Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Mental Health Services Provision In Primary Care And Emergency Department Settings: Analysis Of Blended Fee-For-Service And Blended Capitation Models In Ontario, Canada., Thyna Vu, Kelly K Anderson, Nibene H Somé, Amardeep Thind, Sisira Sarma

Epidemiology and Biostatistics Publications

Treating mental illnesses in primary care is increasingly emphasized to improve access to mental health services. Although family physicians (FPs) or general practitioners are in an ideal position to provide the bulk of mental health care, it is unclear how best to remunerate FPs for the adequate provision of mental health services. We examined the quantity of mental health services provided in Ontario's blended fee-for-service and blended capitation models. We evaluated the impact of FPs switching from blended fee-for-service to blended capitation on the provision of mental health services in primary care and emergency department using longitudinal health administrative data …

Consulting Place As Stakeholder: Accessing The Input Of Ecological Community, Hunter Adkisson

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This is a project about how landscape architects approach the landscape in their design process. Indigenous worldviews hold that the world is living and animate in its own right. When we consider stakeholder engagement in this light, the need arises to extend the definition of stakeholders to include the ecological communities of place – the flora, fauna, soils, and other non-human elements of place. To gather that input, I experimented with techniques to access a greater awareness of ecological community at two sites with different levels of urbanity and types of land management practices. This experimental approach was surprisingly successful …

Leveraging Big Data For Pattern Recognition Of Socio-Demographic And Climatic Factors In Correlation With Eye Disorders In Telangana State, India, Amna Alalawi, Les Sztandera, Parth Lalakia, Anthony Vipin Das, Sai Prashanthi Gumpili, Richard Derman

Kanbar College Faculty Papers

Purpose: Big data is the new gold, especially in health care. Advances in collecting and processing electronic medical records (EMR) coupled with increasing computer capabilities have resulted in an increased interest in the use of big data in health care. Ophthalmology has been an area of focus where results have shown to be promising. The objective of this study was to determine whether the EMR at a multi-tier ophthalmology network in India can contribute to the management of patient care, through studying how climatic and socio-demographic factors relate to eye disorders and visual impairment in the State of Telangana.

Methods: …

Evaluation Of Circulating Levels Of Interleukin-10 And Interleukin-16 And Dietary Inflammatory Index In Lebanese Knee Osteoarthritis Patients, Zeina El-Ali, Germine El-Kassas, Fouad M. Ziade, Nitin Shivappa Mbbs, Mph, Ph.D., James Hébert Scd, Nisrine Bissar

Faculty Publications

Objectives

To investigate plasma concentrations of Interleukin-16 (IL-16) and Interleukin-10 (IL-10) in Lebanese knee osteoarthritis (KOA) patients and to examine the association between the diet-associated inflammation and increased risk for KOA.

Methods

A total of 208 study participants were assigned to one of the 3 groups: Diagnosed Knee Osteoarthritis group (DKOA) (N = 78); Undiagnosed Knee Osteoarthritis group (UKOA) (N = 60) and controls matched on age, sex and sociodemographic characteristics (N = 70). UKOA represents KOA features before they are altered by therapeutic intervention and lifestyle modifications that follow the diagnosis. Energy-adjusted dietary inflammatory index (E-DII™) scores were calculated …

Range-Wide Declines Of Northern Spotted Owl Populations In The Pacific Northwest: A Meta-Analysis, Alan B. Franklin, Katie M. Dugger, Damon B. Lesmeister, Raymond J. Davis, J. David Wiens, Gary C. White, James D. Nichols, James E. Hines, Charles B. Yackulic, Carl J. Schwarz, Steven H. Ackers, L. Steven Andrews, Larissa L. Bailey, Robin Bown, Jesse Burgher, Kenneth P. Burnham, Peter C. Carlson, Tara Chestnut, Mary M. Conner, Krista E. Dilione, Eric D. Forsman, Elizabeth M. Glenn, Scott A. Gremel, Keith A. Hamm, Dale R. Herter, J. Mark Higley, Rob B. Horn, Julianna M. Jenkins, William L. Kendall, David W. Lamphear, Christopher Mccafferty, Trent L. Mcdonald, Janice A. Reid, Jeremy T. Rockweit, David C. Simon, Stan G. Sovern, James K. Swingle, Heather Wise

