4,754 research outputs found

    UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024

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    The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp

    A Multi-level Analysis on Implementation of Low-Cost IVF in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Study of Uganda.

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    Introduction: Globally, infertility is a major reproductive disease that affects an estimated 186 million people worldwide. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of infertility is considerably high, affecting one in every four couples of reproductive age. Furthermore, infertility in this context has severe psychosocial, emotional, economic and health consequences. Absence of affordable fertility services in Sub-Saharan Africa has been justified by overpopulation and limited resources, resulting in inequitable access to infertility treatment compared to developed countries. Therefore, low-cost IVF (LCIVF) initiatives have been developed to simplify IVF-related treatment, reduce costs, and improve access to treatment for individuals in low-resource contexts. However, there is a gap between the development of LCIVF initiatives and their implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Uganda is the first country in East and Central Africa to undergo implementation of LCIVF initiatives within its public health system at Mulago Women’s Hospital. Methods: This was an exploratory, qualitative, single, case study conducted at Mulago Women’s Hospital in Kampala, Uganda. The objective of this study was to explore how LCIVF initiatives have been implemented within the public health system of Uganda at the macro-, meso- and micro-level. Primary qualitative data was collected using semi-structured interviews, hospital observations informal conversations, and document review. Using purposive and snowball sampling, a total of twenty-three key informants were interviewed including government officials, clinicians (doctors, nurses, technicians), hospital management, implementers, patient advocacy representatives, private sector practitioners, international organizational representatives, educational institution, and professional medical associations. Sources of secondary data included government and non-government reports, hospital records, organizational briefs, and press outputs. Using a multi-level data analysis approach, this study undertook a hybrid inductive/deductive thematic analysis, with the deductive analysis guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). Findings: Factors facilitating implementation included international recognition of infertility as a reproductive disease, strong political advocacy and oversight, patient needs & advocacy, government funding, inter-organizational collaboration, tension to change, competition in the private sector, intervention adaptability & trialability, relative priority, motivation &advocacy of fertility providers and specialist training. While barriers included scarcity of embryologists, intervention complexity, insufficient knowledge, evidence strength & quality of intervention, inadequate leadership engagement & hospital autonomy, poor public knowledge, limited engagement with traditional, cultural, and religious leaders, lack of salary incentives and concerns of revenue loss associated with low-cost options. Research contributions: This study contributes to knowledge of factors salient to implementation of LCIVF initiatives in a Sub-Saharan context. Effective implementation of these initiatives requires (1) sustained political support and favourable policy & legislation, (2) public sensitization and engagement of traditional, cultural, and religious leaders (3) strengthening local innovation and capacity building of fertility health workers, in particular embryologists (4) sustained implementor leadership engagement and inter-organizational collaboration and (5) proven clinical evidence and utilization of LCIVF initiatives in innovator countries. It also adds to the literature on the applicability of the CFIR framework in explaining factors that influence successful implementation in developing countries and offer opportunities for comparisons across studies

    Towards A Practical High-Assurance Systems Programming Language

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    Writing correct and performant low-level systems code is a notoriously demanding job, even for experienced developers. To make the matter worse, formally reasoning about their correctness properties introduces yet another level of complexity to the task. It requires considerable expertise in both systems programming and formal verification. The development can be extremely costly due to the sheer complexity of the systems and the nuances in them, if not assisted with appropriate tools that provide abstraction and automation. Cogent is designed to alleviate the burden on developers when writing and verifying systems code. It is a high-level functional language with a certifying compiler, which automatically proves the correctness of the compiled code and also provides a purely functional abstraction of the low-level program to the developer. Equational reasoning techniques can then be used to prove functional correctness properties of the program on top of this abstract semantics, which is notably less laborious than directly verifying the C code. To make Cogent a more approachable and effective tool for developing real-world systems, we further strengthen the framework by extending the core language and its ecosystem. Specifically, we enrich the language to allow users to control the memory representation of algebraic data types, while retaining the automatic proof with a data layout refinement calculus. We repurpose existing tools in a novel way and develop an intuitive foreign function interface, which provides users a seamless experience when using Cogent in conjunction with native C. We augment the Cogent ecosystem with a property-based testing framework, which helps developers better understand the impact formal verification has on their programs and enables a progressive approach to producing high-assurance systems. Finally we explore refinement type systems, which we plan to incorporate into Cogent for more expressiveness and better integration of systems programmers with the verification process

    TeamSTEPPS and Organizational Culture

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    Patient safety issues remain despite several strategies developed for their deterrence. While many safety initiatives bring about improvement, they are repeatedly unsustainable and short-lived. The index hospital’s goal was to build an organizational culture within a groundwork that improves teamwork and continuing healthcare team engagement. Teamwork influences the efficiency of patient care, patient safety, and clinical outcomes, as it has been identified as an approach for enhancing collaboration, decreasing medical errors, and building a culture of safety in healthcare. The facility implemented Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS), an evidence-based framework which was used for team training to produce valuable and needed changes, facilitating modification of organizational culture, increasing patient safety compliance, or solving particular issues. This study aimed to identify the correlation between TeamSTEPPS enactment and improved organizational culture in the ambulatory care nursing department of a New York City public hospital

