Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Use Of Healthcare Utilization Records For Analyzing Trends In Clinical Toxoplasmosis: A Comparison Of Nevada And The United States, Elijah Kreutzer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Toxoplasmosis, a zoonotic disease caused by the parasitic protist Toxoplasma gondii, is a ubiquitous, global public health concern with a wide variety of clinical manifestations. Surveillance for the disease is lacking even in developed countries, and what surveillance is present most often focuses on pregnant women. This research investigated trends in clinical toxoplasmosis in Nevada and nationally to address the lack of knowledge concerning how Nevada discharges compare to national discharges in cases of toxoplasmosis. Specifically, this research sought to determine what characterizes toxoplasmosis in Nevada across inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department settings, as well as how these cases differ …

Are We Building Back Better?, Fabian M. Dayrit

Chemistry Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Generative Adversarial Networks In Bioimage Analysis And Computational Diagnostics., Ahmed Naglah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Computational technologies can contribute to the modeling and simulation of the biological environments and activities towards achieving better interpretations, analysis, and understanding. With the emergence of digital pathology, we can observe an increasing demand for more innovative, effective, and efficient computational models. Under the umbrella of artificial intelligence, deep learning mimics the brain’s way in learn complex relationships through data and experiences. In the field of bioimage analysis, models usually comprise discriminative approaches such as classification and segmentation tasks. In this thesis, we study how we can use generative AI models to improve bioimage analysis tasks using Generative Adversarial Networks …

Smartphone As An Edge For Context-Aware Real-Time Processing For Personal E-Health, Muhammad Bangash

University Honors Program Senior Projects

The medical domain is facing an ongoing challenge of how patients can share their health information and timeline with healthcare providers. This involves secure sharing, diverse data types, and formats reported by healthcare-related devices. A multilayer framework can address these challenges in the context of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). This framework utilizes smartphone sensors, external services, and medical devices that measure vital signs and communicate such real-time data with smartphones. The smartphone serves as an “edge device” to visualize, analyze, store, and report context- aware data to the cloud layer. Focusing on medical device connectivity, mobile security, data …

Measuring The Economic Impact Of Recurrent Flooding On Workforce Productivity And Property, Joshua G. Behr, Wie Yusuf, George Mcleod, Sarah Stafford, Derek Loftis, Afi Anuar, Rafael Diaz

Presentations, Lectures, Posters, Reports

From the Executive Summary:

This research draws upon expertise across multiple disciplines and fields. Leveraged are natural systems data and social-behavioral data. The high-level objective is to advance our understanding of how very recent recurrent flooding has impacted residents within the City of Portsmouth, and then forecast these impacts under projections of sea level rise. While this research draws upon data for the City of Portsmouth, the findings may be generalized to the broader Hampton Roads region.

A Systematic Approach To Configuring Metamap For Optimal Performance, Xia Jing, Akash Indani, Nina Hubig, Hua Min, Yang Gong, James J Cimino, Dean F Sittig, Lior Rennert, David Robinson, Paul Biondich, Adam Wright, Christian Nøhr, Timothy Law, Arild Faxvaag, Ronald Gimbel

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: MetaMap is a valuable tool for processing biomedical texts to identify concepts. Although MetaMap is highly configurative, configuration decisions are not straightforward.

OBJECTIVE: To develop a systematic, data-driven methodology for configuring MetaMap for optimal performance.

METHODS: MetaMap, the word2vec model, and the phrase model were used to build a pipeline. For unsupervised training, the phrase and word2vec models used abstracts related to clinical decision support as input. During testing, MetaMap was configured with the default option, one behavior option, and two behavior options. For each configuration, cosine and soft cosine similarity scores between identified entities and gold-standard terms were …

Intraoperative Localization And Preservation Of Reading In Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex, Oscar Woolnough, Kathryn M Snyder, Cale W Morse, Meredith J Mccarty, Samden D Lhatoo, Nitin Tandon

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

OBJECTIVE: Resective surgery in language-dominant ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC) carries the risk of causing impairment to reading. Because it is not on the lateral surface, it is not easily accessible for intraoperative mapping, and extensive stimulation mapping can be time-consuming. Here the authors assess the feasibility of using task-based electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings intraoperatively to help guide stimulation mapping of reading in vOTC.

