University of Illinois at Chicago
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Inclusion and Collaboration - Perceptions and Experiences of Families of Students with Disabilities
No full textThe purpose of this case study investigation was to explore the perspectives and experiences of four families of students with disabilities (autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disability) regarding inclusion, family-school collaboration throughout their children’s schooling years, and the families’ hopes and fears as they prepare for their children’s future. The interviews, demographic and contextual questionnaires, and student portfolios were used to deeply understand families’ unique experiences. Qualitative thematic analysis and basic descriptive statistics were applied to analyze the collected data. Findings reveal that while inclusive practices and collaborative relationships were strongest during the elementary years, families observed a notable decline in inclusion and communication as students transitioned into middle and high school. Stronger relationships were consistently reported with special education teachers compared to general education staff. Common challenges included staffing shortages, inconsistent communication, and limited structured opportunities for meaningful inclusion. Despite these barriers, all families shared the hope that their children would lead safe, independent, and fulfilling lives. However, varying levels of preparedness and available support led to different outcomes and levels of parental anxiety regarding their children’s futures. The study underscores the importance of a whole-school commitment to inclusive education and the vital role of consistent, respectful family-school collaboration. The study calls for early, individualized transition planning, policies that support sustained inclusion beyond elementary school, and the need to center family voices in decision-making processes to strengthen school systems that enable all students to thrive
Mechanisms of Edema Clearance: The Central Role of Lymphatic Vessels and LYVE1 in Fluid Homeostasis
No full textDisruption of fluid homeostasis results in tissue edema, a hallmark of clinical conditions such as lymphedema. Despite significant advances in lymphatic biology, lymphedema remains a chronic and incurable disorder, largely due to an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms that regulate edema fluid clearance. In this study, we established a novel zebrafish model of edema. We utilized its optical transparency and intravital imaging capabilities to characterize the dynamic lymphatic responses during edema formation and resolution. Using this platform, we identified key structural and molecular changes that accompany compensatory lymphangiogenesis. Additionally, we investigated the role of lymphatic vessel endothelial hyaluronan receptor 1 (LYVE-1) in mediating lymphatic vessel function and promoting edema resolution. Together, our findings elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern lymphatic remodeling and fluid clearance, providing new insights into the fundamental processes that maintain tissue fluid balance
Interrelationships Between Urban Travel and Other Infrastructure
No full textThis dissertation advances the science of how transportation interacts with other urban systems by demonstrating how alternative data sources can reveal mobility patterns and human activity in near real time. Traditional transportation research depends on household surveys and administrative records, which are costly and slow to capture change. In response, this work examines social media and electricity consumption as proxy indicators of travel demand. First, it shows that sentiment derived from geo-tagged Twitter posts can be structured into covariates that significantly improve forecasts of telecommuting prevalence, particularly during disruptive events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, it finds that residential electricity usage profiles in the Chicago region correlate with commuting characteristics, revealing spatially coherent patterns of mobility behavior. Third, it demonstrates that incorporating electricity usage data improves public transit demand forecasting using advanced machine learning models, especially under system shocks when historical data alone are inadequate. Together, these studies provide a framework for integrating unconventional and conventional data to support adaptive transportation planning. The dissertation also discusses the limitations of these proxy signals, such as demographic biases, data aggregation, and correlational relationships, and outlines future directions for causal inference, expanded data sources, and agent-based simulations to enhance scenario evaluation and policy testing
Novel Cladding Designs for Engineering Electromagnetic Scattering
No full textThe rapid development of metamaterials and meta surfaces has revolutionized the field of electromagnetic wave manipulation, offering unprecedented control over wave propagation, reflection, and refraction. These engineered materials, characterized by their unique ability to exhibit properties not found in natural substances, have paved the way for a wide range of applications, particularly in the areas of next-generation antenna designs and electromagnetic cloaking. In this thesis, we propose antenna systems that address the inherent challenges associated with impedance matching and radiation/reception efficiency. By enclosing the antenna with suitably designed spherical metamaterials or ultrathin meta surfaces, the impedance matching is improved and the overall efficiency of the antenna is significantly enhanced. Furthermore, we explore meta surface cloaking with a generalized surface impedances matrix to manipulate the scattering and absorption cross sections. Utilizing Lorenz-Mie scattering theorem, we thoroughly examine tensor-form surface impedance and the corresponding scattering properties, aiming to find the optimal cloaking strategy under different application scenarios
Retrospective Policy Gradient
No full textPolicy Gradient (PG) methods represent a notable category of reinforcement learning algorithms, particularly effective in continuous action domains. These techniques adjust the parameters of parametric policies through stochastic gradient ascent, typically utilizing on-policy trajectory samples to estimate the policy gradient. Nevertheless, this reliance on newly collected data makes them sample-inefficient. Specifically, standard PG algorithms require O(1/ε²) trajectories to achieve an ε-approximate stationary point. A widely used strategy to improve efficiency involves leveraging off-policy information from previous iterations, such as earlier gradient estimates or trajectories. Although the theoretical advantages of gradient reuse are well established—leading to improved convergence rates of O(1/ε^(3/2))—the theoretical understanding of reusing past trajectories remains relatively limited.
