Digital Commons Network^™

Lgmdd1 Natural History And Phenotypic Spectrum: Implications For Clinical Trials, Andrew R Findlay, Sarah E Robinson, Stephanie Poelker, Michelle Seiffert, Rocio Bengoechea, Conrad C Weihl

2020-Current year OA Pubs

OBJECTIVE: To delineate the full phenotypic spectrum and characterize the natural history of limb girdle muscular dystrophy type D1 (LGMDD1).

METHODS: We extracted age at clinical events of interest contributing to LGMDD1 disease burden via a systematic literature and chart review. Manual muscle testing and quantitative dynamometry data were used to estimate annualized rates of change. We also conducted a cross-sectional observational study using previously validated patient-reported outcome assessments (ACTIVLIM, PROMIS-57) and a new LGMDD1 questionnaire. Some individuals underwent repeat ACTIVLIM and LGMDD1 questionnaire assessments at 1.5 and 2.5 years.

RESULTS: A total of 122 LGMDD1 patients were included from …

Vol 68 #1, Melanie Argo

MPLA Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Early Intervention And Intensive Management Of Patients With Diabetes, Cardiorenal, And Metabolic Diseases, Yehuda Handelsman, Samuel Klein, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Increasing rates of obesity and diabetes have driven corresponding increases in related cardiorenal and metabolic diseases. In many patients, these conditions occur together, further increasing morbidity and mortality risks to the individual. Yet all too often, the risk factors for these disorders are not addressed promptly in clinical practice, leading to irreversible pathologic progression. To address this gap, we convened a Task Force of experts in cardiology, nephrology, endocrinology, and primary care to develop recommendations for early identification and intervention in obesity, diabetes, and other cardiorenal and metabolic diseases. The recommendations include screening and diagnosis, early interventions with lifestyle, and …

Human Cardiac Pericytes Are Susceptible To Sars-Cov-2 Infection, Brittany D Brumback, Oleksandr Dmytrenko, Ashley N Robinson, Adam L Bailey, Pan Ma, Jing Liu, Stephanie C Hicks, Sherwin Ng, Gang Li, David M Zhang, Catherine E Lipovsky, Chieh-Yu Lin, Michael S Diamond, Kory J Lavine, Stacey L Rentschler

2020-Current year OA Pubs

COVID-19 is associated with serious cardiovascular complications, with incompletely understood mechanism(s). Pericytes have key functions in supporting endothelial cells and maintaining vascular integrity. We demonstrate that human cardiac pericytes are permissive to SARS-CoV-2 infection in organotypic slice and primary cell cultures. Viral entry into pericytes is mediated by endosomal proteases, and infection leads to up-regulation of inflammatory markers, vasoactive mediators, and nuclear factor kappa-B-dependent cell death. Furthermore, we present evidence of cardiac pericyte infection in COVID-19 myocarditis patients. These data demonstrate that human cardiac pericytes are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and suggest a role for pericyte infection in COVID-19.

The Impact Of School-Based Intervention For Overweight And Obese 9-13-Year-Olds On Anthropometry, Nutrition Knowledge, Attitudes, Selfefficacy And Dietary Behaviors, Sara Zuarub

Dissertations

Childhood obesity has emerged as a significant public health concern in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study evaluated the effects of school-based nutrition education on knowledge, attitude, dietary practices, self-efficacy, and anthropometric measurements of overweight and obese school children aged 9-13 years. Additionally, the parents' perceptions on factors contributing to childhood obesity were examined. A 6-month intervention program based on Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) was undertaken by children from 36 public schools located in Dubai and Sharjah emirates, UAE. The overweight/obese school children (n = 403) were classified into three categories, including two intervention groups (1 and 2) and …

Proposal For And Validation Of Novel Risk-Based Process To Reduce The Risk Of Construction Site Fatalities (Major Accident Prevention (Map) Program), Roberta Selleck, Marcus Cattani, Maureen Hassall

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Despite developments in the prevention of fatalities in the construction industry, fatalities resulting from well-known hazards continue at an unacceptable rate. Construction fatality prevention literature describes risk management techniques to provide ‘early warning’ of potential events. In dynamic construction project environments, these ‘early warnings’ are missed resulting in serious and fatal events. Critical Control Risk Management (CCRM) provides an alternative strategy to prevent fatal events in the construction industry. However, no research exists that explores the application of CCRM to actual construction projects. This study aims to design, develop, and validate a construction fatality prevention program using CCRM principles through …

Swiss National Bank (Snb). 2023. ""Foreign Exchange Rates- Swiss National Bank Dataset Containing Interest And Exchange Rates., Swiss National Bank

Documents

No abstract provided.

