Hurricane Impact on Emergency Services and Use of Telehealth to Support Prehospital Care

The impact of hurricanes on emergency services is well-known. Recent history demonstrates the need for prehospital and emergency department coordination to serve communities during evacuation, storm duration, and cleanup. The use of telehealth applications may enhance this coordination while lessening the impact on health-care systems. These applications can address triage, stabilization, and diversion and may be provided in collaboration with state and local emergency management operations through various shelters, as well as during other emergency medical responses

Calibration Uncertainty for Advanced LIGO's First and Second Observing Runs

Calibration of the Advanced LIGO detectors is the quantification of the detectors' response to gravitational waves. Gravitational waves incident on the detectors cause phase shifts in the interferometer laser light which are read out as intensity fluctuations at the detector output. Understanding this detector response to gravitational waves is crucial to producing accurate and precise gravitational wave strain data. Estimates of binary black hole and neutron star parameters and tests of general relativity require well-calibrated data, as miscalibrations will lead to biased results. We describe the method of producing calibration uncertainty estimates for both LIGO detectors in the first and second observing runs.Comment: 15 pages, 21 figures, LIGO DCC P160013

Determining the Quantitative Principles of T Cell Response to Antigenic Disparity in Stem Cell Transplantation

Alloreactivity compromising clinical outcomes in stem cell transplantation is observed despite HLA matching of donors and recipients. This has its origin in the variation between the exomes of the two, which provides the basis for minor histocompatibility antigens (mHA). The mHA presented on the HLA class I and II molecules and the ensuing T cell response to these antigens results in graft vs. host disease. In this paper, results of a whole exome sequencing study are presented, with resulting alloreactive polymorphic peptides and their HLA class I and HLA class II (DRB1) binding affinity quantified. Large libraries of potentially alloreactive recipient peptides binding both sets of molecules were identified, with HLA-DRB1 generally presenting a greater number of peptides. These results are used to develop a quantitative framework to understand the immunobiology of transplantation. A tensor-based approach is used to derive the equations needed to determine the alloreactive donor T cell response from the mHA-HLA binding affinity and protein expression data. This approach may be used in future studies to simulate the magnitude of expected donor T cell response and determine the risk for alloreactive complications in HLA matched or mismatched hematopoietic cell and solid organ transplantation

Discovering a Light Higgs Boson with Light

We evaluate the prospects for detecting a non-standard light Higgs boson with a significant branching ratio to two photons, in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron. We derive the reach for several channels: $2\gamma$ inclusive, $2\gamma+1$ jet and $2\gamma+2$ jets. We present the expected Run II limits on the branching ratio of $h\to\gamma\gamma$ as a function of the Higgs mass, for the case of ``bosonic'', as well as ``topcolor'' Higgs bosons.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, 7 figures, 4 tables, uses aipproc2.sty, contributed to the Physics at Run II Workshop, analysis redone with optimized cuts and improved background estimate, references adde

Adaptive Motor Imagery: A Multimodal Study of Immobilization-Induced Brain Plasticity.

The consequences of losing the ability to move a limb are traumatic. One approach that examines the impact of pathological limb nonuse on the brain involves temporary immobilization of a healthy limb. Here, we investigated immobilization-induced plasticity in the motor imagery (MI) circuitry during hand immobilization. We assessed these changes with a multimodal paradigm, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure neural activation, magnetoencephalography (MEG) to track neuronal oscillatory dynamics, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to assess corticospinal excitability. fMRI results show a significant decrease in neural activation for MI of the constrained hand, localized to sensorimotor areas contralateral to the immobilized hand. MEG results show a significant decrease in beta desynchronization and faster resynchronization in sensorimotor areas contralateral to the immobilized hand. TMS results show a significant increase in resting motor threshold in motor cortex contralateral to the constrained hand, suggesting a decrease in corticospinal excitability in the projections to the constrained hand. These results demonstrate a direct and rapid effect of immobilization on MI processes of the constrained hand, suggesting that limb nonuse may not only affect motor execution, as evidenced by previous studies, but also MI. These findings have important implications for the effectiveness of therapeutic approaches that use MI as a rehabilitation tool to ameliorate the negative effects of limb nonuse