We propose a power-mean correction for the multiple importance weighting estimator and introduce the Retrospective Policy Gradient (RPG), a PG algorithm that integrates both past and current trajectories for policy updates.
Our implementation builds upon standard RL frameworks and supports both linear and deep neural network policies. We evaluate RPG on continuous control benchmarks from the MuJoCo Gym suite (Half-Cheetah, Swimmer) and custom environments (Cart-Pole). We compare against REINFORCE, GPOMDP, SVRPG, SRVRPG, STORM-PG, and DEF-PG.
Empirical results demonstrate that RPG consistently outperforms existing policy gradient algorithms in terms of both sample efficiency and final empirical performance. In particular, it achieves higher cumulative rewards using significantly fewer environment interactions. We also provide sensitivity analyses with respect to the reuse buffer size.
Through a novel theoretical analysis, we show that the Retrospective Policy Gradient achieves a sample complexity of O(1/ε), marking the best-known rate to date. Empirical findings further validate the effectiveness of our method compared to state-of-the-art PG algorithms
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation with Individualized Physical Therapy for Chronic Knee Pain
No full textBackground: Chronic knee pain is highly prevalent, debilitating, and costly. It can result from maladaptive neuroplastic changes in the central and peripheral nervous systems. Up to 66% of individuals with chronic knee pain do not respond to conservative treatments such as physical therapy (PT) or exercise. The addition of noninvasive brain stimulation, in the form of transcranial direct stimulation (tDCS), to PT has the potential to reverse maladaptive plasticity, as well as improve pain and functional outcomes beyond those seen with PT in isolation. This study investigated the safety, feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of combining tDCS with PT for individuals with chronic knee pain in an outpatient PT clinic. Methods: In this pragmatic randomized, triple-blinded clinical trial, participants with chronic knee pain were assigned to either the active tDCS or sham tDCS groups, both of which had individualized PT following. The active tDCS group had anodal tDCS (20 minutes) targeting the primary motor cortex of the involved knee. Safety was monitored by recording adverse events, and through a safety questionnaire given to participants with knee pain. Feasibility was evaluated by tracking recruitment, enrollment, and retention. Efficacy was assessed through various clinical pain and functional outcomes before and after five treatment sessions. Acceptability was gauged through questionnaires administered to individuals with chronic knee pain and physical therapists. Results: From a pool of 177 potentially eligible participants with knee pain, a total of 32 individuals enrolled in the study. No serious adverse events occurred, but two participants dropped out, one due to headaches and the other due to personal reasons. The active tDCS group demonstrated significant improvements in pain sensitivity, as measured with pressure pain threshold testing, and quadriceps strength as compared to the sham group. The treatment paradigm was found to be acceptable to both individuals with chronic knee pain and physical therapists. Conclusion: The study findings demonstrate that tDCS combined with individualized PT is safe, feasible, and acceptable. It also provides foundational evidence that tDCS has a strong potential to be used as a neuromodulatory adjunct in a rehabilitation setting
Between Culinary and Consecrated—The Introduction and Management of Turkeys in Greater Nicoya, Costa Rica
No full textDomestication and animal management practices held critical roles in ancient societies, supporting reliable sources of food and other animal-derived products, as well as influencing cultural practices. These human-animal relationships include a plethora of interactions within local environments, yet only a few ancient societies went to great lengths to translocate or intentionally introduce species to new environments. Even in today’s globalized world, the introduction of a new species is often accompanied by various challenges, illustrating the complex dynamic between human choices and environmental factors. As one of the few domestic animals in the Americas, the spread of turkeys (Meleagris spp.) presents an intriguing case for understanding human-animal interactions and the introduction of non-native animals in the past.
