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Exploring the Acoustic Output of a Computational Model of Aging Voice
No full textPurpose: This study investigated the acoustic outputs of a computational model of aging voice by comparing acoustic values (i.e., CPP) of real participants to simulations produced by a computational kinematic model of speech. The first aim looked to determine the relation of CPP measured from patient recordings to CPP of simulated vowels, and whether modeling pyriform sinuses increased the correlation to patient recordings. The second aim looked to determine whether decreasing epilaryngeal area increased the CPP of signals produced by the model. Method: 18 laryngeal high-speed video and audio recordings were used from a larger study focused on improving voice production for adults with age-related dysphonia (NIDCD R21DC016356). Glottal area waveforms were segmented and used as the vibratory source in a computational speech production model. Both /a:/ and /i:/ vowels were simulated with and without the presence of the pyriform sinuses and using three settings of epilaryngeal input areas. Cepstral peak prominence of real and simulated vowels were compared. Spearman Rank Correlations were used to compare results of real vs. simulated values under various conditions, including the presence or absence of pyriform sinuses and different epilaryngeal input areas. A repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the CPP differences across epilaryngeal areas at the vocal tract entry. Results: Simulated vowels correlated weakly with real production and the correlation was higher when the pyriform sinuses were included in the model compared to when they were excluded. The correlations for males (present vs. absent) were as follows: (/a:/) rs = 0.455 vs. 0.275 and (/i:/) rs = -0.006 vs. rs = 0.108. The correlations for females (present vs. absent) were as follows: (/a:/) rs = 0.268 vs. rs = 0.260 and (/i:/) rs = 0.200 vs. rs = 0.152. Narrowing the epilaryngeal area from 1.0 to 0.2 cm2 increased the CPP in 6 out of 18 simulations for vowel /a:/, as well as /i:/. Qualitative evaluation of spectrograms revealed variability in harmonic energy across conditions, which might partially explain the weak correlations. Conclusion: In comparing real to simulated recordings for vowels /a:/ and /i:/, no strong relationship was found between groups. While some similarities in CPP were seen between real participants and simulations, this was not consistent for all comparisons. While not consistent among all simulations, there was a stronger relationship between real participants and simulations that included the pyriform sinuses; while not consistent, the presence of pyriform sinuses did alter CPP for simulations. While changes to CPP were noticed among some simulations, there was no strong relationship between CPP and changes to epilaryngeal area
Climate-Smart Crop Success in Arid Agrivoltaic Conditions
No full textAs climate change accelerates aridification and expands arid and semiarid regions, the need for sustainable agricultural and energy production systems has increased. This demand is particularly critical in these densely populated and rapidly growing areas. Agricultural growth in arid environments can be hindered by limited water availability and intense solar radiation. Given the abundant sunlight in arid regions, integrating photovoltaics with agriculture, so-called “agrivoltaics”, offers a sustainable land use opportunity. Agrivoltaic systems utilize solar panels to shade crops, reducing mid-day sun exposure, while evapotranspiration from crops enhances photovoltaic efficiency. Integrating agrivoltaics with climate-smart crops—known for their heat and drought resilience—presents a promising strategy to simultaneously enhance food security and produce renewable energy, thereby advancing sustainable development. Research on cultivating climate-smart crops under PV shade remains limited. While these crops are adapted to intense sun and limited water availability, their performance in the milder microclimate beneath solar panels is not well understood. This study assessed the performance of tepary beans (Phaseolus acutifolius), a climate-smart crop, grown beneath solar panels versus traditional open-field conditions, examining germinations, plant development, yield, and plant-microbe interactions. Tepary beans exhibited significantly improved agricultural performance under solar panels, evidenced by multiple traits, including plant height, weight, reproductive output, and bean morphology. This research highlights the benefits of integrating agriculture with photovoltaic production to address environmental challenges in arid regions, providing innovative dual land use for a sustainable future
Effects of Sugammadex on Women of Childbearing Age
