Courage in Mississippi (short)

Letter to the editor praising James Silver\u27s courage in speaking out about racial problems in Mississippi; Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatchhttps://egrove.olemiss.edu/jws_clip/1247/thumbnail.jp

The Effect upon State Crime Rates of the Legalization of Recreational Marijuana in California

This work examines criminal effects of the legalization of recreational marijuana in the state of California in 2016. While multiple states have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes, there is little empirical evidence to determine the criminal effect, if any, of introducing marijuana products into the legal market. The research analyzes crime rates pre and post legalization. Crime rates from the years 1990-2018 are taken from the California Attorney General Office “Crime in California” annual report, and consist of FBI Part I offenses: murder and non-negligent homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, larceny-theft, and arson. Misdemeanor drug arrests, marijuana felony arrests, and non-marijuana felony drug arrests are also included. DUI arrests are sourced from the California Department of Motor Vehicles DUI management information annual report. Interrupted time-series analysis is the primary analytic strategy, in conjunction with descriptive statistics. Results suggest that legalization has had a non-trivial impact on some offenses, although there are severe data limitations in place

A Novel Reconfigurable Vector-Processed Interleaving Algorithm for a DVB-RCS2 Turbo Encoder

Turbo-Codes (TC) are a family of convolutional codes enabling Forward-Error-Correction (FEC) while approaching the theoretical limit of channel capacity predicted by Shannons theorem. One of the bottlenecks of a Turbo Encoder (TE) lies in the non-uniform interleaving stage. Interleaving algorithms require stalling the input vector bits before the bit rearrangement causing a delay in the overall process. This paper presents performance enhancement via a parallel algorithm for the interleaving stage of a Turbo Encoder application compliant with the DVB-RCS2 standard. The algorithm efficiently implements the interleaving operation while utilizing attributes of a given DSP. We will discuss and compare a serial model for the TE, with the presented parallel processed algorithm. Results showed a speed-up factor of up to 3.4 Total-Cycles, 4.8 Write and 7.3 Read

Biofunktionalisierung von Gold-Nanostrukturen mit Plasma-Fibronektin

Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird das Fibronektin (Fn) Dimer (welches im Blut vorkommt und zur Fibrillenbildung fähig ist) oder Monomer (welches nach der Reduktion von Dimeren erhalten wird) an unterschiedlich dicht verteilte und circa 7 nm große Gold-Nanopartikel auf Oberflächen gebunden. Die Herstellung dieser Oberflächen erfolgt mittels Diblockcopolymer-Mizellen-Nanolithographie (engl.: block copolymer micelle lithography (BCML)). Eine Herausforderung ist hierbei die effiziente und reproduzierbare Anbindung einzelner, unmodifizierter Fn Dimere oder Monomere an einzelne Gold-Nanopartikel auf Oberflächen sowie deren Charakterisierung. Hierfür wird die Effizienz a) einer direkten Anbindungsstrategie, bei der das Molekül statistisch orientiert an Gold-Nanopartikel gebunden wird, und b) einer indirekten Anbindungsstrategie, bei der das Molekül gerichtet orientiert über einen Linker an Gold-Nanopartikel gebunden wird, mittels der Schwingquarzmikrowaage mit Bestimmung des Dissipationsfaktors (engl. quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D)), einer Kombination von QCM-D und Reflektometrie, Fluoreszenzmikroskopie, Rasterelektronenmikroskopie (REM), Transmissions-elektronenmikroskopie (TEM) und Rasterkraftmikroskopie (engl. atomic force microscope (AFM)) untersucht. Ein Vergleich der Hydrophilie von Oberflächen untereinander geschieht hier mit Hilfe der statischen Kontaktwinkelmessung

Cerebral Infarct/Intracranial Cerebrovascular Disease

Imaging goals for intracranial cerebral vascular disease are (1) to assess the degree of parenchymal injury and identify intraparenchymal hemorrhage; (2) to determine if there are areas of altered perfusion that may be at risk for future injury; and (3) to assess the intracranial arteries (patency as well as direction of flow). This unit describes a Basic Protocol that can be used to evaluate stable patients with acute, subacute, or chronic cerebrovascular symptoms. An Alternate Protocol is also given for cases of hyperacute strokes or cerebrovascular symptoms in an unstable patient.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145411/1/cpmia0101.pd

Estimate of vascular permeability and cerebral blood volume using Gd-DTPA contrast enhancement and dynamic T2*-weighted MRI

