Digital Commons Network^™

Do Vaccinations Influence The Development Of Alzheimer Disease?, Paul E Schulz

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

A growing literature supports a protective association between vaccines targeting an array of pathogens (e.g., influenza, pneumococcus, herpes zoster) and the risk of Alzheimer disease (AD). This article discusses the potential underlying mechanisms for this apparent protective effect of immunizations against infectious pathogens on the risk of AD; explores the basic and pharmacoepidemiologic evidence for this association, with particular attention paid to important methodological variations among the epidemiologic studies; and reviews the remaining uncertainties regarding the effects of anti-pathogen vaccines on Alzheimer disease and all-cause dementia, with recommendations for future directions to address those uncertainties.

Burden Of Fatty Liver And Hepatic Fibrosis In Persons With Hiv: A Diverse Cross-Sectional Us Multicenter Study, Montreca Robison, Chandan K Saha, Kimon Zachary, Gregory K Robbins, Samir K Gupta, Raymond T Chung, Naga Chalasani, Kathleen E Corey

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background aims: The current prevalence of fatty liver disease (FLD) due to alcohol-associated (AFLD) and nonalcoholic (NAFLD) origins in US persons with HIV (PWH) is not well defined. We prospectively evaluated the burden of FLD and hepatic fibrosis in a diverse cohort of PWH.

Approach results: Consenting participants in outpatient HIV clinics in 3 centers in the US underwent detailed phenotyping, including liver ultrasound and vibration-controlled transient elastography for controlled attenuation parameter and liver stiffness measurement. The prevalence of AFLD, NAFLD, and clinically significant and advanced fibrosis was determined. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression models were used to evaluate factors …

Effect Of Intravenous Golimumab On Fatigue And The Relationship With Clinical Response In Adults With Active Ankylosing Spondylitis In The Phase 3 Go-Alive Study, Elizabeth C Hsia, Stephen Xu, John D Reveille

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

INTRODUCTION: We studied the effect of intravenous (IV)-golimumab on fatigue and the association of fatigue improvement with clinical response post hoc in adults with active ankylosing spondylitis (AS) in the GO-ALIVE trial.

METHODS: Patients were randomized to IV-golimumab 2 mg/kg (N = 105) at week (W) 0, W4, then every 8 W (Q8W) or placebo (N = 103) at W0, W4, W12, crossover to IV-golimumab 2 mg/kg at W16, W20, then Q8W through W52. Fatigue measures included Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) Question #1 (fatigue; 0 [none], 10 [worst]; decrease indicates improvement) and 36-Item Short Form Health Survey …

Who Is At Risk For New Hepatitis B Infections Among People With Hiv?, Onkar Kshirsagar, Mamta K Jain

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) increases morbidity and mortality among people with HIV (PWH). We retrospectively analyzed HBV incidence among 5785 PWH. Fourteen had newly positive hepatitis B s antigen (mean 5.2 person-years of follow-up, 46.4/100 000 infections/year). These data show gaps in HBV vaccination and in the preventative efficacy of HBV-specific antiretroviral therapy.

Superficial Thrombophlebitis In Ipsilateral Breast After Covid-19 Vaccination, John A Breier, Meng Li, Gregory J Dick, Karthik Anantharaman

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

In globally distributed deep-sea hydrothermal vent plumes, microbiomes are shaped by the redox energy landscapes created by reduced hydrothermal vent fluids mixing with oxidized seawater. Plumes can disperse over thousands of kilometers and their characteristics are determined by geochemical sources from vents, e.g., hydrothermal inputs, nutrients, and trace metals. However, the impacts of plume biogeochemistry on the oceans are poorly constrained due to a lack of integrated understanding of microbiomes, population genetics, and geochemistry. Here, we use microbial genomes to understand links between biogeography, evolution, and metabolic connectivity, and elucidate their impacts on biogeochemical cycling in the deep sea. Using …

Exploring Celiac Disease: A Case Analysis Of Multi-Systemic Symptoms And Effective Dietary Intervention In A Young Female, Mohammad Ahsan Anwaar

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

This study presents the case of a 23-year-old woman diagnosed with celiac disease (CD), a condition triggered by an immune response to gluten, leading to inflammation in the small intestine. The patient manifested typical gastrointestinal symptoms, including diarrhea, abdominal pain, and vomiting, complemented by extra-intestinal signs such as fatigue and skin rashes. Diagnosis was corroborated through the presence of tTG-IgA antibodies and distinct histological changes in the duodenum. A notable finding was the patient's iron deficiency anemia, directly linked to the duodenal damage caused by CD. Effective management, encompassing a strict gluten-free diet and iron supplementation, resulted in marked improvement …

