37495 research outputs found
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User-Centered Software Engineering for VR Relaxation Applications
No full textDeveloping effective Virtual Reality (VR) applications requires integrating user-centered methodologies into the software engineering lifecycle. Traditional VR development often focuses on predefined environments, limiting user input in the design process. This study presents a user-centered participatory approach to developing VR relaxation experiences, where users engage in immersive 3D drawing to help define design requirements rather than having them interact with predefined environments, as in previous studies. Our findings show the importance of incorporating multisensory stimuli, balancing embodied and calm interactions, and integrating mood-based personalization for relaxing VR experiences. These results suggest effective strategies for enhancing user-centered design in Software Engineering and improving VR relaxation experiences
686. Antibiotic Prescribing for Urinary Tract Infections in Outpatient Settings: A Multicenter Assessment Based on the Five Ds of Stewardship
No full textBackground Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a leading cause of outpatient antibiotic use. Prior studies have documented inappropriate prescribing during outpatient UTI visits, but few have assessed intervention opportunities using a structured stewardship framework. We evaluated UTI prescribing practices in a healthcare system using the Five Ds framework: Diagnosis, Drug, Dose, Duration, and De-escalation. Methods
We conducted a retrospective study across 4 medical centers and \u3e 20 outpatient clinics within the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, the second largest U.S. safety net healthcare system. To ensure adequate representation across sites while maintaining feasibility for manual chart review, we reviewed a random sample of adult patients with an ICD-10 code-based UTI diagnosis from 01/2019 to 01/2022. We excluded patients treated for non-UTI infections or not evaluated for acute UTI. For patients with multiple encounters, we included only the first episode. Prescribing practices were assessed for appropriateness using IDSA guideline criteria. Results
Of 48,149 UTI visits, we randomly selected and reviewed 2447 charts 1281 outpatient encounters met inclusion criteria for acute UTI. Of these, 646 (50%) had ≥ 1 inappropriate prescribing practice. Diagnostic errors were the most common (300/646, 46%), followed by drug selection (153/646, 24%), treatment duration (131/646, 20%), de-escalation (32/646, 5%), and dosing (30/464, 5%) (Table 1). Of the diagnosis errors, 260/300 (87%) were related to treatment of asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB). Among drug-related errors, nitrofurantoin for pyelonephritis was most common (78/153, 51%), followed by fluoroquinolone use for ASB or uncomplicated UTI (73/153, 48%). The majority of duration-related errors were prolonged course for uncomplicated cystitis (104/131, 79%). Conclusion
In our health network, clinician-diagnosed UTI visits were commonly associated with incorrect diagnosis, inappropriate antibiotic selection, and inappropriately prolonged treatment. Our findings highlight opportunities for outpatient stewardship and targets for interventions to improve antibiotic prescribing
Integral Peace Leadership: Theory and Practice for Creating Peaceful Change
No full textThis book presents the transformative framework of integral peace leadership, a holistic approach to challenging violence and aggression while building positive, just, and equitable systems and structures, and showcases stories of community peace leaders working to build sustainable, peaceful change around the world.
Integral Peace Leadership explores the four interconnected dimensions essential to peace leadership: Innerwork, the personal peace practices for growth and development; Knowledge, the interactive skills and engagement strategies; Community, the collaborative action and collective impact; and Environment, the navigation and transformation of systemic structures. Sixteen compelling narratives from peace leaders across Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jammu and Kashmir, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States show how this framework catalyzes meaningful change in diverse contexts. These authentic stories demonstrate how integral peace leadership moves from theory to practice, creating sustainable transformation in communities facing complex challenges.
