Digital Commons Network^™

Multi-Level Factors Associated With Hiv Late Presentation With Advanced Disease And Delay Time Of Diagnosis In South Carolina, 2005–2019, Fanghui Shi, Jiajia Zhang Ph.D., Shujie Chen, Xueying Yang Ph.D., Zhenlong Li, Sharon Weissman, Bankole Olatosi Ph.D., Xiaoming Li Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This study explored individual- and county-level risk factors of late presentation with advanced disease (LPAD) among people with HIV (PWH) and their longer delay time from infection to diagnosis in South Carolina (SC), using SC statewide Enhanced HIV/AIDS Reporting System (eHARS). LPAD was defined as having an AIDS diagnosis within three months of initial HIV diagnosis, and delay time from HIV infection to diagnosis was estimated using CD4 depletion model. 3,733 (41.88%) out of 8,913 adult PWH diagnosed from 2005 to 2019 in SC were LPAD, and the median delay time was 13.04 years. Based on the generalized estimating equations …

A Content Analysis Of Counseling Psychology Literature: Resilience Against Oppression Among People Of Color, David C. Stanley Jr., Rawan H. Atari-Khan

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

The researchers analyzed articles from two flagship counseling psychology journals (i.e., Journal of Counseling Psychology and The Counseling Psychologist) to examine current understandings of resilience. There were 54 articles included in the final analysis that spanned the years 1997–2022. The researchers conducted a content analysis to identify, analyze, and report patterns across counseling psychology journals with regard to how resilience has been defined, the racial/ethnic groups that were of focus, and the forms of oppression that were studied or addressed. Five themes were generated that are a direct representation of the topics within previous literature on resilience in the field …

Resistance To Acetyl Coenzyme A Carboxylase (Accase) Inhibitor In Lolium Multiflorum: Effect Of Multiple Target-Site Mutations, Gulab Rangani, Ana Claudia Langaro, Shilpi Agrawal, Reiofeli Algodon Salas-Perez, Juan Camilo Velasquez, Christopher E. Nelson, Nilda Roma-Burgos

Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) is a persistent weed species that poses significant management challenges in key agricultural crops such as wheat, corn, cotton, and soybean. This study investigated the prevalence of resistance to ACCase inhibitor herbicides, specifically diclofop and pinoxaden, among field-collected Italian ryegrass populations. The survey revealed widespread resistance to diclofop and emerging cross-resistance to pinoxaden. To elucidate the physiological mechanism of ACCase herbicide resistance, we investigated mutations in the carboxyl-transferase (CT) domain of the ACCase enzyme, a critical region for herbicide sensitivity. Using dCAPS assays and CT domain sequencing, several known resistance-conferring mutations were detected in …

The International Court Of Justice: New Challenges In The Hague For Adjudication Of Interstate Disputes, John Bellinger, Catherine Amirfar, Sarah H. Cleveland, Juan Manuel Gómez-Robledo Verduzco

Faculty Scholarship

This panel was convened on Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 10:30 a.m. by its moderator Catherine Amirfar of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, who introduced the panelists: Sarah Cleveland of Columbia University Law School; and Juan Manuel Gómez-Robledo Verduzco, the Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations for Mexico.

Taxing The Ten Percent, Alex Raskolnikov

Faculty Scholarship

The United States government is rapidly approaching the point when it will have no choice but to raise taxes. But whose taxes should go up, and why? The argument for higher taxes on the top one percent is well known. The case for higher taxes on the next nine percent is not. This Article makes that case.

Americans with incomes in the top ten percent but not the top one percent are not rich, but they are not middle class either—they are affluent. These affluent Americans have seen mostly tax cuts over the past three decades. Yet today, as progressive …

Human Embryonic Genetic Mosaicism And Its Effects On Development And Disease, Sarah M Waldvogel, Jennifer E Posey, Margaret A Goodell

Center on Aging Staff Publications

Nearly every mammalian cell division is accompanied by a mutational event that becomes fixed in a daughter cell. When carried forward to additional cell progeny, a clone of variant cells can emerge. As a result, mammals are complex mosaics of clones that are genetically distinct from one another. Recent high-throughput sequencing studies have revealed that mosaicism is common, clone sizes often increase with age and specific variants can affect tissue function and disease development. Variants that are acquired during early embryogenesis are shared by multiple cell types and can affect numerous tissues. Within tissues, variant clones compete, which can result …

