Modeling and control of nanoparticle bloodstream concentration for cancer therapies

Currently, the most commonly used treatments for cancerous tumors (chemotherapy, radiation, etc.) have almost no method of monitoring the administration of the treatment for adverse effects in real time. Without any real time feedback or control, treatment becomes a guess and check method with no way of predicting the effects of the drugs based on the actual bioavailability to the patient\u27s body. One particular drug may be effective for one patient, yet provide no benefit to another. Doctors and scientists do not routinely attempt to quantifiably explain this discrepancy. In this work, mathematical modeling and analysis techniques are joined together with experimentation to gain further insight into the challenges of nanoparticle uptake and retention in the bloodstream. Several models are presented here which predict both the uptake and retention phases of the experiment. There does exist a commonly accepted model of drug clearance in the pharmacokinetics community, and it is demonstrated here that this model provides an accurate reflection of reality, as observed in experiments, for delivery of gold-coated nanorods. This model is then utilized in a state space feedback control framework to regulate the nanoparticle concentration in the bloodstream. An equal time delay is also introduced in both the state and control input for the purpose of studying alternate dosing strategies. This study will aid in the prediction of the effects of the drugs in a patient\u27s body, thus leading to better models for drug regimen and administration

Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the Motivations of Citizen Science Volunteers

The Galaxy Zoo citizen science website invites anyone with an Internet connection to participate in research by classifying galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. As of April 2009, more than 200,000 volunteers had made more than 100 million galaxy classifications. In this paper, we present results of a pilot study into the motivations and demographics of Galaxy Zoo volunteers, and define a technique to determine motivations from free responses that can be used in larger multiple-choice surveys with similar populations. Our categories form the basis for a future survey, with the goal of determining the prevalence of each motivation.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure

Multisensory coding of angular head velocity in the retrosplenial cortex

To successfully navigate the environment, animals depend on their ability to continuously track their heading direction and speed. Neurons that encode angular head velocity (AHV) are fundamental to this process, yet the contribution of various motion signals to AHV coding in the cortex remains elusive. By performing chronic single-unit recordings in the retrosplenial cortex (RSP) of the mouse and tracking the activity of individual AHV cells between freely moving and head-restrained conditions, we find that vestibular inputs dominate AHV signaling. Moreover, the addition of visual inputs onto these neurons increases the gain and signal-to-noise ratio of their tuning during active exploration. Psychophysical experiments and neural decoding further reveal that vestibular-visual integration increases the perceptual accuracy of angular self-motion and the fidelity of its representation by RSP ensembles. We conclude that while cortical AHV coding requires vestibular input, where possible, it also uses vision to optimize heading estimation during navigation

Top ten concerns burdening people with cancer: perceptions of patients with cancer and the nurses caring for them

We examined the concerns that nurses perceive patients to have, whether these are congruent with patients' concerns and whether they vary according to cancer site. We also examined Distress Thermometer scores according to cancer site

Optimising health and wellbeing clinics: supporting patient's choice after a cancer diagnosis

Poster presented at RD&E Clinical School Awards, Wednesday 1st June 2016. Awarded top prize

Galaxy Zoo: Motivations of Citizen Scientists

Citizen science, in which volunteers work with professional scientists to conduct research, is expanding due to large online datasets. To plan projects, it is important to understand volunteers' motivations for participating. This paper analyzes results from an online survey of nearly 11,000 volunteers in Galaxy Zoo, an astronomy citizen science project. Results show that volunteers' primary motivation is a desire to contribute to scientific research. We encourage other citizen science projects to study the motivations of their volunteers, to see whether and how these results may be generalized to inform the field of citizen science.Comment: 41 pages, including 6 figures and one appendix. In press at Astronomy Education Revie