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Validation of the age, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio, C reactive protein score on 28 day mortality in the National COVID cohort collaborative
Get PDFIdentifying patients at high mortality risk can improve outcomes in SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia (COVID-19). We validate a prognostic model for mortality in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 receiving dexamethasone using a retrospective multi-centered study. This is a retrospective cohort study using the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (NC3) including 9,708 adult patients admitted for COVID-19 who received dexamethasone within 24 h of admission and remained hospitalized for 72 h. Previous work from a single-center cohort informed selection of prognostic variables including Age, day 3 neutrophil-lymphocyte Ratio, and day 3 C-reactive protein level (ARC Score). Variables from the development cohort were analyzed in a training cohort, and the resulting model was tested in a validation cohort. Age and day 3 measures of the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio and C-reactive protein level were included in a logistic regression model to predict 28-day mortality. The 28-day mortality in this patient population was 15.4%. The area under the curve for the ARC model was 0.77 (95% confidence interval, 0.74–0.79). The Age, neutrophil-lymphocyte Ratio, and C-reactive protein (ARC) score identifies COVID-19 patients with a high risk of mortality within 28 days of hospitalization using clinical information on day 3 of hospitalization. ARC scores perform well across all variants of concern
New Catalytic Methods for Conjugate Additions with ⍺-Boryl Nucleophiles
No full textIn this work, we investigate a new metal-free catalytic method for 1,4-addition of boryl nucleophiles. 1,4-addition reactions, or conjugate additions, are versatile reactions for insertion of nucleophiles at the beta position to a carbonyl, enabling site-selective functionalizations, but often requiring harsh conditions. As such, phase-transfer catalysts were utilized to facilitate mild and selective activation of the silicon-substituted alpha-diboryl nucleophile, which could then add to a dimethyl benzylidene malonate Michael acceptor. In utilizing cesium fluoride as a fluoride activator, a THF and DMF solvent mixture, and cinchonidine and pyrazolium phase transfer catalysts, the reaction was able to reach excellent yields with minimal byproducts. This work has far-reaching implications for the site-selective installation of boronic ester functional handles under mild conditions, which can give way to further functionalization and molecular expansion via a diverse array of boron reactions like oxidations, cross-couplings, and aminations. Future studies will examine tuning phase-transfer catalysts in order to impart enantioselectivity in the reaction, which will further enhance this method's utility in medicinal chemistry and drug molecule expansion
Food for Thought: How Diet Shapes Attention and Cognition
No full textSeveral people struggle with focus or managing their impulses in daily life. The gut and brain are closely connected, and research has shown that our diets can influence how we think and behave. Understanding whether dietary fiber – which “feeds” our healthy gut bacteria – can also enhance cognitive functions can support new practices for improving mental performance, health, and overall well-being.
In this study, participants were grouped by fiber intake and tested on decision-making, attention, and self-control tasks. It was found that fiber intake was linked to performance on the Iowa Gambling Task, a test of learning and impulse control, particularly in the later stages of the game. These findings suggest that fiber consumption may help people make better long-term decisions rather than impulsive short-term choices.