Racial Equity, Diversity And Inclusion In Bioethics: Recommendations From The Association Of Bioethics Program Directors Presidential Task Force, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Alexis Walker, Shawneequa L Callier, Faith E Fletcher, Charlene Galarneau, Nanibaa' Garrison, Jennifer E James, Renee Mcleod-Sordjan, Ubaka Ogbogu, Nneka Sederstrom, Patrick T Smith, Clarence H Braddock, Christine Mitchell

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Recent calls to address racism in bioethics reflect a sense of urgency to mitigate the lethal effects of a lack of action. While the field was catalyzed largely in response to pivotal events deeply rooted in racism and other structures of oppression embedded in research and health care, it has failed to center racial justice in its scholarship, pedagogy, advocacy, and practice, and neglected to integrate anti-racism as a central consideration. Academic bioethics programs play a key role in determining the field's norms and practices, including methodologies, funding priorities, and professional networks that bear on equity, inclusion, and epistemic justice. …

Applying A Health Equity Lens To Better Understand End-Of-Life Prognostication, Newsha Nikzad, Joelle Robertson-Preidler, Faith E Fletcher

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Racial and ethnic inequity exists throughout the lifespan, including at the end of life (EOL). Although prognostication is inherently fraught with uncertainty, many underrepresented minorities get prognoses that are overly optimistic, which can exacerbate inequity by depriving patients of details needed to make informed decisions and plan for EOL care. This article applies a health equity lens to facilitate better ethical and clinical understandings of how to care for patients of color more equitably at the EOL.

Update On Recommendations For Surveillance For Children With Predisposition To Hematopoietic Malignancy, Luke D Maese, Marcin W Wlodarski, Sun Young Kim, Alison A Bertuch, Gaelle Bougeard, Vivian Y Chang, Lucy A Godley, Payal P Khincha, Roland P Kuiper, Harry Lesmana, Rose B Mcgee, Lisa J Mcreynolds, Julia Meade, Sharon E Plon, Sharon A Savage, Sarah R Scollon, Hamish S Scott, Michael F Walsh, Kim E Nichols, Christopher C Porter

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Children harboring certain germline gene variants have an increased risk of developing myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and other hematopoietic malignancies (HM), such as leukemias and lymphomas. Recent studies have identified an expanding number of these predisposition genes, with variants most prevalent in children with MDS but also found in children with other HM. For some hematopoietic malignancy predispositions (HMP), specifically those with a high risk of MDS, early intervention through hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can favorably impact overall survival, providing a rationale for rigorous surveillance. A multidisciplinary panel of experts at the 2023 AACR Childhood Cancer Predisposition Workshop reviewed the latest …

Field-Based Courses Still Matter, But Not Like They Used To, Christopher T. Martine

Faculty Journal Articles

Increasingly, field-based courses are providing the first real opportunities for students to experience nature in meaningful ways. As a baseline, even before the content delivery and the graded assessments, this is already enough to change the way a person feels in the world and to spark an appreciation for the life around them.

(Part of a special feature on education in which recent winners of the Botanical Society of America's Charles E. Bessey Award share teaching philosophies and strategies.)

Stop Sucking Us Dry: Decreasing Unnecessary Blood Draws In The Intensive Care Unit, Danielle A Sultan Do, Danny Le Do, Robert P Briggs Do, Shawn M. Quinn Do, Jessica Boehmler Md, Bryan G. Kane Md, Amy Slenker Md

Department of Emergency Medicine

No abstract provided.

Wisconsin Students Reflect On Their Experiences In Dual Enrollment Programs And How Dual Enrollment Shaped Their Educational Trajectory, Gabriel M. Velez, Michael Vazquez, Ali Shana

College of Education Faculty Research and Publications

Research indicates that engaging in dual enrollment (DE) courses positively impacts college performance and degree completion time, evidenced mostly by static outcome measures (e.g., success in college, college admission, grades). These indicators are important, but do not fully examine how students perceive/experience DE opportunities. The current study used focus groups with DE students across Wisconsin (N=49) to explore how they thought about their experiences and how it informed their thinking about their future educational trajectories. Five themes emerged from thematic analysis of focus groups. First, they were able to maximize their experience thanks to onboarding support. Second, they gave a …

