The safety of sedation for overweight/obese children in the dental setting

Purpose: This study examined childhood overweight/obesity as a risk factor for adverse events during dental sedation procedures for children. Methods: This was a cross-sectional, retrospective, IRB-approved study of pediatric dental sedation records which included 17 years of data (1991-2009). The outcome variables were desaturation, nausea/vomiting, prolonged sedation and true apnea. The explanatory variables were weight percentiles and BMI percentiles. Results: 510 patient records met the inclusion criteria. 431 (86%) experienced no adverse events, 73 (14%) experienced one or more adverse events, and 6 had missing data. BMI data were available for 103 children. Patients who experienced one or more adverse events had higher weight and BMI percentiles. In summary, the normal weight children experienced 12% adverse events versus 18% for those overweight/obese. Conclusions: Weight and BMI percentiles were higher in children who had one or more adverse events. These findings suggest that childhood overweight/obesity may be associated with adverse events during dental sedation procedures

LAnoBERT : System Log Anomaly Detection based on BERT Masked Language Model

The system log generated in a computer system refers to large-scale data that are collected simultaneously and used as the basic data for determining simple errors and detecting external adversarial intrusion or the abnormal behaviors of insiders. The aim of system log anomaly detection is to promptly identify anomalies while minimizing human intervention, which is a critical problem in the industry. Previous studies performed anomaly detection through algorithms after converting various forms of log data into a standardized template using a parser. These methods involved generating a template for refining the log key. Particularly, a template corresponding to a specific event should be defined in advance for all the log data using which the information within the log key may get lost.In this study, we propose LAnoBERT, a parser free system log anomaly detection method that uses the BERT model, exhibiting excellent natural language processing performance. The proposed method, LAnoBERT, learns the model through masked language modeling, which is a BERT-based pre-training method, and proceeds with unsupervised learning-based anomaly detection using the masked language modeling loss function per log key word during the inference process. LAnoBERT achieved better performance compared to previous methodology in an experiment conducted using benchmark log datasets, HDFS, and BGL, and also compared to certain supervised learning-based models

Examining scientific thinking processes in open-ended serious games through gameplay data

Research on scientific problem-solving emphasizes the importance of problem solving and scientific inquiry as central components of the twenty-first century skills. Research has shown that open-ended serious games can facilitate students’ development of specific skills and improve learning performance through scientific problem-solving. However, understanding how students learn these complex skills in a game environment is a major challenge, as much research depends on typical paper-and-pencil assessments and self-reported surveys or other traditional observational and quantitative methods. The participants of the study were 237 sixth graders from two middle schools in the Southwestern area of the United States. The students used an open-ended serious game called Alien Rescue as their science curriculum for three weeks. The purpose of this study is, first, to identify students’ navigation behavior patterns in cognitive processes between at-risk and non-at-risk students within Alien Rescue. To accomplish this purpose, this study intends to use gameplay data by incorporating the integrated method of lag sequential analysis and sequential pattern mining together with a statistical analysis. The findings confirmed that the integrated method helped to explore students’ latent navigation behaviors as well as discover the differences of problem-solving processes between non-at-risk and at-risk students. The second purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between students’ learning performance and their scientific inquiry behaviors, which emerged as students engaged with Probe Design Center in this serious game. The results showed that the game metrics developed in Probe Design Center improved the predictions of both in-game and after-game performance. The cluster analyses with game metrics confirmed four unique groups regarding students’ scientific inquiry behaviors in Probe Design Center. This study concluded that the integrated methods of serious games analytics enabled researchers to investigate in-depth cognitive processes and scientific inquiry behaviors within a specific cognitive tool, Probe Design Center, and discover unique behavior groups across different school settings. The researcher identified the challenges of at-risk students in their cognitive processes and highlighted the support needs for these students. Consequently, this study proposed an interactive dashboard using the data-driven evidences to provide teachers just-in-time information to support students’ cognitive processes.Curriculum and Instructio

Spinal Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) Planning Techniques

Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) delivers a highly conformal and hypofractionated radiation dose to a small target with minimal radiation applied to the surrounding areas. The spine is an ideal site for SBRT owing to its relative immobility, the potential clinical benefits of high-dose delivery to this area, and the presence of adjacent critical structures such as the spinal cord, esophagus, and bowel. However, with the potential for radiation myelopathy if the dose is delivered inaccurately or if the spinal cord dose limit is set too high, proper treatment planning techniques for SBRT are important. Intensity modulation techniques are useful for spinal SBRT because of a rapid dose falloff and spinal cord avoidance. In this chapter, various planning techniques will be discussed and reviewed

Data-Driven Selection of Security Application Frameworks During Architectural Design

The selection of application frameworks is an important aspect of architectural design. Selection often requires satisficing, that is, searching a potentially large space of design alternatives until an acceptable solution is found. There is, however, little help for architects in selecting software frameworks. In this paper we investigate the criteria used by practicing software architects in selecting security frameworks. We also propose how information associated with some of the criteria that are important to architects can be obtained manually or in an automated way from online sources such as GitHub. Our ultimate goal is to identify measures associated with these criteria that can be helpful in providing support for architects to select software frameworks

