patients with age-related cataract requiring a 16.00 to 27.00 diopter (D) spherical IOL power and with a predicted postoperative astigmatism of 0.83 to 2.50 D. Eyes within the lowest cylinder range (predicted postoperative astigmatism 0.83 to 1.32 D) were randomized in a 1:1 ratio …

A Qualitative Study Of The Impact Of Severe Asthma And Its Treatment Showing That Treatment Burden Is Neglected In Existing Asthma Assessment Scales., Michael E. Hyland, Ben Whalley, Rupert C. Jones, Matthew Masoli

School of Psychology

BACKGROUND: People with severe asthma experience significant respiratory symptoms and suffer adverse effects of oral corticosteroids (OCS), including disturbed mood and physical symptoms. OCS impacts on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) have not been quantified. Asthma HRQoL scales are valid as outcome measures for patients requiring OCS only if they assess the deficits imposed by OCS. AIMS: The aim of this study was to compare the burden of disease and treatment in patients with severe asthma with items in eight asthma-specific HRQoL scales. METHODS: Twenty-three patients with severe asthma recruited from a severe asthma clinic were interviewed about the impact …

Call Me Alix, Not Elix: Vowels Are More Important Than Consonants In Own-Name Recognition At 5 Months., Camillia Bouchon, Caroline Floccia, Thibaut Fux, Martine Adda-Decker, Thierry Nazzi

School of Psychology

Consonants and vowels differ acoustically and articulatorily, but also functionally: Consonants are more relevant for lexical processing, and vowels for prosodic/syntactic processing. These functional biases could be powerful bootstrapping mechanisms for learning language, but their developmental origin remains unclear. The relative importance of consonants and vowels at the onset of lexical acquisition was assessed in French-learning 5-month-olds by testing sensitivity to minimal phonetic changes in their own name. Infants' reactions to mispronunciations revealed sensitivity to vowel but not consonant changes. Vowels were also more salient (on duration and intensity) but less distinct (on spectrally based measures) than consonants. Lastly, vowel …

Passing Crisis And Emergency Risk Communications: The Effects Of Communication Channel, Information Type, And Repetition., Judy Edworthy, Elizabeth Hellier, Lex Newbold, Kirsteen Titchener

School of Psychology

Three experiments explore several factors which influence information transmission when warning messages are passed from person to person. In Experiment 1, messages were passed down chains of participants using five different modes of communication. Written communication channels resulted in more accurate message transmission than verbal. In addition, some elements of the message endured further down the chain than others. Experiment 2 largely replicated these effects and also demonstrated that simple repetition of a message eliminated differences between written and spoken communication. In a final field experiment, chains of participants passed information however they wanted to, with the proviso that half …

Metals In Boat Paint Fragments From Slipways, Repair Facilities And Abandoned Vessels: An Evaluation Using Field Portable Xrf., Andrew Turner, Sean Comber, Aldous B. Rees, Dimitrios Gkiokas, Kevin Solman

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Paint flaking off abandoned vessels or generated during boat repair is hazardous to human health and wildlife. In this study, a means of screening paint fragments using a field portable-X-ray fluorescence (FP-XRF) spectrometer is described. The technique is capable of delivering rapid, surficial measurements of Ba, Cu, Pb and Zn down to concentrations less than 150 μg g(-1), and Sn and Cr to concentrations of a few hundred μg g(-1). Application of the technique to fragments collected from slipways, yards, hardstandings, abandoned boats and ships undergoing maintenance throughout the EU reveal highly variable concentrations of metals among samples from the …

Comparison Of Individual And Pooled Urine Samples For Estimating The Presence And Intensity Of Schistosoma Haematobium Infections At The Population Level, Abraham Degarege, Berhanu Erko, Zeleke Mekonnen, Mengistu Legesse, Yohannes Negash, Jozef Vercruysse, Bruno Levecke

Journal Articles: Epidemiology

BACKGROUND: There is a lack of cost-effective diagnostic strategies to evaluate whether mass drug administration (MDA) programmes to control Schistosoma haematobium progress as anticipated. The purpose of this study is to provide a proof-of-principle for examination of pooled urine samples as a strategy for rapid assessment of presence and intensity of Schistosoma haematobium infections at the population level.