Reduced-Intensity Anthracycline-Free Chemoimmunotherapy In Elderly Patients With Newly Diagnosed Or Relapsed Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is the most common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL); it has a cure rate of approximately 50% with standard anthracycline-based chemoimmunotherapy. However, the clinical outcomes of elderly unfit/frail DLBCL patients remain suboptimal due to poor tolerance of anthracycline-containing regimens. Herein, we report a series of seven elderly unfit patients with DLBCL who were treated with a reduced-intensity anthracycline-free chemoimmunotherapy (rituximab, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, and prednisone) regimen combined with lenalidomide (R

Accelerated Epigenetic Aging In Older Adults With Hiv Disease: Associations With Serostatus, Hiv Clinical Factors, And Health Literacy, Gabriela D Colpo

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The prevalence of older persons with HIV (PWH) disease has increased considerably in the last 20 years, but our understanding of biological factors of aging and their clinical correlates among PWH remains limited. Study participants were 149 persons aged 50 and older, including 107 PWH and 42 seronegatives. All participants completed a blood draw, research medical evaluation, structured psychiatric interview, neurocognitive assessment, questionnaires, and measures of health literacy. Four epigenetic clocks were generated from stored blood samples using standardized laboratory methods. In regression models adjusting for sex and smoking status, PWH had significantly higher epigenetic aging acceleration values than seronegatives …

Understanding Filipino Wellness: Investigating The Effects Of Colonial Mentality And Enculturation, Juliene Grace P. Fresnedi

Doctoral Dissertations

Filipino Americans are the third largest Asian American group within the United States and report significantly worse mental health when compared to other population groups. As a result of colonization by both Spain and the United States, Filipino culture has been perceived as a unique blend of cultural influences. Despite there being over 4.1 million Filipinos residing in the US there is a significant lack of research that directly investigates the well-being of this population and to what extent factors such as colonial mentality, enculturation, and generational status have an impact. The present study seeks to address this gap in …

Holocene Variations In The Asian Summer And Winter Monsoons Reconstructed From Extensive Lacustrine Sediments In The Mu Us Desert, Northern China, Xiaohao Wen, Matt W. Telfer, Baosheng Li, W Wang, Tim Daley, C Wang, Mengyuan Tian, Mingkun Qiu

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The Salawusu River Valley cuts through the Mu Us Desert in north central China, and lies at the interface of the East Asian Summer and Winter Monsoonal regions. Exposed at numerous locations in the valley side are extensive late Quaternary deposits, consisting of interbedded aeolian sands, fluvio-lacustrine units and palaeosols. Due to the importance of the location in potentially elucidating both summer and winter monsoonal regimes, and the quality of the sedimentary record, the region has a rich history of study, and yet even within the Holocene sequence, many conflicting interpretations have arisen based on studies on different sections. This …

Spanish Adaptation And Validation Of The Empowerment Of Parents In The Intensive Care-Neonatology (Empathic-N) Questionnaire, C Ruiz-González, P Martín-Casas, Jm Latour, A Úbeda-Tikkanen, I López-De-Uralde-Villanueva, García S Sánchez-Aparicio, N Cuadrado-Obregón

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Introduction Parental satisfaction is rarely measured in the neonatal intensive care unit due to a lack of specific assessment tools. The Empowerment of Parents in The Intensive Care-Neonatology (EMPATHIC-N) questionnaire is an instrument to assess satisfaction in relation to family-centred care that has been validated in several countries, but not Spain. Objectives To perform the translation and cultural adaptation of the EMPATHIC-N to Spanish followed by its validation for the purpose of assessing satisfaction in parents with children admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. Material and methods The questionnaire first underwent forward and backward translation and transcultural adaptation by …

An Extended Mtdna Phylogeography For The Alpine Newt Illuminates The Provenance Of Introduced Populations, J Robbemont, Veldhuijzen S Van, J.R. A Steven, J Ambu, R Boyle, D Canestrelli, M Cvijanović, C Dufresnes, C Ennis, R Gandola, D Jablonski, A Julian, D Kranželić, S Lukanov, I Martínez-Solano, R Montgomery, B Naumov, M O’Neill, N Alexandra, M Pabijan, R Puschendorf, D Salvi, B Schmidt, K Sotiropoulos, F Stanescu, D Stanković, S Stapelton, E Šunje, M Szabolcs, E Vacheva, D Willis, A Zimić, J France, Wrm Meilink, T Stark, Rpjh Struij, A Theodoropoulos, Visser1 Mc De, B Wielstra