Motor Cortical Excitability And Pre-Supplementary Motor Area Neurochemistry In Healthy Adults With Substantia Nigra Hyperechogenicity, Gabrielle Todd, Caroline D. Rae, Janet L. Taylor, Nigel C. Rogasch, Jane E. Butler, Michael Hayes, Robert A. Wilcox, Simon C. Gandevia, Karl Aoun, Adrian Esterman, Simon J. G. Lewis, Julie M. Hall, Elie Matar, Jana Godau, Daniela Berg, Christian Plewnia, Anna-Katharina Von Thaler, Clarence Chiang, Kay L. Double

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Substantia nigra (SN) hyperechogenicity, viewed with transcranial ultrasound, is a risk marker for Parkinson's disease. We hypothesized that SN hyperechogenicity in healthy adults aged 50 – 70 years is associated with reduced short-interval intracortical inhibition in primary motor cortex, and that the reduced intracortical inhibition is associated with neurochemical markers of activity in the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA). Short-interval intracortical inhibition and intracortical facilitation in primary motor cortex was assessed with paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation in 23 healthy adults with normal (n = 14; 61 ± 7 yrs) or abnormally enlarged (hyperechogenic; n = 9; 60 ± 6 yrs) area …

Layout Generation As Intermediate Action Sequence Prediction, Huiting Yang, Danqing Huang, Chin-Yew Lin, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Layout generation plays a crucial role in graphic design intelligence. One important characteristic of the graphic layouts is that they usually follow certain design principles. For example, the principle of repetition emphasizes the reuse of similar visual elements throughout the design. To generate a layout, previous works mainly attempt at predicting the absolute value of bounding box for each element, where such target representation has hidden the information of higher-order design operations like repetition (e.g. copy the size of the previously generated element). In this paper, we introduce a novel action schema to encode these operations for better modeling the …

Generalizing Math Word Problem Solvers Via Solution Diversification, Zhenwen Liang, Jipeng Zhang, Lei Wang, Yan Wang, Jie Shao, Xiangliang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Current math word problem (MWP) solvers are usually Seq2Seq models trained by the (one-problem; one-solution) pairs, each of which is made of a problem description and a solution showing reasoning flow to get the correct answer. However, one MWP problem naturally has multiple solution equations. The training of an MWP solver with (one-problem; one-solution) pairs excludes other correct solutions, and thus limits the generalizability of the MWP solver. One feasible solution to this limitation is to augment multiple solutions to a given problem. However, it is difficult to collect diverse and accurate augment solutions through human efforts. In this paper, …

Planning And Learning For Non-Markovian Negative Side Effects Using Finite State Controllers, Aishwarya Srivastava, Sandhya Saisubramanian, Praveen Paruchuri, Akshat Kumar, Shlomo Zilberstein

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Autonomous systems are often deployed in the open world where it is hard to obtain complete specifications of objectives and constraints. Operating based on an incomplete model can produce negative side effects (NSEs), which affect the safety and reliability of the system. We focus on mitigating NSEs in environments modeled as Markov decision processes (MDPs). First, we learn a model of NSEs using observed data that contains state-action trajectories and severity of associated NSEs. Unlike previous works that associate NSEs with state-action pairs, our framework associates NSEs with entire trajectories, which is more general and captures non-Markovian dependence on states …

Genetic And Environmental Variation In Continuous Phenotypes In The Abcd Study®, Hermine H M Maes, Dana M Lapato, J Eric Schmitt, Monica Luciana, Marie T Banich, James M Bjork, John K Hewitt, Pamela A Madden, Andrew C Heath, Deanna M Barch, Wes K Thompson, William G Iacono, Michael C Neale

