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Structured Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) templates outperformed non-structured ones in an institutional implementation of the NIH Data Management and Sharing (DMS) policy
Get PDFIntroduction: The National Institutes of Health Data Management and Sharing (DMS) policy (NOT-OD-21-013) mandates the submission of a Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) for all NIH-funded research that generates scientific data. However, little information is available about how academic medical centers have implemented the policy. Objectives: The study aimed to characterize our institution’s implementation of the DMS policy and compare structured versus unstructured approaches to producing policy conformant DMSPs. Methods: We monitored all NIH grant submissions from our institution for 18 months, evaluating policy implementation through DMSP completeness and reviewer comments during the Just-in-Time period. A rubric was developed to assess whether each required DMSP element and sub-element was addressed. Eight DMSP templates (three NIH-provided, five institutionally developed) and two categories of investigator-created DMSPs were scored. Researchers’ feedback was collected through surveys and interviews. Results: 79.3% of submitted DMSPs addressed all NIH-required DMSP elements. Element-level compliance ranged from 98.9% (data type) to 82.7% (tools and software). Sub-element scores showed greater variability, with 98.9% completion for data description and 49.3% for data generation. Unstructured DMSPs consistently underperformed compared to structured DMSPs. Survey and interview feedback, along with reviewer comments, reinforced these findings. Conclusion: A notable 20.7% of DMSPs omitted one or more required elements, indicating a need for improved DMS policy conformance. Structured DMSP templates demonstrated greater alignment with NIH policy. We recommend using structured templates to enhance the quality and consistency of data management and sharing plans.Clinical and Translational Scienc
The effect of inflammation on gustatory nerve fiber innervation
No full textThe full text of this item is not available at this time because the author has placed this item under an embargo until December 1, 2026.Between 50–80% of chemotherapy patients experience taste alterations, including reduced sensitivity, distorted perception, or complete taste loss. These deficits can persist after treatment, diminishing quality of life. Despite this significance, the mechanisms underlying chemotherapy-induced taste loss remain unclear. Current literature focuses on the cytotoxic effects of chemotherapy, suggesting that direct damage to taste buds explains the loss of taste. However, less studied is the effect on gustatory innervation. Chemotherapy provokes systemic inflammation, particularly through tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF?) and its receptor TNFR1 in the gustatory system. TNF? and TNFR1 are regulators of axonal remodeling, responsible for both axonal death and growth in their pathways. This role in axonal remodeling raises the possibility that inflammatory signaling contributes chemotherapy-induced taste dysfunction.Neuroscience, Developmental and Regenerative Biolog
Coxiella burnetii Strains Elicit Distinct Inflammatory Responses in Human Macrophages
Get PDF<i>Coxiella burnetii</i>, the causative agent of human Q fever, subverts macrophage antimicrobial functions to establish an intracellular replicative niche. To better understand host&ndash;pathogen interactions, we investigated the transcriptional responses of human alveolar macrophages (hAMs) infected with virulent [NMI, G (Q212)], attenuated (NMII), and avirulent (Dugway) strains of <i>C. burnetii</i>. RNA sequencing indicated that all strains activated proinflammatory pathways, particularly IL-17 signaling, though the magnitude and nature of the response varied by strain. Infections with NMI, NMII or G (Q212) resulted in differential expression of roughly the same number of genes, while Dugway infection induced a stronger transcriptional response. Dugway and G (Q212) tended to polarize macrophages toward M1-like states, whereas responses to NMI and NMII were variable. Cytokine assays of NMII-infected THP-1 macrophages suggested the activation of IL-17 signaling, but only at later stages of infection, and single-cell RNA sequencing of NMII-infected THP-1 macrophages indicated heterogeneity in host response to infection, with distinct subpopulations exhibiting M1-like and M2-like inflammatory profiles. These findings highlight the complexity of macrophage response to <i>C. burnetii</i> and underscore the importance of strain-specific and cell-specific factors in shaping host immunity. Understanding these dynamics may inform the development of targeted therapies for Q fever
Vacuum of Knowledge: A Renewed Look at Portable Suction Standards for Emergency Use
Get PDFThis poster was presented at the 2025 Postdoctoral Appreciation Week event.One potential reason for the performance issues seen with portable suction devices is a lack of regulatory and manufacturing standards that require devices to meet the stated needs of end-users. Therefore, the objective of this work was to take a wholistic and objective look at the existing testing, regulatory, and manufacturing standards for portable suction devices and to provide standards recommendations to field improved portable suction devices.Emergency Medicin
A Framing Analysis of News Coverage on January 6, 2021 on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN
Get PDFThe Capitol Riots of January 6th, 2021, represent a critical moment in American history. This study examines the live breaking news coverage of the Capitol Riots by CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, identifying four recurring themes: rhetoric directed at Donald Trump, responses to the Capitol Police, characterization of the crowd, and comparisons to the Black Lives Matter protests. This study highlights how, despite distinct political leanings, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC found moments of consensus in their rhetoric towards these common themes, emphasizing the event's severity and the media's shared recognition of a breach of democratic norms. Utilizing agenda extension and agenda-setting theory, the analysis demonstrates how initial news framing decisions contributed to the long-term shaping of public memory and perception. While the study found differences in the tone and emphasis of these transcripts that were reflected in the networks’ political leanings, each network brought awareness and attention to systemic issues in policing, political rhetoric, and the media influence of the political elite. Consistent with historical media bias research, this study found that differences in news framing across the three networks analyzed were less pronounced than expected, particularly in the initial reporting of the event. The Capitol Riots not only exposed vulnerabilities in American democracy but also demonstrated the powerful role of news framing in constructing collective reality.Communicatio
Advanced Optical Characterization and Modeling of Multilayer Thin Films for Perovskite Photovoltaics: Addressing Structural Non-Idealities and Material-Specific Behaviors
Get PDFIn recent years, organic-inorganic perovskites have emerged as highly promising materials for optoelectronic and energy-harvesting applications due to their remarkable electrical and optical properties, such as strong optical absorption, tunable band gaps, and long carrier diffusion lengths. These outstanding features along with low-cost fabrication methods have driven significant research interest in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Advances in device and interfacial have gradually permitted overcoming the multifarious challenges associated with the utilization of perovskite materials. The relatively affordable and scalable low-temperature solution processability, lightweight and flexibility of PSCs, along with lab-scale devices reaching efficiencies in excess of 25% highlights them as suitable candidates for addressing the scalability limitations of solar-based renewable energy technologies.
The rapid advancement of PSCs as next-generation photovoltaics is tempered by challenges mainly related with material degradation, long-term stability, and limited understanding of their optoelectronic behavior. Addressing these limitations requires accurate, non-destructive and reproducible metrology techniques capable of characterizing and quantitatively analyzing the complex structural composition and time-evolving behaviors present in these devices. This research focuses on the development and application of optical modeling strategies to accurately determine the optical and structural properties of the different layers incorporated in a PSC film stack. The characterization of the optical behavior is performed employing spectroscopic ellipsometry and spectrophotometry analysis. Ellipsometry technique offers significant advantages, as it allows precise extraction of key material properties such as band gap, refractive index, extinction coefficient, and absorption coefficient, which are crucial in the optical design of a photovoltaic device.
Motivated by the need for precise, non-destructive tools to support the development of high performance and stable PSCs, this work employs an optical modeling approach that enables layer by layer evaluation of the device throughout the various stages of the fabrication process. Since optical properties of perovskite materials are strongly influenced by factors such as crystallinity, grain boundaries, surface roughness, impurities, and lattice defects, this study can provide valuable insights into the evolution of material properties and their correlation with crystal quality, film morphology and defect passivation. Furthermore, this study highlights the ability of optical modeling to serve as a powerful diagnostic and monitoring tool for identifying material degradation, phase transitions, and morphological changes, parameters that are directly related with long-term stability and device performance.
This work presents a multilayer optical modeling approach to investigate the optical properties of three essential layers commonly used in inverted perovskite solar cell architectures: indium tin oxide (ITO) as the transparent anode, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) as the hole transport layer, and methylammonium lead iodide as the perovskite layer. By employing this modeling approach based on physically meaningful dispersion equations, namely oscillators, such as Gaussian, Lorentz, Drude, among others, the dielectric functions are extracted from the UV-Vis to near-infrared range. The parameterized optical constants were simultaneously fitted to ellipsometry and intensity-transmission data and validated with ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy and profilometry. Additionally, this analysis incorporates key structural and compositional parameters including anisotropy, surface roughness, and graded layers to account for non-uniformities and interfacial effects, and morphological complexities that influence the optical response of each layer. This comprehensive study proposes a more accurate and physically meaningful representation of the multilayer film stack. The optical models are validated through cross-sectional SEM, profilometry, and XRD data, ensuring consistency between the optical and physical characterization.Electrical and Computer Engineerin
A Quad Tree-based Polygon Encoding for Shape-based Approximate Similarity Search
Get PDFThis poster was presented at the 2025 Postdoctoral Appreciation Week event.Similarity searches over geometries of polygons are used in various domains such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) including geospatial intelligence, pathology, and solar flares. This work focuses on large-scale geospatial intelligence, where similarity search is used to geo-locate a shape in a large reference dataset based on its geometric properties using Jaccard similarity metric (ratio of area intersection over union). Such calculations over large realworld datasets are computationally expensive due to rapid growth in size and expensive polygonal geometric calculations. Approximate K-Nearest Neighbor Similarity (K-ANN) search can solve the similarity search problem by prioritizing fast query processing time over accuracy. Such algorithms require the inputs in feature vector form. The conventional uniform grid-based encoding is unable to produce high-quality feature vectors over real-world datasets wherein the polygons vary widely in area by orders of magnitude. In this work, we present a novel polygon encoding scheme based on Quad tree non-uniform grids over real-world benchmark datasets with extreme variations in areas preserving the Jaccard similarity metric by encapsulating shape as well as area into corresponding feature vectors. We construct a Hierarchical Navigable Small World (HNSW) graph using the Quad tree-based feature vectors resulting in a scalable K-ANN search index over polygonal datasets based on Jaccard distances, the first such work. We prepared a benchmark ground truth dataset for exact similarity search over popular datasets to evaluate the indexes constructed using different encoding techniques. Our HNSW graph-based index achieves 76% and 85% recall rates for the top 50 and 500 ANN search over 450K polygons, respectively.Computer Scienc
