Assessing the dyadic relationship between sleep and health-related quality of life in PD patients and their caregivers using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM)

Overview: My name is Sushmitha Inguva. I am a 4th year doctoral student in the Department of Pharmacy Administration in the School of Pharmacy. My primary area of interest is in Health Economics and Outcomes Research. For my dissertation, I am focusing on sleep disorders and their impact on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and caregivers. Intellectual Merit: PD is caused by loss of dopaminergic neurons in the brain. PD patients experience motor and non-motor symptoms (NMS). Among NMS, sleep disorders are the most common, occurring in about 60-90% of patients. Sleep disorders in patients affect other NMS, their HRQoL, as well as caregivers’ sleep quality and HRQoL. Traditional methods of evaluating the relationship between sleep and HRQoL in PD have often ignored the nonindependence in scores of the two variables for patients and their caregivers. Therefore, the current study proposes to assess the dyadic relationship between sleep and HRQoL in a sample of PD patients and caregivers using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM). The APIM uses fewer degrees of freedom, produces unbiased and precise estimates and yields greater power than traditional methods. These unbiased estimates are integral to other studies/models assessing spillover effects on caregiver HRQoL and pharmacoeconomic analyses. External Opportunity: I am planning to seek funding for my project from the Davis Phinney Foundation for Parkinson’s under their 2020 Research Project Funding Call for Letter of Intent. The potential funding amount is $5350. The program involves two deadlines: one for a letter of intent on April 1, 2020 and one for the full application on June 19, 2020, upon invitation to submit. This is my first attempt at applying for an external funding opportunity and I strongly believe that this experience is going to be instrumental for me in starting and developing a career in academia. If I receive the award, it will strengthen my academic profile and fill me with motivation to pursue more such funding opportunities in the future

SLEEP AND HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE AMONG PERSONS WITH PARKINSON’S DISEASE AND THEIR CAREGIVERSSLEEP AND HEALTH-RELATED QUALITY OF LIFE AMONG PERSONS WITH PARKINSON’S DISEASE AND THEIR CAREGIVERS

This dissertation aimed at filling gaps in the body of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and sleep literature by synthesizing and appraising current knowledge on the influence of sleep on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in persons with Parkinson’s (PWP) and their caregivers, conducting a psychometric evaluation of a HRQoL instrument among PWP, and applying a novel method to assess the dyadic relationship between sleep and HRQoL in PWP and their caregivers. First, the systematic literature review results showed that nocturnal and diurnal sleep problems among PWP are strong predictors of their HRQoL. Additionally, studies that focused on caregiver outcomes showed that PWP and caregivers’ sleep issues were predictors of caregiver HRQoL. Results synthesized across these studies suggest that the relationship between sleep and HRQoL might be interdependent for PWP and caregivers. Second, a cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Global Health, a generic HRQoL instrument, among PWP. Findings from this study provide evidence that the global physical health (GPH) and global mental health (GMH) summary scores obtained from this instrument show good reliability and validity in PWP. Finally, a cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the dyadic relationship between sleep and HRQoL among PWP and caregivers using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model. This study used the PROMIS sleep disturbance (SD) and the PROMIS sleep-related impairment (SRI) to measure nocturnal and diurnal sleep issues, respectively. Results showed that both SD and SRI in PWP and their caregivers are significant predictors of their own HRQoL. Additionally, caregiver’s SD and SRI were found to be significant predictors of PWP’s HRQoL. These results provide empirical evidence that the sleep-HRQoL relationship is not an independently occurring phenomenon for PWP and caregivers. Study findings about the impact of sleep on HRQoL among PWP and their caregivers help provide a better understanding of this complex relationship in PD. Interventions aiming to improve PWP’s HRQoL might benefit from integrating services that also address caregivers’ sleep. Such interventions have the potential to reduce humanistic burden in this population and economic burden on the society by way of decreasing institutionalization rates among PWP

Winds of Change and Clouds of Ideas: What is the Future of ELT?

