Antiplatelet Drug Resistance: Almost Ready for Prime Time

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90218/1/phco.26.8.1201.pd

Court Review: Volume 41, Issue 1 - Recent Evaluative Research on Jury Trial Innovations

During the past decade, state jury reform commissions, many individual federal and state judges, and jury scholars have advocated the adoption of a variety of innovative trial procedures to assist jurors in trials. These include reforms as prosaic as allowing juror note taking and furnishing jurors with copies of written instructions, through more controversial changes, such as allowing jurors to ask questions of witnesses or permitting them to discuss the case together during breaks in the trial. Accounts of the nature and purpose of the innovations and the pace of change are found in this issue of Court Review1 and elsewhere. These innovations are now catalogued in convenient form, accompanied by practical guidance for judges. Many jury trial reforms reflect growing awareness of best practices in education and communication as well as research documenting that jurors take an active rather than a passive approach to their decision-making task. Traditional adversary jury trial procedures often appear to assume that jurors are blank slates, who will passively wait until the end of the trial and the start of jury deliberations to form opinions about the evidence. However, we now know that jurors quite actively engage in evidence evaluation, developing their opinions as the trial progresses. It makes sense to revise trial procedures so they take advantage of jurors’ decision-making tendencies and strengths. Although reform groups have endorsed many of these innovations, until recently there was only modest evidence about their impact in the courtroom. Now, substantial research on the effects of most of the reforms on juror comprehension and juror satisfaction with the trial has been completed and reported. Data are now available to judges and others seeking reliable empirical support for the changes to the traditional jury trial. This article will describe the methods used to study juries and jury trials and present recent data now available for each of the major proposed innovations. We also draw on new findings from our own recent research testing the comparative advantages of jury innovations for understanding complex scientific evidence

An Analysis of Rank Ordered Data

Many methods are available to analyze rank ordered data. We used a spectral density method to analyze Formosan subterranean termite control options ranked by Louisiana homeowners. Respondents are asked to rank termite control options from the most preferred to the least preferred option. Spectral analysis results indicated that the most preferred termite control choice is a relatively cheap ($0.13 per square foot) option of liquid treatment.FST, rank ordered data, spectral analysis, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Benefits to Qualitative Data Quality with Multiple Coders: Two Case Studies in Multi-coder Data Analysis

Qualitative research methods contend with debates surrounding subjectivity and bias. Researchers use a variety of techniques to help ensure data trustworthiness. One such technique is to involve multiple coders in data analysis. The deliberative nature of codebook development among multiple coders produces rich data analysis that may not otherwise be achieved with a single (or even two) researcher(s). In this manuscript, we make a plea for researchers and journals to include data analysis procedures and descriptions in published literature. In addition, we illustrate minimal reporting of qualitative data analysis processes through a synthesis of 21 years of agricultural best management practice adoption literature. We present two rural agricultural case studies on multi-coder team codebook development and intercoder reliability processes specific to interviews, focus groups, and content analysis. Overall, we argue that multi-coder teams can improve data quality, and reporting data analysis procedures can mitigate implications of subjectivity in qualitative methods

A Facilitated Prioritization Process: An Application in the Forest Sector in Honduras

This article describes an application of an Extension-oriented facilitated goal prioritization process conduced for national forest sector development in Honduras. The process can be employed in many settings that require stakeholder input. This article describes the consensus ranking of priority actions and generation of most doable actions. The results of this project will be used as an input in national forest-sector strategic planning in Honduras

Tilings of Annular Region

We present our summer research on mathematical tiling. We classified which rectangular annular regions are tileable by the set of T and skew tretrominoes. We present a partial proof of this result, and discuss some of the context for this problem

Competitive Tiling

Competitive tiling consists of two players, a tile set, a region, and a non-negative integer d. Alice and Bob, our two players, alternate placing tiles on the untiled squares of the region. They play until no more tiles can be placed. Alice wins if at most d squares are untiled at the end of the game, and Bob wins if more than d squares are untiled. For given regions and tile sets we are interested in the smallest value of d such that Alice has a winning strategy. We call this the game tiling number. In this project, we focus on finding the game tiling number for the game played with dominoes on 2 x n rectangles, modified 2 x n rectangles, and rectangular annular regions

Photosensitivity reaction from operating room lights after oral administration of 5-aminolevulinic acid for fluorescence-guided resection of a malignant glioma

Orally administered 5-aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA), which was approved in the United States in 2017, is preferentially metabolized by malignant glioma cells into protoporphyrin IX and enhances tumor visualization when using a blue light filter on an operating microscope. Photosensitivity after 5-ALA administration is a known side effect, but a photosensitivity reaction from operating room lights has not yet been documented. We report the case of a 56-year-old man with a history of previous resection of a grade II astrocytoma who presented with imaging concerning for tumor recurrence and possible malignant transformation. Repeat surgical resection utilized 5-ALA. Soon after the surgery, he developed reddening of his skin, particularly over the right side of his head and neck, with blistering and peeling in a distribution that was particularly exposed to operating room lights during surgery. No other areas of his skin experienced the same redness, blistering, or peeling. Topical lotions were applied and the skin changes resolved spontaneously over weeks. Significant photosensitivity after administration of oral 5-ALA is a rare complication, but neurosurgeons who perform fluorescence-guided tumor resection should remain cognizant of its potential association with exposure to intense light, including in the operating room. Phototoxicity typically is self-limited, but awareness is important to minimize its occurrence

Observation of ultrafast internal conversion in fullerene anions in solution

The ultrafast decay rates of photoexcited View the MathML source ions have been measured in the condensed phase. The mechanism for decay is internal conversion, and the decay rate is a strong function of the charge on the ion. A bottleneck in the ground state recovery has also been detected, and its interpretation is discussed

Changes in the gut microbiota of mice orally exposed to methylimidazolium ionic liquids

Ionic liquids are salts used in a variety of industrial processes, and being relatively non-volatile, are proposed as environmentally-friendly replacements for existing volatile liquids. Methylimidazolium ionic liquids resist complete degradation in the environment, likely because the imidazolium moiety does not exist naturally in biological systems. However, there is limited data available regarding their mammalian effects in vivo. This study aimed to examine the effects of exposing mice separately to 2 different methylimidazolium ionic liquids (BMI and M8OI) through their addition to drinking water. Potential effects on key target organs-the liver and kidney-were examined, as well as the gut microbiome. Adult male mice were exposed to drinking water containing ionic liquids at a concentration of 440 mg/L for 18 weeks prior to examination of tissues, serum, urine and the gut microbiome. Histopathology was performed on tissues and clinical chemistry on serum for biomarkers of hepatic and renal injury. Bacterial DNA was isolated from the gut contents and subjected to targeted 16S rRNA sequencing. Mild hepatic and renal effects were limited to glycogen depletion and mild degenerative changes respectively. No hepatic or renal adverse effects were observed. In contrast, ionic liquid exposure altered gut microbial composition but not overall alpha diversity. Proportional abundance of Lachnospiraceae, Clostridia and Coriobacteriaceae spp. were significantly greater in ionic liquid-exposed mice, as were predicted KEGG functional pathways associated with xenobiotic and amino acid metabolism. Exposure to ionic liquids via drinking water therefore resulted in marked changes in the gut microbiome in mice prior to any overt pathological effects in target organs. Ionic liquids may be an emerging risk to health through their potential effects on the gut microbiome, which is implicated in the causes and/or severity of an array of chronic disease in humans