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Twin studies yield valuable insights into the sources of variation, covariation and causation in human traits. The ABCD Study® (abcdstudy.org) was designed to take advantage of four universities known for their twin research, neuroimaging, population-based sampling, and expertise in genetic epidemiology so that representative twin studies could be performed. In this paper we use the twin data to: (i) provide initial estimates of heritability for the wide range of phenotypes assessed in the ABCD Study using a consistent direct variance estimation approach, assuring that both data and methodology are sound; and (ii) provide an online resource for researchers that can …

Clinical Importance Of Clonal Hematopoiesis In Metastatic Gastrointestinal Tract Cancers, Bill H Diplas, Kelly Bolton, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

IMPORTANCE: Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) has been associated with development of atherosclerosis and leukemia and worse survival among patients with cancer; however, the association with cancer therapy efficacy, in particular immune checkpoint blockade (ICB), and toxicity has not yet been established. Given the widespread use of ICB and the critical role hematopoietic stem cell-derived lymphocytes play in mediating antitumor responses, CH may be associated with therapeutic efficacy and hematologic toxicity.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the association between CH and outcomes, hematologic toxicity, and therapeutic efficacy in patients with metastatic gastrointestinal tract cancers being treated with systemic therapy, both in the first-line metastatic …

Southern Educator, Georgia Southern University

College of Education: News & Publications (2003-2023)

Certification now Easier for Paraprofessionals

COE Earns CAEP Accreditation

Undergraduate Assists in District-wide Project Eaglet

Building Beautiful Bridges over Educational Gaps

Functional And Clinical Studies Reveal Pathophysiological Complexity Of Clcn4-Related Neurodevelopmental Condition, Elizabeth E Palmer, Linda J Richards, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Missense and truncating variants in the X-chromosome-linked CLCN4 gene, resulting in reduced or complete loss-of-function (LOF) of the encoded chloride/proton exchanger ClC-4, were recently demonstrated to cause a neurocognitive phenotype in both males and females. Through international clinical matchmaking and interrogation of public variant databases we assembled a database of 90 rare CLCN4 missense variants in 90 families: 41 unique and 18 recurrent variants in 49 families. For 43 families, including 22 males and 33 females, we collated detailed clinical and segregation data. To confirm causality of variants and to obtain insight into disease mechanisms, we investigated the effect on …

The Diagnosis Of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency: Implementation Of The Pidtc 2022 Definitions, Christopher C Dvorak, Jeffrey J Bednarski, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Shearer et al in 2014 articulated well-defined criteria for the diagnosis and classification of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) as part of the Primary Immune Deficiency Treatment Consortium's (PIDTC's) prospective and retrospective studies of SCID.

OBJECTIVE: Because of the advent of newborn screening for SCID and expanded availability of genetic sequencing, revision of the PIDTC 2014 Criteria was needed.

METHODS: We developed and tested updated PIDTC 2022 SCID Definitions by analyzing 379 patients proposed for prospective enrollment into Protocol 6901, focusing on the ability to distinguish patients with various SCID subtypes.

RESULTS: According to PIDTC 2022 Definitions, 18 of 353 …

Urban Air Mobility (Uam) Flight Path: Literature Review And Conceptual Design Of Uam Corridor Virtual Lane System Using “Tracks”, Immanuel Bankole

Student Works

As the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) industry grows and becomes more popular, most of the conversations in the public domain are focused on the (electric Vertical Take-off and Landing) eVTOL aircraft and the physical infrastructure that will support these eVTOL aircraft. However, there is a lack of research on UAM traffic management and flight paths taken by aircraft between locations.