Dna Methylation-Derived Immune Cell Proportions And Cancer Risk In Black Participants, Jan Bressler, Elizabeth A Platz, Dominique S Michaud

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Prior cohort studies assessing cancer risk based on immune cell subtype profiles have predominantly focused on White populations. This limitation obscures vital insights into how cancer risk varies across race. Immune cell subtype proportions were estimated using deconvolution based on leukocyte DNA methylation markers from blood samples collected at baseline on participants without cancer in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study. During a mean of 17.5 years of follow-up, 668 incident cancers were diagnosed in 2,467 Black participants. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine immune cell subtype proportions and overall cancer incidence and site-specific incidence (lung, breast, and …

Multicohort Epigenome-Wide Association Study Of All-Cause Cardiovascular Disease And Cancer Incidence: A Cardio-Oncology Approach, Karin Haack, Jason G Umans, M Daniele Fallin, Miguel Herreros-Martinez, Marina Pollan, Eric Boerwinkle, Elizabeth A Platz, Miranda R Jones, Jan Bressler, Roby Joehanes, Calen P Ryan, Juan R Gonzalez, Daniel Levy, Daniel W Belsky, Shelley A Cole, Dominique S Michaud, Ana Navas-Acien, Maria Tellez-Plaza

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Emerging evidence reveals a complex relationship between cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer, which share common risk factors and biological pathways.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate common epigenetic signatures for CVD and cancer incidence in 3 ethnically diverse cohorts: Native Americans from the SHS (Strong Heart Study), European Americans from the FHS (Framingham Heart Study), and European Americans and African Americans from the ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk In Communities) study.

METHODS: A 2-stage strategy was used that included first conducting untargeted epigenome-wide association studies for each cohort and then running targeted models in the union set of …

Measuring Anxiety Among Latino Immigrant Populations: Within-Country And Between-Country Comparisons, Mildred M Maldonado-Molina, Juliana Mejía-Trujillo, Saskia R Vos, Carolina Scaramutti, Patrizia A Perazzo, Maria Duque, Maria Fernanda Garcia, Eric C Brown, Seth J Schwartz

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Anxiety is the most prevalent mental health disorder among adults worldwide. Given its increased prevalence among migrants due to their marginalized position in the societies where they reside, psychometric evaluations of anxiety measures such as the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) are needed for use with migrants. The present study is the first attempt to compare the structure of GAD-7 scores for (a) different Latino groups in the same country and (b) the same Latino group in two different countries. Using three samples of Mexican and Venezuelan migrants (total N = 933), we provide reliability and validity evidence of the GAD-7 …

Viability Discrimination Of Bacterial Microbiomes In Home Kitchen Dish Sponges Using Propidium Monoazide Treatment, Charles Darkoh

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Dish sponges are known to support the proliferation of human bacterial pathogens, yet they are commonly used by consumers. Exposure to foodborne pathogens via sponge use may lead to illness, a serious concern among susceptible populations. The extent of exposure risks from sponge use has been limited by constraints associated with culture-independent or dependent methods for bacterial community characterization. Therefore, five used dish sponges were characterized to evaluate the presence of viable bacterial foodborne pathogens using the novel application of propidium monoazide (PMA) treatment and targeted 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Select pathogen viability was confirmed using targeted selective enrichment. …

Phenotypic Diversity Of Type Iii Secretion System Activity In Enteropathogenic Escherichia Coli Clinical Isolates, Theresa J Ochoa, Jose L Puente

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction. Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) strains pose a significant threat as a leading cause of severe childhood diarrhoea in developing nations. EPEC pathogenicity relies on the type III secretion system (T3SS) encoded by the locus of enterocyte effacement (LEE), facilitating the secretion and translocation of bacterial effector proteins.

Gap Statement. While the regulatory roles of PerC (plasmid-encoded regulator) and GrlA (global regulator of LEE-activator) in ler expression and LEE gene activation are well-documented in the EPEC prototype strain E2348/69, understanding the variability in LEE gene expression control mechanisms among clinical EPEC isolates remains an area requiring further investigation.

