Canal Wave Oscillation Phenomena Due to Column Vortex Shedding

The GARVEE Transportation Program started by the Idaho Transportation Department has improved parts of I-84 in Boise, Idaho. These desired improvements led to the widening of a bridge over the New York Canal (NYC) in 2009. To support the wider road, additional bridge columns were installed. The new bridge columns had a larger diameter than the existing columns and raised the number of columns from 28 to 60. Construction was completed just before the irrigation season began. During the first irrigation season it was observed that waves and oscillations were occurring within the canal immediately adjacent to the bridge structure. Throughout the irrigation season, it was observed that the intensity of the oscillations would vary. It was also observed that the wave oscillations propagated upstream and downstream from the bridge structure. Both longitudinal and transverse waves were observed. The waves appeared to originate in the section of the canal that was under the I-84 Bridge. A physical model was built in 2010 at Utah State University\u27s (USU) Utah Water Research Laboratory (UWRL) in an attempt to simulate the oscillation phenomenon and to develop potential solutions to the problem. During the original modeling work, a thorough investigation to the causes of this phenomenon was not accomplished due to time constraints. The objective of the follow-up research presented in this thesis was to qualitatively determine the causes of the oscillations. Laboratory tests were performed using the original physical model used in the original 2010 testing

Pupillometry as a tool to study expertise in medicine

Background Pupillometry has been studied as a physiological marker for quantifying cognitive load since the early 1960s. It has been established that small changes in pupillary size can provide an index of the cognitive load of a participant as he/she performs a mental task. The utility of pupillometry as a measure of expertise is less well established, although recent research in the fields of education, medicine and psychology indicates that differences in pupillary size during domain-specific tasks allows differentiation between experts and novices in appropriately designed experiments.Purpose The goal of this review is to explore the existing body of evidence for the use of pupillometry as a measure of expertise and to identify its strengths and constraints within the context of expertise research in the medical sciences.Results Pupillometry is a robust metric that allows researchers to better understand cognitive load in medical practitioners with varying levels of expertise. In medical expertise research, it has been used to study surgeons, anesthetists and emergency physicians. Its strengths include its ability to provide quantitative and objective outputs, to be measured unobtrusively with new technology and to be precisely computed as cognitive load changes over the course of completion of a task. Constraints associated with this methodology include its potential inaccuracy with changes in ambient light and pupillary accommodation as well as the need for relatively expensive equipment. Conclusion With recent technological advances, pupillometry has become a simple and robust method for quantifying physiological changes attributable to cognitive load and is increasingly being utilized in medical education. It can be used as a reliable marker of mental effort and has been shown to differentiate levels of expertise in medical practitioners

Creating an Online Institutional Research Record in ArchivesSpace

Background : The School of Medicine was a pioneer in using problem-based learning and simulated patients in medical education. In January 2018 the Library was asked whether the School had a bibliography of the School\u27s contributions to these topics. We did not, but agreed it would be a useful and interesting resource. During this time the Library was also planning to implement an online catalog and finding aid for our archives using the open source platform ArchivesSpace. The death of a distinguished and emeritus professor in June 2018 fast-tracked these projects. Description : As a starting point for an institutional bibliography the Library first focused on four of the School\u27s earliest and most distinguished researchers. For each, librarians author-searched relevant databases while the archive specialist went through the Medical Library archives. After the bibliographies were complete, the Library procured a physical copy of each work. ArchivesSpace, which had been green-lit for installation by the School, was the most logical home for the digital manifestation of the bibliographies. Frustratingly, implementation stalled for months. With the support of the School\u27s Associate Dean of Education & Curriculum, who hoped to unveil the Founding Figures Collection of Medical Education at a memorial honoring a recently passed researcher and professor, the Library was able to install ArchivesSpace and begin data entry in November 2018. Conclusion: These two projects were not initially connected, but by associating our stalled project (ArchivesSpace) with a pressing matter (the memorial), we were able to revive it. The memorial was held in January 2019 with great attendance, and the Founding Figures Collection was well received. We continue to build an institutional bibliography bit by bit and have identified several researchers that build upon the collection. Now that ArchivesSpace is up and running, our archive specialist is working on inputting all archival collections and materials. We hope to digitize and, whenever legally possible, make our archive materials available online