This work is important because it highlights a potential dietary pathway to support brain health and behavior, adding to the growing evidence that nutrition shapes not just our physical health, but also cognition. For the general public, the results emphasize a simple, accessible strategy: eating more fiber-rich foods. This could improve daily decision-making and self-regulation
Attitudes Towards Care Work and Household Authority Among Married Muslim Men in Malaysia
Get PDFThis article explores men’s attitudes towards care work and authority through interviews with 21 married Muslim men in Malaysia who work full-time and are/were stay-at-home husbands or stay-at-home fathers (SAHFs). This study finds that both groups of men embrace caring masculinities but also masculinize care. The way they reconcile both models of care is influenced by how they understand Islamic discourse. SAHFs generally interpreted Islam to mean that care work and their role did not detract from their sense of masculinity. Interpretations of Islam affirmed a negative relationship between unemployment and a sense of masculinity for men working full-time. This article seeks to expand the geographic scope of Western masculinity theory by exploring how religion influences men’s attitudes towards alternative gender roles in a Muslim-majority setting
Heterogeneous Data Integration in Healthcare Big Data: A Comprehensive Systematic Review
Get PDFHealthcare data integration is one of the most complex challenges in modern medical informatics. Hospitals and research centers collect huge amounts of data from imaging, electronic health records, genomics, proteomics, and sensor devices. Some repositories exceed three petabytes of information [1]. These data arrive in different formats and at different times. Researchers need methods that can combine such diverse information while keeping it useful for doctors and patients. In this review we summarize current methods for integrating multimodal healthcare data. We focus on how these methods scale, how they are evaluated, and how they can be used in real clinics. We also highlight the importance of integrating data across different health domains such as oncology, neurology, mental health and lifestyle studies [54][61]
Framing the Super Wicked Problem: Three Essays on American Climate Attitudes
Get PDFAddressing global climate change effectively and equitably requires significant political will and public support. In the United States, persistent climate skepticism complicates this effort. This dissertation investigates the political psychology of climate attitudes, with a focus on how identity-based factors, particularly racial resentment and nationalism, influence support for climate action. This dissertation consists of three papers. The first paper examines how the perceived racial distributional effects of climate policy shape the views of White Americans. I argue that racial resentment has emerged as a key determinant of climate attitudes, especially when policies are seen as benefiting communities of color. Using both correlational and experimental survey data, I find that higher levels of racial resentment are associated with lower support for domestic and international climate policy, regardless of partisanship. An original survey experiment shows that support declines further when respondents are explicitly informed about the racial equity goals of climate action. The second paper investigates whether racial resentment operates as a distinct mechanism or merely reflects broader conservative worldviews. Using an original survey of White Americans, I test competing explanations for the linkage finding that racial resentment remains a significant and independent predictor of opposition to climate policy, even after accounting for other psychological and ideological factors. These results indicate that racial resentment is not merely a proxy for cultural conservatism, but represents a distinct form of out-group animus that actively shapes climate attitudes. The third paper, co-authored with Tyler Ditmore, explores strategies to overcome climate skepticism. Through a vignette and a conjoint experiment, we find that framing green industrial policy as a tool of international economic competition, particularly with China, is especially effective in shifting opinions among ex-ante climate skeptics. Collectively, these papers highlight the importance of non-material factors, such as racial attitudes and sociotropic concerns, in shaping public support for climate policy. They offer critical insights for scholars and policymakers on how climate messaging can either build or erode coalitions for action. Understanding these dynamics is essential for crafting politically viable and inclusive climate strategies.Doctor of Philosoph
ASSEMBLY AND PROPERTIES OF 2D MATERIAL-MOLECULE SUPERLATTICES
Get PDFThe fabrication of atomically precise hybrid materials is one of the core goals of materials science. By carefully combining different material building blocks, specific properties can be targeted for a variety of chemical, electronic, or physical uses. Layered and 2D materials are a particularly interesting class of building block, as they exhibit many interesting quantum properties when they are exfoliated into individual monolayers. However, unlike quantum dots, there does not exist a good way to assemble individual 2D monolayers into 3D solids, thus making their practical use in devices quite difficult. In this work, I demonstrate a generalizable method to assemble 3D solids from 2D semiconductors and molecules. By using a combination of simulation and experimentation, I propose a mechanism, and show the fabrication of a variety of molecule containing thin films, including novel structures predicted by our mechanism. After fabricating these novel superlattices, I perform a variety of characterization to show that the resulting superlattices maintain the interesting quantum properties of the 2D material, while still