Providing an accessible roadmap for those committed to creating a more just and peaceful world, this book is the ideal resource for both scholars seeking theoretical foundations and practitioners looking to implement peacebuilding strategies.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/education_books/1165/thumbnail.jp
The Ro-vibrational Spectroscopy of H\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3eNCO (\u3csup\u3e2\u3c/sup\u3eA′) and HNCOH and the Peculiar Case of Their Isomers \u3cem\u3ecis\u3c/em\u3e- and \u3cem\u3etrans\u3c/em\u3e-HNCHO
No full textWhile quantum chemical treatment of the prebiotic, astrochemically relevant H2NCO molecule’s rotational constants and fundamental vibrational frequencies produces exceptionally accurate values, the cis-HNCHO isomer is more of a challenge to standard electronic structure methods. The trans-HNCHO conformer is well-behaved like H2NCO due to the nature of the local potential energy surface, but the zero-point vibrational energy of the torsional motion is significantly greater than the barrier, implying that this isomer cannot be observed. The 2.6 kcal mol−1 lower-energy cis-HNCHO conformer showcases a small pseudo-Jahn–Teller distortion about the HNCO torsion coordinate at planarity. This produces a challenging environment for the quartic force field (QFF) treatment of the rotational and vibrational spectroscopic data. Even so, the accuracy of the H2NCO spectroscopic constants from this explicitly correlated coupled cluster theory QFF implies that similar accuracy should be present for the mathematically well-behaved trans-HNCHO, which exists in a shallow but true minimum. The constants computed herein may allow for a more detailed search of experimental rotation spectra for cis-HNCHO, which would provide reference data necessary for potential searches for this molecule in space. Rotational constants are also provided for the four conformers of HNCOH, and the fundamental vibrational frequencies in the range of James Webb Space Telescope observation are provided for all isomers in order to allow for the possibility of multiple wavelength observation of this family of molecules, which may play a role in the molecular origins of life
Lister, Andrew. \u3cem\u3eJustice and Reciprocity\u3c/em\u3e. Oxford University Press, 2025. Pp. 304. $130.00 (cloth).
No full textA review of Andrew Lister\u27s Justice and Reciprocity
Synthesis Study of Evapotranspiration Evolution in the Mekong Delta Induced by Land Use and Land Cover Changes in the Decades of 1990–2020
No full textEvapotranspiration (ET) plays a key role in the water cycle and balance, and its estimation is of paramount importance in hydrological studies. This variable is also strongly influenced by the land use and land cover (LULC). This study use a synthesis approach to analyse the relationship between ET variation and LULC transformation in the period 1990–2020. The study area represents a major agricultural region in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam between the Mekong and Bassac rivers. The multivariate dataset was ingested into the hydrological model Soil and Water Assessment Tool to examine the multidecadal ET evolution across the study region. The ET evolution is investigated together with LULC changes to identify the primary drivers of the ET change. The results reveal an increase in landscape fragmentation together with a decrease in ET. The reduction in ET is associated with the decrease in water surfaces corresponding to upstream dam operations and with the construction of new urban areas. In the coastal area, a conversion from natural areas (i.e. mangroves cover) to aquaculture has been observed, leading to a slight increase in ET
StyleSPADE: Realistic Image Augmentation for Robust Infrastructure Crack Segmentation via Ensemble Learning
No full textThe rapid deterioration of global infrastructure necessitates precise and automated crack detection technologies for proactive maintenance. However, deep learning-based segmentation models often suffer from a scarcity of diverse, high-quality labeled datasets. This study proposes StyleSPADE, a novel conditional image generation model that integrates semantic masks and style images to synthesize realistic crack data with diverse background textures while preserving precise geometric morphology. To validate the effectiveness of the generated data, we conducted extensive semantic segmentation tasks using Transformer-based (Mask2Former, Swin-UPerNet) and CNN-based (K-Net) models. Experimental results demonstrate that StyleSPADE-based augmentation significantly outperforms baseline models, achieving a Crack IoU of 0.6376 and an F1-score of 0.7586. Furthermore, we implemented a Stacking Ensemble strategy combining high-recall and high-precision models, which further improved performance to a Crack IoU of 0.6452. Our findings confirm that StyleSPADE effectively mitigates the data scarcity problem and enhances the robustness of crack detection in complex environmental conditions. This framework contributes to improving the efficiency and safety of infrastructure management by enabling reliable damage assessment in data-limited environments
Evaluation of Peptides and Peptide–Doxorubicin Conjugates Designed and Synthesized for Targeting Triple-Negative Breast Cancer via Cell-Surface Receptors
No full textA significant problem faced in oncology is the lack of chemotherapeutic agents that are tumor site-specific, resulting in reduced therapeutic efficacy and unintended infliction of harm to surrounding healthy tissues and cells that often lead to serious side effects. Current strategies being explored to circumvent this issue aim to refine delivery of chemotherapeutic agents specifically to tumor sites, which may be achieved via conjugation of these agents to biomarker-specific ligands. This forms the foundation of ligand-targeted drug delivery. Among different breast cancers, treatment of the triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtype has been particularly challenging, largely due to the absence of a well-defined biomarker to exploit for targeted drug delivery. This has substantially limited the number of effective TNBC treatment options, funneling down primarily to conventional chemotherapy, the long-standing standard of care. The scope of this dissertation covers the peptide–drug conjugate (PDC) therapeutic modality. The findings herein delineate novel ligands, targets, and PDCs for effectively targeting TNBC