No full textPurpose: The purpose of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was to increase knowledge among Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) at a general acute care hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, regarding the effects of Sugammadex on women of childbearing age.Background: Anesthesia providers are crucial in ensuring patient safety during surgical procedures. However, there are gaps in knowledge about the effects of Sugammadex on women who are on contraceptives, breastfeeding, or pregnant. Sugammadex, which is used for reversing neuromuscular blockade, could bind with hormonal contraceptives containing estrogens and progestin, rendering them ineffective for up to 7 days post-administration (Do & Cho, 2023). This interaction could diminish contraceptive efficacy and potentially lead to unintended pregnancy if the patient didn’t use alternative methods of contraception. Methods: The primary methodology employed in this project involved implementing a targeted educational intervention aimed at enhancing CRNAs' knowledge of the effects of Sugammadex on women of childbearing age. This intervention consisted of a focused educational presentation followed by administering an electronic survey using Qualtrics. The survey included ten questions to gauge the participants' knowledge of the presented material. Results: Out of the 90 anesthesia providers who were invited to participate in the study, 26 provided a response, resulting in a response rate of 29%. Following an educational intervention, significant improvements in knowledge were observed regarding the effects of Sugammadex on women of childbearing age. Mean scores rose across all survey questions, with the most significant increases seen in areas such as understanding hormonal interactions (1.39 points), recommendations for pregnancy and lactation (1.85 points), fetal safety (1.54 points), and the low risk of breast milk transfer (1.58 points). Statistically significant improvements (p < 0.05) confirmed the effectiveness of the intervention in enhancing knowledge consistency among participants. Conclusions: This quality improvement project effectively enhanced CRNAs' knowledge and confidence regarding the reproductive health implications of Sugammadex, particularly its effects on hormonal contraceptives, pregnancy, and lactation. By addressing this critical knowledge gap, the project emphasizes the importance of integrating reproductive health discussions into anesthesia practice, thereby supporting informed consent and ensuring patient safety. Ongoing education and the standardization of informed consent protocols for female patients of childbearing age can further reinforce these practices within routine anesthesia care, promoting safer outcomes and improving provider-patient communication
Mixed Methods Investigation of the Validity of the Items on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
No full textThis study explores the validity of the items on the Rosenberg Self Esteem scale. Self-esteem is the degree that someone feels favorably about themselves and how much value they personally feel they have. While other measures have been developed to measure global self-esteem, the RSES is overwhelmingly used most often. The definition of self-esteem and its role in education has been debated by educators, psychologists and educational psychologists for over 100 years. The self-esteem movement of the late 1980’s and 90’s in the United States was a campaign that began in the state of California and was widely adopted by the educational system. Understanding if the construct of self-esteem has changed since initial measurement tools were developed in 1965 is important. For example, items on the RSES may now be measuring other constructs of self. A mixed method design was utilized to examine the validity of the items on the RSES using the structure of Strong Program of Construct Validation combining qualitive and quantitative data. Qualitive data from thirty-three participants was collected via interviews using an informal interview style and research translation process called Think Aloud Protocol. Quantitative data was collected through one hundred and seventy-four surveys containing the RSES and the Self-Liking/Self-Competence Scale – Revisited. Findings showed that the items on the RSES were found to have statistical validity, but this measure may not be measuring current perceptions of self-esteem
Place-Based Liberalism
No full textPlace-Based Liberalism envisions the local political community as a fundamental site of liberal political power, identity, and normativity. An effective liberal institution must be to some extent federalist — that is, involving decentralized subnational political jurisdictions that are decentralized to some degree — and the most theoretically and practically attractive form of liberalism requires citizens having the right relation to both the local and national polity. The following seven chapters develop various aspects of this program. The first chapters develop moral grounds for the project. Chapter 1 focuses on Rawlsian political liberalism, which I interpret as seeking the most stable liberal democratic constitutional form. Chapter 2 develops the value of political solidarity. Chapter 3, on civic friendship, partly combines these themes: the value of civic friendship, which is a kind of solidarity, may itself be built into the Rawlsian stability framework. Chapter 4 develops possible practical implications of these arguments, and specifically defends promoting greater local sovereignty in a federalist political system. Local sovereignty is most powerful and defensible when citizens generally have mobility rights: that is, the ability to move among a diverse set of local jurisdictions. Chapter 5 theorizes the sufficiency conditions for mobility rights in terms of the necessary resources