Teaching is challenging at a time when changes are rapidly taking place in education along with the interface of technology. Positions of language teaching institutions and teachers are changing and so are perceptions of what constitutes learning. There is a need to take these changes into consideration while designing teaching for the future. This paper is premised on two contexts – FP courses at the Centre for Preparatory Studies, Sultan Qaboos University and FP courses at the Sohar University, Oman. This paper examines teaching and learning in the digital era. Then, a discussion of the 21st century students, society and the global demands, which are also influenced by technology will be investigated. Finally, the expected challenges of teachers’ preparedness in using technology, along with adopting potential approaches for teaching will be discussed. Keywords: changing perceptions, 21st century needs, General Foundation Programs, future of English language teachin

Pulsed laser deposition and characterisation of ZnO and aluminium-doped ZnO nanostructures on silicon and flexible plastic substrates

We have developed recipes for the catalyst-free growth of upstanding/vertically aligned ZnO nanorods featuring core/shell or interconnected core/shell architectures on ZnO-seeded Si (100) substrates using the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The structural, morphological and luminescent properties of these ZnO nanorod samples were established. A ZnO emission band at 3.331 eV was observed in the core/shell and interconnected core/shell nanorod architectures and its origin linked to the defects observed at the crystalline/amorphous interface of the core/shell structure. This particular defect PL emission appears to be a new observation for ZnO. We have grown vertically aligned ZnO nanorods on PLD prepared ZnO-seeded Si substrates by catalyst-free vapour phase transport (VPT). The nanorods featured excellent optical properties and a coverage density higher than previously published data. The structural, morphological and luminescent properties of the seed layers and nanorods were inter-compared. Importantly, we also compared the near band edge emission of such VPT-and PLD-deposits, with a focus on the identification of the origin of the emission feature at 3.331 eV. We have researched the room temperature PLD growth of highly transparent and conductive ZnO and Al-doped ZnO (AZO) nanocrystalline thin films on flexible Zeonor plastic substrates. The trends for the growth rate, surface morphology, hydrophobicity and the structural, optical and electrical properties of 65 nm - 420 nm thick ZnO/AZO films grown on Zeonor substrates were analysed as a function of oxygen growth pressure (1-300 mTorr). The as-grown films showed highly reproducible deposition behaviour, and featured high transmittance, low-electrical resistance, optical smoothness, low residual stress, and hydrophobicity. The results presented in this thesis are discussed in the context of prospectiv

Mediator-free interaction of glucose oxidase, as model enzyme for immobilization, with Al-doped and undoped ZnO thin films laser-deposited on polycarbonate supports

Al doped and undoped ZnO thin films were deposited by pulsed-laser deposition on polycarbonate sheets. The films were characterized by optical transmission, Hall effect measurement, XRD and SEM. Optical transmission and surface reflectometry studies showed good transparency with thicknesses ∼100 nm and surface roughness of 10 nm. Hall effect measurements showed that the sheet carrier concentration was −1.44 × 1015 cm−2 for AZO and −6 × 1014 cm−2 for ZnO. The films were then modified by drop-casting glucose oxidase (GOx) without the use of any mediators. Higher protein concentration was observed on ZnO as compared to AZO with higher specific activity for ZnO (0.042 U mg−1) compared to AZO (0.032 U mg−1), and was in agreement with cyclic voltemmetry (CV). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) suggested that the protein was bound by dipole interactions between AZO lattice oxygen and the amino group of the enzyme. Chronoamperometry showed sensitivity of 5.5 μA mM−1 cm−2 towards glucose for GOx/AZO and 2.2 μA mM−1 cm−2 for GOx/ZnO. The limit of detection (LoD) was 167 μM of glucose for GOx/AZO, as compared to 360 μM for GOx/ZnO. The linearity was 0.28–28 mM for GOx/AZO whereas it was 0.6–28 mM for GOx/ZnO with a response time of 10s. Possibly due to higher enzyme loading, the decrease of impedance in presence of glucose was larger for GOx/ZnO as compared to GOx/AZO in electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). Analyses with clinical blood serum samples showed that the systems had good reproducibility and accuracy. The characteristics of novel ZnO and AZO thin films with GOx as a model enzyme, should prove useful for the future fabrication of inexpensive, highly sensitive, disposable electrochemical biosensors for high throughput diagnostics