METHODS: A total of 640 urine samples were collected from 520 school-aged children (520 at baseline and 120 at follow-up) during a clinical trial that was designed to assess the efficacy of praziquantel against Schistosoma haematobium infections in Ethiopia. Individual and pooled …

Clinical Presentation Of Patients With Ebola Virus Disease In Conakry, Guinea, Elhadj Ibrahima Bah, Marie-Claire Lamah, Tom Fletcher, Shevin T. Jacob, David Brett-Major, Amadou Alpha Sall, Nahoko Shindo, William A. Fischer, Francois Lamontagne, Sow Mamadou Saliou, Daniel G. Bausch, Barry Moumié, Tim Jagatic, Armand Sprecher, James V. Lawler, Thierry Mayet, Frederique A. Jacquerioz, María F. Méndez Baggi, Constanza Vallenas, Christophe Clement, Simon Mardel, Ousmane Faye, Oumar Faye, Baré Soropogui, Nfaly Magassouba, Lamine Koivogui, Ruxandra Pinto, Robert A. Fowler

Journal Articles: Epidemiology

BACKGROUND: In March 2014, the World Health Organization was notified of an outbreak of Zaire ebolavirus in a remote area of Guinea. The outbreak then spread to the capital, Conakry, and to neighboring countries and has subsequently become the largest epidemic of Ebola virus disease (EVD) to date.

METHODS: From March 25 to April 26, 2014, we performed a study of all patients with laboratory-confirmed EVD in Conakry. Mortality was the primary outcome. Secondary outcomes included patient characteristics, complications, treatments, and comparisons between survivors and nonsurvivors.

RESULTS: Of 80 patients who presented with symptoms, 37 had laboratory-confirmed EVD. Among confirmed …

Characteristics Associated With Willingness To Participate In A Randomized Controlled Behavioral Clinical Trial Using Home-Based Personal Computers And A Webcam, Hiroko H. Dodge, Yuriko Katsumata, Jian Zhu, Nora Mattek, Molly Bowman, Mattie Gregor, Katherine Wild, Jeffrey A Kaye

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Trials aimed at preventing cognitive decline through cognitive stimulation among those with normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment are of significant importance in delaying the onset of dementia and reducing dementia prevalence. One challenge in these prevention trials is sample recruitment bias. Those willing to volunteer for these trials could be socially active, in relatively good health, and have high educational levels and cognitive function. These participants' characteristics could reduce the generalizability of study results and, more importantly, mask trial effects. We developed a randomized controlled trial to examine whether conversation-based cognitive stimulation delivered through personal computers, a webcam …

The Promise Of Novel Molecular Markers In Bladder Cancer, Jahan Miremami, Natasha Kyprianou

Urology Faculty Publications

Bladder cancer is the fourth most common malignancy in the US and is associated with the highest cost per patient. A high likelihood of recurrence, mandating stringent surveillance protocols, has made the development of urinary markers a focus of intense pursuit with the hope of decreasing the burden this disease places on patients and the healthcare system. To date, routine use of markers is not recommended for screening or diagnosis. Interests include the development of a single urinary marker that can be used in place of or as an adjunct to current screening and surveillance techniques, as well identifying a …

A Call For Better Care: The Impact Of Postnatal Contact Services On Women’S Parenting Confidence And Experiences Of Postpartum Care In Queensland, Australia, Yvette D. Miller, Aimée C C. Dane, Rachel Thompson

Dartmouth Scholarship

BackgroundUniversal postnatal contact services are provided in several Australian states, but their impact on women’s postnatal care experience has not been evaluated. Furthermore, there is lack of evidence or consensus about the optimal type and amount of postpartum care after hospital discharge for maternal outcomes. This study aimed to assess the impact of providing Universal Postnatal Contact Service (UPNCS) funding to public birthing facilities in Queensland, Australia on women’s postna

