970 research outputs found
Oral Health Intervention: A Multifaceted Approach to Improve Oral Health Care during Pregnancy
Introduction:
Early Childhood Caries (ECC) is the most common chronic disease of childhood
Mothersâ oral health status is a strong predictor of the oral health status of their children
2009:
Vermont spends 495 Medicaid cap on reimbursement for a womanâs dental care during pregnancy and up to 60 days after delivery
American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) Guidelines on prenatal dental care are published
2013:
74% of surveyed Vermont providers treating pregnant women are unaware of the Medicaid change
82% of these providers are not using guidelines to assess oral health during pregnancy
Objective: To improve prenatal dental referral rates from obstetric providers by facilitating Vermont-specific implementation of ACOG guidelineshttps://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1212/thumbnail.jp
Lunar Operating Surface Transport
The Lunar Operating Surface Transport (LOST) is a modular unit designed to support future Artemis missions. Lunar surface operations are expanding and will require systems to support the buildup of equipment and outposts. The Lunar transport is an on-ground vehicle capable of moving dense loads for extended durations across the moonâs lunar south pole. The transport can traverse the technically challenging terrain while ensuring control and stability of the payload. The Lunar Operating Surface Transport will push the boundaries of lunar exploration and enhance operational capabilities of the Artemis program
Effect of Detector Coincidence Criteria on a High Precision Measurement of the Neutron Lifetime
The UCNtau collaboration is working to measure the mean lifetime of a free neutron to 0.1s using very low energy âultracoldâ neutrons (UCN). Achieving such high precision is important in a variety of low-energy tests for new physics. A density of UCN is produced in the Los Alamos solid-D2 super-thermal source and is then polarized and guided to a magneto-gravitational trap. The UCN that have high enough energy to escape the trapping potential are cleaned out, and the remaining neutrons are left to decay for two time intervals, a short and long holding time. The difference in the two holding times, along with the normalized number of neutrons left in the trap at the end of the holding periods, are used to calculate the average lifetime of the neutrons in the trap. The neutrons are detected using a newly-developed in situ active detector that observes light from a B-coated ZnS scintillation screen via a pair of photomultiplier tubes . Over the past year I have been doing an in depth analysis of the 2015-2016 data set and will present preliminary blinded results from my ongoing analysis
Temporal Patterns of Diversification across Global Cichlid Biodiversity (Acanthomorpha: Cichlidae)
The contrasting distribution of species diversity across the major lineages of cichlids makes them an ideal group for investigating macroevolutionary processes. In this study, we investigate whether different rates of diversification may explain the disparity in species richness across cichlid lineages globally. We present the most taxonomically robust time-calibrated hypothesis of cichlid evolutionary relationships to date. We then utilize this temporal framework to investigate whether both species-rich and depauperate lineages are associated with rapid shifts in diversification rates and if exceptional species richness can be explained by clade age alone. A single significant rapid rate shift increase is detected within the evolutionary history of the African subfamily Pseudocrenilabrinae, which includes the haplochromins of the East African Great Lakes. Several lineages from the subfamilies Pseudocrenilabrinae (Australotilapiini, Oreochromini) and Cichlinae (Heroini) exhibit exceptional species richness given their clade age, a net rate of diversification, and relative rates of extinction, indicating that clade age alone is not a sufficient explanation for their increased diversity. Our results indicate that the Neotropical Cichlinae includes lineages that have not experienced a significant rapid burst in diversification when compared to certain African lineages (rift lake). Neotropical cichlids have remained comparatively understudied with regard to macroevolutionary patterns relative to African lineages, and our results indicate that of Neotropical lineages, the tribe Heroini may have an elevated rate of diversification in contrast to other Neotropical cichlids. These findings provide insight into our understanding of the diversification patterns across taxonomically disparate lineages in this diverse clade of freshwater fishes and one of the most species-rich families of vertebrates.This work was supported by NSF grants DEB 0716155, DEB 0732642, and DEB 1060869 to WLS, DEB 0910081 to MPD, DEB 0916695 to PC, DEB 1258141 to MPD and WLS, DEB 1311408 to CDM, and IOS 0749943 to JSS. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
Tree-based Unidirectional Neural Networks for Low-Power Computer Vision
This article describes the novel Tree-based Unidirectional Neural Network (TRUNK) architecture. This architecture improves computer vision efficiency by using a hierarchy of multiple shallow Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), instead of a single very deep CNN. We demonstrate this architectureâs versatility in performing different computer vision tasks efficiently on embedded devices. Across various computer vision tasks, the TRUNK architecture consumes 65% less energy and requires 50% less memory than representative low-power CNN architectures, e.g., MobileNet v2, when deployed on the NVIDIA Jetson Nano
Directed Acyclic Graph-based Neural Networks for Tunable Low-Power Computer Vision