The United States (U.S.) Federal Aviation Administration has proposed the use of corridors to minimize the interaction between UAM operations and traditional air traffic as eVTOL aircraft perform flight activities. The government also acknowledges the need for additional structures (such …

Steering Particles Via Micro-Actuation Of Chemical Gradients Using Model Predictive Control, Mark N. Mcdonald, Cameron K. Peterson, Douglas R. Tree

Faculty Publications

Biological systems rely on chemical gradients to direct motion through both chemotaxis and signaling, but synthetic approaches for doing the same are still relatively naïve. Consequently, we present a novel method for using chemical gradients to manipulate the position and velocity of colloidal particles in a microfluidic device. Specifically, we show that a set of spatially localized chemical reactions that are sufficiently controllable can be used to steer colloidal particles via diffusiophoresis along an arbitrary trajectory. To accomplish this, we develop a control method for steering colloidal particles with chemical gradients using nonlinear model predictive control with a model based …

Forgotten Brother Reuben Lewis: Missouri River Fur Trader And Indian Agent For The Arkansas Cherokees, Jay H. Buckley, Deveney Reber

Faculty Publications

Reuben Lewis was born in 1777, the fourth and youngest child of William Lewis and Lucy Meriwether. Their oldest child, Jane, married and lived out her days at Locust Hill, the family estate in Virginia. The Lewis’ second child, baby Lucinda, died in infancy. Their third child, Meriwether – the closest in age and friendship to Reuben – became the famous first half of the Lewis and Clark Expedition which explored the uncharted West before he met his tragic and mysterious death on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. While Reuben’s life has been rightly overshadowed by his older brother Meriwether’s …

Ash Aerosol Particle Size Distribution, Composition, And Deposition Behavior While Co-Firing Coal And Steam-Exploded Biomass In A 1.5 Mwth Combustor, Rajarshi Roy, Brian Schooff, Xiaolong Li, Scott Montgomery, Jacob Tuttle, Jost O.L. Wendt, Kingsley Dickson, Brian Iverson, Andrew R. Fry

Faculty Publications

Five different blends of Utah bituminous coal and steam-exploded pine (100/0, 75/25, 50/50, 25/75, 0/100 by mass) were fired in a 1.5 MWth combustor. Primary objectives were to understand mineral matter behavior by analyzing aerosol size distribution, aerosol size-segregated composition, ash deposition mass, and ash composition. For particle size < 0.1 μm, pure coal had the lowest aerosol concentration and pure biomass showed the highest (higher nucleation of potassium salts), a trend which reversed for particles >0.1 μm. During pure biomass combustion, aerosol particles >15 μm contained higher mass fractions of potassium (+126%), calcium (+132%), and iron (+115%) and lower fractions of aluminum (−49%) and silicon (−29%) than pure coal. Ash deposition mass decreased with increasing biomass blends. …

Future Aware Pricing And Matching For Sustainable On-Demand Ride Pooling, Xianjie Zhang, Pradeep Varakantham, Hao Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The popularity of on-demand ride pooling is owing to the benefits offered to customers (lower prices), taxi drivers (higher revenue), environment (lower carbon footprint due to fewer vehicles) and aggregation companies like Uber (higher revenue). To achieve these benefits, two key interlinked challenges have to be solved effectively: (a) pricing – setting prices to customer requests for taxis; and (b) matching – assignment of customers (that accepted the prices) to taxis/cars. Traditionally, both these challenges have been studied individually and using myopic approaches (considering only current requests), without considering the impact of current matching on addressing future requests. In this …

Faculty And Student Perceptions Of Mentoring Development Of Preservice K-8 Teachers’ Mathematical And Professional Identities, Eryn M. Maher, Ha Nguyen, Tuyin An, Gregory Chamblee

College of Science & Mathematics: Faculty Presentations

No abstract provided.

Human-Centered Ai For Software Engineering: Requirements, Reflection, And Road Ahead, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Since its inception in the 2000s, AI for Software Engineering (AI4SE) has grown rapidly. AI in its different forms, e.g., data mining, information retrieval, machine learning, natural language processing, etc., has been demonstrated to be able to produce good results for automating many tasks, including specification mining, bug and vulnerability discovery, bug localization, duplicate bug report identification, failure detection, program repair, technical question answering, code search, and many more. AI4SE has much potential to improve software engineers’ productivity and software quality. Due to its potential, it is currently one of the most popular research areas in the software engineering field.To …

An Empirical Study Of Package Management Issues Via Stack Overflow, Syful Islam, Raula Kula, Christoph Treude, Bodin Chinthanet, Takashi Ishio, Kenichi Matsumoto

