Hydrologic and Water Quality Monitoring on Turkey Creek Watershed, Francis Marion National Forest, SC

2008 S.C. Water Resources Conference - Addressing Water Challenges Facing the State and Regio

Hydrologic and Water Quality Monitoring on Turkey Creek Watershed, Francis Marion National Forest, SC

2008 S.C. Water Resources Conference - Addressing Water Challenges Facing the State and Regio

Impact of chronic stress protocols in learning and memory in rodents: systematic review and meta-analysis

The idea that maladaptive stress impairs cognitive function has been a cornerstone of decades in basic and clinical research. However, disparate findings have reinforced the need to aggregate results from multiple sources in order to confirm the validity of such statement. In this work, a systematic review and meta-analyses were performed to aggregate results from rodent studies investigating the impact of chronic stress on learning and memory. Results obtained from the included studies revealed a significant effect of stress on global cognitive performance. In addition, stressed rodents presented worse consolidation of learned memories, although no significantly differences between groups at the acquisition phase were found. Despite the methodological heterogeneity across studies, these effects were independent of the type of stress, animals' strains or age. However, our findings suggest that stress yields a more detrimental effect on spatial navigation tests' performance. Surprisingly, the vast majority of the selected studies in this field did not report appropriate statistics and were excluded from the quantitative analysis. We have therefore purposed a set of guidelines termed PROBE (Preferred Reporting Orientations for Behavioral Experiments) to promote an adequate reporting of behavioral experiments.This work was funded by the European Commission (FP7) "SwitchBox" (Contract HEALTH-F2-2010-259772) project and co-financed by the Portuguese North Regional Operational Program (ON.2 - O Novo Norte) under the National Strategic Reference Framework (QREN), through the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), and by Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian (Portugal) (Contract grant number: P-139977; project "Better mental health during ageing based on temporal prediction of individual brain ageing trajectories (TEMPO)"). PSM is supported by an FCT fellowship grant, from the PhD-iHES program, with the reference PDE/BDE/113601/2015.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Patient Similarity Analysis and Decision Support Dashboards in Cancer Care: Patients\u27 and Other Stakeholders\u27 Perspectives

Patient Similarity Analysis can be used to develop personalised aids for patients and clinicians making complex healthcare decisions, including those encountered in the oncology domain. However, little is known about patients’ views on how insights derived through Patient Similarity Analysis may be incorporated into decision making at the point of care. In this study, we developed a set of Patient Similarity-based dashboard mock-ups and consulted oncology stakeholders in Aotearoa New Zealand regarding acceptability. Aim: To explore oncology stakeholders’ (patients, clinicians, researchers and advocates) perspectives on the acceptability of using Patient Similarity-based decision dashboards to guide decision making. Methods: This is a qualitative descriptive study using non-random, purposive sampling, combined with advertisement and snowball recruitment. We interviewed patients, healthcare providers and other stakeholders. One-off, semi-structured interviews were conducted to elicit perspectives on the acceptability of using decision support dashboards, including: participants’ attitudes, the tools fit with the participants’ values and goals, and the potential benefits and burdens. Data was analysed using Directed Content Analysis. Results: Thirty-one participants were interviewed: 19 patients with breast or prostate cancer, seven clinicians, and five other stakeholders. Participants found the dashboard mock-ups generally acceptable, with the information presented considered relevant by most. Participants expressed enthusiasm about using Patient Similarity-based insights, as they made them feel confident in making decisions knowing what patients like them decided in similar circumstances. Participant-identified benefits of using Patient Similarity-based dashboards were: increased relatability to care recommendations based on other similar patients’ experiences; information consolidation, including about non-standard treatments; and shareability with whānau. Participants thought such dashboards would enable patients to actively participate in care decisions, enhancing equitable access to health information. A key challenge noted by both clinicians and patients related to clarity regarding the definition of ‘similar’, which would impact meaningfulness and reliability of recommendations. Conclusion: The proposed dashboard mock-ups were considered acceptable, with Patient Similarity insights reported as valuable and desired by participants. Several considerations and challenges are reported. These findings are relevant to researchers, software developers, health care providers and policy makers developing and/or implementing decision support tools in cancer care and other healthcare settings

Vibration suppression in cutting tools using collocated piezoelectric sensors/actuators with an adaptive control algorithm

The machining process is very important in many engineering applications. In high precision machining, surface finish is strongly correlated with vibrations and the dynamic interactions between the part and the cutting tool. Parameters affecting these vibrations and dynamic interactions, such as spindle speed, cut depth, feed rate, and the part's material properties can vary in real-time, resulting in unexpected or undesirable effects on the surface finish of the machining product. The focus of this research is the development of an improved machining process through the use of active vibration damping. The tool holder employs a high bandwidth piezoelectric actuator with an adaptive positive position feedback control algorithm for vibration and chatter suppression. In addition, instead of using external sensors, the proposed approach investigates the use of a collocated piezoelectric sensor for measuring the dynamic responses from machining processes. The performance of this method is evaluated by comparing the surface finishes obtained with active vibration control versus baseline uncontrolled cuts. Considerable improvement in surface finish (up to 50%) was observed for applications in modern day machining

Annotation analysis for testing drug safety signals using unstructured clinical notes

BackgroundThe electronic surveillance for adverse drug events is largely based upon the analysis of coded data from reporting systems. Yet, the vast majority of electronic health data lies embedded within the free text of clinical notes and is not gathered into centralized repositories. With the increasing access to large volumes of electronic medical data-in particular the clinical notes-it may be possible to computationally encode and to test drug safety signals in an active manner.ResultsWe describe the application of simple annotation tools on clinical text and the mining of the resulting annotations to compute the risk of getting a myocardial infarction for patients with rheumatoid arthritis that take Vioxx. Our analysis clearly reveals elevated risks for myocardial infarction in rheumatoid arthritis patients taking Vioxx (odds ratio 2.06) before 2005.ConclusionsOur results show that it is possible to apply annotation analysis methods for testing hypotheses about drug safety using electronic medical records

Recycling Attitudes and Behavior among a Clinic-Based Sample of Low-Income Hispanic Women in Southeast Texas

We examined attitudes and behavior surrounding voluntary recycling in a population of low-income Hispanic women. Participants (N = 1,512) 18–55 years of age completed a self-report survey and responded to questions regarding household recycling behavior, recycling knowledge, recycling beliefs, potential barriers to recycling (transportation mode, time), acculturation, demographic characteristics (age, income, employment, marital status, education, number of children, birth country), and social desirability. Forty-six percent of participants (n = 810) indicated that they or someone else in their household recycled. In a logistic regression model controlling for social desirability, recycling behavior was related to increased age (P<0.05), lower acculturation (P<0.01), knowing what to recycle (P<0.01), knowing that recycling saves landfill space (P<0.05), and disagreeing that recycling takes too much time (P<0.001). A Sobel test revealed that acculturation mediated the relationship between recycling knowledge and recycling behavior (P<0.05). We offer new information on recycling behavior among Hispanic women and highlight the need for educational outreach and intervention strategies to increase recycling behavior within this understudied population