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) inhabits older coniferous forests in the Pacific Northwest and has been at the center of forest management issues in this region. The immediate threats to this federally listed species include habitat loss and competition with barred owls (Strix varia), which invaded from eastern North America. We conducted a prospective meta-analysis to assess population trends and factors affecting those trends in northern spotted owls using 26 years of survey and capture-recapture data from 11 study areas across the owls' geographic range to analyze demographic traits, rates of population change, and occupancy parameters for spotted …

Determination Of Freedom-From-Rabies For Small Indian Mongoose Populations In The United States Virgin Islands, 2019–2020, A. Springer Browne, Hannah M. Cranford, Clint N. Morgan, James A. Ellison, Are Berentsen, Nicholas Wiese, Alexandra Medley, John Rossow, Leanne Jankelunas, Alan S. Mckinley, Claudia D. Lombard, Nicole F. Angeli, Thomas Kelley, Jennifer Valiulus, Bethany Bradford, Valicia J. Burke-France, Cosme J. Harrison, Irene Guendel, Marissa Taylor, Gerard L. Blanchard, Jeffrey B. Doty, David J. Worthington, David Horner, Keith R. Garcia, Joseph Roth, Brett R. Ellis, Kristine M. Bisgard, Ryan Wallace, Esther M. Ellis

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Mongooses, a nonnative species, are a known reservoir of rabies virus in the Caribbean region. A cross-sectional study of mongooses at 41 field sites on the US Virgin Islands of St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas captured 312 mongooses (32% capture rate). We determined the absence of rabies virus by antigen testing and rabies virus exposure by antibody testing in mongoose populations on all three islands. USVI is the first Caribbean state to determine freedom-from-rabies for its mongoose populations with a scientifically-led robust cross-sectional study. Ongoing surveillance activities will determine if other domestic and wildlife populations in USVI are …

Testing A Bite-Shortened Hook To Minimize Fish Handling In A Recreational Fishery, Holden E. Harris, Brian K. Whalen, Andrew G. Gude, Michael S. Allen

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Discard mortality can make fishing unsustainable, even in catch-and-release or highly regulated fisheries. However, fishing practices and gears that minimize hook injury, handling, and air exposure can considerably improve fitness and survival in released fish. This study tested whether modified hooks could allow anglers to successfully land and then release fish in the water and without handling. Standard, barbless, and bite-shortened hooks were used to catch Spotted Seatrout Cynoscion nebulosus (n > 75 per hook type), and logistic models were used to assess the differences in landing success and hook self-release success by hook type and categorical fish size. Average landing …

Landscape Of Stress: Tree Mortality Influences Physiological Stress And Survival In A Native Mesocarnivore, Jennifer R. Kordosky, Eric M. Gese, Craig M. Thompson, Patricia A. Terletzky, Lorin A. Neuman-Lee, Jon D. Schneiderman, Kathryn L. Purcell, Susannah S. French

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Climate change and anthropogenic modifications to the landscape can have both positive and negative effects on an animal. Linking landscape change to physiological stress and fitness of an animal is a fundamental tenet to be examined in applied ecology. Cortisol is a glucocorticoid hormone that can be used to indicate an animal’s physiological stress response. In the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, fishers (Pekania pennanti) are a threatened mesocarnivore that have been subjected to rapid landscape changes due to anthropogenic modifications and tree mortality related to a 4-year drought. We measured cortisol concentrations in the hair of 64 …