Aim. This …

Hippocampal Gray Matter Volume In Young Adulthood Varies With Adolescent Alcohol Use, Susan Tortolero Emery

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Adolescent substance use is linked with negative future outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety, substance use disorder). Given that the brain undergoes significant maturation during adolescence, this developmental period may represent a time of particular vulnerability to substance use. Neuroimaging research has largely focused on heavy or binge patterns of substance use; thus, relatively less is known about the neural impact of a broader range of adolescent substance use. Characterizing the neural impact of a broader range of adolescent substance use may inform prevention and treatment efforts. The present study investigated relationships between adolescent substance use trajectories (i.e., alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis) …

Classification Of Isolated Versus Multiple Birth Defects: An Automated Process For Population-Based Registries, Peter H Langlois, Laura E Mitchell, A J Agopian

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Epidemiologic studies of birth defects often conduct separate analyses for cases that have isolated defects (e.g., spina bifida only) and cases that have multiple defects (e.g., spina bifida and a congenital heart defect). However, in some instances, cases with additional defects (e.g., spina bifida and clubfoot) may be more appropriately considered as isolated because the co-occurring defect (clubfoot) is believed to be developmentally related to the defect of interest. Determining which combinations should be considered isolated can be challenging and potentially resource intensive for registries. Thus, we developed automated classification procedures for differentiating between isolated versus multiple defects, while accounting …

Transgender Women With Hiv Demonstrate Unique Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Profiles, Anoma Somasunderam

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Purpose: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) prevalence and severity may be higher in people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) than the general population, and vary with sex and age. We explored NAFLD characteristics by gender.

Methods: Adult transgender women (TW), cisgender women (CW), and cisgender men (CM) with HIV on antiretroviral therapy and without other known causes of liver disease underwent screening for NAFLD (2017-2020). Circulating factors associated with NAFLD were measured. Hepatic steatosis and fibrosis were assessed using transient elastography by controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) and liver stiffness measurement (LSM), respectively. Analysis of variance/Wilcoxon testing compared normally/non-normally distributed variables, …

Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium Guideline For Cyp2b6 Genotype And Methadone Therapy, Roseann S Donnelly, Evan D Kharasch

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Methadone is a mu (μ) opioid receptor agonist used clinically in adults and children to manage opioid use disorder, neonatal abstinence syndrome, and acute and chronic pain. It is typically marketed as a racemic mixture of R- and S-enantiomers. R-methadone has 30-to 50-fold higher analgesic potency than S-methadone, and S-methadone has a greater adverse effect (prolongation) on the cardiac QTc interval. Methadone undergoes stereoselective metabolism. CYP2B6 is the primary enzyme responsible for catalyzing the metabolism of both enantiomers to the inactive metabolites, S- and R-2-ethylidene-1,5-dimethyl-3,3-diphenylpyrrolidine (S- and R-EDDP). Genetic variation in the CYP2B6 gene has been investigated in the context …

Physical Activity And Sedentary Time Among Us Adolescents Before And During Covid-19: Findings From A Large Cohort Study, Natalia I Heredia, Deanna M Hoelscher, Michael W Beets, Robert G Weaver

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

INTRODUCTION: Evidence suggests that adolescents engage in less physical activity during the summer break. Less is known regarding physical activity during the summer months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS: Utilizing data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the authors examined daily activity measured by Fitbit Charge 2 devices before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic during school and summer months. Linear models estimated activity during pre-COVID-19 school, pre-COVID-19 summer, COVID-19 school, and COVID-19 summer.

RESULTS: Participants (N=7,179, aged 11.96 years, 51% female, 51% White) accumulated 8,671.0 (95% CI=8,544.7; 8,797.3) steps, 32.5 (95% CI=30.8, 32.3) minutes of moderate-to-vigorous …

Clonal Hematopoiesis Of Indeterminate Potential Is Associated With Reduced Risk Of Cognitive Impairment In Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease, Celestin Missikpode, Xiao Sun, Changwei Li, Zhijie Huang, Amanda Anderson, Md Mesbah Uddin, Do-Kyun Kim, Jonathan Taliercio, Rajat Deo, Zeenat Bhat, Dawei Xie, Panduranga Rao, Jing Chen, James P Lash, Jiang He, Pradeep Natarajan, James E Hixson, Kristine Yaffe, Cric Study Investigators

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) and dementia disproportionately burden patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). The association between CHIP and cognitive impairment in CKD patients is unknown.