    Trade-Off Exploration for Acceleration of Continuous Integration

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    Continuous Integration (CI) is a popular software development practice that allows developers to quickly verify modifications to their projects. To cope with the ever-increasing demand for faster software releases, CI acceleration approaches have been proposed to expedite the feedback that CI provides. However, adoption of CI acceleration is not without cost. The trade-off in duration and trustworthiness of a CI acceleration approach determines the practicality of the CI acceleration process. Indeed, if a CI acceleration approach takes longer to prime than to run the accelerated build, the benefits of acceleration are unlikely to outweigh the costs. Moreover, CI acceleration techniques may mislabel change sets (e.g., a build labelled as failing that passes in an unaccelerated setting or vice versa) or produce results that are inconsistent with an unaccelerated build (e.g., the underlying reason for failure does not match with the unaccelerated build). These inconsistencies call into question the trustworthiness of CI acceleration products. We first evaluate the time trade-off of two CI acceleration products — one based on program analysis (PA) and the other on machine learning (ML). After replaying the CI process of 100,000 builds spanning ten open-source projects, we find that the priming costs (i.e., the extra time spent preparing for acceleration) of the program analysis product are substantially less than that of the machine learning product (e.g., average project-wise median cost difference of 148.25 percentage points). Furthermore, the program analysis product generally provides more time savings than the machine learning product (e.g., average project-wise median savings improvement of 5.03 percentage points). Given their deterministic nature, and our observations about priming costs and benefits, we recommend that organizations consider the adoption of program analysis based acceleration. Next, we study the trustworthiness of the same PA and ML CI acceleration products. We re-execute 50 failing builds from ten open-source projects in non-accelerated (baseline), program analysis accelerated, and machine learning accelerated settings. We find that when applied to known failing builds, program analysis accelerated builds more often (43.83 percentage point difference across ten projects) align with the non-accelerated build results. Accordingly, we conclude that while there is still room for improvement for both CI acceleration products, the selected program analysis product currently provides a more trustworthy signal of build outcomes than the machine learning product. Finally, we propose a mutation testing approach to systematically evaluate the trustworthiness of CI acceleration. We apply our approach to the deterministic PA-based CI acceleration product and uncover issues that hinder its trustworthiness. Our analysis consists of three parts: we first study how often the same build in accelerated and unaccelerated CI settings produce different mutation testing outcomes. We call mutants with different outcomes in the two settings “gap mutants”. Next, we study the code locations where gap mutants appear. Finally, we inspect gap mutants to understand why acceleration causes them to survive. Our analysis of ten thriving open-source projects uncovers 2,237 gap mutants. We find that: (1) the gap in mutation outcomes between accelerated and unaccelerated settings varies from 0.11%–23.50%; (2) 88.95% of gap mutants can be mapped to specific source code functions and classes using the dependency representation of the studied CI acceleration product; (3) 69% of gap mutants survive CI acceleration due to deterministic reasons that can be classified into six fault patterns. Our results show that deterministic CI acceleration suffers from trustworthiness limitations, and highlights the ways in which trustworthiness could be improved in a pragmatic manner. This thesis demonstrates that CI acceleration techniques, whether PA or ML-based, present time trade-offs and can reduce software build trustworthiness. Our findings lead us to encourage users of CI acceleration to carefully weigh both the time costs and trustworthiness of their chosen acceleration technique. This study also demonstrates that the following improvements for PA-based CI acceleration approaches would improve their trustworthiness: (1) depending on the size and complexity of the codebase, it may be necessary to manually refine the dependency graph, especially by concentrating on class properties, global variables, and constructor components; and (2) solutions should be added to detect and bypass flaky test during CI acceleration to minimize the impact of flakiness

    The use of the fungus Nectriella pironii for the production of a laccase-like multicopper oxidase and elimination of toxic contaminants in the textile industry