Processing visual data on mobile devices has many applications, e.g., emergency response and tracking. State-of-the-art computer vision techniques rely on large Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) that are usually too power-hungry to be deployed on resource-constrained edge devices. Many techniques improve DNN efficiency of DNNs by compromising accuracy. However, the accuracy and efficiency of these techniques cannot be adapted for diverse edge applications with different hardware constraints and accuracy requirements. This paper demonstrates that a recent, efficient tree-based DNN architecture, called the hierarchical DNN, can be converted into a Directed Acyclic Graph-based (DAG) architecture to provide tunable accuracy-efficiency tradeoff options. We propose a systematic method that identifies the connections that must be added to convert the tree to a DAG to improve accuracy. We conduct experiments on popular edge devices and show that increasing the connectivity of the DAG improves the accuracy to within 1% of the existing high accuracy techniques. Our approach requires 93% less memory, 43% less energy, and 49% fewer operations than the high accuracy techniques, thus providing more accuracy-efficiency configurations
The EvoDevoCI: A Concept Inventory for Gauging Studentsâ Understanding of Evolutionary Developmental Biology
The American Association for the Advancement of Science 2011 report Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education encourages the teaching of developmental biology as an important part of teaching evolution. Recently, however, we found that biology majors often lack the developmental knowledge needed to understand evolutionary developmental biology, or âevo-devo.â To assist in efforts to improve evo-devo instruction among undergraduate biology majors, we designed a concept inventory (CI) for evolutionary developmental biology, the EvoDevoCI. The CI measures student understanding of six core evo-devo concepts using four scenarios and 11 multiple-choice items, all inspired by authentic scientific examples. Distracters were designed to represent the common conceptual difficulties students have with each evo-devo concept. The tool was validated by experts and administered at four institutions to 1191 students during preliminary (n = 652) and final (n = 539) field trials. We used student responses to evaluate the readability, difficulty, discriminability, validity, and reliability of the EvoDevoCI, which included items ranging in difficulty from 0.22â0.55 and in discriminability from 0.19â0.38. Such measures suggest the EvoDevoCI is an effective tool for assessing student understanding of evo-devo concepts and the prevalence of associated common conceptual difficulties among both novice and advanced undergraduate biology majors
The EvoDevoCI: A Concept Inventory for Gauging Studentsâ Understanding of Evolutionary Developmental Biology
The American Association for the Advancement of Science 2011 report Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education encourages the teaching of developmental biology as an important part of teaching evolution. Recently, however, we found that biology majors often lack the developmental knowledge needed to understand evolutionary developmental biology, or âevo-devo.â To assist in efforts to improve evo-devo instruction among undergraduate biology majors, we designed a concept inventory (CI) for evolutionary developmental biology, the EvoDevoCI. The CI measures student understanding of six core evo-devo concepts using four scenarios and 11 multiple-choice items, all inspired by authentic scientific examples. Distracters were designed to represent the common conceptual difficulties students have with each evo-devo concept. The tool was validated by experts and administered at four institutions to 1191 students during preliminary (n = 652) and final (n = 539) field trials. We used student responses to evaluate the readability, difficulty, discriminability, validity, and reliability of the EvoDevoCI, which included items ranging in difficulty from 0.22â0.55 and in discriminability from 0.19â0.38. Such measures suggest the EvoDevoCI is an effective tool for assessing student understanding of evo-devo concepts and the prevalence of associated common conceptual difficulties among both novice and advanced undergraduate biology majors
Getting to Evo-Devo: Concepts and Challenges for Students Learning Evolutionary Developmental Biology
To examine how well biology majors have achieved the necessary foundation in evolution, numerous studies have examined how students learn natural selection. However, no studies to date have examined how students learn developmental aspects of evolution (evo-devo). Although evo-devo plays an increasing role in undergraduate biology curricula, we find that instruction often addresses development cursorily, with most of the treatment embedded within instruction on evolution. Based on results of surveys and interviews with students, we suggest that teaching core concepts (CCs) within a framework that integrates supporting concepts (SCs) from both evolutionary and developmental biology can improve evo-devo instruction. We articulate CCs, SCs, and foundational concepts (FCs) that provide an integrative framework to help students master evo-devo concepts and to help educators address specific conceptual difficulties their students have with evo-devo. We then identify the difficulties that undergraduates have with these concepts. Most of these difficulties are of two types: those that are ubiquitous among students in all areas of biology and those that stem from an inadequate understanding of FCs from developmental, cell, and molecular biology
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