Wetlands Regulation in an Era of Climate Change: Can Section 404 Meet the Challenge?

This Article raises the question of how we should assess the potential threat to wetlands posed by the impacts of a changing climate and considers the role that section 404 of the Clean Water Act can play both in assessing and responding to that threat. Our inquiry is two-fold. First, should we be concerned about climate impacts on wetlands? And if so, how can section 404 help us to assess and respond to this threat? Part I surveys the scientific literature on the projected impacts of climate change of particular relevance to wetlands and the impacts anticipated for particular types of wetlands. Part II presents an approach for assessing the extent to which we should be concerned about climate change impacts on wetlands. Part III discusses section 404 and priorities for strengthening it in an era of climate change

Decision analytic model for evaluation of suspected coronary disease with stress testing and coronary CT angiography.

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to apply a decision analytic model for the evaluation of coronary artery disease (CAD) to define the optimal utilization of coronary computed tomographic angiography (cCTA) and stress testing. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The model tested in this study assumes that CAD is evaluated with a stress test and/or cCTA and that a patient with positive evaluation results undergoes cardiac catheterization. On the basis of values of sensitivity, specificity, and radiation dose from the published literature and test costs from the Medicare fee schedule, a decision tree model was constructed as a function of disease prevalence. RESULTS: The false-negative rate is lowest when cCTA is used as an isolated test. The false-positive rate is minimized when cCTA is used in combination with stress echocardiography. Effective radiation is minimized by use of stress electrocardiography or stress echocardiography alone or prior to cCTA. When the pretest probability of CAD is low, a strategy that uses stress echocardiography followed by cCTA minimizes the false-positive rate and effective radiation exposure, with relatively low imaging costs and with a false-negative rate only slightly higher than a strategy including stress myocardial scintigraphy. As the pretest probability of CAD increases above 20%, the false-negative rate of stress echocardiography followed by cCTA increases by \u3e5% relative to cCTA alone. CONCLUSION: Effective radiation dose and imaging costs for the workup of CAD may be minimized by an appropriate combination of stress testing and cCTA. A strategy that uses stress echocardiography followed by cCTA is most appropriate for the evaluation of low-risk patients with CAD with a pretest probability \u3c 20%, while cCTA alone may be more appropriate in intermediate-risk patients

The Hopf modules category and the Hopf equation

We study the Hopf equation which is equivalent to the pentagonal equation, from operator algebras. A FRT type theorem is given and new types of quantum groups are constructed. The key role is played now by the classical Hopf modules category. As an application, a five dimensional noncommutative noncocommutative bialgebra is given.Comment: 30 pages, Letax2e, Comm. Algebra in pres

How significant are the public dimensions of faculty work in review, promotion and tenure documents?

Much of the work done by faculty at both public and private universities has significant public dimensions: it is often paid for by public funds; it is often aimed at serving the public good; and it is often subject to public evaluation. To understand how the public dimensions of faculty work are valued, we analyzed review, promotion, and tenure documents from a representative sample of 129 universities in the US and Canada. Terms and concepts related to public and community are mentioned in a large portion of documents, but mostly in ways that relate to service, which is an undervalued aspect of academic careers. Moreover, the documents make significant mention of traditional research outputs and citation-based metrics: however, such outputs and metrics reward faculty work targeted to academics, and often disregard the public dimensions. Institutions that seek to embody their public mission could therefore work towards changing how faculty work is assessed and incentivized

Outcomes of open mitral valve replacement versus Transcatheter mitral valve repair; insight from the National Inpatient Sample Database.

Background: Transcatheter mitral valve repair and replacement (TMVR) is a minimally invasive alternative to conventional open-heart mitral valve replacement (OMVR). The present study aims to compare the burden, demographics, cost, and complications of TMVR and OMVR. Methods: The United States National Inpatient Sample (US-NIS) for the year 2017 was queried to identify all cases of TMVR and OMVR. Categorical and continuous data were analyzed using Pearson chi-square and independent t-test analysis, respectively. An adjusted odds ratio (aOR) based on the ordinal logistic regression (OLR) model was calculated to determine the association between outcome variables. Results: Of 19,580 patients, 18,460 (94%) underwent OMVR and 1120 (6%) TMVR. Mean ages of patients were 63 ± 14 years (OMVR) and 67 ± 13 years (TMVR). Both cohorts were predominantly Caucasian (73% OMVR vs. 74.0% TMVR). The patients who underwent TMVR were more likely to belong to a household with an income in the highest quartile (26.1% vs. 22.0% for OMVR) versus the lowest quartile (22.1% vs. 27.8%). The average number of days from admission to TMVR was less compared to OMVR (2.63 days vs. 3.02 days, p = 0.015). In-hospital length of stay (LOS) was significantly lower for TMVR compared to OMVR (11.56 vs. 14.01 days, p=\u3c0.0001). Adjusted in-hospital mortality taking into account comorbidities showed no significant difference between the two groups (OR 1.2, 0.93-1.68, p = 0.15). Conclusion: Patients undergoing TMVR were older and more financially affluent. TMVR was more costly but was associated with a shorter hospital stay and similar mortality to OMVR

Support varieties for selfinjective algebras

Support varieties for any finite dimensional algebra over a field were introduced by Snashall-Solberg using graded subalgebras of the Hochschild cohomology. We mainly study these varieties for selfinjective algebras under appropriate finite generation hypotheses. Then many of the standard results from the theory of support varieties for finite groups generalize to this situation. In particular, the complexity of the module equals the dimension of its corresponding variety, all closed homogeneous varieties occur as the variety of some module, the variety of an indecomposable module is connected, periodic modules are lines and for symmetric algebras a generalization of Webb's theorem is true