Risks Of Introduction And Economic Consequences Associated With African Swine Fever, Classical Swine Fever And Foot-And-Mouth Disease: A Review Of The Literature, Vienna Brown, Ryan S. Miller, Sophie C. Mckee, Karina H. Ernst, Nicole M. Didero, Rachel M. Maison, Meredith J. Grady, Stephanie A. Shwiff

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

African swine fever (ASF), classical swine fever (CSF) and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) are considered to be three of the most detrimental animal diseases and are currently foreign to the U.S. Emerging and re-emerging pathogens can have tremendous impacts in terms of livestock morbidity and mortality events, production losses, forced trade restrictions, and costs associated with treatment and control. The United States is the world's top producer of beef for domestic and export use and the world's third-largest producer and consumer of pork and pork products; it has also recently been either the world's largest or second largest exporter of pork …

Economic Losses Of Catfish To Avian Predation: A Case Report, Ganesh Kumar, Shraddha Hegde, David Wise, Charles Mischke, Brian Dorr

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Avian predation in catfish aquaculture has been a persistent issue throughout the history of the industry, and as production has expanded predation from piscivorous birds has intensified. Catfish ponds in the Mississippi River delta (in the Mississippi migratory flyway) provide a constant and readily accessible supply of forage for birds. Intensive foraging by fish-eating birds has led to a specific regulatory policy and numerous on-farm and regional management efforts. However, in 2016, legal challenges lead to recision of some federal policies and uncertainty as to allowable management, resulting in limitations on bird depredation. Estimating the extent of fish losses to …

Comparing Dietary Score Associations With Lipoprotein Particle Subclass Profiles: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of A Middle-To Older-Aged Population, Seán R. Millar, Pilar Navarro, Janas M. Harrington, Nitin Shivappa Mbbs, Mph, Ph.D., James Hébert Scd, Ivan J. Perry, Catherine M. Phillips

Faculty Publications

Background and objectives: Lipoprotein particle concentrations and size are associated with increased risk for atherosclerosis and premature cardiovascular disease. Studies also suggest that certain dietary behaviours may be cardioprotective. Limited comparative data regarding any dietary score/index-lipoprotein particle subclass associations exist. Thus, our objective was to assess relationships between the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), Health Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015), Mediterranean Diet (MD) and Energy-adjusted Dietary Inflammatory Index (E-DII™) scores and plasma lipids and lipoprotein profiles to test the hypothesis that healthier diet (better quality and more anti-inflammatory) would be associated with a more favourable lipoprotein profile.

Materials and methods: This …

Recent Advances In Network-Based Methods For Disease Gene Prediction, Sezin Kircali Ata, Min Wu, Yuan Fang, Ou-Yang Le, Chee Keong Kwoh, Xiao-Li Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Disease-gene association through Genome-wide association study (GWAS) is an arduous task for researchers. Investigating single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that correlate with specific diseases needs statistical analysis of associations. Considering the huge number of possible mutations, in addition to its high cost, another important drawback of GWAS analysis is the large number of false-positives. Thus, researchers search for more evidence to cross-check their results through different sources. To provide the researchers with alternative and complementary low-cost disease-gene association evidence, computational approaches come into play. Since molecular networks are able to capture complex interplay among molecules in diseases, they become one of …

Covid-19 Impact On Radiology Students’ Distance Learning (Summer 2021), Mary Lee, Jason Chan, Cheryann Jackson-Holmes, Renzo Marmolejo, Zoya Vinokur

Publications and Research

The Radiological Technology students have adjusted from the urgent distance learning that was enacted in the Spring of 2020, to the hybrid distance learning that is currently in place. This hybrid distance learning is the same way the incoming class of radiological technology students were taught. Both cohorts of students were tracked over the year by online anonymous surveys. We wanted to know how students were adapting to distance learning, if their focus and motivation varied over the course of the year due to changing pandemic conditions. For the students that were working, what impact did it have on their …