Impact of a multimodal antimicrobial stewardship intervention on fluoroquinolone usage for antimicrobial prophylaxis before urologic procedures in a Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic
Get PDFObjective: This study evaluated the impact of a multimodal antimicrobial stewardship intervention on fluoroquinolone (FQ) use for prophylaxis in outpatient urologic procedures. Methods: This single-center retrospective cohort study included patients from the South Texas Veterans Affairs (VA) outpatient urology clinic who underwent procedures between December 1, 2020, and February 29, 2024. Interventions included academic detailing, provider-specific FQ use reports, and prospective urine culture reviews with feedback. One pre-intervention cohort (PRE) and three post-intervention cohorts (POST2021, POST2022, POST2023) were analyzed. The primary outcome was FQ days of therapy (DOT); secondary outcomes included inappropriate prescriptions, post-operative complications, emergence of FQ resistance within 1 year, and Clostridioides difficile infection within 30 days of prophylaxis. Results: This analysis included data from 548 patients (150 PRE, 139 POST2021, 168 POST2022, 91 POST2023). Median age was similar across groups (p = 0.20), with over 90% male in each cohort (p = 0.07). Over one-third in each cohort received pre-operative oral antibiotics, 25% of which were FQs. More than 90% received pre-operative IV antibiotics, and over 50% received post-operative oral antibiotics. A significant reduction in FQ DOT/100 procedures was noted from pre- to post-intervention groups (98.6 PRE, 49.6 POST2021, 53.5 POST2022, 45.1 POST2023). No significant differences were observed in the secondary clinical outcomes. Conclusion: A multimodal stewardship initiative reduced FQ use before urologic procedures, mainly due to decreased IV use. Further efforts are needed to optimize pre-operative FQ use and address drivers of post-operative antibiotic prescribing.Pharmac
Robust Explicit Parameter Estimation of the Inverse Weibull Distribution
Get PDFIn this thesis, we investigate several robust explicit estimators for the two-parameter Inverse Weibull (IW) distribution. Due to the non-monotonic nature of its hazard rate, the IW distribution plays a significant role in analyzing lifetime data in reliability and biological studies. It is well known that commonly used parameter estimation methods, such as maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and ordinary least squares (OLS) are sensitive to outliers, which limits their applicability when data may be contaminated by outlying observations due to various factors. This limitation motivates the exploration of alternative robust estimation methods. To be more specific, we consider M-estimators and power-weighted repeated medians (PWRM) estimators, both of which are explicit functions of the sample observations and are therefore computationally efficient. We carry out simulation studies to evaluate the efficiency and robustness of these estimators under both clean and contaminated data conditions. The numerical results indicate that while all methods perform similarly in the absence of contamination, the PWRM estimator outperforms both OLS and MLE in contaminated settings by achieving higher relative efficiency and maintaining stability across different levels of censoring. Finally, we illustrate the practical utility of these methods through a real-data application.Management Science and Statistic
Hot Spots Policing: Assessing the Impact on Officer-Initiated Activity
Get PDFThis study investigates the effects of hot spots policing on self-initiated officer activity using data from a violent crime reduction strategy implemented in Dallas, TX. A strong body of empirical evidence has demonstrated that violent crime is disproportionately concentrated in very small, specific geographic locations. Hot spots policing leverages crime concentration by focusing police resources in these small, crime-prone areas. While extensive research demonstrates that hot spots policing is effective in reducing crime, critics argue that focused enforcement efforts may lead to increased proactive activities targeting residents. To date, no research has specifically examined the impact on self-initiated officer activities involving citizen interactions within communities exposed to hot spots policing. Moreover, there has been little exploration of the differences between hot spots strategies that use proactive approaches compared with lighter footprint strategies. We address this gap in the literature using a multi-year assessment of the effects of two types of hot spots policing on self-initiated activity. We found differential impacts on self-initiated activity in areas treated with deterrence-based, high visibility (HV) strategies versus those treated with proactive, offender-focused approaches (OF). Hot spots policing had no effect on self-initiated activity in HV treated areas while there were statistically significant increases in four of five measured categories in the OF treated locations. This study highlights the need for law enforcement agencies to adopt tailored approaches specific to crime conditions in different areas. While proactive approaches may be necessary in specific locations, agencies should understand both the crime reduction benefits and potential impacts on local communities.Criminology and Criminal Justic