Autonomous Mobile Vehicle based on RFID Technology using an ARM7 Microcontroller

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system is looked upon as one of the top ten important technologies in the 20th century. Industrial automation application is one of the key issues in developing RFID. Therefore, this paper designs and implements a RFID-based autonomous mobile vehicle for more extensively application of RFID systems. The microcontroller LPC2148 is used to control the autonomous mobile vehicle and to communicate with RFID reader. By storing the moving control commands such as turn right, turn left, speed up and speed down etc. into the RFID tags beforehand and sticking the tags on the tracks, the autonomous mobile vehicle can then read the moving control commands from the tags and accomplish the proper actions. Due to the convenience and non-contact characteristic of RFID systems, the proposed mobile vehicle has great potential to be used for industrial automation, goods transportation, data transmission, and unmanned medical nursing etc. in the future. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed mobile vehicle

A No-Reference Video Quality Predictor For Compressed Videos

A system and method to predict the perceptual quality of a compressed video by deploying a self-reference technique is disclosed. The method includes the steps of computing a frame difference image from the luminance component of at least one other alternate frame of an input test image. A blurred frame and a blurred frame difference image are then obtained by low-pass filtering of the input and frame difference images. A divisive normalization operator is applied on the four types of images independently and a generalized Gaussian distribution GGD fitted. Spatial features and temporal features are then extracted from the GGD. Absolute differences between the spatial and temporal features are computed and weighted based on motion in a given frame in the video. These features are pooled over different patches across the frames to obtain a final video quality score Q. The method shows superior results when compared to existing methods, while being computationally simple

Environmental accounting regulation for protection and remediation - An UAE perspective

The purpose of any accounting system is to provide managers across the organization with information that facilitates not only Control of activities and refinement of operational plans but also the accountability. With changing accounting policies both the corporate and financial worlds’ effective and consistent deployment of accounting logic by keeping environmental protection is highly essential for rapidly polluting current environment. In years past, environmental issues were often ignored by both corporations and individuals. Environmental accounting is used to determine measures to promote sustainable environmental management. Implementing measures that strike a balance between cost reduction and environmental impact reduction is crucial to promoting sustainable environmental management. The release of new International Accounting Standards (IAS), the World Bank, United Nations, and International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) environmental guidance documents has added pressure to the IASC to come out with an environmental standard. UNCTAD has been at the forefront of work on environmental accounting. The Group recommended that it concentrate its future efforts on examining available guidance on the main issues in environmental financial accounting and on identifying key environmental performance indicators and their relation to financial performance. Ultimately, this has given a focus to form a framework for environmental accounting which may be used by national standard-setters. Such a framework will comprise a set of recommended "best-practices" which will be drawn from the work of national professional accounting bodies, industry groups and accounting standard setters. The present study is aimed to focus the environmental accounting issues and the legal frame work for environmental protection and remediation in the UAE. The required information for the study has been collected from secondary sources those include the official publications of the government and non government agencies. The study is limited to the law and regulation related to the environmental accounting issues in the UAE and; the summary of the study would reveal the effective environmental protection and remediation frame work for current environmental accounting practices in UAE

Advanced process control strategies for continuous influenza viral particle production

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OXPHOS Inhibition via LUC7L2 as a Target for SF3B1-Mutant Myelodysplastic Syndrome

SF3B1 gene mutations are the most common spliceosome mutations seen in myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) patients. Though it is well known SF3B1 mutations cause downstream changes in erythroid differentiation and the cell cycle, which leads to malignancy, metabolic changes arising from this mutation are unknown. We conducted RNA sequencing from SF3B1-mutant MDS patient samples and found several genes related to metabolism were alternatively spliced. Of these, LUC7L2 was selected as our target as previous studies show its involvement in promoting oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) via various downstream mechanisms when knocked down.We show that OXPHOS is increased in MOLM-13 myeloid malignant cells when LUC7L2 is inhibited. The results suggested that this gene, which is alternatively spliced and shows lower expression in SF3B1-mutant MDS, increases myeloid malignant dependence on OXPHOS