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Many herpetofauna species have been introduced outside of their native range. MtDNA barcoding is regularly used to determine the provenance of such populations. The alpine newt has been introduced across the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland. However, geographical mtDNA structure across the natural range of the alpine newt is still incompletely understood and certain regions are severely undersampled. We collect mtDNA sequence data of over seven hundred individuals, from both the native and the introduced range. The main new insights from our extended mtDNA phylogeography are that 1) haplotypes from Spain do not form a reciprocally monophyletic clade, but …

Challenges And Opportunities In Achieving Sustainable Mud Crab Aquaculture In Tropical Coastal Regions, Elina Apine, Prashanth Ramappa, Ramachandra Bhatta, Lucy M. Turner, Lynda D. Rodwell

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Aquaculture plays a significant role in food security and provides livelihoods and employment for millions of people among coastal communities worldwide. However, the growing aquaculture sector has also created debates around its long-term ecological sustainability, economic viability, potential social inequalities and governance issues. We investigated the perceived challenges and opportunities to achieving sustainable mud crab aquaculture in tropical coastal regions by using the case study of coastal mud crab farms in Andhra Pradesh, India. Informed by perceptions and indicative financial data from a sample of stakeholders we investigated the potential economic outcomes under different scenarios representing varying yield levels, risk …

Bought But Never Used: How And When Unused Utility Reduces Subsequent Spending, Shruti Koley, Brandon J. Reich

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Consumers often buy products that they later do not use. How does failing to use purchased products affect subsequent spending? Six experiments demonstrate that when consumers do not use their purchased products, it decreases their subsequent discretionary spending across product categories due to an aversion to wasted money. We find that this effect is driven primarily by perceived money waste and not product waste. Consequently, the effect persists even when consumers avoid product waste, such as by donating their unused products, but is mitigated when they avoid money waste, such as when their unused products are freely acquired. We also …

Atomically Dispersed Cu-N3 On Hollow Spherical Carbon Nitride For Acetaminophen Degradation: Generation Of 1o2 From H2o2, Shuoyuan Tian, Yu Yin, Mengxuan Liu, Lei Shi, Shu Zhang, Abdul Hannan Asif, Xuan Li, Mengqiong Liu, Xiaoguang Duan, Shaobin Wang, Hongqi Sun

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Discharge of recalcitrant pharmaceuticals into aquatic systems has caused severe impacts on public health and ecosystem. Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) are effective for eliminating these refractory pollutants, for which single-atom catalysts (SACs) become the state-of-the-art materials owing to the maximized exposure of active metal sites. In this work, hollow spherical graphitic carbon nitride (hsCN) was fabricated to incorporate copper species to develop Fenton-like catalysts for acetaminophen (ACT) removal. Through pyrolysis of supramolecular assemblies derived from melamine-Cu complex and cyanuric acid, single atom Cu-N3 sites were anchored on hsCN by N-coordination to obtain SACu-hsCN. In virtue …

Magnesium-Based Nanocomposites: A Review From Mechanical, Creep And Fatigue Properties, S. Abazari, A. Shamsipur, H. R. Bakhsheshi-Rad, J. W. Drelich, J. Goldman, S. Sharif, A. F. Ismail, M. Razzaghi

Michigan Tech Publications

The addition of nanoscale additions to magnesium (Mg) based alloys can boost mechanical characteristics without noticeably decreasing ductility. Since Mg is the lightest structural material, the Mg-based nanocomposites (NCs) with improved mechanical properties are appealing materials for lightweight structural applications. In contrast to conventional Mg-based composites, the incorporation of nano-sized reinforcing particles noticeably boosts the strength of Mg-based nanocomposites without significantly reducing the formability. The present article reviews Mg-based metal matrix nanocomposites (MMNCs) with metallic and ceramic additions, fabricated via both solid-based (sintering and powder metallurgy) and liquid-based (disintegrated melt deposition) technologies. It also reviews strengthening models and mechanisms that …

Investigation Of Pool Boiling Heat Transfer On Modified Copper And Aluminum Surfaces, Mariam Khaled Zaghloul

Theses

This thesis presents an investigation of pool-boiling heat transfer using the surfacemodification method. The studied boiling surfaces were smooth and rough pin-fins embedded on the copper and aluminum surfaces. This study visualizes bubble formation and departure diameter. Experimental testing aims to predict the heat transfer coefficients for different heat fluxes over smooth and rough pin-finned surfaces. The surface modification method allows changing the boiling surface characteristics, which can lead to enhanced heat transfer. Several factors were studied, including the heat-transfer coefficient, heat flux, bubble departure diameter, and formation time. Four surfaces were used for conducting the pool boiling experiment: a …

