Digital Commons Network^™

Outcome After Surgical Stabilization Of Rib Fractures Versus Nonoperative Treatment In Patients With Multiple Rib Fractures And Moderate To Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (Cwis-Tbi), Jonne T. H. Prins, Esther M. M. Van Lieshout, Francis Ali-Osman, Zachary M. Bauman, Eva-Corina Caragounis, Jeff Choi, D. Benjamin Christie Iii, Peter A. Cole, William B. Devoe, Julie Whitis

School of Medicine Publications

Background: Outcomes after surgical stabilization of rib fractures (SSRF) have not been studied in patients with multiple rib fractures and traumatic brain injury (TBI). We hypothesized that SSRF, as compared with nonoperative management, is associated with favorable outcomes in patients with TBI.

Methods: A multicenter, retrospective cohort study was performed in patients with rib fractures and TBI between January 2012 and July 2019. Patients who underwent SSRF were compared to those managed nonoperatively. The primary outcome was mechanical ventilation-free days. Secondary outcomes were intensive care unit length of stay and hospital length of stay, tracheostomy, occurrence of complications, neurologic outcome, …

Starting Antihypertensive Drug Treatment With Combination Therapy: Controversies In Hypertension - Con Side Of The Argument, Zhen-Yu Zhang, Yu-Ling Yu, Kei Asayama, Tine W. Hansen, Gladys E. Maestre, Jan A. Staessen

School of Medicine Publications

The 2018 European Society of Cardiology/European Society of Hypertension1 and the 2020 International Society of Hypertension2 guidelines for the management of hypertension proposed that initial combination therapy with 2 antihypertensive agents in a single-pill combination (SPC) is preferred in most patients in need of blood pressure (BP) lowering treatment and should replace the long-standing concept of starting treatment with a single agent, rotating through antihypertensive drug classes, and next moving towards combining drug classes. By moving SPCs forward as the initial BP-lowering strategy, the European1 and International2 Societies of Hypertension Guideline Committees overlooked several principles in …

An Iterative Hybrid Algorithm For Roots Of Non-Linear Equations, Chaman Lal Sabharwal

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Finding the roots of non-linear and transcendental equations is an important problem in engineering sciences. In general, such problems do not have an analytic solution; the researchers resort to numerical techniques for exploring. We design and implement a three-way hybrid algorithm that is a blend of the Newton–Raphson algorithm and a two-way blended algorithm (blend of two methods, Bisection and False Position). The hybrid algorithm is a new single pass iterative approach. The method takes advantage of the best in three algorithms in each iteration to estimate an approximate value closer to the root. We show that the new algorithm …

Weight Loss For Obese Prostate Cancer Patients On Androgen Deprivation Therapy, Rebekah Wilson, Robert Newton, Dennis Taaffe, Nicolas H. Hart, Philippa Lyons-Wall, Daniel A. Galvao

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

PURPOSE: Excess fat mass (FM) contributes to poor prostate cancer (PCa) prognosis and comorbidity. However, FM gain is a common side effect of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). We examined the efficacy of a 12-wk weight loss intervention to reduce FM and maintain lean mass (LM) in ADT-treated obese PCa patients.

METHODS: Fourteen ADT-treated obese PCa patients (72 ± 9 yr, 39.7% ± 5.4% body fat) were recruited for a self-controlled prospective study, with 11 completing the 6-wk control period, followed by a 12-wk intervention comprising 300 min·wk-1 of exercise including supervised resistance training and home-based aerobic exercise, and dietitian consultations …

Effects Of Dietary Energy Levels On Performance And Carcass Yield Of 2 Meat-Type Broiler Lines Housed In Hot And Cool Ambient Temperatures, Pramir Maharjan, Katie M. Hilton, Garrett Mullenix, Jordan Weil, Antonio Beitia, Nawin Suesuttajit, Cole Umberson, Diego A. Martinez, Justina Caldas, Antonio Kalinowski, Nadia Yacoubi, Victor Naranjo, Judith A. England, Craig N. Coon