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    Niniejsza praca doktorska miała na celu wytypowanie mikroorganizmu, wykazującego zdolność do produkcji enzymu o aktywności lakazy i eliminacji barwników przemysłu tekstylnego, amin aromatycznych oraz wielopierścieniowych węglowodorów aromatycznych (WWA) z jednoczesnym wskazaniem mechanizmów adaptacji drobnoustroju do toksycznych zanieczyszczeń generowanych przez przemysł tekstylny. Charakterystyka lakaz oraz innych enzymów zaliczanych do wielomiedziowych oksydaz, a także ich zastosowanie zostały opisane w P1. W pierwszym etapie pracy, którego wyniki zostały przedstawione w P2, przeprowadzono skrining grzybów wyizolowanych z terenu dawnych Zakładów Przemysłu Barwników „Boruta” w Zgierzu, o zdolności do wytwarzania enzymu o aktywności lakazy. Wskazany drobnoustrój został zidentyfikowany jako Nectriella pironii. Zakres badań, opisanych w P3, obejmował ocenę możliwości grzyba N. pironii do eliminacji amin aromatycznych i barwników azowych. W eksperymentach wykorzystano próbki odcieków pobranych ze składowiska odpadów niebezpiecznych (Z. P. B.) ,,Boruta’’ w Zgierzu. W wyniku przeprowadzonych analiz wykazano, że grzyb N. pironii charakteryzuje się zwiększoną zdolnością do wzrostu w obecności prób pochodzących ze składowiska odpadów niebezpiecznych. Ponadto dowiedziono, iż o-tolidyna podczas hodowli ulega hydroksylacji i/lub przekształceniu do mniej toksycznej pochodnej – 3,3’-dihydroksybenzydyny. W ostatnim etapie pracy, którego rezultaty zostały zawarte w P4, oceniono możliwość eliminacji WWA przez N. pironii w obecności odcieków składowiskowych oraz zidentyfikowano mechanizmy zachodzące w grzybni na skutek adaptacji mikroorganizmu do zanieczyszczeń. Uzyskane wyniki wykazały, iż badany szczep jest w stanie eliminować badane WWA. Uzyskane rezultaty mogą wskazywać na adaptację grzyba N. pironii do czynnika stresowego i/lub zdolność do detoksykacji zanieczyszczenia po jego uprzedniej biotransformacji do mniej toksycznych półproduktów.The aim was the selection of a microorganism showing the ability to produce enzyme with laccase activity and eliminate textile industry dyes, aromatic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and the indication of the mechanisms of this microorganism’s adaptation to toxic pollutants of textile industry. The characteristics of laccases and other enzymes classified as multicopper oxidases and their application had been described in review P1. The first stage of the work (P2) involved screening of fungi isolated from the area of the former "Boruta" Dye Industry Plant in Zgierz, and characterized by the ability to produce enzymes with laccase activity. The indicated microorganism was identified as Nectriella pironii. The scope of the research described in P3 included the assessment of the ability of the tested fungus to eliminate aromatic amines and azo dyes. In addition, in these experiments samples of leachates collected from the hazardous waste landfill were used. The fungus was characterized by an increased ability to grow in the presence of samples from a hazardous waste landfill and during cultivation o-tolidine underwent hydroxylation and/or conversion to a less toxic derivative, 3,3’-dihydroxybenzidine. In the last stage (P4), the possibility of PAH elimination by N. pironii in the presence of landfill leachates was evaluated. The mechanisms occurring in the mycelium as a result of the adaptation to contamination were identified. The results obtained might indicate the adaptation of N. pironii to stress factors and/or its ability to detoxify the contaminants after biotransformation to less toxic intermediates.1. Dofinansowanie projektu pt. „Charakterystyka indukcji lakazy grzyba Myrothecium sp. IM 6443 oraz analiza jej potencjału biodegradacyjnego” przyznane przez Narodowe Centrum Nauki w ramach konkursu Preludium 14. Lata 2017-2022 (UMO-2017/27/N/NZ9/02160), kierownik projektu 2. Dotacja celowa na działalność związaną z prowadzeniem badań naukowych lub prac rozwojowych oraz zadań z nimi związanych, służących rozwojowi młodych naukowców oraz uczestników studiów doktoranckich. Rok 2018 (5811/E-345/M/2018), kierownik projekt

    Modern meat: the next generation of meat from cells

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    Modern Meat is the first textbook on cultivated meat, with contributions from over 100 experts within the cultivated meat community. The Sections of Modern Meat comprise 5 broad categories of cultivated meat: Context, Impact, Science, Society, and World. The 19 chapters of Modern Meat, spread across these 5 sections, provide detailed entries on cultivated meat. They extensively tour a range of topics including the impact of cultivated meat on humans and animals, the bioprocess of cultivated meat production, how cultivated meat may become a food option in Space and on Mars, and how cultivated meat may impact the economy, culture, and tradition of Asia

    Combating the Hydra: Violence and Resistance in the Habsburg Empire, 1500–1900

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    Combating the Hydra explores structural as well as occasion-specific state violence committed by the early modern Habsburg Empire. The book depicts and analyzes attacks on marginalized people “maladjusted” of all sorts, women “of ill repute,” “heretic” Protestants, and “Gypsies.” Previously uncharted archival records reveal the use of arbitrary imprisonment, coerced labor, and deportation. The case studies presented provide insights into the origins of modern state power from varied techniques of population control, but are also an investigation of resistance against oppression, persecution, and life-threatening assaults. The spectrum of fights against debasement is a touching attestation of the humanity of the outcasts; they range from mental and emotional perseverance to counterviolence. A conversation with the eminent historian Carlo Ginzburg concludes the collection by asking about the importance of memorizing horrors of the past.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ces/1002/thumbnail.jp
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