80264 research outputs found
Sort by
Uncovering Factors that Contribute to Sustaining Teamwork in Healthcare Multiteam Systems (MTSs)
No full textOver the past couple of decades, research on employee team composition, functioning, and performance has steadily increased. Organizations are increasingly relying on teamwork to solve complex tasks and goals that are beyond the capability for individuals to accomplish alone. As research and practice regarding teamwork has become more popular, a new perspective has risen looking at how teams interact with other teams, or multiteam systems (MTSs). These systems are inherently very complex and understanding how team processes, conditions, and performance change when looking beyond how one team works together to how multiple teams coordinate to achieve a larger goal becomes a complex phenomenon to study. Indeed, the existing literature on MTSs is still in a very nascent stage, with little existing empirical work. This is particularly true for healthcare settings, where research investigating healthcare MTSs is scarce.
To address this gap, this effort examined the factors that influence sustainment of effective teamwork behaviors in healthcare multiteam systems. Specifically, a group consensus method, known as the modified Delphi method, was used to gain expert consensus on the top factors that are perceived as being important for healthcare MTS teamwork. Following a literature review of healthcare MTSs and interviews that were conducted with experts to gain additional insight, two rounds of surveys were distributed to conduct the modified Delphi study. Results provide support for factors that are important for sustaining teamwork in healthcare MTSs, such as psychological safety, individual competence, leadership commitment, peer support, sense of control, and motivation. Differences between research and clinical teams were also identified to provide further insight into the team contexts that impact the relevance of team constructs. Future research is recommended to empirically test the association between these factors and healthcare outcomes (e.g., satisfaction, burnout, wellbeing, errors, patient safety). Additionally, the importance of training and need for more of it was frequently reported
NeuRolling: A High-Density 384- and 1,152-Channel Self-Rolling Neural Probe for Multi-Region Brain Recordings in Non-Human Primates and Humans
No full textStable, large-scale neural recordings in non-human primates (NHPs) are essential for understanding distributed brain functions underlying cognition, perception, and behavior. However, existing technologies of penetrating neural probes are fundamentally limited by trade-offs among channel count, spatial coverage, mechanical flexibility and biocompatibility. Rigid or bulky devices often induce tissue damage and inflammation, while flexible systems have struggled to scale in channel density, and often fall short in spatial resolution and the capability to reliably record single-unit activity. To address this challenge, we present NeuRolling, a novel high-density 1,152-channel flexible electrode array capable of recording neural activity across multiple brain regions in both NHPs and humans. This technology introduces a self-rolling mechanism that compacts a 200mm2 two-dimensional polyimide (PI) array into a 200μm diameter cylindrical form factor with minimal insertion footprint. The rolling behavior is driven by engineered vertical stress gradients within bilayer PI films, induced by mismatches in their coefficient of thermal expansion (CTEs). This vertically inhomogeneous structure enables precise control over the probe’s final geometry, allowing ultra-dense site integration while preserving mechanical integrity. By combining scalability, compactness, and tissue compatibility, this probe platform represents a significant leap forward for chronic, high-throughput neural interfacing in large-brain systems. NeuRolling opens new possibilities for neuroscience studies by enabling single-unit recordings across brain regions, facilitating investigations into network connectivity and large-scale neural dynamics
Asian American Community Study: Individual and Household Characteristics in the Greater Houston Area
No full textGreater Houston is home to one of the most diverse and fastest-growing Asian populations in the country, but this was not always the case. In 1980, Asian residents made up just 1.8% of the area population. By 2023, that number had nearly quintupled to 8.7%. Fort Bend County, for instance, was home to more Asian residents in 2023 than the entire state of Texas had in 1980. Fueled by both immigration and domestic migration from other parts of the U.S., the Houston area’s Asian communities are among its most diverse populations in every sense—ethnically, linguistically, culturally, and geographically. Given the growth and diversification of Asian populations in the Houston region, this brief provides a demographic overview. It disaggregates the many different ethnicities that often are categorized under the general label of “Asian” to better explore and understand the ethnic composition, nativity and generational status, education, and income of these groups in the area
Transhumanism and the Religion of Apotheosis
No full textIn this study, which offers a detailed intellectual history of the contemporary transhumanist movement, I defend the view that transhumanism is a fundamentally religious phenomenon, notwithstanding the efforts of many of its leading proponents (e.g., Nick Bostrom) to present it as a secular philosophy and an organic extension of Enlightenment humanism. Like some previous authors who have advanced a religious interpretation of transhumanism, I see in it an immanentized and otherwise distorted form of Christian theology. But my own analysis, drawn from Orthodox Christianity and my training in religious comparativism, identifies the core of transhumanist thought in the conjunction of apotheosis (or self-deification) and techno-superhumanism, with the immanentization of the transcendent, as I call it, implicit in the combination. I also consider why transhumanism is the de facto religion of the global superclass
Advancing Gene Editing Strategies for Treating Sickle Cell Disease
No full textGene editing-based therapies for sickle cell disease (SCD) have primarily utilized Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 (SpCas9) to either correct the sickle mutation in the β-globin gene or to reactivate fetal hemoglobin (HbF) by disrupting the HBG promoter or BCL11A erythroid enhancer. However, Cas orthologs, such as Staphylococcus aureus Cas9 (SaCas9) and Acidaminococcus sp. Cas12a (AsCas12a), which may offer advantages for ex vivo and in vivo editing, remains unexplored mainly for SCD treatment. In this study, we demonstrate the high efficiency of SaCas9 and AsCas12a in editing hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) from SCD patients, directly comparing their efficacy and safety profiles to SpCas9. Under optimized conditions, SaCas9 demonstrated superior efficiency in correcting the sickle mutation and targeting the BCL11A erythroid enhancer, with fewer unintended gene editing outcomes compared to SpCas9. This led to greater induction of HbF and adult hemoglobin (HbA) production. AsCas12a showed the highest HbF induction among the Cas orthologs tested, demonstrating greater editing efficiency at the HBG promoter and fewer unintended gene editing outcomes compared to SpCas9.