METHODS: In 11 patients undergoing extraoperative, intracranial seizure mapping, the authors recorded induced broadband gamma activation (70-150 Hz) during a visual category localizer. In 2 additional patients, whose pathologies necessitated resections in language-dominant vOTC, task-based functional mapping was …

Identifying Missing Is-A Relations In Orphanet Rare Disease Ontology, Maryamsadat Mohtashamian, Rashmie Abeysinghe, Xubing Hao, Licong Cui

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The Orphanet Rare Disease Ontology (ORDO) provides a structured vocabulary encapsulating rare diseases. Downstream applications of ORDO depend on its accuracy to effectively perform their tasks. In this paper, we implement an automated quality assurance pipeline to identify missing is-a relations in ORDO. We first obtain lexical features from concept names. Then we generate related and unrelated feature sharing concept-pairs, where a feature sharing concept-pair can further generate derived term-pairs. If an unrelated and related feature sharing concept-pair generate the same derived term-pair, then we suggest a potential missing is-a relation between the unrelated feature sharing concept-pair. Applying this approach …

Estimating The Distribution Of Ratio Of Paired Event Times In Phase Ii Oncology Trials, Li Chen, Mark Burkard, Jianrong Wu, Jill M. Kolesar, Chi Wang

Markey Cancer Center Faculty Publications

With the rapid development of new anti-cancer agents which are cytostatic, new endpoints are needed to better measure treatment efficacy in phase II trials. For this purpose, Von Hoff (1998) proposed the growth modulation index (GMI), that is, the ratio between times to progression or progression-free survival times in two successive treatment lines. An essential task in studies using GMI as an endpoint is to estimate the distribution of GMI. Traditional methods for survival data have been used for estimating the GMI distribution because censoring is common for GMI data. However, we point out that the independent censoring assumption required …

Divergent Serpentoviruses In Free-Ranging Invasive Pythons And Native Colubrids In Southern Florida, United States, Steven B. Tillis, Jillian M. Josimovich, Melissa A. Miller, Laura L. Hoon-Hanks, Arik M. Hartmann, Natalie M. Claunch, Marley E. Iredale, Tracey D. Logan, Amy A. Yackel Adams, Ian A. Bartoszek, John S. Humphrey, Bryan M. Kluever, Mark D. Stenglein, Robert N. Reed, Christina M. Romagosa, James F.X. Wellehan, Robert J. Ossiboff

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Burmese python (Python bivittatus) is an invasive snake that has significantly affected ecosystems in southern Florida, United States. Aside from direct predation and competition, invasive species can also introduce nonnative pathogens that can adversely affect native species. The subfamily Serpentovirinae (order Nidovirales) is composed of positive-sense RNA viruses primarily found in reptiles. Some serpentoviruses, such as shingleback nidovirus, are associated with mortalities in wild populations, while others, including ball python nidovirus and green tree python nidovirus can be a major cause of disease and mortality in captive animals. To determine if serpentoviruses were present in invasive Burmese …

Quantifying The Magnitude Of To Tal Dose Deviation Caused By Various Sources Of Error Among Iroc Phantom Irradiation Results, Sharbacha S. Edward

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The Imaging and Radiation Oncology Core (IROC) phantoms are used as an end-to-end test of an institution’s radiotherapy processes, and for clinical trial credentialing. Phantoms are treated like patients, and evaluation of the doses received by the thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) inside the phantom, reflects the accuracy with which an institution can image, plan and irradiate a phantom or patient. Recent phantom results show that among the hundreds of various IROC phantoms irradiated annually, 8-17% of institutions fail this test. The purpose of this work was to investigate the various types of errors that may occur during the treatment process and …

