Is a Student Loan Crisis on the Horizon?

College tuition and student debt levels have been increasing at a fast pace for at least two decades. These well-documented trends, coupled with an economy weakened by a major recession, have raised serious questions about whether the market for student debt is headed for a crisis, with many borrowers unable to repay their loans and taxpayers being forced to foot the bill.In this report, Beth Akers and Matthew Chingos analyze more than two decades of data on the financial well-being of American households and find that in reality, the impact of student loans may not be as dire as many commentators fear

Modeling central nervous system involvement in acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Infiltration of the central nervous system (CNS) by leukemic blasts represents one of the problematic disease manifestations of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Modern prophylactic measures have decreased the rate of CNS involvement in ALL. However, they produce adverse side effects, including cognitive dysfunction, seizures, and growth retardation, which have unique implications in pediatric patients that constitute the bulk of ALL cases. While there has been significant research into how ALL cells are nurtured in sanctuary sites, such as the bone marrow, there is a paucity of literature reporting on the mechanisms through which ALL cells migrate into the CNS and how they interact with cellular constituents of the CNS to evade treatment in this unique sanctuary site. To this end, the overall goals of the current body of work were to understand how ALL cells interact with human brain-derived microvascular endothelial cells (HBMEnd) and to understand how cellular constituents of the subarachnoid space of the CNS alter ALL cell response to chemotherapeutics routinely used in the prophylaxis of CNS leukemia.;Using in vitro models, we investigated the interaction between ALL cells and HBMEnd to understand the functional significance of coincident VE-cadherin and PECAM-1 expression by ALL. Based on our observation that induction of adhesion molecules that are typically increased subsequent to inflammation did not occur following interaction of ALL cells with endothelial cells, we explored adhesion molecules expressed constitutively by ALL cells that could enhance leukemic cell adhesion to HBMEnd. Evaluation of primary ALL samples, including leukemic cells isolated from CSF, demonstrated that VE-cadherin and PECAM-1 are co-expressed on the tumor cell surface. Based on the classical role of VE-cadherin and PECAM-1 mediating homotypic interactions between adjacent endothelial cells, we hypothesized that expression of these two proteins by ALL cells would enhance their interaction with HBMEnd. Using lentiviral-mediated expression of these two proteins and neutralization of protein function with specific antibodies, we demonstrated expression of VE-cadherin and PECAM-1 by ALL enhanced the adhesion of ALL to HBMEnd, while expression of PECAM-1 enhanced ALL adhesion to, and migration through, HBMEnd.;We also investigated the contribution of astrocytes, choroid plexus epithelial cells, and meningeal cells to alterations in leukemic cell survival during treatment with chemotherapeutics routinely used for the prophylaxis of CNS involvement in ALL. As these cells from the CNS have been documented to express soluble factors and adhesion molecules similar to cells resident in the bone marrow that enhance the survival of ALL cells following chemotherapy treatment, we hypothesized that culture of ALL cells with cellular constituents of the subarachnoid space would promote ALL survival following exposure to cytarabine, dexamethasone, and methotrexate. We demonstrated that ALL cells migrate towards chemotactic stimuli secreted by astrocytes, choroid plexus epithelial cells, and meningeal cells. Additionally, we documented the physical interaction of ALL cells with these three CNS-derived cell types. Finally, through the use of in vitro co-culture models, we showed that meningeal cells, choroid plexus epithelial cells, and astrocytes confer protection to ALL cells from chemotherapy-induced cell death using drugs typically found in CNS prophylactic regimens.;The research described herein provides foundations for understanding how ALL cells interact with endothelial cells and cells of the subarachnoid space that would be important for invasion and survival in the CNS, respectively. Furthermore, these studies serve as a springboard for further investigations into the mechanism used by ALL cells to infiltrate the CNS as well as investigations to elucidate the exact soluble factors and adhesion-mediated signaling events that enhance ALL survival in the CNS. Ultimately, this work may improve our understanding of CNS involvement in ALL and may allow for the development of strategies to prevent CNS leukemia and minimize the need for treatment in this sensitive anatomical site where treatment-induced toxicity is of significant concern

