Innovations in Opioid Law and Policy Interventions Workshop: Summary of Proceedings

In 2017, Indiana University, in cooperation with Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and community partners, launched the Grand Challenge: Responding to the Addictions Crisis initiative, a university-wide effort to advance interdisciplinary research and interventions in response to the substance abuse crisis affecting Indiana and the nation. The “Legal and Policy Best Practices in Response to the Substance Abuse Crisis” project is one of sixteen funded under Phase 1 of the Grand Challenge. In July 2018, and as part of this project, the research team convened a group of national experts to discuss legal and policy innovations to respond to the opioid use disorder (OUD) crisis. This report summarizes the proceedings of this workshop and updates some of the recommendations made by the team in their March 2018 Preliminary Report. During the workshop, experts answered targeted questions relating to the challenges in implementing law and policy recommendations to respond to the addiction crisis, as well as identified gaps in the current research. Participants provided examples of innovative interventions to respond to this crisis across four primary topic categories: (1) Criminalization; (2) Public Health; (3) Treatment; and (4) Effectuating Change

The relationship of microRNAs to clinical features of Huntington's and Parkinson's disease

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) represent a major system of post-transcriptional regulation, by either preventing translational initiation or by targeting messenger RNA transcripts for storage or degradation. miRNA deregulation has been reported in neurodegenerative disorders, such as Huntington’s disease (HD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), which may impact gene expression and modify disease progression and/or severity. To assess the relationship of miRNA levels to HD, small RNA sequence analysis was performed for 26 HD and 36 non-disease control samples derived from human prefrontal cortex. 75 miRNAs were differentially expressed in HD brain as compared to controls at genome-wide significance (FDR q<0.05). Among HD brains, nine miRNAs were significantly associated with the extent of neuropathological involvement in the striatum and three of these significantly related to a continuous measure of striatal involvement, after statistical adjustment for the contribution of HD gene length. Five miRNAs were identified as having a significant, inverse relationship to age of motor onset, in particular, miR-10b-5p, the mostly strongly over-expressed miRNA in HD cases. Although prefrontal cortex was the source of tissue profiled in these studies, the relationship of miR-10b-5p levels to striatal involvement in the disease was independent of cortical involvement. In blood plasma from 26 HD, 4 asymptomatic HD gene carriers and 8 controls, miR-10b-5p levels were significantly elevated in HD as compared to non-diseased and preclinical HD subjects, demonstrating that miRNA alterations associated with diseased brain may be detected peripherally. Using small RNA sequence analysis for 29 PD brains, 125 miRNAs were identified as differentially expressed at genome-wide significance (FDR q<0.05) in PD versus controls. A set of 29 miRNAs accurately classified PD from non-diseased brain (93.9% specificity, 96.6% sensitivity, 4.8% absolute error). In contrast to HD, among PD cases, miR-10b-5p was significantly decreased and had a significant, positive association to onset age independent of age at death. These studies provide a detailed miRNA profile for HD and PD brain, identify miRNAs associated with disease pathology and suggest miRNA changes observed in brain can be detected in blood. Together, these findings support the potential of miRNA biomarkers for the diagnosis and assessment of progression for neurodegenerative diseases

Checklist to Transparently Define Test Oracles for TP, FP, and FN Objects in Automated Driving

Popular test oracles for the perception subsystem of driving automation systems identify true-positive (TP), false-positive (FP), and false-negative (FN) objects. Oracle transparency is needed for comparing test results and for safety cases. To date, there exists a common notion of TPs, FPs, and FNs in the field, but apparently no published way to comprehensively define their oracles. Therefore, this paper provides a checklist of functional aspects and implementation details that affect the oracle behavior. Besides labeling policies of the test set, we cover fields of view, occlusion handling, safety-relevant areas, matching criteria, temporal and probabilistic issues, and further aspects. Even though our checklist can hardly be formalized, it can help practitioners maximize the transparency of their oracles, which, in turn, makes statements on object perception more reliable and comparable.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Princess

Princess takes place in a world where eyeballs stretch out of people’s heads like prehensile limbs. The film follows a father, Franklin, who is seen in his home wearing a dress. He covers himself in a long trench coat before leaving the house. As he gets into a cab, Franklin ushers the driver to move quickly, but before too long the cab gets stuck in traffic. This leaves Franklin no choice but to get out and walk. When he exits the cab, his coat gets stuck in the door and rips as he tries to pull it free. The dress is exposed to all the pedestrians on the street whose eyes begin to stretch from their heads. He panics and sprints away, trying to escape from the crowd of eyes that has formed around him. They surround him, and he tries to fight them off. The more they attack the more frustrated he becomes, and he explodes with anger. The slithery jumble of eyes combines together to form a giant monster. Franklin, no longer afraid, charges the monster. He jumps into the air, striking poses that exude confidence and strength. He is no longer ashamed to be seen in the dress. Instead, he is forcing the eyes to look at him causing the monster to explode. Out of the corner of his eye he notices his daughter waiting outside a park with her friend. Both of them are wearing dresses similar in style to his. When she sees him, she’s amazed at how beautiful he looks in the dress. They enter the park which is decorated with balloons, ribbons, and other princess party accoutrement. There are a few moms in dresses at the party as well. Their eyes follow Franklin and his daughter, but he ignores them

Ouachita\u27s Department of Theatre Arts to present A Servant to Two Masters

Ouachita Baptist University’s Department of Theatre Arts will present “A Servant to Two Masters” from Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 17-19, and Monday, Nov. 21, at 7:30 p.m. in Verser Theatre. A matinee performance is set for Sunday, Nov. 20 at 2:30 p.m. Written by Carlo Goldoni in 1746 and adapted by David Turner and Paul Lapworth, “A Servant to Two Masters” is a comedy that tells the story of Truffaldino, a hungry servant who, upon realizing that working for two masters could ensure him a greater supply of food, tries to do the job of two men while working desperately to conceal that fact from both employers