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Association Between Pulmonary Function and Asthma Symptoms
No full textBackground: FEV1 as a percentage of predicted (FEV1%pred) is commonly measured in asthma clinical studies; however, reports vary on its association with asthma control instruments evaluating symptoms. Objective: Assess the association between FEV1%pred and Asthma Control Questionnaire (ACQ) scores in a managed-care population with persistent asthma. Methods: Retrospective analysis of survey responses and spirometry results of patients (aged ≥12 years) with persistent asthma from the Observational Study of Asthma Control and Outcomes was done. Eligible patients received 4 identical surveys including the 5-item ACQ (ACQ-5)/6-item ACQ (ACQ-6) and completed spirometry in parallel. Longitudinal analyses, comparisons of change over time, and fixed- and random-effects regression analyses were conducted, with/without adjustment for covariates. Results: There were 1748 survey responses with valid spirometry results. In unadjusted models, coefficients for ACQ-5/ACQ-6 scores were not statistically significant and coefficient of determination (R2) was low (0.03). When adjusted for covariates, ACQ-5 and ACQ-6 scores were significantly associated with FEV1%pred (P \u3c.001) and R2 increased to 0.11 and 0.12, respectively. In adjusted models, every 1-point increase in ACQ-5 and ACQ-6 scores was associated with a 1.7% and 1.9% decrease, respectively, in FEV1%pred. Change in FEV1%pred and change in ACQ-5/ACQ-6 scores were not significantly associated in regressions with/without covariates. Conclusions: The weak and statistically insignificant association between FEV1%pred and ACQ-5/ACQ-6 scores in unadjusted models suggests a high degree of unexplained variation between these measures. Results support the use of both symptoms and pulmonary function, rather than relying on one measure alone, to assess asthma control in clinical care and outcomes studies
Collaborative training and response communities-an alternative to traditional cyber defense escalation
No full textIn the United States, the State of Colorado\u27s Department of Transportation successfully defended and recovered from a recent severe malware attack. The 2018 attack at the Colorado Department of Transportation was mitigated by a rapid multi-agency incident response. This is the first case in the United States where a state\u27s National Guard responded to a governor\u27s declaration of a cyber emergency response. In anticipation of advanced threats to Colorado citizens, Regis University has hosted collaborative exercises with government, organizations, and industry as part of a larger Collaborative Training Response Community (CTRC) effort to facilitate collaborative physical exercises, governmental policy development, and relationship building. The resulting capabilities allowed for an effective response to this incident. The authors present a new incident response model, based on this case in the context of existing cybersecurity organizations extant in the U.S., that may be useful to private and public sector communities where collaborative incident response is appropriate
Exploring freirean culture circles and boalian theatre as pedagogies for preparing asset-oriented teacher educators
No full textBackground/Context: Teacher educator development remains an undertaking that is both understudied and underavailable as an explicit professional path, despite scholarship suggesting that teacher education\u27s transformative potential hinges on teacher educators\u27 pedagogical work. Purpose, Practice, & Participants: This article reports on a qualitative study that explored the development of teacher educators who expressed deep commitments to educational equity for minoritized youth. Fifteen current and prospective teacher educators participated over three years in situated adaptations of two critical pedagogical approaches: Freirean culture circles, where participants engaged in critical dialogue around conflicts encountered in their teacher education work that involved issues of inequity, particularly deficit-based ideas of P-12 students and their families, and Boalian theatre (or teatro), interactive role-play where participants dramatically re-enacted these conflicts and imagined potential responses to them. This study examines the ways in which these critical pedagogical spaces facilitated participants\u27 development as asset-oriented teacher educators. Research Design & Data Collection: This research represents an ethnographic self-study, as the authors engaged in culture circles and teatro as participant-researchers. To study these spaces of critical teacher educator development, the authors collected ethnographic data, which included semistructured interviews with each participant, field notes, and audio/ video recordings of dialogue and role-play, as well as participant written reflections. Findings/Results: Through their engagement in culture circles and teatro, participants came to recognize some of the micro-pedagogies of asset-oriented teacher education, grappled with the relational dimensions of teacher learning, became familiar with possible tools of asset-oriented teacher education, and interrogated the social, political, and historical dimensions of the work. In doing so, they understood each area as linked both to specific settings and individuals and as connected to more common dilemmas that may play out across teacher education contexts. Conclusions/Recommendations: While cautioning against widespread, mechanistic implementation, the authors recognize culture circles and teatro as offering special promise for the development of asset-oriented teacher educators. In particular, findings suggest that these critical pedagogies support the conditions for learning-particularly spaces that center participants\u27 identities and experiential conflicts-that can cultivate complex understandings about, and tools for engaging, the contingent work of asset-oriented teacher education. Such spaces seem particularly well equipped to cultivate critical understandings deemed essential for transforming the field of teacher education
Expert systems in finance: Smart financial applications in big data environments
No full textThroughout the industry, financial institutions seek to eliminate cumbersome authentication methods, such as PINs, passwords, and security questions, as these antiquated tactics prove increasingly weak. Thus, many organizations now aim to implement emerging technologies in an effort to validate identities with greater certainty. The near instantaneous nature of online banking, purchases, transactions, and payments puts tremendous pressure on banks to secure their operations and procedures. In order to reduce the risk of human error in financial domains, expert systems are seen to offer a great advantage in big data environments. Besides their efficiency in quantitative analysis such as profitability, banking management, and strategic financial planning, expert systems have successfully treated qualitative issues including financial analysis, investment advisories, and knowledge-based decision support systems. Due to the increase in financial application\u27s size, complexity, and number of components, it is no longer practical to anticipate and model all possible interactions and data processing in these applications using the traditional data processing model. The emergence of new research areas is clear evidence of the rise of new demands and requirements of modern real-life applications to be more intelligent. This book provides an exhaustive review of the roles of expert systems within the financial sector, with particular reference to big data environments. In addition, it offers a collection of high-quality research that addresses broad challenges in both theoretical and application aspects of intelligent and expert systems in finance. The book serves to aid the continued efforts of the application of intelligent systems that respond to the problem of big data processing in a smart banking and financial environment
Howling on the edge: Mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata) howling behaviour and anthropogenic edge effects in a fragmented tropical rainforest in Costa Rica
No full textThe function of long calling is a subject of interest across animal behaviour study, particularly within primatology. Many primate species have male-specific long-distance calls, including platyrrhines like the folivorous howler monkey (Alouatta spp.). Howler monkeys may howl to defend resources such as feeding trees or areas of rich vegetation from other monkey groups. This study tests the ecological resource defence hypothesis for howling behaviour in the mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata) and investigates how anthropogenic forest fragmentation may influence howling behaviour. More specifically, this study examines how howling bout rate, duration, precursors and tree species richness, DBH, and canopy cover vary in 100 m anthropogenic edge and interior forest zones at La Suerte Biological Research Station (LSBRS), a fragmented tropical rainforest in Costa Rica. Results show that tree species richness and canopy cover are higher in forest interior at this site, suggesting that monkeys should howl at greater rates in the interior to defend access to these higher-quality vegetation resources. Overall, our results supported the ecological resource defence hypothesis. The main howl precursor was howling from neighbouring groups. Although howling rate did not differ between forest zones, howling bouts from forest interior were longer, had a greater number of howls per bout and were preceded by different precursors than howls from anthropogenic edge zones, including more howls from neighbouring groups. Our findings provide some of the first evidence for behavioural edge effects in primate vocal communication behaviour