An Automated Method To Enrich And Expand Consumer Health Vocabularies Using Glove Word Embeddings, Mohammed Ibrahim

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clear language makes communication easier between any two parties. However, a layman may have difficulty communicating with a professional due to not understanding the specialized terms common to the domain. In healthcare, it is rare to find a layman knowledgeable in medical jargon, which can lead to poor understanding of their condition and/or treatment. To bridge this gap, several professional vocabularies and ontologies have been created to map laymen medical terms to professional medical terms and vice versa. Many of the presented vocabularies are built manually or semi-automatically requiring large investments of time and human effort and consequently the slow …

Analysis Of Genetic Variants Associated With Levels Of Immune Modulating Proteins For Impact On Alzheimer’S Disease Risk Reveal A Potential Role For Siglec14, Benjamin C. Shaw, Yuriko Katsumata, James F. Simpson, David W. Fardo, Steven Estus

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified immune-related genes as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), including TREM2 and CD33, frequently passing a stringent false-discovery rate. These genes either encode or signal through immunomodulatory tyrosine-phosphorylated inhibitory motifs (ITIMs) or activation motifs (ITAMs) and govern processes critical to AD pathology, such as inflammation and amyloid phagocytosis. To investigate whether additional ITIM and ITAM-containing family members may contribute to AD risk and be overlooked due to the stringent multiple testing in GWAS, we combined protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) data from a recent plasma proteomics study with AD associations in a recent …

The Value Of Republishing Scientific Literature In Institutional Repositories, Sue Ann Gardner, Linnea Fredrickson, Paul Royster

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

Background: The University of Nebraska-Lincoln University Libraries institutional repository was founded in 2005 on the Digital Commons platform. It currently contains more than 118,000 full-text scholarly works that have been downloaded over 73,000,000 times.

Problem that drove the project: Older scientific literature may only occasionally circulate from university library collections or be purchased by readers from remaindered publishers' stock.

Methods: This research will employ statistical analyses to demonstrate the value of making available four series of scientific literature in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln University Libraries Digital Commons: Insecta Mundi, the Nebraska Bird Review, the Transactions of the Nebraska …

Tocilizumab And Covid-19: A Meta-Analysis Of 2120 Patients With Severe Disease And Implications For Clinical Trial Methodologies, Azza Sarfraz, Zouina Sarfraz, Muzna Sarfraz, Hinna Aftab, Zainab Pervaiz

Department of Paediatrics and Child Health

Background/aim: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, numerous therapies to counteract this severe disease have emerged. The benefits of Tocilizumab for severely infected COVID-19 patients and the methodologies of ongoing clinical trials are explored.
Materials and methods: A systematic search adhering to PRISMA guidelines was conducted in PubMed, Cochrane Central, medRxiv, and bioRxiv using the following keywords: “Tocilizumab,” “Actemra,” “COVID-19.” An additional subsearch was conducted on Clinicaltrials.gov to locate ongoing tocilizumab trials.
Results: A total of 13 studies were included in the meta-analysis comprising 2120 patients. The treatment group had lower mortality compared to the control group (OR = 0.42, …

Covid-19: A One Health Issue, Karen Gruszynski

Cumberland Mountain Naturalist

COVID-19 has very rapidly become part of modern societal lexicon as the disease highlights the importance understanding zoonotic diseases and the impact they can have on human life. With a 177million human cases and 3.82million deaths globally at the time of this publication, the "One Health" nature of the disease has had a lasting impact across the planet. As the disease spread rapidly, it highlighted the dissemination of information through social media and other sources. With this in mind, Dr. Gary Vroegindewey, Director for One Health at LMU-CVM, put forth the idea to have students collect and summarize information about …

Covid-19 Multi-Targeted Drug Repurposing Using Few-Shot Learning, Yang Liu, You Wu, Xiaoke Shen, Lei Xie