Creating a Multimedia Enhanced Problem-Based Learning Environment for Middle School Science: Voices from the Developers

This paper describes the design and development process used to create Alien Rescue, a multimedia-enhanced learning environment that supports problem-based learning (PBL) in middle school science. The goal of the project is to further our understandings of technology, pedagogy, and instructional theories as they relate to the application of PBL within middle school classrooms through the application of design-based research. A unique characteristic of the project is that it is developed entirely by a team of graduate learning technologies students, working under the direction and supervision of the faculty. Throughout the development process, graduate student developers learn steps and strategies for designing immersive learning environments, engage in technology development, and conduct research that informs future design iterations. Key features of the development model are described in detail and developers’ reflections are shared. Recommendations for those interested in engaging similar endeavors are provided

Postdocs’ Lab Engagement Predicts Trajectories of PhD Students’ Skill Development

The doctoral advisor—typically the principal investigator (PI)—is often characterized as a singular or primary mentor who guides students using a cognitive apprenticeship model. Alternatively, the “cascading mentorship” model describes the members of laboratories or research groups receiving mentorship from more senior laboratory members and providing it to more junior members (i.e., PIs mentor postdocs, postdocs mentor senior graduate students, senior students mentor junior students, etc.). Here we show that PIs’ laboratory and mentoring activities do not significantly predict students’ skill development trajectories, but the engagement of postdocs and senior graduate students in laboratory interactions do. We found that the cascading mentorship model accounts best for doctoral student skill development in a longitudinal study of 336 PhD students in the United States. Specifically, when postdocs and senior doctoral students actively participate in laboratory discussions, junior PhD students are over 4 times as likely to have positive skill development trajectories. Thus, postdocs disproportionately enhance the doctoral training enterprise, despite typically having no formal mentorship role. These findings also illustrate both the importance and the feasibility of identifying evidence-based practices in graduate education

The Relation between Birth Weight and Insulin Resistance in Korean Adolescents

Low birth weight is associated with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes in adults. The fetal programming hypothesis has shown that insulin resistance and its associated metabolic disturbances result from a poor gestational environment, for which low birth weight is a surrogate. An at-home questionnaire survey was performed on 660 middle school students (12-15 years) in Seoul, Korea, and 152 cases were randomly selected based on their birth weight. Subjects were divided into three groups according to birth weight. We recorded their birth weight and measured their current anthropometric data, blood pressure, lipid profile, HOMA-IR, and HOMA-β, and compared these parameters among the groups. The relation of birth weight to physiological characteristics in adolescence was examined. Systolic blood pressure, lipid profiles, and fasting plasma glucose, HOMA-β were not significantly different among the groups, but diastolic blood pressure was lower in the third tertile. Insulin, C-peptide, and HOMA-IR were higher in the lower birth weight tertile. After adjustment for confounding factors, birth weight was inversely related to diastolic blood pressure, insulin, C-peptide, and HOMA-IR. We conclude that low birth weight may predict the risk of the insulin resistance and its progression over age, and that adequate gestational nutrition is therefore necessary to prevent low birth weight

Optimal planning target margin for prostate radiotherapy based on interfractional and intrafractional variability assessment during 1.5T MRI-guided radiotherapy

IntroductionWe analyzed daily pre-treatment- (PRE) and real-time motion monitoring- (MM) MRI scans of patients receiving definitive prostate radiotherapy (RT) with 1.5 T MRI guidance to assess interfractional and intrafractional variability of the prostate and suggest optimal planning target volume (PTV) margin.Materials and methodsRigid registration between PRE-MRI and planning CT images based on the pelvic bone and prostate anatomy were performed. Interfractional setup margin (SM) and interobserver variability (IO) were assessed by comparing the centroid values of prostate contours delineated on PRE-MRIs. MM-MRIs were used for internal margin (IM) assessment, and PTV margin was calculated using the van Herk formula.ResultsWe delineated 400 prostate contours on PRE-MRI images. SM was 0.57 ± 0.42, 2.45 ± 1.98, and 2.28 ± 2.08 mm in the left-right (LR), anterior-posterior (AP), and superior-inferior (SI) directions, respectively, after bone localization and 0.76 ± 0.57, 1.89 ± 1.60, and 2.02 ± 1.79 mm in the LR, AP, and SI directions, respectively, after prostate localization. IO was 1.06 ± 0.58, 2.32 ± 1.08, and 3.30 ± 1.85 mm in the LR, AP, and SI directions, respectively, after bone localization and 1.11 ± 0.55, 2.13 ± 1.07, and 3.53 ± 1.65 mm in the LR, AP, and SI directions, respectively, after prostate localization. Average IM was 2.12 ± 0.86, 2.24 ± 1.07, and 2.84 ± 0.88 mm in the LR, AP, and SI directions, respectively. Calculated PTV margin was 2.21, 5.16, and 5.40 mm in the LR, AP, and SI directions, respectively.ConclusionsMovements in the SI direction were the largest source of variability in definitive prostate RT, and interobserver variability was a non-negligible source of margin. The optimal PTV margin should also consider the internal margin