Update to the Vitamin C, Thiamine and Steroids in Sepsis (VICTAS) protocol: statistical analysis plan for a prospective, multicenter, double-blind, adaptive sample size, randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Observational research suggests that combined therapy with Vitamin C, thiamine and hydrocortisone may reduce mortality in patients with septic shock. METHODS AND DESIGN: The Vitamin C, Thiamine and Steroids in Sepsis (VICTAS) trial is a multicenter, double-blind, adaptive sample size, randomized, placebo-controlled trial designed to test the efficacy of combination therapy with vitamin C (1.5 g), thiamine (100 mg), and hydrocortisone (50 mg) given every 6 h for up to 16 doses in patients with respiratory or circulatory dysfunction (or both) resulting from sepsis. The primary outcome is ventilator- and vasopressor-free days with mortality as the key secondary outcome. Recruitment began in August 2018 and is ongoing; 501 participants have been enrolled to date, with a planned maximum sample size of 2000. The Data and Safety Monitoring Board reviewed interim results at N = 200, 300, 400 and 500, and has recommended continuing recruitment. The next interim analysis will occur when N = 1000. This update presents the statistical analysis plan. Specifically, we provide definitions for key treatment and outcome variables, and for intent-to-treat, per-protocol, and safety analysis datasets. We describe the planned descriptive analyses, the main analysis of the primary end point, our approach to secondary and exploratory analyses, and handling of missing data. Our goal is to provide enough detail that our approach could be replicated by an independent study group, thereby enhancing the transparency of the study. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03509350. Registered on 26 April 2018

Prospectus, September 6, 1989

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1989/1018/thumbnail.jp

Television news and the symbolic criminalisation of young people

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journalism Studies, 9(1), 75 - 90, 2008, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14616700701768105.This essay combines quantitative and qualitative analysis of six UK television news programmes. It seeks to analyse the representation of young people within broadcast news provision at a time when media representations, political discourse and policy making generally appear to be invoking young people as something of a folk devil or a locus for moral panics. The quantitative analysis examines the frequency with which young people appear as main actors across a range of different subjects and analyses the role of young people as news sources. It finds a strong correlation between young people and violent crime. A qualitative analysis of four “special reports” or backgrounders on channel Five's Five News explores the representation of young people in more detail, paying attention to contradictions and tensions in the reports, the role of statistics in crime reporting, the role of victims of crime and the tensions between conflicting news frames.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

Faint High Latitude Carbon Stars Discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Methods and Initial Results

We report the discovery of 39 Faint High Latitude Carbon Stars (FHLCs) from Sloan Digital Sky Survey commissioning data. The objects, each selected photometrically and verified spectroscopically, range over 16.6 < r* < 20.0, and show a diversity of temperatures as judged by both colors and NaD line strengths. At the completion of the Sloan Survey, there will be many hundred homogeneously selected and observed FHLCs in this sample. We present proper motion measures for each object, indicating that the sample is a mixture of extremely distant (>100 kpc) halo giant stars, useful for constraining halo dynamics, plus members of the recently-recognized exotic class of very nearby dwarf carbon (dC) stars. Motions, and thus dC classification, are inferred for 40-50 percent of the sample, depending on the level of statistical significance invoked. The new list of dC stars presented here, although selected from only a small fraction of the final SDSS, doubles the number of such objects found by all previous methods. (Abstract abridged).Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, Vol. 124, Sep. 2002, 40 pages, 7 figures, AASTeX v5.

New 10Be exposure ages improve Holocene ice sheet thinning history near the grounding line of Pope Glacier, Antarctica

Evidence for the timing and pace of past grounding line retreat of the Thwaites Glacier system in the Amundsen Sea embayment (ASE) of Antarctica provides constraints for models that are used to predict the future trajectory of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Existing cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure ages suggest that Pope Glacier, a former tributary of Thwaites Glacier, experienced rapid thinning in the early to mid-Holocene. There are relatively few exposure ages from the lower ice-free sections of Mt. Murphy (<300 m a.s.l.; metres above sea level) that are uncomplicated by either nuclide inheritance or scatter due to localised topographic complexities; this makes the trajectory for the latter stages of deglaciation uncertain. This paper presents 12 new 10Be exposure ages from erratic cobbles collected from the western flank of Mt. Murphy, within 160 m of the modern ice surface and 1 km from the present grounding line. The ages comprise two tightly clustered populations with mean deglaciation ages of 7.1 ± 0.1 and 6.4 ± 0.1 ka (1 SE). Linear regression analysis applied to the age–elevation array of all available exposure ages from Mt. Murphy indicates that the median rate of thinning of Pope Glacier was 0.27 m yr−1 between 8.1–6.3 ka, occurring 1.5 times faster than previously thought. Furthermore, this analysis better constrains the uncertainty (95 % confidence interval) in the timing of deglaciation at the base of the Mt. Murphy vertical profile (∼ 80 m above the modern ice surface), shifting it to earlier in the Holocene (from 5.2 ± 0.7 to 6.3 ± 0.4 ka). Taken together, the results presented here suggest that early- to mid-Holocene thinning of Pope Glacier occurred over a shorter interval than previously assumed and permit a longer duration over which subsequent late Holocene re-thickening could have occurred