To be or not to be: The case of the hot WHIM absorption in the blazar PKS 2155-304 sight line
No full textThe cosmological missing baryons at z \u3c 1 most likely hide in the hot (T ≥ 105.5 K) phase of the warm hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). While the hot WHIM is hard to detect due to its high ionisation level, the warm (T ≤105.5 K) phase of the WHIM has been very robustly detected in the far-ultraviolet (FUV) band. We adopted the assumption that the hot and warm WHIM phases are co-located and therefore used the FUV-detected warm WHIM as a tracer for the cosmologically interesting hot WHIM. We performed an X-ray follow-up in the sight line of the blazar PKS 2155-304 at the redshifts where previous FUV measurements of Ovi, Si iv, and broad Lyman-alpha (BLA) absorption have indicated the existence of the warm WHIM. We looked for the Ovii Heα and Oviii Lyα absorption lines, the most likely hot WHIM tracers. Despite the very large exposure time (∼1 Ms), the Reflection Grating Spectrometer unit 1 (RGS1) on-board XMM-Newton data yielded no significant detection which corresponds to upper limits of log N(O vii(cm-2)) ≤ 14:5-15:2 and log N(O viii(cm-2)) ≤ 14:9-15:2. An analysis of the data obtained with the combination of the Low Energy Transmission Grating (LETG) and the High Resolution Camera (HRC) on-board Chandra yielded consistent results. However, the data obtained with the LETG, combined with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) lead to the detection of an feature resembling an absorption line at λ ∼ 20Å at simple one-parameter confidence level of 3.7σ, consistent with several earlier LETG/ACIS reports. Given the high statistical quality of the RGS1 data, the possibility of RGS1 accidentally missing the true line at λ ∼ 20Å is very low: 0.006%. Neglecting this, the LETG/ACIS detection can be interpreted as Ly transition of Oviii at one of the redshifts (z ∼ 0:054) of FUV-detected warm WHIM. Given the very convincing X-ray spectral evidence for and against the existence of the λ ∼ 20Å feature, we cannot conclude whether or not it is a true astrophysical absorption line. Considering cosmological simulations, the probability of the LETG/ACIS λ ∼ 20Å feature being due to the astrophysical Oviii absorber co-located with the FUV-detected Ovi absorber is at the very low level of ≤.0.1%. We cannot completely rule out the very unlikely possibility that the LETG/ACIS 20Å feature is due to a transient event located close to the blazar
Short-term Effects of Manual Therapy in Patients After Surgical Fixation of Ankle and/or Hindfoot Fracture: A Randomized Clinical Trial
No full textBackground: Patients with surgical fixation of ankle and/or hindfoot fractures often experience decreased range of motion and loss of function following surgery and postsurgical immobilization, yet there is minimal evidence to guide care for these patients.
Objectives: To assess whether manual therapy may provide short-term improvements in range of motion, muscle stiffness, gait, and balance in patients who undergo operative fixation of an ankle and/or hindfoot fracture.
Methods: In this multisite, double-blind randomized clinical trial, 72 consecutive patients who underwent open reduction internal fixation of an ankle and/or hindfoot fracture and were receiving physical therapy treatment of exercise and gait training were randomized to receive either impairment-based manual therapy (manual therapy group) or a sham manual therapy treatment of light soft tissue mobilization and proximal tibiofibular joint mobilizations (control group). Participants in both groups received 3 treatment sessions over 7 to 10 days, and outcomes were assessed immediately post intervention. Outcomes included ankle joint range of motion, muscle stiffness, gait characteristics, and balance measures. Group-by-time effects were compared using linear mixed modeling.
Results: There were no significant differences between the manual therapy and control groups for range of motion, gait, or balance outcomes. There was a significant difference from baseline to the final follow-up in resting gastrocnemius muscle stiffness between the manual therapy and control groups (-47.9 N/m; 95% confidence interval: -86.1, -9.8; P = .01). There was no change in muscle stiffness for the manual therapy group between baseline and final follow-up, whereas muscle stiffness increased in the control group by 6.4%.
Conclusion: A brief course of manual therapy consisting of 3 treatment sessions over 7 to 10 days did not lead to better short-term improvement than the application of sham manual therapy for most clinical outcomes in patients after ankle and/or hindfoot fracture who were already being treated with exercise and gait training. Our results, however, suggest that manual therapy might decrease aberrant resting muscle stiffness after ankle and/or hindfoot surgical fixation.
