Using Social Media to Promote STEM Education: Matching College Students with Role Models

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields have become increasingly central to U.S. economic competitiveness and growth. The shortage in the STEM workforce has brought promoting STEM education upfront. The rapid growth of social media usage provides a unique opportunity to predict users' real-life identities and interests from online texts and photos. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach by leveraging social media to promote STEM education: matching Twitter college student users with diverse LinkedIn STEM professionals using a ranking algorithm based on the similarities of their demographics and interests. We share the belief that increasing STEM presence in the form of introducing career role models who share similar interests and demographics will inspire students to develop interests in STEM related fields and emulate their models. Our evaluation on 2,000 real college students demonstrated the accuracy of our ranking algorithm. We also design a novel implementation that recommends matched role models to the students.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, accepted by ECML/PKDD 2016, Industrial Trac

A high-performance 8 nV/root Hz 8-channel wearable and wireless system for real-time monitoring of bioelectrical signals

Background: It is widely accepted by the scientific community that bioelectrical signals, which can be used for the identification of neurophysiological biomarkers indicative of a diseased or pathological state, could direct patient treatment towards more effective therapeutic strategies. However, the design and realisation of an instrument that can precisely record weak bioelectrical signals in the presence of strong interference stemming from a noisy clinical environment is one of the most difficult challenges associated with the strategy of monitoring bioelectrical signals for diagnostic purposes. Moreover, since patients often have to cope with the problem of limited mobility being connected to bulky and mains-powered instruments, there is a growing demand for small-sized, high-performance and ambulatory biopotential acquisition systems in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and in High-dependency wards. Finally, to the best of our knowledge, there are no commercial, small, battery-powered, wearable and wireless recording-only instruments that claim the capability of recording electrocorticographic (ECoG) signals. Methods: To address this problem, we designed and developed a low-noise (8 nV/√Hz), eight-channel, battery-powered, wearable and wireless instrument (55 × 80 mm2). The performance of the realised instrument was assessed by conducting both ex vivo and in vivo experiments. Results: To provide ex vivo proof-of-function, a wide variety of high-quality bioelectrical signal recordings are reported, including electroencephalographic (EEG), electromyographic (EMG), electrocardiographic (ECG), acceleration signals, and muscle fasciculations. Low-noise in vivo recordings of weak local field potentials (LFPs), which were wirelessly acquired in real time using segmented deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes implanted in the thalamus of a non-human primate, are also presented. Conclusions: The combination of desirable features and capabilities of this instrument, namely its small size (~one business card), its enhanced recording capabilities, its increased processing capabilities, its manufacturability (since it was designed using discrete off-the-shelf components), the wide bandwidth it offers (0.5 – 500 Hz) and the plurality of bioelectrical signals it can precisely record, render it a versatile and reliable tool to be utilized in a wide range of applications and environments

Causes of death in patients with unipolar single chamber ventricular pacing: prevalence and circumstances in dependence on arrhythmias leading to pacemaker implantation.

analysis of different causes of death in patinets with pacemake

Rationale and Design of the Percutaneous Stem Cell Injection Delivery Effects on Neomyogenesis in Dilated Cardiomyopathy (The POSEIDON-DCM Study)

BACKGROUND: While accumulating clinical trials have focused on the impact of cell-therapy in patients with acute MI and ischemic cardiomyopathy, there are fewer efforts to examine cell-based therapy in patients with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy (NICM). We hypothesized that cell-therapy could have a similar impact in NICM. METHODS/RESULTS: The POSIDEON-DCM trial is a phase I/II trial designed to address autologous vs. allogeneic bone marrow derived MSCs in patients with NICM. In this study, cells will be administered transendocardially with the NOGA injection-catheter system to patients (n=36) randomly allocated to two treatments groups: Group 1 (n=18 auto-hMSCs) and Group 2 (n=18 allo-hMSCs). The primary and secondary objectives are, respectively, to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of allo-hMSCS vs. auto-hMSCs in patients with NICM. CONCLUSIONS: This study will establish safety of transendocardial injection of stem cells (TESI), compare phenotypic outcomes, and offer promising advances in the field of cell-based therapy in patients with NICM