for mobility and the range of options necessary for mobility. Chapter 6 theorizes the underlying account of autonomy embodied by mobility rights. Chapter 7 connects place-based liberalism to the contemporary crisis of loneliness, arguing that broadly communitarian ideals could be embodied in place-based liberalism compatible with an appropriately-interpreted principle of liberal neutrality. These chapters may be themed in different ways. Chapters 4 and 7 are the most relevant for contemporary political discourse. Chapters 1 and 3 each concern Rawlsian political liberalism, and chapter 4 may be viewed as a direct upshot of those discussions. Chapters 2 and 3 pursue the related concepts of political solidarity and civic friendship. Chapters 5 and 6 may respectively be of independent interest to theorists of consent and autonomy, and jointly form what I believe is the most sustained focused discussion in the literature of the conditions for mobility or exit rights. These chapters also jointly make the case that place-based liberalism genuinely satisfies, through mobility rights, the minimal conditions of liberal justice. Chapters 2 and 7 focus on the freestanding political values of solidarity and social health. This sets them apart as yet another pairing, but the stability of liberal institutions and the values that those institutions achieve are related concerns. Citizens must see their state as valuable if it is to be stable. The best way to achieve this is for the state to in fact achieve a wide array of substantive, political, and social values. The background perspective of the dissertation is instrumentalist and practical. As I foreground in chapter 4, liberalism is widely believed to be in a moment of crisis. We must not simply resist threats to liberalism, but also reassess the basic foundations and institutions of liberalism in response to those threats. I do not directly argue for liberalism’s value here, but instead presuppose that a broadly liberal form of democratic constitutional government is, so far as we currently know, by far the best way to arrange a state — but only if liberalism can sustain itself at all. I do, however, attempt to directly and indirectly answer a variety of critiques of liberalism, mainly by showing how capacious a place-based form of liberalism can be regarding ideological, religious, social, and communitarian pluralism. Liberalism can only succeed if liberal citizens flourish. Place-based liberalism makes room for a very wide array of flourishing ways of life, while preserving the fundamental liberal commitment that individuals must not be oppressed by their society
Continuous Variable Quantum Networks: A Layer-Based Approach
No full textQuantum networks promise to enable many interesting applications including enhanced imaging, enhanced sensing, and provably secure communication. Similar to how the OSI model allows for different layers of classical networks to be abstracted apart from each other, in this dissertation I present analogous layer boundaries that may be drawn to distinguish the different aspects of quantum networks that will be needed to enable us to realize them. For the physical layer we discuss the foundational quantum optics necessary to create and share entanglement as well as some theoretical performance bounds on characterizing squeezed vacuum sources. Afterwards we look at experimental characterizations of both single-mode and two-mode squeezed vacuum sources, which play very important roles in most applications of continuous variable quantum information. Next, for the link layer we study how to quantify the amount of entanglement shared between two network users when using protocols that do not result in easy-to-use states. We then use these tools to analyze several repeater protocols, focusing on ones that utilize continuous variable entanglement sources. Lastly, for the network layer we begin by considering how the phenomenon of requests being ‘blocked’ in classical networks can be ported over to entanglement distribution requests. We then showcase methods for calculating the capacity region of a single quantum switch, as well as fundamental tradeoffs in the optimization of switch placement within a quantum network
Overcoming Resistance to Improved Performance Measures
No full textThis study examines whether managers in supervisory roles incorporate new objective performance measures to a greater extent in their subjective performance evaluations upon receiving communication from an innovation champion that supports the use of those measures. I predict that communication from an innovation champion increases managers’ trust in the value of new performance measures, an increase that is made greater when managers perceive innovation champions to be similar to themselves. I measure incorporation of new performance measures using the weight placed on said measures by managers in subjective performance evaluations. I do not find that managers incorporate new performance measures to a greater extent when exposed to communication from an innovation champion, nor do I find that innovation champion similarity increases the influence of innovation champions on the incorporation of new measures. I do, however, find that managerial trust in the value of new performance measures increases managers’ incorporation of said measures into their subjective performance evaluations. This study contributes to prior literature by providing future researchers with avenues for further exploring means of overcoming managerial resistance to new performance measures in subjective performance evaluation settings. This study also speaks to practice by emphasizing the importance of building managerial trust in the value of new performance measures when seeking to implement improved performance measurement systems
Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test – Revised (CUDIT-R): Clinical Utility Education for Psychiatric Providers
No full textPurpose: This quality improvement project aimed to educate a group of psychiatric providers working at a local addiction and behavioral health treatment center on the benefits and clinical utility of a cannabis use disorder screening tool in an inpatient setting. Background: To improve behavioral health outcomes, practical, evidence-based screening tools have been used in a variety of behavioral healthcare settings. One such tool, the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test-Revised (CUDIT-R), has proven efficacy regarding DSM-5-TR cannabis use disorder criteria. Considering the emotional and neurocognitive detriments that have ample supportive evidence regarding cannabis use, along with the more widespread accessibility of cannabis currently backed by US State and Federal policy, provider awareness regarding improved screening practices is pertinent. Methods: This quality improvement DNP project employed a pretest-posttest design, including Likert-style multiple-choice questions, which were used to evaluate a live, in-person PowerPoint presentation on the CUDIT-R. Results: A total of ten psychiatric provider participants, all over the age of 18, were recruited from a weekly staff meeting, and all ten completed pre-and posttest surveys. Posttest data showed a significant increase in perceived knowledge, perceived benefits, intent to adopt into daily practice, and DSM-5-TR criteria alignment of the CUDIT-R. The survey question pertaining to the need for further education with respect to the CUDIT-R data was skewed and did not show statistical significance
Exploring Gender Typicality and Sense of Belonging among University Students in Gender-imbalanced Disciplines
No full textThis study examines gender typicality and sense of belonging in undergraduate students enrolled in colleges with significant gender imbalances in enrollment in a public university in the Southwestern United States. Students were classified as either a match or non-match for gender-college congruence, meaning that they identified themselves either with a gender congruous with the dominant gender of their college (match), or with a different gender (non-match). Participants (N = 88) completed a revised version of the gender typicality subscale of the Multidimensional Gender Identity Scale (Egan & Perry, 2001; Tate et al., 2015), as well as a revised version of the Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale (Pittman & Richmond, 2007) to measure their sense of belonging within their college. Multiple regression modeling showed that gender-college congruence does not predict sense of belonging, though it does positively predict gender typicality, adjusting for gender and class standing. Gender typicality positively predicts sense of belonging, although this relationship is not moderated by gender-college congruence. Results demonstrated that more gender typical students may gravitate towards enrollment within a college in which the gender imbalance skews toward their own gender. This match of a student’s own gender with the dominant gender of their college does not seem to be an important factor in students’ sense of belonging. However, more gender typical students tended to feel a greater sense of belonging in their college in general. The study points to a further need to examine gender disparity among academic disciplines that go beyond binary categories of gender identity, and that more may need to be done to support sense of belonging in gender nonconforming students
Effects of Cyclase-Associated Protein 2 α-ACTIN Induced Isoform Exchange on Actomyosin Interactions
No full textCyclase-associated protein 2 (CAP2) plays a critical role in thin filament maturation bymediating the exchange of α-actin isoforms within the sarcomere. In CAP2 knockout (CAP2-KO) mice, this process is disrupted, resulting in a significant increase in smooth muscle actin (SMA) and skeletal actin (SKA) and decreased levels of cardiac actin (CAA). Therefore, CAP2-KO disease correlates the altered isoform profile with cardiac dysfunction and the development of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). Using single-cell mechanics, this study shows that CAP2-KO cardiomyocytes have significantly reduced force production at maximal calcium activation, which is rescued by an overexpression of CAA. In vitro motility (IVM) assays demonstrate that
only regulated thin filaments display functional differences in actin-myosin interactions between isoforms, likely mediated through SMA’s increased binding to the troponin complex. These findings support a model in which α-actin isoform expression impacts actomyosin interactions indirectly through regulation by accessory proteins, contributing to the contractile dysfunction seen in CAP2-KO hearts