Survey On Sentiment Analysis: Evolution Of Research Methods And Topics, Jingfeng Cui, Zhaoxia Wang, Seng-Beng Ho, Erik Cambria

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sentiment analysis, one of the research hotspots in the natural language processing field, has attracted the attention of researchers, and research papers on the field are increasingly published. Many literature reviews on sentiment analysis involving techniques, methods, and applications have been produced using different survey methodologies and tools, but there has not been a survey dedicated to the evolution of research methods and topics of sentiment analysis. There have also been few survey works leveraging keyword co-occurrence on sentiment analysis. Therefore, this study presents a survey of sentiment analysis focusing on the evolution of research methods and topics. It incorporates …

Decoding The Underlying Meaning Of Multimodal Hateful Memes, Ming Shan Hee, Wen Haw Chong, Roy Ka-Wei Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recent studies have proposed models that yielded promising performance for the hateful meme classification task. Nevertheless, these proposed models do not generate interpretable explanations that uncover the underlying meaning and support the classification output. A major reason for the lack of explainable hateful meme methods is the absence of a hateful meme dataset that contains ground truth explanations for benchmarking or training. Intuitively, having such explanations can educate and assist content moderators in interpreting and removing flagged hateful memes. This paper address this research gap by introducing Hateful meme with Reasons Dataset (HatReD), which is a new multimodal hateful meme …

Transferable Curricula Through Difficulty Conditioned Generators, Sidney Tio, Pradeep Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Advancements in reinforcement learning (RL) have demonstrated superhuman performance in complex tasks such as Starcraft, Go, Chess etc. However, knowledge transfer from Artificial "Experts" to humans remain a significant challenge. A promising avenue for such transfer would be the use of curricula. Recent methods in curricula generation focuses on training RL agents efficiently, yet such methods rely on surrogate measures to track student progress, and are not suited for training robots in the real world (or more ambitiously humans). In this paper, we introduce a method named Parameterized Environment Response Model (PERM) that shows promising results in training RL agents …

Learning To Send Reinforcements: Coordinating Multi-Agent Dynamic Police Patrol Dispatching And Rescheduling Via Reinforcement Learning, Waldy Joe, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We address the problem of coordinating multiple agents in a dynamic police patrol scheduling via a Reinforcement Learning (RL) approach. Our approach utilizes Multi-Agent Value Function Approximation (MAVFA) with a rescheduling heuristic to learn dispatching and rescheduling policies jointly. Often, police operations are divided into multiple sectors for more effective and efficient operations. In a dynamic setting, incidents occur throughout the day across different sectors, disrupting initially-planned patrol schedules. To maximize policing effectiveness, police agents from different sectors cooperate by sending reinforcements to support one another in their incident response and even routine patrol. This poses an interesting research challenge …

Camper: An Effective Framework For Privacy-Aware Deep Entity Resolution, Yuxiang Guo, Lu Chen, Zhengjie Zhou, Baihua Zheng, Ziquan Fang, Zhikun Zhang, Yuren Mao, Yunjun Gao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Entity Resolution (ER) is a fundamental problem in data preparation. Standard deep ER methods have achieved state-of-the-art efectiveness, assuming that relations from diferent organizations are centrally stored. However, due to privacy concerns, it can be difcult to centralize data in practice, rendering standard deep ER solutions inapplicable. Despite eforts to develop rule-based privacy-preserving ER methods, they often neglect subtle matching mechanisms and have poor efectiveness as a result. To bridge efectiveness and privacy, in this paper, we propose CampER, an efective framework for privacy-aware deep entity resolution. Specifcally, we frst design a training pair self-generation strategy to overcome the absence …

Multi-View Graph Contrastive Learning For Solving Vehicle Routing Problems, Yuan Jiang, Zhiguang Cao, Yaoxin Wu, Jie Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, neural heuristics based on deep learning have reported encouraging results for solving vehicle routing problems (VRPs), especially on independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) instances, e.g. uniform. However, in the presence of a distribution shift for the testing instances, their performance becomes considerably inferior. In this paper, we propose a multi-view graph contrastive learning (MVGCL) approach to enhance the generalization across different distributions, which exploits a graph pattern learner in a self-supervised fashion to facilitate a neural heuristic equipped with an active search scheme. Specifically, our MVGCL first leverages graph contrastive learning to extract transferable patterns from VRP graphs to …

Decompiling X86 Deep Neural Network Executables, Zhibo Liu, Yuanyuan Yuan, Shuai Wang, Xiaofei Xie, Lei Ma