Publications and Research

The life-threatening disease COVID-19 has inspired significant efforts to discover novel therapeutic agents through repurposing of existing drugs. Although multi-targeted (polypharmacological) therapies are recognized as the most efficient approach to system diseases such as COVID-19, computational multi-targeted compound screening has been limited by the scarcity of high-quality experimental data and difficulties in extracting information from molecules. This study introduces MolGNN , a new deep learning model for molecular property prediction. MolGNN applies a graph neural network to computational learning of chemical molecule embedding. Comparing to state-of-the-art approaches heavily relying on labeled experimental data, our method achieves equivalent or superior prediction …

Soft Lithographic Replication Of High Length-Scale Micropillars From Laser-Ablated Fused-Silica Templates, Jason Pitts

University Honors Theses

Soft lithography is a well-established route to wafer-scale reproduction of micro- and nanoscale features in a wide variety of materials. Nevertheless, micron length scales have yet to be explored, despite the potential utility of such structures. Here, polymer micropillars of 6-12 μm length, approximately 0.5-1.5 μm wide at 10 μm spacing are reproduced from a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mold made from patterned cellulose acetate (CA). The patterned CA was cast from a rigid fused silica template machined by a pulsed femtosecond laser. Pore topographic features were successfully reproduced in Norland Optical Adhesive (NOA), polycaprolactone (PCL), Nafion, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), and …

Pediatric Asthma – Another Negative Outcome Of Recurrent Flooding, Odu Researchers Find, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

Adapting An Agent-Based Model Of Infectious Disease Spread In An Irish County To Covid-19, Elizabeth Hunter, John D. Kelleher

Articles

The dynamics that lead to the spread of an infectious disease through a population can be characterized as a complex system. One way to model such a system, in order to improve preparedness, and learn more about how an infectious disease, such as COVID-19, might spread through a population, is agent-based epidemiological modelling. When a pandemic is caused by an emerging disease, it takes time to develop a completely new model that captures the complexity of the system. In this paper, we discuss adapting an existing agent-based model for the spread of measles in Ireland to simulate the spread of …

Contemporary Challenges And Opportunities For The Management Of Bird Damage At Field Crop Establishment, Christophe Sausse, Alice Baux, Michel Bertrand, Elsa Bonnaud, Sonia Canavelli, Alexandra Destrez, Page E. Klug, Lourdes Olivera, Ethel Rodriguez, Guilllermo Tellechea, Sebastian Zuil

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Bird damage, from sowing to crop establishment, is an important issue for farmers in many parts of the world. However, reliable and cost-effective solutions remain elusive because management tools and research on the subject are limited. The spatial variability of damage across landscapes and the adaptative behaviour of birds create further challenges. Additionally, the issue must be tackled at the landscape scale and involve a variety of stakeholders with conflicting interests and objectives. We summarize some of the challenges and opportunities identified to face these difficulties and address four major research directions for operational solutions including 1) crop damage assessment, …

Impact Of Neoantigen Expression And T-Cell Activation On Breast Cancer Survival, Wenjing Li, Amei Amei, Francis Bui, Saba Norouzifar, Lingeng Lu, Zuoheng Wang

Mathematical Sciences Faculty Research

Neoantigens are derived from tumor-specific somatic mutations. Neoantigen-based syn-thesized peptides have been under clinical investigation to boost cancer immunotherapy efficacy. The promising results prompt us to further elucidate the effect of neoantigen expression on patient survival in breast cancer. We applied Kaplan–Meier survival and multivariable Cox regression models to evaluate the effect of neoantigen expression and its interaction with T-cell activation on overall survival in a cohort of 729 breast cancer patients. Pearson’s chi-squared tests were used to assess the relationships between neoantigen expression and clinical pathological variables. Spearman correlation analysis was conducted to identify correlations between neoantigen expression, mutation …

Landscape-Based Mutational Sensitivity Cartography And Network Community Analysis Of The Sars-Cov-2 Spike Protein Structures: Quantifying Functional Effects Of The Circulating D614g Variant, Gennady M. Verkhivker, Steve Agajanian, Deniz Yasar Oztas, Grace Gupta