My dissertation research investigates the introduction and management of turkeys in the Greater Nicoya archaeological area of northwestern Costa Rica, the southernmost region where turkeys appear to have been translocated. While many resources and goods were traded both within and outside of Mesoamerica, turkey distribution areas are poorly understood. In this multicultural frontier of pre-contact Mesoamerica, my research suggests that these non-native birds may have been a restricted resource that served as indicators of social organization. Furthermore, turkeys may have been acquired through local participation in an elite-based regional interaction sphere. Using osteological, ancient DNA, stable isotope, and iconographic data, my research aimed to understand and address social aspects of turkey translocation and management practices within ancient Greater Nicoya societies during a period of important sociopolitical changes, increasing social inequality, and the arrival of foreign groups into the area.
Imitation Learning with Superhuman Policy Gradient Optimization for Sequential Cancer Treatment Decisions
No full textWe propose a simulator-driven imitation learning framework for sequential deci- sion making in head and neck cancer (HNC) treatment. Our method, Superhu- man Policy Gradient Optimization (SPGO), integrates inverse reinforcement learning principles with policy gradient updates to derive three-stage treat- ment policies directly from recorded physician decisions. A pre-trained clinical simulator—combining a variational autoencoder (VAE) and gradient boosting (XGBoost) models—generates complete, temporally consistent patient trajec- tories, enabling safe and reproducible training.
Unlike conventional behavior cloning, SPGO optimizes a subdominance loss that explicitly rewards surpassing the expert across multiple clinical outcomes, including relapse at year three and patient-reported toxicities at multiple follow- up times. We systematically compare six subdominance configurations (absolute vs. relative, sum vs. max aggregation, per-feature vs. max-only α updates) to assess how loss design affects convergence and treatment quality.
Our best configuration—relative differences with sum aggregation and per- feature α updates—achieves over 70% superhuman dominance across clinically relevant features on held-out patients. The learned policies reproduce expert decisions on acute measures while significantly reducing predicted late toxicities and relapse risk, demonstrating generalization beyond the training distribution
Alternative Crisis Mental Health Responses: Protocol for a Knowledge-To-Action Study
No full textAlternative crisis mental health responses are models that differ from the default, policy-only model of responding to emergency reports of acute psychological distress in the community. The two prevalent alternative models are co-response, pairing police with a civilian (such as a nurse or social worker) and civilian response, whereby first responders are not police. Two scoping reviews have been completed that synthesize key processes from the literature that underpin co-response and civilian response. Informed by transformative justice and the principle of the collective, this protocol details a knowledge-to-action (KTA) study whereby summaries of those scoping reviews will be used as prompts for semi-structured interviews with interest-holders (frontline service providers, people with lived experience of mental health crises, policymakers, and mental health scholars and advocates) across the United States and Canada. Interviews will focus on participants’ experiences with and perceptions of crisis response, as well as their opinions about the accuracy and relevance of the scoping reviews. The analytic plan incorporates content analysis and interpretive phenomenology to capture both the patterns that emerge and the meanings that participants attach to their experiences, producing a more layered and comprehensive analysis than either method could achieve alone. This protocol represents one of the first research plans to apply the KTA cycle and the first known study to propose that a team of researchers first synthesize the literature and then interview key informants about the accuracy and applicability of those knowledge syntheses. Findings may highlight discrepancies between the literature and the field, with a focus on alternative crisis mental health response.</p
“They didn't think we'd live this long”: A qualitative exploration of older adults living with HIV perspectives on geriatric care in Ontario
No full textIntroduction: Advances in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care haveincreased life expectancy, leading to more older adults living with HIV. Thisstudy examines older adults' perspectives on geriatric healthcare needs.Methods: A community-based qualitative study in Ontario, Canada, recruitedsome adults aged 50+ years living with HIV through quota and purposive sam-pling. Quota sampling was used to include individuals of different ages, gen-ders and ethno-racial backgrounds to capture a range of experiences. Datawere collected via semi-structured interviews and focus groups, analyzed usingthe Qualitative Analysis Guide of Leuven. Results: Participants included interviewees (n = 14) and focus groupattendees (n = 12). Four themes emerged: (1) lack of knowledge and access togeriatric care, highlighting service challenges; (2) healthcare providers' under-standing of HIV and ageing, with stigma concerns; (3) role of social supportnetworks for emotional/practical support; and (4) requirements for improvedgeriatric care, advocating provider education and greater social care access.Conclusions: Gaps in geriatric care for older adults with HIV highlightstigma, access issues and the need for education, virtual care and tailored,inclusive healthcare solutions. </p
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