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Two meat-type broiler lines, line A and line B were fed experimental diets from 22-42 d with objectives to determine the effects of dietary metabolizable energy (ME) levels on feed intake (FI), performance, body composition, and processing yield as affected by environmental grow-out temperatures. Two thousand fifty male chicks from line A and 2,050 male chicks from line B were reared in 90-floor pens, 45 chicks per pen utilizing primary breeder nutrition and husbandry guidelines for starter (110 d) and grower (11-21 d) phases. Experimental finisher diets consisted of 5 increasing levels of apparent nitrogen corrected …

C1q Complement/Tumor Necrosis Factor-Associated Proteins In Cardiovascular Disease And Covid-19, Yaoli Xie, Zhijun Meng, Jia Gao, Caihong Liu, Jing Wang, Rui Guo, Jianli Zhao, Bernard Lopez, Theodore Christopher, Daniel Lee, Xin-Liang Ma, Yajing Wang

Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty Papers

With continually improving treatment strategies and patient care, the overall mortality of cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been significantly reduced. However, this success is a double-edged sword, as many patients who survive cardiovascular complications will progress towards a chronic disorder over time. A family of adiponectin paralogs designated as C1q complement/tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-associated proteins (CTRPs) has been found to play a role in the development of CVD. CTRPs, which are comprised of 15 members, CTRP1 to CTRP15, are secreted from different organs/tissues and exhibit diverse functions, have attracted increasing attention because of their roles in maintaining inner homeostasis by regulating …

Atg16l1 As A Novel Biomarker And Autophagy Gene For Diabetic Retinopathy., Xinxiao Gao, Yunhui Du, Wayne Bond Lau, Yu Li, Siquan Zhu, Xin-Liang Ma

Department of Emergency Medicine Faculty Papers

Objective: Accumulating evidence suggests the critical role of autophagy in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy (DR). In the current study, we aim to identify autophagy genes involved in DR via microarray analyses.

Methods: Gene microarrays were performed to identify differentially expressed lncRNAs/mRNAs between normal and DR retinas. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analyses of lncRNA-coexpressed mRNAs were used to determine the related pathological pathways and biological modules. Real-time polymerase chain reactions (PCR) were conducted to validate the microarray analyses.

Results: A total of 2474 significantly dysregulated lncRNAs and 959 differentially expressed mRNAs were identified in the …

Flash-Based Security Primitives: Evolution, Challenges And Future Directions, Holden Gordon, Jack Edmonds, Soroor Ghandali, Wei Yan, Nima Karimian, Fatemeh Tehranipoor

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Over the last two decades, hardware security has gained increasing attention in academia and industry. Flash memory has been given a spotlight in recent years, with the question of whether or not it can prove useful in a security role. Because of inherent process variation in the characteristics of flash memory modules, they can provide a unique fingerprint for a device and have thus been proposed as locations for hardware security primitives. These primitives include physical unclonable functions (PUFs), true random number generators (TRNGs), and integrated circuit (IC) counterfeit detection. In this paper, we evaluate the efficacy of flash memory-based …

Using Saildrones To Validate Arctic Sea-Surface Salinity From The Smap Satellite And From Ocean Models, Jorge Vazquez-Cuervo, Chelle Gentemann, Wenqing Tang, Dustin Carroll, Hong Zhang, Dimitris Menemenlis, Jose Gomez-Valdes, Marouan Bouali, Michael Steele

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The Arctic Ocean is one of the most important and challenging regions to observe—it experiences the largest changes from climate warming, and at the same time is one of the most difficult to sample because of sea ice and extreme cold temperatures. Two NASA-sponsored deployments of the Saildrone vehicle provided a unique opportunity for validating sea-surface salinity (SSS) derived from three separate products that use data from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite. To examine possible issues in resolving mesoscale-to-submesoscale variability, comparisons were also made with two versions of the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) …

Nlp-Based Customer Loyalty Improvement Recommender System (Clirs2), Katarzyna Anna Tarnowska, Zbigniew Ras

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Structured data on customer feedback is becoming more costly and timely to collect and organize. On the other hand, unstructured opinionated data, e.g., in the form of free-text comments, is proliferating and available on public websites, such as social media websites, blogs, forums, and websites that provide recommendations. This research proposes a novel method to develop a knowledge-based recommender system from unstructured (text) data. The method is based on applying an opinion mining algorithm, extracting aspect-based sentiment score per text item, and transforming text into a structured form. An action rule mining algorithm is applied to the data table constructed …