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

We developed and applied a computational approach to simulate functional effects of the global circulating mutation D614G of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. All-atom molecular dynamics simulations are combined with deep mutational scanning and analysis of the residue interaction networks to investigate conformational landscapes and energetics of the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins in different functional states of the D614G mutant. The results of conformational dynamics and analysis of collective motions demonstrated that the D614 site plays a key regulatory role in governing functional transitions between open and closed states. Using mutational scanning and sensitivity analysis of protein residues, we identified the stability …

Early Assessment Of Lung Function In Coronavirus Patients Using Invariant Markers From Chest X-Rays Images, Mohamed Elsharkawy, Ahmed Sharafeldeen, Fatma Taher, Ahmed Shalaby, Ahmed Soliman, Ali Mahmoud, Mohammed Ghazal, Ashraf Khalil, Norah Saleh Alghamdi, Ahmed Abdel Khalek Abdel Razek, Eman Alnaghy, Moumen T. El-Melegy, Harpal Singh Sandhu, Guruprasad A. Giridharan, Ayman El-Baz

All Works

The primary goal of this manuscript is to develop a computer assisted diagnostic (CAD) system to assess pulmonary function and risk of mortality in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The CAD system processes chest X-ray data and provides accurate, objective imaging markers to assist in the determination of patients with a higher risk of death and thus are more likely to require mechanical ventilation and/or more intensive clinical care.To obtain an accurate stochastic model that has the ability to detect the severity of lung infection, we develop a second-order Markov-Gibbs random field (MGRF) invariant under rigid transformation (translation or …

Session 2: Access To Health And Health Services Panel - The Covid-19 Experience, Annette Clark, Wendy Chalres, Dan Laster, Anna Santos Rutschman, Madhavi Sunder, Margret Chon

SITIE Symposiums

COVID-19 has had a massive impact on the U.S. and the world regarding health care and health care access. Improving access has been the topic of scholarship for many years. It took the COVID- 19 pandemic to bring these issues to the forefront of public discussion. Inequities in public health access, not only domestically but globally, have become apparent in the light of COVID-19. This expert panel addresses the inequities of vaccines worldwide and the concept of vaccine sharing programs. It also explores the role that intellectual property plays in these equity issues and some of the risks inherent in …

Examining The Effect Of Explanation On Satisfaction And Trust In Ai Diagnostic Systems, Lamia Alam, Shane Mueller

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Background: Artificial Intelligence has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, and it is increasingly being deployed to support and assist medical diagnosis. One potential application of AI is as the first point of contact for patients, replacing initial diagnoses prior to sending a patient to a specialist, allowing health care professionals to focus on more challenging and critical aspects of treatment. But for AI systems to succeed in this role, it will not be enough for them to merely provide accurate diagnoses and predictions. In addition, it will need to provide explanations (both to physicians and patients) about why the diagnoses …

The Discrete-Event Modeling Of Administrative Claims (Demac) System: Dynamically Modeling The U.S. Healthcare Delivery System With Medicare Claims Data To Improve End-Of-Life Care, Rachael Chacko

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

The shift of the U.S. healthcare delivery system from the treatment of acute conditions to chronic diseases requires a new method of healthcare system analysis to properly assess end- of-life (EOL) quality throughout the country. In this paper, we propose the Discrete-Event Modeling of Administrative Claims (DEMAC) system, which relies on a hetero-functional graph theory and discrete event-driven framework to dynamically model EOL care on multiple levels. The heat map visualizations produced by the DEMAC system enable the elucidation of not only patient-specific EOL care but also broader treatment patterns among providers and hospitals. As a whole, the DEMAC system …

Progression Magazine, 2021 Summer, Coastal Carolina University

Progression Magazine

Magazine of the College of Science at Coastal Carolina University.