Infrastructure Development For Personalized Risk Prediction To Reduce Cardiovascular Disease In Childhood Cancer Survivors, Suman Shrestha

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Although childhood cancer survivors have lengthy life expectancies, they run the risk of experiencing long-term health issues as a result of their treatment. The most frequent non-cancerous cause of morbidity and mortality for these survivors is cardiac disease. Radiation therapy (RT) has been linked in numerous cohort studies to a higher chance of developing a late cardiac disease in these survivors, and this risk rises with higher mean heart doses and increased RT exposure to larger cardiac volumes. Since, the heart is a heterogeneous organ made up of several distinct substructures, RT dose received by the entire heart does not …

Transcriptomic Profiling Of Trypanosoma Congolense Mouthpart Parasites From Naturally Infected Flies, Sara Silva Pereira, Kawira Mathenge, Daniel Masiga, Andrew Jackson

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Background: Animal African trypanosomiasis, or nagana, is a veterinary disease caused by African trypanosomes transmitted by tsetse flies. In Africa, Trypanosoma congolense is one of the most pathogenic and prevalent causes of nagana in livestock, resulting in high animal morbidity and mortality and extensive production losses. In the tsetse fly, parasites colonise the midgut and eventually reach the mouthparts, from where they can be transmitted as the fly feeds on vertebrate hosts such as cattle. Despite the extreme importance of mouthpart-form parasites for disease transmission, very few global expression profile studies have been conducted in these parasite forms. Methods: Here, …

A Bootstrap Method For A Multiple-Imputation Variance Estimator In Survey Sampling, Lili Yu, Yichuan Zhao

Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Environmental Health Sciences: Faculty Publications

Rubin’s variance estimator of the multiple imputation estimator for a domain mean is not asymptotically unbiased. Kim et al. derived the closed-form bias for Rubin’s variance estimator. In addition, they proposed an asymptotically unbiased variance estimator for the multiple imputation estimator when the imputed values can be written as a linear function of the observed values. However, this needs the assumption that the covariance of the imputed values in the same imputed dataset is twice that in the different imputed datasets. In this study, we proposed a bootstrap variance estimator that does not need this assumption. Both theoretical argument and …

Nexus Between Animal Welfare, Environment, And Sustainable Development: Resource Document, Wellbeing International

Nexus – UNEP – Animal Welfare, Environment, Sustainable Development

This Resource Document has been developed to explore the Nexus (links) between Animal Welfare, the Environment, and Sustainable Development. The document includes relevant citations and reports addressing the topics encompassed by the Nexus. It will be maintained as a “living document” (subject to revision) in the WellBeing International Studies Repository. The original document and subsequent revisions will be kept in the Repository to provide a record of the changes.

A Multiple Input Multiple Output Framework For The Automatic Optical Fractionator-Based Cell Counting In Z-Stacks Using Deep Learning, Palak Dave

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Quantifying cells in a defined region of biological tissue is critical for many clinical and preclinical studies, especially in pathology, toxicology, cancer, and behavior. Unbiased stereology is the state-of-art method for quantification of the total number and other morphometric parameters of stained objects in a defined region of biological tissue. As part of a program to develop accurate, precise, and more efficient automatic approaches for quantifying morphometric changes in biological tissue, our group has shown that both deep learning-based and hand-crafted algorithms can estimate the total number of histologically stained cells at their maximal profile of focus in extended depth …

Pandemic Fatigue Impedes Mitigation Of Covid-19 In Hong Kong, Zhanwei Du, Lin Wang, Songwei Shan, Dickson Lam, Tim K. Tsang, Jingyi Xiao, Huizhi Gao, Bingyi Yang, Sheikh Taslim Ali, Sen Pei, Isaac Chun-Hai Fung, Eric H. Y. Lau, Qiuyan Liao, Peng Wu, Lauren Ancel Meyers, Gabriel M. Leung, Benjamin Cowling

Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Environmental Health Sciences: Faculty Publications

Hong Kong has implemented stringent public health and social measures (PHSMs) to curb each of the four COVID-19 epidemic waves since January 2020. The third wave between July and September 2020 was brought under control within 2 m, while the fourth wave starting from the end of October 2020 has taken longer to bring under control and lasted at least 5 mo. Here, we report the pandemic fatigue as one of the potential reasons for the reduced impact of PHSMs on transmission in the fourth wave. We contacted either 500 or 1,000 local residents through weekly random-digit dialing of landlines …

Association Between The Health Belief Model, Exercise, And Nutrition Behaviors During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Keagan Kiely, Bill Mase, Andrew R. Hansen, Jessica S. Schwind

Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Environmental Health Sciences: Faculty Publications

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our nation’s health further than the infection it causes. Physical activity levels and dietary intake have suffered while individuals grapple with the changes in behavior to reduce viral transmission. With unique nuances regarding the access to physical activity and nutrition during the pandemic, the constructs of Health Belief Model (HBM) may present themselves differently in nutrition and exercise behaviors compared to precautions implemented to reduce viral transmission studied in previous research. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent of exercise and nutritional behavior change during the COVID-19 pandemic and explain the …

Privacy-Aware Estimation Of Relatedness In Admixed Populations, Su Wang, Miran Kim, Wentao Li, Xiaoqian Jiang, Han Chen, Arif Harmanci

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Estimation of genetic relatedness, or kinship, is used occasionally for recreational purposes and in forensic applications. While numerous methods were developed to estimate kinship, they suffer from high computational requirements and often make an untenable assumption of homogeneous population ancestry of the samples. Moreover, genetic privacy is generally overlooked in the usage of kinship estimation methods. There can be ethical concerns about finding unknown familial relationships in third-party databases. Similar ethical concerns may arise while estimating and reporting sensitive population-level statistics such as inbreeding coefficients for the concerns around marginalization and stigmatization.

RESULTS: Here, we present SIGFRIED, which makes …

Laboratory Evaluation And Field Feasibility Of Micro-Encapsulated Insecticide Effect On Rhodnius Prolixus And Triatoma Dimidiata Mortality In Rural Households In Boyaca, Colombia, Lidia Gual-Gonzalez, Manuel Medina, Cesar Valverde-Castro, Virgilio Beltran, Rodrigo Caro, Omar Triana-Chavez, Melissa Nolan Ph.D., Mph, Omar Cantillo-Barraza

Faculty Publications

Chagas disease is a neglected vector-borne zoonosis caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi that is primarily transmitted by insects of the subfamily Triatominae. Although control efforts targeting domestic infestations of Rhodnius prolixus have been largely successful, with several regions in Boyacá department certified free of T. cruzi transmission by intradomicile R. prolixus, novel native species are emerging, increasing the risk of disease. Triatoma dimidiata is the second most important species in Colombia, and conventional control methods seem to be less effective. In this study we evaluated the efficacy and usefulness of micro-encapsulated insecticide paints in laboratory conditions and its …

A Review Of Risk Concepts And Models For Predicting The Risk Of Primary Stroke, Elizabeth Hunter, John D. Kelleher

Articles

Predicting an individual's risk of primary stroke is an important tool that can help to lower the burden of stroke for both the individual and society. There are a number of risk models and risk scores in existence but no review or classification designed to help the reader better understand how models differ and the reasoning behind these differences. In this paper we review the existing literature on primary stroke risk prediction models. From our literature review we identify key similarities and differences in the existing models. We find that models can differ in a number of ways, including the …

A Framework For Securing Edge Computing In Medical Devices, David Mcquaid

HECA Research Conference

Edge computing brings data collection, processing and analysis closer to data sources, either enabling execution within devices themselves or outsourcing to local servers and data centres instead of central locations The basic idea is to minimize data transmission time as much as possible and to leverage the implicit processing power that most IOT’s hardware possess.

Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics (Stem) Project-Based Learning (Pbl) Education: A New Mexico Case Study For Equity And Inclusion, Kimberly A. Scheerer

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

This research addresses how student participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) project-based learning (PBL) education activities encourages underrepresented minority student achievement in STEM career field trajectories. Seven New Mexico high school counselors and 12 STEM organization personnel were interviewed during this study. Their responses represent the nuanced professional voices where New Mexico public education intersects with STEM student interest and cultural influence.

For students, STEM PBL can foster deep integration across educational disciplines and enhance STEM career trajectory interest and readiness. STEM education converged with PBL methodologies has the ability to leverage community support while broadening student networks. …

The Evolving Privacy And Security Concerns For Genomic Data Analysis And Sharing As Observed From The Idash Competition, Tsung-Ting Kuo, Xiaoqian Jiang, Haixu Tang, Xiaofeng Wang, Arif Harmanci, Miran Kim, Kai Post, Diyue Bu, Tyler Bath, Jihoon Kim, Weijie Liu, Hongbo Chen, Lucila Ohno-Machado

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Concerns regarding inappropriate leakage of sensitive personal information as well as unauthorized data use are increasing with the growth of genomic data repositories. Therefore, privacy and security of genomic data have become increasingly important and need to be studied. With many proposed protection techniques, their applicability in support of biomedical research should be well understood. For this purpose, we have organized a community effort in the past 8 years through the integrating data for analysis, anonymization and sharing consortium to address this practical challenge. In this article, we summarize our experience from these competitions, report lessons learned from the events …

I-Climate: A “Clinical Climate Informatics” Action Framework To Reduce Environmental Pollution From Healthcare, Dean F Sittig, Jodi D Sherman, Matthew J Eckelman, Andrew Draper, Hardeep Singh

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Addressing environmental pollution and climate change is one of the biggest sociotechnical challenges of our time. While information technology has led to improvements in healthcare, it has also contributed to increased energy usage, destructive natural resource extraction, piles of e-waste, and increased greenhouse gases. We introduce a framework "Information technology-enabled Clinical cLimate InforMAtics acTions for the Environment" (i-CLIMATE) to illustrate how clinical informatics can help reduce healthcare's environmental pollution and climate-related impacts using 5 actionable components: (1) create a circular economy for health IT, (2) reduce energy consumption through smarter use of health IT, (3) support more environmentally friendly decision-making …

Physics-Informed Neural Networks For Informed Vaccine Distribution In Heterogeneously Mixed Populations, Alvan Arulandu, Padmanabhan Seshaiyer

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Humanizing Mathematical Biology Research And Education, Carrie Diaz Eaton, Ognyan Simeonov

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Vaccine Misinformation On Disease Spread, Anthony Delegge, Yina Wang

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

A Molecular Chemodosimeter To Probe “Closed Shell” Ions In Kidney Cells, Rashid Mia

Faculty Publications

Two quinidine-functionalized coumarin molecular probes have been synthesized and have been found to bind metal cations (Cd2+, Co2+, Cu2+, Fe2+, Hg2+, Ni2+, and Zn2+) with high affinity in organic–aqueous media (DMSO–HEPES). The chemodosimeters coordinate with the Zn2+ ions in a two-to-one ratio (molecular probe : Zn2+) with a log β of 10.0 M−2. Upon the addition of the closed-shell metal ions studied, a fluorescence turn-on via an excimer formation is seen at 542 nm due to the quinaldine moiety adopting a syn arrangement when coordinated to the metal Zn2+ ions. Confocal microscopy monitored free Zn2+ ions in the Human Embryonic …

Stochastic Models Of Zoonotic Avian Influenza With Multiple Hosts, Environmental Transmission, And Migration In The Natural Reservoir, Kaia Smith

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.