FORMING ADVERSARIAL EXAMPLE ATTACKS AGAINST DEEP NEURAL NETWORKS WITH REINFORCEMENT LEARNING

Deep neural networks (DNN) are producing groundbreaking results in virtually all academic and commercial domains and will serve as the workhorse of future human-machine teams that will modernize the Department of Defense (DOD). As such, leaders will need to trust and rely on these networks, which makes their security a paramount concern. Considerable research has demonstrated that DNNs remain vulnerable to adversarial examples. While many defense schemes have been proposed to counter the equally many attack vectors, none have been successful at securing a DNN from this vulnerability. Novel attacks expose blind spots unique to a network’s defense, indicating the need for a robust and adaptable attack, used to expose these vulnerabilities early in the development phase. We propose a novel reinforcement learning–based attack, Adversarial Reinforcement Learning Agent (ARLA), designed to learn the vulnerabilities of a DNN and generate adversarial examples to exploit them. ARLA was able to significantly degrade the accuracy of five CIFAR-10 DNNs, four of which used a state-of-the-art defense. We compared our method to other state-of-the-art attacks and found evidence that ARLA is an adaptive attack, making it a useful tool for testing the reliability of DNNs before they are deployed within the DOD.Lieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

A Light in the Hills: Helen Price Stacy

Helen Price Stacy is an Appalachian writer, artist, and activist from West Liberty, Ky who published a variety of work including nonfiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, reflecting themes of sense of place, activism, and finding hope in even the darkest of situations.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2024/1004/thumbnail.jp

Data curators at work: Focus on projects and experiences

Editor's Summary Three postdoctoral fellows in a program sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources/Digital Library Foundation are exploring and contributing to the field of digital curation through very different perspectives. With a neuroscience background, Katherine Akers is encouraging scientists to preserve and share research datasets and analyzing the use of library resources. For Inna Kouper, building cyberstructure and facilitating and promoting user engagement are primary. Matthew Lavin is working to make digital tools and approaches serve the needs of humanists, focusing on digitally conveying the physical features and histories of books. With different definitions of data and a variety of research goals, the scholars apply hybrid professional approaches to digital curation, stimulating expanded information, intellectual cross fertilization and a broader view of data, research and knowledge.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102231/1/1720400113_ftp.pd

Assessing Readiness of Community Pharmacists to Perform and Document Medically Billed Clinical Services

Objectives: To assess the readiness of community pharmacists in documenting and performing medically billed clinical services.  Additionally, the preferred training method of community pharmacists was evaluated.  Methods:  This study surveyed practicing pharmacists in a chain community pharmacy in Washington State via a voluntary, anonymous online survey through Qualtrics.  Data collected in the survey measured each pharmacist’s self-perceived ability to perform examinations and to gather and document patient subjective and objective information compliant with medical billing requirements. In addition, questions evaluated the training methods pharmacists preferred in the community setting. The data was aggregated and analyzed utilizing descriptive statistics to assess pharmacists’ self-perceived baseline understanding regarding documenting and performing medically billed clinical services as well training preferences of the pharmacists surveyed. Results: Pharmacists in the study had a generally higher perceived ability in performing past medical history, medical decision-making and clinical documentation of a medical visit. In contrast, pharmacists in the community setting had a lower perceived ability performing physical assessment criteria in a medically billed clinical visit. This study indicated that pharmacists in the community setting preferred live small-group training on future medical billing. Conclusion: Pharmacists have some of the skills necessary to perform and bill clinical visits; however, there is room for improvement in particular areas where pharmacists have a lack of training and experience.   Article Type: Original Researc

ELM Characteristics in MAST

Edge localized mode (ELM) characteristics in a large spherical tokamak (ST) with significant auxiliary heating are explored. High confinement is achieved in mega ampere spherical tokamak (MAST) at low ELM frequencies even though the ELMs exhibit many type III characteristics. These ELMs are associated with a reduction in the pedestal density but no significant change in the pedestal temperature or temperature profile, indicating that energy is convected from the pedestal region into the scrape-off layer. Power to the targets during an ELM arrives predominantly at the low field outboard side. ELM effluxes are observed up to 20 cm from the plasma edge at the outboard mid-plane and are associated with the radial motion of a feature at an average velocity of 0.75 km s-1. The target balance observed in MAST is potentially rather favourable for the ST since H-mode access is facilitated in a regime where ELM losses flow mostly to the large wetted area, outboard targets and, in addition, the target heat loads are reduced by an even distribution of power between the upper and lower targets