Level of evidence: Therapy, level 2. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2019;49(5):310-319. Epub 13 Feb 2019. doi:10.2519/jospt.2019.8864
Establishing the inter-rater reliability of spinal cord damage manual measurement using magnetic resonance imaging
No full textStudy design: Retrospective study. Objectives: To establish the inter-rater reliability in the quantitative evaluation of spinal cord damage following cervical incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI) utilizing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI was used to perform manual measurements of the cranial and caudal boundaries of edema, edema length, midsagittal tissue bridge ratio, axial damage ratio, and edema volume in 10 participants with cervical incomplete SCI. Setting: Academic university setting. Methods: Structural MRIs of 10 participants with SCI were collected from Northwestern University’s Neuromuscular Imaging and Research Lab. All manual measures were performed using OsiriX (Pixmeo Sarl, Geneva, Switzerland). Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were used to determine inter-rater reliability across seven raters of varying experience. Results: High-to-excellent inter-rater reliability was found for all measures. ICC values for cranial/caudal levels of involvement, edema length, midsagittal tissue bridge ratio, axial damage ratio, and edema volume were 0.99, 0.98, 0.90, 0.84, and 0.93, respectively. Conclusions: Manual MRI measures of spinal cord damage are reliable between raters. Researchers and clinicians may confidently utilize manual MRI measures to quantify cord damage. Future research to predict functional recovery following SCI and better inform clinical management is warranted
Local-Language Radio Stations in Kenya: Helpful or Harmful?
No full textToday, Kenya has a vibrant media landscape, one of the most sophisticated in the region. In particular, vernacular radio—radio stations that broadcast news and entertainment in indigenous languages—is thriving. Vernacular stations have grown in popularity and there are now more than 30 airing across the country. However, critics have suggested that vernacular stations played a role in the 2007 post-election violence that killed more than 1000 people. This study, qualitative interviews with Kenyan journalists, set out to understand what role vernacular radio plays in the contemporary journalism landscape in Kenya. The results revealed that while journalists recognize their value primarily for cultural preservation and for rural communities to obtain information, which can lead to increased development and political participation, there are negative aspects. Journalists see the stations as contemporary contributors to the tribal divisions that still exist in the country. Analyzed from the lens of social responsibility theory—that being, that media organizations should operate with some level of concern for the public good—vernacular radio as a journalism practice presents unique implications for development and continued democratization, as well as for the media to fulfill its social responsibility
Meat eating in wild hamadryas baboons: Opportunistic trade-offs between insects and vertebrates
No full textThe consumption of meat may provide herbivorous animals with important nutrients that are scarce in their plant-based diet. Seasonal variation in plant food availability has been suggested to motivate dietary flexibility in a range of species and thus primates may seek more prey when key plant resources are unavailable. Alternatively, prey encounter rate may drive meat eating. Here we investigate patterns of meat eating in hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas) at Filoha, Awash National Park, Ethiopia. The Filoha baboons rely largely on doum palm fruit (Hyphaene thebaica), which are available most months of the year, and the young leaves of Acacia senegal, which are more abundant during the wet season. We hypothesized that the baboons would consume more meat when H. thebaica and A. senegal were less available, which we tested by comparing meat eating and consumption of these plant food species from March 2005 through February 2006. Our results reveal a high rate of vertebrate meat eating at Filoha (0.028/hour of observation) compared with other hamadryas sites. We found no relationship, however, between meat eating (either insect or vertebrate) and either rainfall or consumption of H. thebaica or A. senegal, indicating that availability of preferred plant resources does not drive meat consumption. Vertebrate consumption and time spent feeding were significantly negatively associated; there was no relationship, however, between the consumption of animal matter and either home range size or daily path length. Vertebrate and insect consumption alternated throughout the year such that the baboons maintained a small amount of animal matter in their diet year-round. Our results suggest that the baboons do not often actively seek animal matter, but consume it opportunistically, with the presence of locust and dragonfly swarms driving insect consumption, and both prey availability and the availability of feeding time shaping vertebrate predation