Furthermore, we evaluated the persistence of large gene modifications by engrafting SCD HSPCs in a murine transplantation model after ex vivo gene editing of the BCL11A erythroid enhancer using SpCas9 and SaCas9. We confirmed that large deletions persisted for up to 20 weeks post-transplantation. These findings highlight the promise of SaCas9 and AsCas12a as good alternatives to SpCas9 for gene editing-based treatments.
Additionally, we developed a cell model based on sickle-human umbilical cord-derived erythroid progenitor (S-HUDEP2) cells that enables monitoring of HbF induction via fluorescence. Blue fluorescent protein (BFP) expression strongly correlated with the F-cell percentage, allowing precise quantification of HbF induction without conventional intracellular staining. This model also enables the investigation of gene editing-induced large deletions in F-cells, which is challenging to study using existing intracellular staining assays. Using this cell model, we showed that HbF induction following HBB cutting is partly due to large deletions around the Cas9 cut site
The 44th Kinder Houston Area Survey: Destination Houston: A Growing Region’s Path to Prosperity
No full textIn 2010, Rice University launched the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. The Houston Area Survey had just wrapped up its 29th administration. Over the past 15 years, as the Kinder Institute has expanded, it has continued to document the story of Houston through its annual survey. This year’s edition reflects on this period, highlighting one of the region’s key distinguishing traits: continued growth
Chronic large-scale recording with ultraflexible electrode arrays for studying neural codes and their stability
No full textA central question in neuroscience is identifying neural codes that stably represent external variables across time. Using mice visual perception as the experimental paradigm, I focused on the debate between rate code versus temporal code based neural representation and depicted their differential contribution to the duality of neural representation stability and drift. Despite the pivotal distinction between spike counting based rate code and spike timing aware temporal codes, previous studies have yet to unveil the role of temporal code in long-term visual representation due to technical constraints. Past reports on drift in visual code over time predominantly relied on calcium imaging, which lacked the temporal resolution to capture fast-spiking dynamics and were further confounded by interferences such as photobleaching, leaving a gap in our comprehension of these complexities in neural code. While such investigation could have been carried out with electrophysiological recordings that resolves fast spiking dynamics, the scale and longevity necessary to study representation stability has not been achieved with conventional rigid electrodes. Our group overcomes these hurdles with large scale implantation of ultraflexible nanoelectronic threads (NETs) electrodes, which provide unprecedented longitudinal recordings across many neurons, while minimizing tissue-electrode interface instability.
In this thesis, I a) established a platform to map visual response properties of neural units from > 1000 channels of ultraflexible electrodes. b) developed a method to track same units recorded by these ultraflexible electrode arrays. c) compared the stability of different neural codes by longitudinally tracking > 1000 single neuron units from 5 mice over 15 consecutive days from animals subjected to repeated, diverse visual stimuli every day.
Our result reveals that considering the fast temporal dynamics of neuronal spikes (temporal code) enhances the stability of individual neuron tuning, neuronal population representation, and decoding accuracy compared to rate code. Thus, temporal coding, a mechanism that operates on the millisecond scale of neural communication, might be a fundamental principle that supports the consistency of sensory experiences, amidst the ever-changing brain states and synaptic strengths
Ion Selective Electrochemical Process for Pollutant Removal and Resource Recovery
No full textWater scarcity worldwide has prompted the complete utilization of every drop of water sources by removing pollutants and recovering resources from multiple water sources. Electrified water treatment technologies such as electrocatalysis and electrodialysis are promising technologies to achieve such targets by consuming renewable energy, causing no secondary pollution and requiring no harsh chemicals. However, the efficiency of electrified technology is not satisfied due to complicated water matrix and high salinity in some water sources, where competing ions may decrease the product purity and waste more energy during major process. High selectivity is a key parameter to improve electrified technology efficiency in a multi-solute water matrix via high energy efficiency, fast kinetics, and low by-product production or less by-process. The selectivity towards certain ions can be achieved by its size, electrostatic force, chemical affinity and even design of operation. In this work, We reported several approaches including process design, membrane development and material synthesizing to deliver a comprehensive strategy of achieving ion selectivity by multiple mechanisms. The removal efficiency of nitrate as a pollutant and the recovery of Lithium as a resource were evaluated and compared with commercial or conventional design
Long-Range, Large Aperture Thermal Imaging via Sparse Aperture Metalens Computational Imaging
No full textLong-range imaging in the mid-wave infrared (MWIR) is critical for defense, industrial, and environmental applications, often requiring high-resolution imaging achievable only with large-aperture lenses (~100–1000 mm). Conventional glassbased refractive optics meet these equirements but result in bulky, costly systems. While metalenses offer a lightweight alternative, creating large apertures with current fabrication techniques poses significant challenges. To address this, we employed a computational imaging approach using sparse aperture metalenses. By arranging an array of small metalenses in a spatial configuration that maximizes spatial information and applying a computational reconstruction algorithm, our system achieves high-resolution, high-contrast images equivalent to those from a single large aperture. This scalable approach allows large-aperture realization by strategically arranging smaller sub-apertures. We validated this design with a prototype of 89 mm outer diameter and 356 mm focal length. Enhanced with a neural network-based reconstruction algorithm, our proposed sparse aperture system achieves near-diffraction-limited performance. Furthermore, simulations of a large recursive sparse aperture demonstrate improved MTF coverage and higher resolution imaging. This work represents progress toward practical, scalable, high-performance MWIR imaging systems