Intuit Strategic Audit

Intuit is a financial technology company located in Mountain View, California. Intuit’s goal is to “power prosperity around the world”. The company does this by building software to help everyday people manage their money. Intuit has three main business segments: Small Business, Consumer Tax, and ProConnect. Intuit’s Small Business Segment focuses on creating software to help small businesses in their accounting. This segment generates the most revenue for the company, but it lacks a global presence. The Consumer Tax Segment creates tax filing software for the general public. It is facing an uncertain future, as competing free software is becoming more prominent and the government will soon be able to release their own tax filing solution. This thesis examines Intuit’s current situation and recommends actions to take for the business to continue being successful

No sign of harm : issues for disabled children communicating about abuse

While all children may be the victims of abuse, disabled children are particularly vulnerable. This paper explores the views of professionals working with children using alternative/augmented communication systems on the issues relating to communication about abuse. Interviews were carried out with 20 staff from eight establishments for disabled children across Scotland. It describes the range of alternative/augmented communication systems used and the barriers to communication about abuse. Staff generally accepted the importance of providing the appropriate vocabulary in augmented communication systems, but systems that provide such vocabulary were not widely used. Staff considered that a major difficulty concerned the level of understanding disabled children might have about concepts of abuse. They were unsure how the appropriate vocabulary could be introduced in a natural way and how links could be made between the signs and their meanings. Staff saw themselves as those most able to protect the children, but it was felt that discovery of abuse was more likely to come from them noticing physical signs, behaviour or mood changes than from the child communicating explicitly about abuse. The need for appropriate training and increased coordination between social work, health and education is highlighted

Clinical Comparison of the Auditory Steady-State Response with the Click Auditory Brainstem Response in Infants

ObjectivesOur goal was to determine the effectiveness of using the auditory steady state response (ASSR) as a measure of hearing thresholds in infants who are suspected of having significant hearing loss, as compared with using the click-auditory brainstem response (C-ABR).MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed the audiologic profiles of 76 infants (46 boys and 30 girls, a total of 151 ears) who ranged in age from 1 to 12 months (average age: 5.7 months). The auditory evaluations in 76 infants who were suspected of having hearing loss were done via the C-ABR and ASSR. In addition, for reference, the mean ASSR thresholds were compared to those of 39 ears of infants and 39 ears of adults with normal hearing at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz.ResultsThe highest correlation between the C-ABR and ASSR thresholds was observed at an average of 2-4 kHz (r=0.94). On comparison between the hearing of infants and adults at 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz, the mean ASSR threshold in infants was 12, 7, 8, and 7 dB higher, respectively, than that in adults.ConclusionASSR testing may provide additional audiometric information for accurately predicting the hearing sensitivity, and this is essential for the management of infants with severe to profound hearing loss

Independent Validation of an Existing Model Enables Prediction of Hearing Loss after Childhood Bacterial Meningitis

Objective: This study aimed external validation of a formerly developed prediction model identifying children at risk for hearing loss after bacterial meningitis (BM). Independent risk factors included in the model are: duration of symptoms prior to admission, petechiae, cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) glucose level, Streptococcus pneumoniae and ataxia. Validation helps to evaluate whether the model has potential in clinical practice. Study design: 116 Dutch school-age BM survivors were included in the validation cohort and screened for sensorineural hearing loss (>25 dB). Risk factors were obtained from medical records. The model was applied to the validation cohort and its performance was compared with the development cohort. Validation was performed by application of the model on the validation cohort and by assessment of discrimination and goodness of fit. Calibration was evaluated by testing deviations in intercept and slope. Multiple imputation techniques were used to deal with missing values. Results: Risk factors were distributed equally between both cohorts. Discriminative ability (Area Under the Curve, AUC) of the model was 0.84 in the development and 0.78 in the validation cohort. Hosmer-Lemeshow test for goodness of fit was not significant in the validation cohort, implying good fit concerning the similarity of expected and observed cases. There were no significant differences in calibration slope and intercept. Sensitivity and negative predicted value were high, while specificity and positive predicted value were low which is comparable with findings in the development cohort. Conclusions: Performance of the model remained good in the validation cohort. This prediction model might be used as a screening tool and can help to identify those children that need special attention and a long follow-up period or more frequent auditory testing

Intuit Strategic Audit

Intuit is a financial technology company located in Mountain View, California. Intuit’s goal is to “power prosperity around the world”. The company does this by building software to help everyday people manage their money. Intuit has three main business segments: Small Business, Consumer Tax, and ProConnect. Intuit’s Small Business Segment focuses on creating software to help small businesses in their accounting. This segment generates the most revenue for the company, but it lacks a global presence. The Consumer Tax Segment creates tax filing software for the general public. It is facing an uncertain future, as competing free software is becoming more prominent and the government will soon be able to release their own tax filing solution. This thesis examines Intuit’s current situation and recommends actions to take for the business to continue being successful

Engineering Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (HIPSCS) to Investigate the Contribution of the APOE Risk Allele to the Onset and Progression of Alzheimer’s Disease

Developing therapies for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) requires an in-depth understanding of disease etiology. Although the majority of AD patients are sporadic, multiple genetic risk variants have been identified, the most powerful and prevalent of which is polymorphism in the Apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene. Amyloid-dependent and -independent mechanisms have been postulated to explain the effects of ApoE, but currently how ApoE modulates AD disease risk, especially during aging, remains unclear. The advent of human pluripotent stem cell technology (hPSC) has allowed for the development of in vitro ‘disease-in-a-dish’ models that allow for the modeling of complex genetics associated with idiopathic disease as well as a platform for the screening of potential therapeutic compounds. Additionally, the development of designer nucleases that allow for genome manipulation at single base pair resolution has greatly expanded the utility of cellular disease models, however genome modification in hPSCs has proven to be extremely inefficient. To this end, we have developed a novel tool using Cas9 Base Editors, called Transient Reporter for Editing Enrichment (TREE), which allows for a real-time readout of base editing activity within individual cells. We demonstrate that TREE allows for efficient isolation of edited cell populations in human cells, including hPSCs, with single or multiple simultaneous genomic edits, without the need for integrated selection markers. As proof of principle, we compare TREE to traditional editing enrichment strategies, demonstrating higher editing efficiencies across all tested target sites. Next, we adapted TREE to facilitate facile generation of isogenic hPSC lines using Cas9 Base Editors and show the utility of the technology for generating clonal lines with single base edits, multiplex edits, and gene knockouts. Finally, using isogenic ApoE hPSC lines generated using TREE, we characterize a disease model that recapitulates disease phenotypes and allows for the interrogation of mechanisms by which ApoE contributes to Alzheimer’s disease progression. This system will be useful to the broader stem cell biology field as a tool to efficiently generate edited hPSC lines for a wide variety of applications in developmental biology, disease modeling, drug discovery, and cell-based therapies