Improving WIC Retention in Vermont: Beneficiary attitudes toward co-location in medical homes

Introduction: The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a national program aimed at improving the nutrition and health of pregnant women and children. Those eligible for Vermont WIC include anyone pregnant or with children under 5 that has an income below 185% of federal poverty level or is enrolled in Vermont Medicaid. WIC has been shown to improve birth outcomes1, breast feeding rates2, infant growth and development, and consumption of important nutrients. Those enrolled in WIC report high levels of satisfaction Despite the benefits of WIC, retention rates of eligible families remain low. Studies have shown that mandatory bi-annual recertification appointments pose logistical problems. Rescheduling missed appointments and long waiting times at the WIC offices were also barriers. Other states have found that integration of WIC recertification appointments with the family’s primary care medical visits may improve retention. A limited scale co-localization of WIC and the medical home in Vermont showed some promise.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1213/thumbnail.jp

Future changes in tropical cyclone activity in the North Indian Ocean projected by high-resolution MRI-AGCMs

Open Access at publisher's web site: http://www.springerlink.com/content/b682734237171631

Video enhancement using adaptive spatio-temporal connective filter and piecewise mapping

This paper presents a novel video enhancement system based on an adaptive spatio-temporal connective (ASTC) noise filter and an adaptive piecewise mapping function (APMF). For ill-exposed videos or those with much noise, we first introduce a novel local image statistic to identify impulse noise pixels, and then incorporate it into the classical bilateral filter to form ASTC, aiming to reduce the mixture of the most two common types of noises - Gaussian and impulse noises in spatial and temporal directions. After noise removal, we enhance the video contrast with APMF based on the statistical information of frame segmentation results. The experiment results demonstrate that, for diverse low-quality videos corrupted by mixed noise, underexposure, overexposure, or any mixture of the above, the proposed system can automatically produce satisfactory results

The poleward migration of the location of tropical cyclone maximum intensity

Temporally inconsistent and potentially unreliable global historical data hinder the detection of trends in tropical cyclone activity. This limits our confidence in evaluating proposed linkages between observed trends in tropical cyclones and in the environment. Here we mitigate this difficulty by focusing on a metric that is comparatively insensitive to past data uncertainty, and identify a pronounced poleward migration in the average latitude at which tropical cyclones have achieved their lifetime-maximum intensity over the past 30 years. The poleward trends are evident in the global historical data in both the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, with rates of 53 and 62 kilometres per decade, respectively, and are statistically significant. When considered together, the trends in each hemisphere depict a global-average migration of tropical cyclone activity away from the tropics at a rate of about one degree of latitude per decade, which lies within the range of estimates of the observed expansion of the tropics over the same period. The global migration remains evident and statistically significant under a formal data homogenization procedure, and is unlikely to be a data artefact. The migration away from the tropics is apparently linked to marked changes in the mean meridional structure of environmental vertical wind shear and potential intensity, and can plausibly be linked to tropical expansion, which is thought to have anthropogenic contributions

Putting to rest WISHE-ful misconceptions for tropical cyclone intensification

The purpose of this article is twofold. The first is to point out and correct several misconceptions about the putative WISHE mechanism of tropical cyclone intensification that currently are being taught to atmospheric science students, to tropical weather forecasters, and to laypeople who seek to understand how tropical cyclones intensify. The mechanism relates to the simplest problem of an initial cyclonic vortex in a quiescent environment. This first part is important because the credibility of tropical cyclone science depends inter alia on being able to articulate a clear and consistent picture of the hypothesized intensification process and its dependencies on key flow parameters. The credibility depends also on being able to test the hypothesized mechanisms using observations, numerical models, or theoretical analyses. The second purpose of the paper is to carry out new numerical experiments using a state-of-the-art numerical model to test a recent hypothesis invoking the WISHE feedback mechanism during the rapid intensification phase of a tropical cyclone. The results obtained herein, in conjunction with prior work, do not support this recent hypothesis and refute the view that the WISHE intensification mechanism is the essential mechanism of tropical cyclone intensification in the idealized problem that historically has been used to underpin the paradigm. This second objective is important because it presents a simple way of testing the hypothesized intensification mechanism and shows that the mechanism is neither essential nor the dominant mode of intensification for the prototype intensification problem. In view of the operational, societal, and scientific interest in the physics of tropical cyclone intensification, we believe this paper will be of broad interest to the atmospheric science community and the findings should be useful in both the classroom setting and frontier research

MMP28 (epilysin) as a novel promoter of invasion and metastasis in gastric cancer

Background\ud The purpose of this study was to investigate invasion and metastasis related genes in gastric cancer.\ud \ud Methods\ud The transwell migration assay was used to select a highly invasive sub-line from minimally invasive parent gastric cancer cells, and gene expression was compared using a microarray. MMP28 upregulation was confirmed using qRT-PCR. MMP28 immunohistochemistry was performed in normal and gastric cancer specimens. Invasiveness and tumor formation of stable cells overexpressing MMP28 were tested in vitro and in vivo.\ud \ud Results\ud MMP28 was overexpressed in the highly invasive sub-cell line. Immunohistochemistry revealed MMP28 expression was markedly increased in gastric carcinoma relative to normal epithelia, and was significantly associated with depth of tumor invasion, lymph node metastasis and poorer overall survival. Ectopic expression of MMP28 indicated MMP28 promoted tumor cell invasion in vitro and increased gastric carcinoma metastasis in vivo.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud This study indicates MMP28 is frequently overexpressed during progression of gastric carcinoma, and contributes to tumor cell invasion and metastasis. MMP28 may be a novel therapeutic target for prevention and treatment of metastases in gastric cancer

Studies on the response of a water-Cherenkov detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory to atmospheric muons using an RPC hodoscope

Extensive air showers, originating from ultra-high energy cosmic rays, have been successfully measured through the use of arrays of water-Cherenkov detectors (WCDs). Sophisticated analyses exploiting WCD data have made it possible to demonstrate that shower simulations, based on different hadronic-interaction models, cannot reproduce the observed number of muons at the ground. The accurate knowledge of the WCD response to muons is paramount in establishing the exact level of this discrepancy. In this work, we report on a study of the response of a WCD of the Pierre Auger Observatory to atmospheric muons performed with a hodoscope made of resistive plate chambers (RPCs), enabling us to select and reconstruct nearly 600 thousand single muon trajectories with zenith angles ranging from 0 to 55. Comparison of distributions of key observables between the hodoscope data and the predictions of dedicated simulations allows us to demonstrate the accuracy of the latter at a level of 2%. As the WCD calibration is based on its response to atmospheric muons, the hodoscope data are also exploited to show the long-term stability of the procedure