Purpose To develop a numerical approach for estimation of vascular permeability from dynamic T2*-weighted imaging, a technique routinely used to measure cerebral blood volume (CBV) and flow in gliomas. Materials and Methods This study describes a process for estimating both the gadolinium diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA) transvascular transfer constant and CBV from dynamic T2*-weighted images. The algorithm was applied to data from the brains of 12 patients with grade IV gliomas. The stability of the method was assessed. Estimates of CBV by this technique were compared to those of the conventional method. Results The algorithm was found to be insensitive to noise and to generate stable voxel-by-voxel estimates of permeability and CBV. Conclusion Using a single imaging acquisition, the three most important vascular properties, CBV, cerebral blood flow (CBF), and permeability, can be estimated. This approach may have potential in clinical evaluation of patients with brain tumor or acute ischemic stroke. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2006. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55796/1/20634_ftp.pd

Improved Leakage Correction for Single-Echo Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast Perfusion MRI Estimates of Relative Cerebral Blood Volume in High-Grade Gliomas by Accounting for Bidirectional Contrast Agent Exchange

Background and purposeContrast agent extravasation through a disrupted blood-brain barrier potentiates inaccurate DSC MR imaging estimation of relative CBV. We explored whether incorporation of an interstitial washout rate in a leakage-correction model for single-echo, gradient-echo DSC MR imaging improves relative CBV estimates in high-grade gliomas.Materials and methodsWe modified the traditional model-based postprocessing leakage-correction algorithm, assuming unidirectional contrast agent extravasation (Boxerman-Weisskoff model) to account for bidirectional contrast agent exchange between intra- and extravascular spaces (bidirectional model). For both models, we compared the goodness of fit with the parent leakage-contaminated relaxation rate curves by using the Akaike Information Criterion and the difference between modeled interstitial relaxation rate curves and dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging by using Euclidean distance in 21 patients with glioblastoma multiforme.ResultsThe bidirectional model had improved Akaike Information Criterion versus the bidirectional model in >50% of enhancing tumor voxels in all 21 glioblastoma multiformes (77% ± 9%; P < .0001) and had reduced the Euclidean distance in >50% of enhancing tumor voxels for 17/21 glioblastoma multiformes (62% ± 17%; P = .0041). The bidirectional model and dynamic contrast-enhanced-derived kep demonstrated a strong correlation (r = 0.74 ± 0.13). On average, enhancing tumor relative CBV for the Boxerman-Weisskoff model exceeded that for the bidirectional model by 16.6% ± 14.0%.ConclusionsInclusion of the bidirectional exchange in leakage-correction models for single-echo DSC MR imaging improves the model fit to leakage-contaminated DSC MR imaging data and significantly improves the estimation of relative CBV in high-grade gliomas

Impact of Software Modeling on the Accuracy of Perfusion MRI in Glioma

PURPOSE: To determine whether differences in modeling implementation will impact the correction of leakage effects (from blood brain barrier disruption) and relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) calculations as measured on T2*-weighted dynamic susceptibility-weighted contrast-enhanced (DSC)-MRI at 3T field strength. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This HIPAA-compliant study included 52 glioma patients undergoing DSC-MRI. Thirty-six patients underwent both non Preload Dose (PLD) and PLD-corrected DSC acquisitions, with sixteen patients undergoing PLD-corrected acquisitions only. For each acquisition, we generated two sets of rCBV metrics using two separate, widely published, FDA-approved commercial software packages: IB Neuro (IBN) and NordicICE (NICE). We calculated 4 rCBV metrics within tumor volumes: mean rCBV, mode rCBV, percentage of voxels with rCBV > 1.75 (%>1.75), and percentage of voxels with rCBV > 1.0 (Fractional Tumor Burden or FTB). We determined Pearson (r) and Spearman (ρ) correlations between non-PLD- and PLD-corrected metrics. In a subset of recurrent glioblastoma patients (n=25), we determined Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) Areas-Under-Curve (AUC) for FTB accuracy to predict the tissue diagnosis of tumor recurrence versus post-treatment effect (PTRE). We also determined correlations between rCBV and microvessel area (MVA) from stereotactic biopsies (n=29) in twelve patients. RESULTS: Using IBN, rCBV metrics correlated highly between non-PLD- and PLD-corrected conditions for FTB (r=0.96, ρ=0.94), %>1.75 (r=0.93, ρ=0.91), mean (r=0.87, ρ=0.86) and mode (r=0.78, ρ=0.76). These correlations dropped substantially with NICE. Using FTB, IBN was more accurate than NICE in diagnosing tumor vs PTRE (AUC=0.85 vs 0.67) (p<0.01). The highest rCBV-MVA correlations required PLD and IBN (r=0.64, ρ=0.58, p=0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Different implementations of perfusion MRI software modeling can impact the accuracy of leakage correction, rCBV calculation, and correlations with histologic benchmarks