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Due to their widespread use on heterogeneous hardware devices, deep learning (DL) models are compiled into executables by DL compilers to fully leverage low-level hardware primitives. This approach allows DL computations to be undertaken at low cost across a variety of computing platforms, including CPUs, GPUs, and various hardware accelerators. We present BTD (Bin to DNN), a decompiler for deep neural network (DNN) executables. BTD takes DNN executables and outputs full model specifications, including types of DNN operators, network topology, dimensions, and parameters that are (nearly) identical to those of the input models. BTD delivers a practical framework to process …

Fintech Data Infrastructure For Esg Disclosure Compliance, Randall E. Duran, Peter Tierney

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Regulations related to the disclosure of environmental, governance, and social (ESG) factors are evolving rapidly and are a major concern for financial compliance worldwide. Information technology has the potential to reduce the effort and cost of ESG disclosure compliance. However, comprehensive and accurate ESG data are necessary for disclosures. Currently, the availability and quality of underlying data for ESG disclosures vary widely and are often deficient. The process involved with obtaining ESG data is also often inefficient and prone to error. This paper compares the models used and the evolution of Fintech data infrastructure developed to support financial services with …

Document-Level Relation Extraction Via Separate Relation Representation And Logical Reasoning, Heyan Huang, Changsen Yuan, Qian Liu, Yixin Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Document-level relation extraction (RE) extends the identification of entity/mentions’ relation from the single sentence to the long document. It is more realistic and poses new challenges to relation representation and reasoning skills. In this article, we propose a novel model, SRLR, using Separate Relation Representation and Logical Reasoning considering the indirect relation representation and complex reasoning of evidence sentence problems. Specifically, we first expand the judgment of relational facts from the entity-level to the mention-level, highlighting fine-grained information to capture the relation representation for the entity pair. Second, we propose a logical reasoning module to identify evidence sentences and conduct …

Hyperbolic Graph Topic Modeling Network With Continuously Updated Topic Tree, Ce Zhang, Rex Ying, Hady Wirawan Lauw

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Connectivity across documents often exhibits a hierarchical network structure. Hyperbolic Graph Neural Networks (HGNNs) have shown promise in preserving network hierarchy. However, they do not model the notion of topics, thus document representations lack semantic interpretability. On the other hand, a corpus of documents usually has high variability in degrees of topic specificity. For example, some documents contain general content (e.g., sports), while others focus on specific themes (e.g., basketball and swimming). Topic models indeed model latent topics for semantic interpretability, but most assume a flat topic structure and ignore such semantic hierarchy. Given these two challenges, we propose a …

Semantically Constitutive Entities In Knowledge Graphs, Chong Cher Chia, Maksim Tkachenko, Hady Wirawan Lauw

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Knowledge graphs are repositories of facts about a world. In this work, we seek to distill the set of entities or nodes in a knowledge graph into a specified number of constitutive nodes, whose embeddings would be retained. Intuitively, the remaining accessory nodes could have their original embeddings “forgotten”, and yet reconstitutable from those of the retained constitutive nodes. The constitutive nodes thus represent the semantically constitutive entities, which retain the core semantics of the knowledge graph. We propose a formulation as well as algorithmic solutions to minimize the reconstitution errors. The derived constitutive nodes are validated empirically both in …

The Heterogeneous Vehicle Routing Problem With Multiple Time Windows For The E-Waste Collection Problem, Aldy Gunawan, Minh P.K Nguyen, Vincent F. Yu, Dang Viet Anh Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) or e-waste describes end-of-life electronic products that are discarded. Due to their toxic and negative impacts to humans' health, many publications have been proposed to handle, however, studies related to e-waste collection and transportation to waste disposal sites are not widely studied so far. This study proposes a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to solve the e-waste collecting problem by formulating it as the heterogeneous vehicle routing problem with multiple time windows (HVRPMTW). The model is validated with newly developed benchmark instances that are solved by commercial software, CPLEX. The model is …

An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search For Heterogeneous Vehicle Routing Problem With Time Windows, Minh Pham Kien Nguyen, Aldy Gunawan, Vincent F. Yu, Mustafa Misir

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The heterogeneous vehicle routing problem with time windows (HVRPTW) employs various vehicles with different capacities to serve upcoming pickup and delivery orders. We introduce a HVRPTW variant for reflecting the practical needs of crowd-shipping by considering the mass-rapid-transit stations, as the additional terminal points. A mixed integer linear programming model is formulated. An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search based meta-heuristic is also developed by utilizing a basic probabilistic selection strategy, i.e. roulette wheel, and Simulated Annealing. The proposed approach is empirically evaluated on a new set of benchmark instances. The computational results revealed that ALNS shows its clear advantage on the …