assembling into a 3D solid. After characterizing the 2D material component of the lattice, I perform a combination of MD simulations and experimentation to reveal the increased dynamic potential offered to this material by the molecular phase. Our simulations reveal that the liquid phase trapped inside of the superlattice is quite mobile; in some cases more so than a bulk liquid. I show that this increased mobility is a direct result of decreased intermolecular forces, and in that way present the beginnings of a model for intelligently designing novel hybrid materials. After demonstrating the increased mobility from a standpoint of simulation, I next utilize this increased dynamic potential to intercalate ions into the system in mild, aqueous conditions. I demonstrate that the intercalation is unique to the superlattice system, and further show that the superlattice system can be leveraged to intercalate ions that typically do not intercalate. By demonstrating the increased dynamic potential of our superlattice system, this work provides exciting opportunities to develop new hybrid materials for a variety of interesting optical, electrochemical, and physical purposes.Doctor of Philosoph
A COMPARISON OF METHODS FOR STUDYING CO-DEVELOPMENT
Get PDFHybrid models have been gaining traction in the psychological sciences due to their ability to simultaneously model contemporaneous between-person effects and prospective within-person effects. However, there has yet to be a systematic and rigorous evaluation of how popular hybrid models, such as the LCM-SR and RI-CLPM, perform under conditions commonly encountered in psychological research. The current thesis used a Monte Carlo Simulation to examine the performance of the LCM-SR and RI-CLPM when a linear trend was present or absent in the underlying data structure. The results demonstrated that performance in relation to model fit and parameter was comparable between the two models when there was no trend, but diverged when a linear trend was present. Specifically, the performance of the RI-CLPM significantly deteriorated. Performance was especially concerning when slope variance was small, as this misspecification was often undetected and the associated AR and CL estimates were significantly biased. Ultimately, these results suggest that it is imperative that applied researchers use a principled model-building strategy for fitting RI-CLPMs to help identify misspecification where possible. Otherwise, researchers are at a high risk of making inaccurate inferences from their models.Master of Art
Flipping the Script on Service Provision: Refinement, Feasibility, and Social Validity of a Pilot Community Service Program for Autistic Adults
Get PDFAutistic adults report substantially lower rates of quality of life and community participation than non-autistic adults (Wilson et al., 2021). Volunteering is a community participation activity which has demonstrated positive associations with mental and physical health, social support, employment skills, and quality of life in the general population (Stuart et al., 2020) and may provide meaningful benefits for autistic adults as well. In this study, the ORBIT model of program development (Czajkowski et al., 2015) was used as a framework to gauge stakeholder feedback and refine program materials (Phase I) and to ultimately pilot a revised volunteer program for autistic adults called TEACCH Autism Gives (TAG) (Phase II). Program materials were initially adapted from the TEACCH School Transition to Employment and Post Secondary Education Program (T-STEP; Klinger et al., 2022). In Phase I, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 autistic adults in the community; thematic analysis affirmed the value of volunteering and revealed themes across barriers and facilitators of success. Feedback from stakeholder interviews was used to refine program structure and materials. In Phase II, 12 autistic adults participated in the TAG program by volunteering across 4 volunteer sites in North Carolina for 3-5 hours per week and completing measures of community participation, social engagement, and self-determination at pre- and post-test. Results revealed high social validity among autistic adults, high rates of feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness among volunteer supervisors, and significant improvements in community participation at post-test. Significant changes were not observed for measures of social engagement, loneliness, or self-determination. Findings suggest that the development of an efficacy trial is warranted to further explore the efficacy of the TAG program as well as potential downstream effects of community participation on quality of life in this population.Doctor of Philosoph
IS THE GRASS ALWAYS GREENER? THE POLISH FARMERS’ FIGHT BETWEEN POLITICS AND SUSTAINABILITY IN CAP
Get PDFThis thesis examines whether political partisanship toward the European Union (EU) affects Polish farmers’ adoption of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) eco-schemes and green payments. While the CAP emphasizes sustainability through eco-schemes, adoption rates remain uneven. Using a quantitative case study of Poland’s 16 voivodeships from 2014 to 2024, the analysis draws on path dependence, GAL-TAN cleavage, and rent-seeking theories. Regressions and correlation analyses test the relationship between EU parliamentary voting patterns (2014, 2019, 2024) and subsidy uptake, while controlling for structural variables such as farm size and education. Results reveal that farm size is the strongest predictor of eco-scheme engagement, meaning that structural capacity outweighs political alignment. However, 2024 data show a moderate correlation between pro-EU partisanship and eco-scheme uptake, suggesting a potential shift in how political beliefs shape CAP participation. These findings reveal a new perspective on EU partisanship, challenging assumptions about the politicization of sustainability.Master of Art