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The package manager (PM) is crucial to most technology stacks, acting as a broker to ensure that a verified dependency package is correctly installed, configured, or removed from an application. Diversity in technology stacks has led to dozens of PMs with various features. While our recent study indicates that package management features of PM are related to end-user experiences, it is unclear what those issues are and what information is required to resolve them. In this paper, we have investigated PM issues faced by end-users through an empirical study of content on Stack Overflow (SO). We carried out a qualitative …

The Ntpase Activity Of The Double Fyve Domain-Containing Protein 1 Regulates Lipid Droplet Metabolism., Victoria A. Ismail, Teri Naismith, David J. Kast

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Lipid droplets (LDs) are transient lipid storage organelles that can be readily tapped to resupply cells with energy or lipid building blocks and therefore play a central role in cellular metabolism. However, the molecular factors and underlying mechanisms that regulate the growth and degradation of LDs are poorly understood. It has emerged that proteins that establish contacts between LDs and the endoplasmic reticulum play a critical role in regulating LD metabolism. Recently, the autophagy-related protein, double FYVE domain-containing protein 1 (DFCP1/ZFYVE1) was shown to reside at the interface of the endoplasmic reticulum and LDs, however, little is known about the …

Solving Large-Scale Pursuit-Evasion Games Using Pre-Trained Strategies, Shuxin Li, Xinrun Wang, Youzhi Zhang, Wanqi Xue, Jakub Cerny, Bo An

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Pursuit-evasion games on graphs model the coordination of police forces chasing a fleeing felon in real-world urban settings, using the standard framework of imperfect-information extensive-form games (EFGs). In recent years, solving EFGs has been largely dominated by the Policy-Space Response Oracle (PSRO) methods due to their modularity, scalability, and favorable convergence properties. However, even these methods quickly reach their limits when facing large combinatorial strategy spaces of the pursuit-evasion games. To improve their efficiency, we integrate the pre-training and fine-tuning paradigm into the core module of PSRO -- the repeated computation of the best response. First, we pre-train the pursuer's …

Bidding Graph Games With Partially-Observable Budgets, Guy Avni, Ismael Jecker, Dorde Zikelic

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Two-player zero-sum graph games are a central model, which proceeds as follows. A token is placed on a vertex of a graph, and the two players move it to produce an infinite play, which determines the winner or payoff of the game. Traditionally, the players alternate turns in moving the token. In bidding games, however, the players have budgets and in each turn, an auction (bidding) determines which player moves the token. So far, bidding games have only been studied as fullinformation games. In this work we initiate the study of partial-information bidding games: we study bidding games in which …

Learning Control Policies For Stochastic Systems With Reach-Avoid Guarantees, Dorde Zikelic, Mathias Lechner, A. Thomas Henzinger, Krishnendu Chatterjee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We study the problem of learning controllers for discrete-time non-linear stochastic dynamical systems with formal reach-avoid guarantees. This work presents the first method for providing formal reach-avoid guarantees, which combine and generalize stability and safety guarantees, with a tolerable probability threshold p ∈ [0,1] over the infinite time horizon in general Lipschitz continuous systems. Our method leverages advances in machine learning literature and it represents formal certificates as neural networks. In particular, we learn a certificate in the form of a reach-avoid supermartingale (RASM), a novel notion that we introduce in this work. Our RASMs provide reachability and avoidance guarantees …

Ubs In The World: 1929–1934, Union Bank Of Switzerland (Ubs)

Documents

No abstract provided.

On Generalized Degree Fairness In Graph Neural Networks, Zemin Liu, Trung Kien Nguyen, Yuan Fang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Conventional graph neural networks (GNNs) are often confronted with fairness issues that may stem from their input, including node attributes and neighbors surrounding a node. While several recent approaches have been proposed to eliminate the bias rooted in sensitive attributes, they ignore the other key input of GNNs, namely the neighbors of a node, which can introduce bias since GNNs hinge on neighborhood structures to generate node representations. In particular, the varying neighborhood structures across nodes, manifesting themselves in drastically different node degrees, give rise to the diverse behaviors of nodes and biased outcomes. In this paper, we first define …