203 research outputs found
Factors and associations for physical activity in severely obese adults during a two-year lifestyle intervention
No full text<p>First author: Randi Jepsen. </p
Must be treated with respect: evolving ethics and curation of Mesoamercian human remains
No full textThis paper explores the ethical protocols for the handling of human remains sourced in Central America and stored in academic collections within the United States. Although all such institutions profess a commitment that osteological remains “Must be treated with respect,” the definition of what constitutes “respect” is often subjective. My research and data collected will draw upon the international mandates that govern the exportation, storage, study, and conservation of human remains with attention to three aspects that contribute to the legal framework in which human remains fall: 1) The laws and where they originate; 2) The organizations that maintain these laws; and 3) The extent by which these laws are applied and enforced. I will compare varying internal policies directed towards the conservation and handling of human remains in four academic institutions. As these policies and practices are necessarily institution-specific, they will be compared to demonstrate areas of significant alignment and areas of contrast. The ultimate goal is to establish how following ethical guidelines can become a sustainable feature in archaeological practice by crafting a framework in which ethical principles are designed in such a way that they can have a positive impact on the quality of scientific data. This position is supported by a demonstration of how standardization in ethical issues has consequences for the standardization in the scientific method and long-term conservation of remains. Other improvements discussed include the possibility for enhanced international cultural diplomacy to impact the overall discipline of archaeology in the public perception of its role as a steward of important cultural heritage.M.A.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Randi Renee Ragsdal
The search for the chimera
No full textSession 1 Mr. Randi will give an update of his lecture to the American Physical Society on the occasion of his award of the 1989 Forum Prize. The citation said: "for his unique defense of Science and the scientific method in many disciplines, including physics, against pseudoscience, frauds and charlatans. His use of scientific techniques has contributed to refuting suspicious and fraudulent claims of paranormal results. He has contributed significantly to public understanding of important issues where science and society interact". He is a professional magician and author of many books. He worked with John Maddox, the Editor of Nature to investigate the claims of "water with memory"
Interplay between European regulation and national policies in biodiversity conflict reconciliation
No full textSuccessful public conservation policies at various governmental levels have increased some populations of protected species to the extent that they are causing damage to human activities. As a reaction public authorities are developing biodiversity reconciliation policies. Finland and Germany have both created reconciliation policies including a package of measures like management of population, support of technical measures and compensation for damage. All these measures are affected by European policy and law, though no special reconciliation policy has been adopted at European level. This article explores the options European legislation offers and the restrictions it imposes on member states. Based on experiences with German and Finnish biodiversity reconciliation policies, the interrelationship between European and national regulation is elaborated, leading to suggestions for better coordination of reconciliation policies between different governmental levels. --Biodiversity conflict reconciliation,European regulation,fisheries and aquaculture,local damage management,nature conservation,policy instruments
The perks of being bold: Overconfidence predicts persistence
No full textOverconfidence is a widely researched bias that most people exhibit across a broad range of domains. Most of the past research has focused on the negative, dangerous consequences of overconfidence. In the present studies, following recent work that has identified some advantages of overconfidence, we explored persistence as an additional advantage. In the present research, overconfidence is operationalized as the degree to which self-assessed performance exceeds actual performance. Performance on each task was incentivized. We examined overconfidence and persistence in three different domains: logical reasoning, creative thinking, and effort expenditure. Across two studies (Ns = 304 and 306), evidence showed that overconfidence in one’s performance predicted a greater willingness to invest time and effort in working on all three tasks. Moreover, we also explored several personality predictors of overconfidence. The results showed that narcissism, risk seeking, and pride predicted higher levels of overconfidence, though some variation existed across tasks. These results suggest that overconfidence is associated with positive gains like persistence, which is in turn associated with success and aids the acquisition of valuable resources.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2020-08-01The student, Randi Vogt, accepted the attached license on 2018-07-06 at 10:23.The student, Randi Vogt, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2018-07-06 at 10:53.This Thesis was approved for publication on 2018-07-06 at 11:05.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #12754 on 2018-09-27 at 11:36:17Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-27T16:47:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
VOGT-THESIS-2018.pdf: 1556119 bytes, checksum: ac0e1830caa8a2beca7d9fe3b28cfc9f (MD5)
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Previous issue date: 2018-07-06Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 107892
Lift date: 2020-09-27T16:47:41Z
Reason: Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemLimited Restriction Lifted for Item 107892 on 2020-09-28T09:15:22Z
Total Artificial Heart: A Retrospective Multiple-Case Analysis of Occupational Therapy in a Quaternary Hospital
No full textAbstract
Date Presented 3/31/2017
A retrospective multicase study of functional outcomes was done with patients with an implanted total artificial heart. Results show improved function with occupational therapy provided postoperatively. Knowledge and evidence can be used to develop and implement interventions for this population.
