How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

Archaeological Investigations in the Baalche’ Group at Yaxnohcah, Campeche, Mexico: An Analysis of the Function of a Courtyard Group

This thesis details the 2013 and 2014 excavation and analysis of the Baalche’ Group at the Maya site of Yaxnohcah in southeastern Campeche, Mexico. The Baalche’ Group is a courtyard group consisting of four structures (Brisa 4 and Baalche’ 5, 6, and 7) that is located in the site core, directly adjacent to an E-Group complex. This thesis will address the construction history, activities, and status associated with the Baalche’ Group in order to evaluate the group’s function. Based on ceramic analysis and radiocarbon dating, the group was first constructed in Late Preclassic period and was continuously occupied until the Terminal Classic period. The arrangement of the group and the artifact assemblage collected from excavations compares with palatial complexes from the Maya lowlands, indicating that the Baalche’ Group functioned as a palace, or, more specifically, a place where a ruling family resided and/or governed at Yaxnohcah

Effectiveness of return to activity and return to school protocols for children postconcussion: a systematic review

ObjectiveTo determine the effects of following return to activity (RTA) and return to school (RTS) protocols on clinical outcomes for children with concussion. The 12 subquestions of this review focus on the effectiveness of protocols, guidelines and recommendations, and the evidence supporting content of the protocols including rest, exercise and school accommodations.DesignSystematic review.Data sourcesPubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, ERIC and manual reference list check.Eligibility criteria for selecting studiesStudies were included if they evaluated RTA or RTS protocols in children aged 5–18 years with a concussion or if they reported a rigorous study design that provided evidence for the recommendations. Included studies were original research or systematic reviews. Articles were excluded if they did not report on their methodology or included participants with significant neurological comorbidities.ResultsThe literature search retrieved 198 non-duplicate articles and a total of 13 articles were included in this review. Despite the adoption of several RTS and RTA protocols in clinical practice there is little evidence to determine their efficacy in the paediatric population.SummaryThe current data support the recommendation that children in the acute stage postconcussion should undergo 1–2 days physical and cognitive rest as they initiate graduated RTA/RTS protocols. Prolonged rest may increase reported symptoms and time to recovery. Further interventional studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of RTA/RTS protocols in youth with concussion

Market experience is a reference point in judgments of fairness

People's desire for fair transactions can play an important role in negotiations, organizations, and markets. In this paper, we show that markets can also shape what people consider to be a fair transaction. We propose a simple and generally-applicable model of path-dependent fairness preferences, in which past experiences shape preferences, and we experimentally test the model's predictions. We find that previous exposure to competitive pressure substantially and persistently reduces subjects' fairness concerns, making them more likely to accept low offers. Consistent with our theory, we also find that past experience has little effect on subjects' inclinations to treat others unfairly

Comparison of Molecular Contours for Measuring Writhe in Atomistic Supercoiled DNA

DNA molecular center-lines designed from atomistic-resolution structures are compared for the evaluation of the writhe in supercoiled DNA using molecular dynamics simulations of two sets of minicircles with 260 and 336 base pairs. We present a new method called WrLINE that systematically filters out local (i.e., subhelical turn) irregularities using a sliding-window averaged over a single DNA turn and that provides a measure of DNA writhe that is suitable for comparing atomistic resolution data with those obtained from measurements of the global molecular shape. In contrast, the contour traced by the base-pair origins defined by the 3DNA program largely overestimates writhe due to the helical periodicity of DNA. Nonetheless, this local modulation of the molecular axis emerges as an internal mechanism for the DNA to confront superhelical stress, where the adjustment between low and high twist is coupled to a high and low local periodicity, respectively, mimicking the different base-stacking conformational space of A and B canonical DNA forms

LAGOS-NE : A multi-scaled geospatial and temporal database of lake ecological context and water quality for thousands of U.S. lakes

Understanding the factors that affect water quality and the ecological services provided by freshwater ecosystems is an urgent global environmental issue. Predicting how water quality will respond to global changes not only requires water quality data, but also information about the ecological context of individual water bodies across broad spatial extents. Because lake water quality is usually sampled in limited geographic regions, often for limited time periods, assessing the environmental controls of water quality requires compilation of many data sets across broad regions and across time into an integrated database. LAGOS-NE accomplishes this goal for lakes in the northeastern-most 17 US states. LAGOS-NE contains data for 51101 lakes and reservoirs larger than 4 ha in 17 lake-rich US states. The database includes 3 datamodules for: lake location and physical characteristics for all lakes; ecological context (i.e., the land use, geologic, climatic, and hydrologic setting of lakes) for all lakes; and in situmeasurements of lake water quality for a subset of the lakes fromthe past 3 decades for approximately 2600â\u80\u9312 000 lakes depending on the variable. The database contains approximately 150000 measures of total phosphorus, 200 000 measures of chlorophyll, and 900 000 measures of Secchi depth. The water quality data were compiled from87 lake water quality data sets fromfederal, state, tribal, and non-profit agencies, university researchers, and citizen scientists. This database is one of the largest andmost comprehensive databases of its type because it includes both in situmeasurements and ecological context data. Because ecological context can be used to study a variety of other questions about lakes, streams, and wetlands, this database can also be used as the foundation for other studies of freshwaters at broad spatial and ecological scale