Extrapolating Lessons From A Master Mentor: What Bob Burdick Taught Me, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

Bob Burdick began his career in clinical practice as a student in the clinic at Boston University School of Law in 1970, shortly after the civil clinic had been established as the Legal Aid Program in Hyde Park in 1969. Right out of law school, Bob worked at Greater Boston Legal Services (“GBLS”), he then was hired at BU as a clinical instructor and later promoted to director of what became the Civil Litigation Program in 1979. During the forty years Bob led the civil clinic (now renamed the Civil Litigation and Justice Program), he was the creative and innovative …

Analysis Of Healthcare Miscommunication And How To Effectively Improve Communication Outcomes: An Integrative Review, Jill Suzanne Smith

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Healthcare workers convey client information regularly to provide essential and safe care. Errors in communication have been linked to a decrease in client satisfaction and an increase in medical errors. Both the Joint Commission and the World Health Organization have recommended using a standard communication tool, SBAR, to increase client satisfaction and decrease medical errors. A review of 52 research articles determined effective SBAR training should be conducted utilizing simulations to improve the healthcare providers’ self-confidence and usage of the SBAR tool. This integrative review also concluded the number and length of SBAR simulation sessions have no consequence on the …

America’S Unforgiving Forgiveness Program: Problems And Solutions For Public Service Loan Forgiveness, Robert Wu

UC Law Journal

In the first three years of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), over 227,000 borrowers applied for relief. The U.S. Department of Education granted relief to less than 3800 borrowers, denying forgiveness to roughly 98% of the program’s applicants. This astronomically high rejection rate raises questions of responsibility for the program’s initial failure. Many have blamed the Trump Administration for using its political influence to manufacture an unforgiving result. However, a purely political explanation for the program’s failure provides an incomplete illustration of the reasons underlying PSLF’s demise. This Note examines the numerous pitfalls that resulted in PSLF’s unforgiving forgiveness rate. …

Altimetry For The Future: Building On 25 Years Of Progress, Saleh Abdalla, Abdolnabi Kolahchi, Micheal Ablain, Susheel Adusumilli, Suchandra Aich Bhowmick, Eva Alou-Font, Laiba Amarouche, Ole Baltazar Andersen, Edward Zaron, Multiple Additional Authors

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 2018 we celebrated 25 years of development of radar altimetry, and the progress achieved by this methodology in the fields of global and coastal oceanography, hydrology, geodesy and cryospheric sciences. Many symbolic major events have celebrated these developments, e.g., in Venice, Italy, the 15th (2006) and 20th (2012) years of progress and more recently, in 2018, in Ponta Delgada, Portugal, 25 Years of Progress in Radar Altimetry. On this latter occasion it was decided to collect contributions of scientists, engineers and managers involved in the worldwide altimetry community to depict the state of altimetry and propose recommendations for the …

Guavanet: A Deep Neural Network Architecture For Automatic Sensory Evaluation To Predict Degree Of Acceptability For Guava By A Consumer, Vipul Mehra

Theses

This thesis is divided into two parts:Part I: Analysis of Fruits, Vegetables, Cheese and Fish based on Image Processing using Computer Vision and Deep Learning: A Review. It consists of a comprehensive review of image processing, computer vision and deep learning techniques applied to carry out analysis of fruits, vegetables, cheese and fish.This part also serves as a literature review for Part II.Part II: GuavaNet: A deep neural network architecture for automatic sensory evaluation to predict degree of acceptability for Guava by a consumer. This part introduces to an end-to-end deep neural network architecture that can predict the degree of …

Chevron Is A Phoenix, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Kevin M. Stack

Vanderbilt Law Review

Judicial deference to agency interpretations of their own statutes is a foundational principle of the administrative state. It recognizes that Congress has the need and desire to delegate the details of regulatory policy to agencies rather than specify those details or default to judicial determinations. It also recognizes that interpretation under regulatory statutes is intertwined with implementation of those statutes. Prior to the famous decision in Chevron, the Supreme Court had long regarded judicial deference as a foundational principle of administrative law. It grew up with the administrative state alongside other foundational administrative law principles. In Chevron, the …