Primary Author and Speaker: Hannah Oldenburg
Additional Authors and Speakers: Jennifer Bergstrom, Gina Christensen
Contributing Authors: Caitlin Polley, Randi Privette, Maureen Musselmann, Mary Pyffereon, Charles Brannon</jats:p
Improving Traumatic Brain Injury Outcomes: Early Identification and Management of Paroxysmal Sympathetic Hyperactivity
No full textAbstract
Background: Paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity (PSH) can occur in patients with acutely acquired brain injury and is associated with mortality, poor clinical outcomes, prolonged hospitalizations, physical disability, and increased healthcare costs. The most common cause of PSH syndrome is traumatic brain injury (TBI). Symptoms consist of hyperthermia, diaphoresis, arterial hypertension, tachycardia, tachypnea, and extremity motor dystonic posturing, often in response to evoked stimuli and occurs in 8% to 33% of TBI patients. Critical care nurses are at the forefront of providing direct patient care to TBI patients and are often the first to identify PSH.
Purpose: The objective of this quality improvement project (QI) was to comprehensively evaluate the literature and provide evidence-based information regarding PSH to nurses, advanced practice providers, residents, and trauma/surgical critical care attendings who deliver care to TBI patients in a surgical trauma intensive care unit (ICU).
Methods: An integrative literature review was performed, PowerPoint was created to conduct seminars, and pre-and post-test analyses were obtained to evaluate knowledge attainment of the management of PSH. The overall goal of the educational seminars was to increase scores by \u3e20% for adequate knowledge attainment, which was obtained. Limitations: high acuity patients, staffing schedules, seminar timing, and lack of perceived educational need by providers.
Conclusion: This QI project identified a gap in clinical knowledge and practice surrounding PSH in TBIs. Continuous education on PSH is imperative to promote early identification and timely management for prevention of secondary brain injury and worsening healthcare outcomes in this complex patient population.
Author Contact Information
Randi Rockwell
[email protected]
The Open ANC (OANC)
No full textThe American National Corpus (ANC) project is creating a massive electronic collection of American English, including texts of all genres and transcripts of spoken data produced from 1990 onward. The ANC will provide the most comprehensive picture of American English ever created, and will serve as a resource for education, linguistic and lexicographic research, and technology development. This open portion of the American National Corpus (OANC) contains approximately 15 millions words from the full corpus.Le projet American National Corpus (ANC) est en train de rassembler une collection volumineuse sur l'anglais américain qui comprend des textes de tous genres et des transcriptions de paroles à partir de 1990. L'ANC fournira l'image la plus complète de l'anglais américain construite à ce jour, servant de ressource pour l'enseignement, la recherche linguistique et lexicographique, ainsi que les technologies de la langue. Ce fragment en libre accès de l'American National Corpus (OANC) contient environ 15 millions de mots du corpus d'origine
Large-scale probabilistic aerial reconstruction
No full textThesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2018.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-167).While much emphasis has been placed on large-scale 3D scene reconstruction from a single data source such as images or distance sensors, models that jointly utilize multiple data types remain largely unexplored. In this work, we will present a Bayesian formulation of scene reconstruction from multi-modal data as well as two critical components that enable large-scale reconstructions with adaptive resolution and high-level scene understanding with meaningful prior-probability distributions. Our first contribution is to formulate the 3D reconstruction problem within the Bayesian framework. We develop an integrated probabilistic model that allows us to naturally represent uncertainty and to fuse complementary information provided by different sensor modalities (imagery and LiDAR). Maximum-a-Posteriori inference within this model leverages GPGPUs for efficient likelihood evaluations. Our dense reconstructions (triangular mesh with texture information) are feasible with fewer observations of a given modality by relaying on others without sacrificing quality. Secondly, to enable large-scale reconstructions our formulation supports adaptive resolutions in both appearance and geometry. This change is motivated by the need for a representation that can adjust to a wide variability in data quality and availability. By coupling edge transformations within a reversible-jump MCMC framework, we allow changes in the number of triangles and mesh connectivity. We demonstrate that these data-driven updates lead to more accurate representations while reducing modeling assumptions and utilizing fewer triangles. Lastly, to enable high-level scene understanding, we include a categorization of reconstruction elements in our formulation. This scene-specific classification of triangles is estimated from semantic annotations (which are noisy and incomplete) and other scene features (e.g., geometry and appearance). The categorization provides a class-specific prior-probability distribution, thus helping to obtain more accurate and interpretable representations by regularizing the reconstruction. Collectively, these models enable complex reasoning about urban scenes by fusing all available data across modalities, a crucial necessity for future autonomous agents and large-scale augmented-reality applications.by Randi Cabezas.Ph. D
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