Color Updating On The Apparent Motion Path, Edmund Chong, Sang Wook Hong, Won Mok Shim

Dartmouth Scholarship

When a static stimulus appears successively at two distant locations, we perceive illusory motion of the stimulus across them–long-range apparent motion (AM). Previous studies have shown that when the apparent motion stimuli differ in shape, interpolation between the two shapes is perceived across the AM path. In contrast, the perceived color during AM has been shown to abruptly change from the color of the first stimulus into that of the second, suggesting interpolation does not occur for color during AM. Here, we report the first evidence to our knowledge, that an interpolated color, distinct from the colors of either apparent …

A Microrna-1280/Jag2 Network Comprises A Novel Biological Target In High-Risk Medulloblastoma, Fengfei Wang, Marc Remke, Tze-Chen Hsieh, Lizi Wu, Cynthia Hawkins, Joseph M. Wu, Erxi Wu

NYMC Faculty Publications

Over-expression of PDGF receptors (PDGFRs) has been previously implicated in high-risk medulloblastoma (MB) pathogenesis. However, the exact biological functions of PDGFRα and PDGFRβ signaling in MB biology remain poorly understood. Here, we report the subgroup specific expression of PDGFRα and PDGFRβ and their associated biological pathways in MB tumors. c-MYC, a downstream target of PDGFRβ but not PDGFRα, is involved in PDGFRβ signaling associated with cell proliferation, cell death, and invasion. Concurrent inhibition of PDGFRβ and c-MYC blocks MB cell proliferation and migration synergistically. Integrated analysis of miRNA and miRNA targets regulated by both PDGFRβ and c-MYC reveals that increased …

Sugihara Causality Analysis Of Scalp Eeg For Detection Of Early Alzheimer's Disease, Joseph C. Mcbride, Xiaopeng Zhao, Nancy B. Munro, Greg A. Jicha, Frederick A. Schmitt, Richard J. Kryscio, Charles D. Smith, Yang Jiang

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

Recently, Sugihara proposed an innovative causality concept, which, in contrast to statistical predictability in Granger sense, characterizes underlying deterministic causation of the system. This work exploits Sugihara causality analysis to develop novel EEG biomarkers for discriminating normal aging from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early Alzheimer's disease (AD). The hypothesis of this work is that scalp EEG based causality measurements have different distributions for different cognitive groups and hence the causality measurements can be used to distinguish between NC, MCI, and AD participants. The current results are based on 30-channel resting EEG records from 48 age-matched participants (mean age 75.7 …

Launching A Virtual Decision Lab: Development And Field-Testing Of A Web-Based Patient Decision Support Research Platform, Aubri S. Hoffman, Hilary A. Llewellyn-Thomas, Anna N. A. Tosteson, Annette M. Oconnor

Dartmouth Scholarship

Over 100 trials show that patient decision aids effectively improve patients’ information comprehension and values-based decision making. However, gaps remain in our understanding of several fundamental and applied questions, particularly related to the design of interactive, personalized decision aids. This paper describes an interdisciplinary development process for, and early field testing of, a web-based patient decision support research platform, or virtual decision lab, to address these questions.

E2f4 Regulatory Program Predicts Patient Survival Prognosis In Breast Cancer, Sari S. Khaleel, Erik H. Andrews, Matthew Ung, James Direnzo, Chao Chung

Dartmouth Scholarship

Genetic and molecular signatures have been incorporated into cancer prognosis prediction and treatment decisions with good success over the past decade. Clinically, these signatures are usually used in early-stage cancers to evaluate whether they require adjuvant therapy following surgical resection. A molecular signature that is prognostic across more clinical contexts would be a useful addition to current signatures. We defined a signature for the ubiquitous tissue factor, E2F4, based on its shared target genes in multiple tissues. These target genes were identified by chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) experiments using a probabilistic method. We then computationally calculated the regulatory activity score …