Methods: We conducted time-to-event analyses in up to 1452 older adults with CKD from the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort who underwent CHIP gene sequencing. Cognition was assessed using four validated tests in up to 6 years mean follow-up time. Incident cognitive impairment was defined as a test score one standard deviation below the baseline mean.

Results: Compared to non-carriers, CHIP carriers were markedly less likely to experience impairment in attention (adjusted …

Bht-Qaoa: The Generalization Of Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm To Solve Arbitrary Boolean Problems As Hamiltonians, Ali Al-Bayaty, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A new methodology is introduced to solve classical Boolean problems as Hamiltonians, using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA). This methodology is termed the “Boolean-Hamiltonians Transform for QAOA” (BHT-QAOA). Because a great deal of research and studies are mainly focused on solving combinatorial optimization problems using QAOA, the BHTQAOA adds an additional capability to QAOA to find all optimized approximated solutions for Boolean problems, by transforming such problems from Boolean oracles (in different structures) into Phase oracles, and then into the Hamiltonians of QAOA. From such a transformation, we noticed that the total utilized numbers of qubits and quantum gates …

Cross-Silo Federated Learning With Record-Level Personalized Differential Privacy, Xiaofeng Meng

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Federated learning (FL) enhanced by differential privacy has emerged as a popular approach to better safeguard the privacy of client-side data by protecting clients’ contributions during the training process. Existing solutions typically assume a uniform privacy budget for all records and provide one-size-fits-all solutions that may not be adequate to meet each record’s privacy requirement. In this paper, we explore the uncharted territory of cross-silo FL with record-level personalized differential privacy. We devise a novel framework named rPDP-FL, employing a two-stage hybrid sampling scheme with both uniform client-level sampling and non-uniform record-level sampling to accommodate varying privacy requirements.

A …

Enhanced Privacy Bound For Shuffle Model With Personalized Privacy, Hong Chen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The shuffle model of Differential Privacy (DP) is an enhanced privacy protocol which significantly amplifies the central DP guarantee by anonymizing and shuffling the local randomized data. Yet, deriving a tight privacy bound is challenging due to its complicated randomization protocol. While most existing works focused on uniform local privacy settings, this work focuses on a more practical personalized privacy setting. To bound the privacy after shuffling, we need to capture the probability of each user generating clones of the neighboring data points and quantify the indistinguishability between two distributions of the number of clones on neighboring datasets. Existing works …

Precurious: How Innocent Pre-Trained Language Models Turn Into Privacy Traps

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The pre-training and fine-tuning paradigm has demonstrated its effectiveness and has become the standard approach for tailoring language models to various tasks. Currently, community-based platforms offer easy access to various pre-trained models, as anyone can publish without strict validation processes. However, a released pre-trained model can be a privacy trap for fine-tuning datasets if it is carefully designed. In this work, we propose PreCurious framework to reveal the new attack surface where the attacker releases the pre-trained model and gets a black-box access to the final fine-tuned model. PreCurious aims to escalate the general privacy risk of both membership inference …

Rrh Library Newsletter, Fall 2024, Libraries At Rochester Regional Health

Rochester Regional Health authored publications and proceedings

Newsletter sections include: St. Lawrence Health New Library Access; Meet with a Librarian; Library Partnership; RRH Archives

Organizational Conflicts Of Interest

Research & Economic Development Policies

Government and some industry sponsors that fund Georgia Southern University (University) research require an organizational conflict of interest (OCI) assessment to ensure objectivity in Federal contracting. The OCI policy described below is directed toward identifying and managing OCI in a manner consistent with Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 9.5.

An Evaluation Of Cutting-Edge Ai Research Tools Using The React Framework, Susan Gardner Archambault, Jose Rincón

Librarian Publications & Presentations

As AI continues to revolutionize academic research, librarians must stay informed about the latest AI-powered tools and their potential applications. This article explores a range of cutting-edge AI research tools, evaluating their key features, benefits, and drawbacks using the REACT framework (Relevancy, Ease of Use, Assessing DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility], Currency, Transparency & Accuracy). We focus on two categories of tools: citation-based literature mapping tools and text-extraction tools for literature reviews. The citation mapping tools are Litmaps, Connected Papers, and ResearchRabbit, which help researchers discover and visualize related academic literature. The text-extraction tools—Elicit, scite, and Consensus—assist in finding, …