Measuring Semantic Relatedness: A Proposal For A New Textual Tool, Katherine A. Cohen

Vanderbilt Law Review

Judicial decisions, statutes, constitutions, sentencing guidelines, and ERISA-related documents have at least one thing in common: at a molecular level, the laws are all composed of words. The scientific study of linguistics, particularly the field of semantics, analyzes what words mean and how they are connected with each other. And yet, thus far, the legal field has taken little notice of academic and technological breakthroughs in the field of linguistic semantics. This Note seeks to highlight the potential utility of linguistic semantic tools in interpreting legal texts. Specifically, applying algorithms to a free online lexical database allows anyone with a …

Is This Science? Students' Experiences Of Failure Make A Research-Based Course Feel Authentic, Emma C. Goodwin, Vladimir Anokhin, Mackenzie J. Gray, Daniel E. Zajic, Jason Podrabsky, Erin E. Shortlidge

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) and inquiry-based curricula both expose students to the scientific process. CUREs additionally engage students in novel and scientifically relevant research, with the intention of providing an "authentic" research experience. However, we have little understanding of which course design elements impact students' beliefs that they are experiencing "authentic" research. We designed a study to explore introductory biology students' perceptions of research authenticity in CURE and inquiry classes. Using the Laboratory Course Assessment Survey, we found that students in CURE sections perceived higher levels of authentic research elements than students in inquiry-based sections. To identify specific factors …

A Transcendental Phenomenological Study Of The Motivations Of Minority Police Recruits Participating In An Entrance-Level Police Academy, Jennifer A. Beskid

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the lived experiences of minority police recruits who were participating in an entrance-level police academy. The central research question of the study was what were the lived experiences of minority police recruits who were participating in an entrance-level police academy? Data was collected using interviews, a questionnaire, and records analysis. The interviews were transcribed with the initial results being preliminarily grouped. Once the groups were established, the researcher reviewed the records for inclusion in the groupings. Participants completed a questionnaire designed to elicit information about their motivations to become police …

Analyzing The Publishing Trends Of The Indian Council For Agricultural Research (Icar): A Scientometric Study, Dr Mariraj Vasudev Sedam

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The study analyses the publication productivity of the faculty and researchers of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). Many scientometric studies have been done about institutional scientific outcome in recent years. The study presents a quantitative study of productivity, characteristics of various aspects of publications of ICAR. A total of 9236 contributions published and received 43876 citations with 4.75 average citations per paper in the study period.

Reduction Of Hospital Readmissions In Patients With A Diagnosis Of Copd: An Integrative Review, Guerline Norbrun

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive lung disease with potential to interfere with breathing ability. It is the third leading cause of 30-day readmission and death in the US, and the leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. It constitutes a society burden and poor disease management leads to major health consequences such as acute COPD exacerbation resulting in frequent costly readmissions, add to its massive direct healthcare costs. Over $50 billion are spent annually in direct care alone in addition to $15 billion in hospital readmissions; with 12 million adults are being affected in the United States …

Leadership Development Of Ethnic Minoritized Men In Ces: A Phenomenological Theory Study, Maria E. Moore

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Ethnic minoritized men continue to be underrepresented in the counselor education and supervision (CES) field in faculty and leadership roles. This qualitative phenomenological study highlights the lived experiences of six ethnic minoritized men leaders in CES to examine the factors that helped them in their leadership development and how those elements can be fostered in others to increase diversity in leadership in CES. The six participants come from universities across the United States. Limited research has been done on ethnic minoritized men leaders in counseling and CES, and that research focused on their current leadership experiences. A semi structured interview …

Program Evaluation Of Life Skill Curriculum For Young Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Sandra J. Schmiedeknecht

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to discover the effectiveness of curriculum specific to young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) within a specific community. This paper supports a program evaluation of a life skill curriculum compiled, taught and refined, and specifically designed for young adults with ASD. Young adults with ASD have few resources for a successful transition from adolescence to young adulthood. There is diminutive amount of literature evaluating and providing evidence that teaching a life skill curriculum is effective in enhancing success in the transition for young adult with ASD. There is a great deal of …

Educating Church Leaders: Providing End-Of-Life Spiritual Care To Life Changers Church Ministry, Jermaine Joshua Ruffin