Optimal experimental design for cytogenetic dose-response calibration curves

Purpose: To introduce optimal experimental design techniques in the cytogenetic biological dosimetry practice. This includes the development of a new optimatility criterion for the calibration of radiation doses. Materials and Methods: The most typical optimal design criterion and the one developed in this research are introduced and applied in an example from the litera- ture. In another example from the literature, a simulation study has been performed to compare the standard error of the dose estimation using di erent experimental designs. An RStudio project and a GitHub project have been developed to repro- duce these results. Results: It is appreciated how the application of optimal experimental design tech- niques can reduce the standard error of biodosimetric dose estimations. Conclusions: Optimal experimental design techniques jointly with practitioners re- quirements may be applied. This practice would not involve an additional laboratory work

Poisson excess relative risk models : new implementations and software

Two new implementations for fitting Poisson excess relative risk methods are proposed for assumed simple models. This allows for estimation of the excess relative risk associated with a unique exposure, where the background risk is modelled by a unique categorical variable, for example gender or attained age levels. Additionally, it is shown how to fit general Poisson linear relative risk models in R. Both simple methods and the R fitting are illustrated in three examples. The first two examples are from the radiation epidemiology literature. Data in the third example are randomly generated with the purpose of sharing it jointly with the R scripts

PriorVAE: Encoding spatial priors with VAEs for small-area estimation

Gaussian processes (GPs), implemented through multivariate Gaussian distributions for a finite collection of data, are the most popular approach in small-area spatial statistical modelling. In this context they are used to encode correlation structures over space and can generalise well in interpolation tasks. Despite their flexibility, off-the-shelf GPs present serious computational challenges which limit their scalability and practical usefulness in applied settings. Here, we propose a novel, deep generative modelling approach to tackle this challenge, termed PriorVAE: for a particular spatial setting, we approximate a class of GP priors through prior sampling and subsequent fitting of a variational autoencoder (VAE). Given a trained VAE, the resultant decoder allows spatial inference to become incredibly efficient due to the low dimensional, independently distributed latent Gaussian space representation of the VAE. Once trained, inference using the VAE decoder replaces the GP within a Bayesian sampling framework. This approach provides tractable and easy-to-implement means of approximately encoding spatial priors and facilitates efficient statistical inference. We demonstrate the utility of our VAE two stage approach on Bayesian, small-area estimation tasks

Getting Inside the Expert's Head:An Analysis of Physician Cognitive Processes During Trauma Resuscitations

Study objective: Crisis resource management skills are integral to leading the resuscitation of a critically ill patient. Despite their importance, crisis resource management skills (and their associated cognitive processes) have traditionally been difficult to study in the real world. The objective of this study was to derive key cognitive processes underpinning expert performance in resuscitation medicine, using a new eye-tracking-based video capture method during clinical cases. Methods: During an 18-month period, a sample of 10 trauma resuscitations led by 4 expert trauma team leaders was analyzed. The physician team leaders were outfitted with mobile eye-tracking glasses for each case. After each resuscitation, participants were debriefed with a modified cognitive task analysis, based on a cued-recall protocol, augmented by viewing their own first-person perspective eye-tracking video from the clinical encounter. Results: Eye-tracking technology was successfully applied as a tool to aid in the qualitative analysis of expert performance in a clinical setting. All participants stated that using these methods helped uncover previously unconscious aspects of their cognition. Overall, 5 major themes were derived from the interviews: logistic awareness, managing uncertainty, visual fixation behaviors, selective attendance to information, and anticipatory behaviors. Conclusion: The novel approach of cognitive task analysis augmented by eye tracking allowed the derivation of 5 unique cognitive processes underpinning expert performance in leading a resuscitation. An understanding of these cognitive processes has the potential to enhance educational methods and to create new assessment modalities of these previously tacit aspects of expertise in this field

From a certain point of view: sensory phenomenological envisionings of running space and place

The precise ways in which we go about the mundane, repetitive, social actions of everyday life are central concerns of ethnographers and theorists working within the traditions of the sociology of the mundane and sociological phenomenology. In this article, we utilize insights derived from sociological phenomenology and the newly developing field of sensory sociology to investigate a particular, mundane, and embodied social practice, that of training for distance running in specific places: our favored running routes. For, despite a growing body of ethnographic studies of particular sports, little analytic attention has been devoted to the actual, concrete practices of “doing” or “producing” sporting activity, particularly from a sensory ethnographic perspective. Drawing upon data from a 2-year joint autoethnographic research project, here we explore the visual dimension, focusing upon three key themes in relation to our runners’ visualization of, respectively, (1) hazardous places, (2) performance places, (3) the time–space–place nexus