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Life Changers Community Fellowship Church, of Jackson, Mississippi, struggles to provide end-of-life spiritual care to its members. Its church leadership has placed the responsibility of providing end-of-life spiritual care on institutions such as hospice and palliative care companies. These organizations do their best to provide end-of-life spiritual care, but struggle due to cultural and ethnical boundaries, and a lack of resources to provide such care. This study seeks to examine whether end-of-life spiritual care is a biblical concern and/or mandate within church leadership. In addition, this study will explore how hospice chaplains understand end-of-life spiritual care provided to patients and …

Performance Of Various Low-Level Decoder For Surface Codes In The Presence Of Measurement Error, Claire E. Badger

Theses and Dissertations

Quantum error correction is a research specialty within the area of quantum computing that constructs quantum circuits that correct for errors. Decoding is the process of using measurements from an error correcting code, known as error syndrome, to decide corrective operations to perform on the circuit. High-level decoding is the process of using the error syndrome to perform corrective logical operations, while low-level decoding uses the error syndrome to correct individual data qubits. Research on machine learning-based decoders is increasingly popular, but has not been thoroughly researched for low-level decoders. The type of error correcting code used is called surface …

Indoor Navigation Using Convolutional Neural Networks And Floor Plans, Ricky D. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to evaluate a new indoor navigation technique by incorporating floor plans along with monocular camera images into a CNN as a potential means for identifying camera position. Building floor plans are widely available and provide potential information for localizing within the building. This work sets out to determine if a CNN can learn the architectural features of a floor plan and use that information to determine a location. In this work, a simulated indoor data set is created and used to train two CNNs. A classification CNN, which breaks up the floor plan into …

Formal Verification For High Assurance Software: A Case Study Using The Spark Auto-Active Verification Toolset, Ryan M. Baity

Theses and Dissertations

Software is an increasingly integral and sophisticated part of safety- and mission-critical systems. Poorly written software can lead to information leakage, undetected cyber breaches, and even human injury in cases where the software directly interfaces with components of a physical system. These systems may range from power facilities to remotely piloted aircraft. Software bugs and vulnerabilities can lead to severe economic hardships and loss of life in these domains. As fast as software spreads to automate many facets of our lives, it also grows in complexity. The complexity of software systems combined with the nature of the critical domains dependent …

Solving The Quantum Layout Problem For Nisq-Era Quantum Computers Via Metaheuristic Algorithms, Brian D. Curran Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

In the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ)-era, quantum computers (QC) are highly prone to noise-related errors and suffer from limited connectivity between their physical qubits. Circuit transformations must be made to abstract circuits to address the noise and hardware constraints of NISQ-era devices. Such transformations introduce additional gates to the original circuit, thereby reducing the circuit's overall fidelity. To address the aforementioned constraints of NISQ-era QCs, dynamic remapping procedures permute logical qubits about physical qubits of the device to increase the fidelity of operations and make operations hardware-compliant. The quantum layout problem (QLP) is the problem of mapping logical qubits of …

Comparison Of Machine Learning Techniques On Trust Detection Using Eeg, James R. Elkins

Theses and Dissertations

Trust is a pillar of society and is a fundamental aspect in every relationship. With the use of automated agents in todays workforce exponentially growing, being able to actively monitor an individuals trust level that is working with the automation is becoming increasingly more important. Humans often have miscalibrated trust in automation and therefore are prone to making costly mistakes. Since deciding to trust or distrust has been shown to correlate with specific brain activity, it is thought that there are EEG signals which are associated with this decision. Using both a human-human trust and a human-machine trust EEG dataset …

Commuting Compositions For Quantum Circuit Reduction, Brenna R. Cole

Theses and Dissertations

Quantum circuit simplification improves program execution on quantum hardware by reducing error from prolonged environmental interaction and noisy gate operations. One simplification technique is template matching, which repeatedly conducts local optimization by replacing small sequences of gates within a circuit by optimized versions. Underlying this method is the problem of identifying sequences matching templates. This is challenging because some, but not all, gates can commute within a circuit. This means there may not be a subcircuit that matches a template in the original circuit specification, but a match may exist in an equivalent rearrangement of gates. In such cases, certain …