Sensemaking and Success in the Transition from Community Colleges to University IS/CS/CE Programs

Increasing the enrollment of women, minority, and other underrepresented populations in undergraduate information systems and computing programs is an important social issue. We explore ways of attracting and retaining community college transfer students—an important source of underrepresented students —by examining their sensemaking efforts as they transition to four-year universities. We conducted a qualitative study to test sensemaking theory and develop recommendations for retaining community college transfer students in undergraduate information systems, computer science, and computer engineering programs

The IMS Toucan System for the Blizzard Challenge 2023

For our contribution to the Blizzard Challenge 2023, we improved on the system we submitted to the Blizzard Challenge 2021. Our approach entails a rule-based text-to-phoneme processing system that includes rule-based disambiguation of homographs in the French language. It then transforms the phonemes to spectrograms as intermediate representations using a fast and efficient non-autoregressive synthesis architecture based on Conformer and Glow. A GAN based neural vocoder that combines recent state-of-the-art approaches converts the spectrogram to the final wave. We carefully designed the data processing, training, and inference procedures for the challenge data. Our system identifier is G. Open source code and demo are available.Comment: Published at the Blizzard Challenge Workshop 2023, colocated with the Speech Synthesis Workshop 2023, a sattelite event of the Interspeech 202

project report Promise2007

Das Projekt Promise2007 befasste sich mit der Erstellung und Auswertung einer Statistik zur Mitgliedersituation im Berufsverband Medizinischer Informatiker e.V.. Mit dem Ziel mehr über die Mitglieder und ihre derzeitige Situation zu erfahren wurde das Projekt an der Fachhochschule Hannover initiiert. Statistisch erfasst wurden Fragen zum Beschäftigungsverhältnis, zu Aus- und Weiterbildung, der beruflichen Situation und persönliche Angaben. Die Ergebnisse wurden ausgewertet und daraus wichtige Erkenntnisse für den BVMI e.V. abgeleitet, welche auf die weitere Verbandsarbeit Einfluss nehmen

Chassis organism from Corynebacterium glutamicum – a top-down approach to identify and delete irrelevant gene clusters

Unthan S, Baumgart M, Radek A, et al. Chassis organism from Corynebacterium glutamicum – a top-down approach to identify and delete irrelevant gene clusters. Biotechnology Journal. 2015;10(2):290-301

The Journal of BSN Honors Research, Volume 5, Issue 1, Summer 2012

University of Kansas School of Nursing. Bachelor of Science in Nursing Honors ProgramExploration Of Health Care Needs Among Sudanese Refugee Women - Albin, J M, Domian, E. Is There An App For That? Developing An Evaluation Rubric For Apps For Use With Adults With Special Needs - Buckler, T, Peterson, M. The Relationship Between Nursing Characteristics And Pain Care Quality - Davis, E, Dunton, N. The Relationship Between Sleep And Night Eating On Weight Loss In Individuals With Severe Mental Illness - Huynh, Thu Nhi, Hamera, E. Examining Nurse Leader/Manager-Physician Communication Strategies: A Pilot Study - Jantzen, M, Ford, D J. Comparison Of Personal, Health And Family Characteristic Of Children With And Without Autism - Martin, A, Bott, M J. Association Between Obstructive Sleep Apnea And Postoperative Adverse Events - Nielsenshultz, Y, Smith, C, Bott, M, Schultz, M P, Cole, C. Challenges Associated With Partnering With Sudanese Refugee Women In Addressing Their Health Issues - Pauls, K L, Baird, M B. Complementary Therapy To Relieve Pediatric Cancer Therapy-Related Symptoms In The Usa - Slaven, A, Williams, P D

Supporting self-management after attending a structured education programme: a qualitative longitudinal investigation of type 1 diabetes patients’ experiences and views

Background: Structured education programmes for patients with diabetes and other chronic conditions are being widely adopted. However, follow-up studies suggest that course graduates may struggle to sustain the self-care practices taught on their courses over time. This study explored the support needs of patients with type 1 diabetes after attending a structured education programme promoting an empowerment approach and training in use of flexible intensive insulin therapy, a regimen now widely advocated and used to manage this condition. The objective was to inform future support offered to course graduates. Methods: Repeat, in-depth interviews with 30 type 1 diabetes patients after attending Dose Adjustment for Normal Eating (DAFNE) courses in the UK, and six and 12 months later. Data were analysed using an inductive, thematic approach. Results: While the flexible intensive insulin treatment approach taught on DAFNE courses was seen as a logical and effective way of managing one’s diabetes, it was also considered more technically complex than other insulin regimens. To sustain effective disease self-management using flexible intensive insulin treatment over time, patients often expected, and needed, on-going input and support from health care professionals trained in the approach. This included: help determining insulin dose adjustments; reassurance; and, opportunities to trouble-shoot issues of concern. While some benefits were identified to receiving follow-up support in a group setting, most patients stated a preference or need for tailored and individualised support from appropriately-trained clinicians, accessible on an ‘as and when needed’ basis. Conclusions: Our findings highlight potential limitations to group-based forms of follow-up support for sustaining diabetes self-management. To maintain the clinical benefits of structured education for patients with type 1 diabetes over time, course graduates may benefit from and prefer ongoing, one-to-one support from health care professionals trained in the programme’s practices and principles. This support should be tailored and personalised to reflect patients’ specific and unique experiences of applying their education and training in the context of their everyday lives, and could be the subject of future research

Rationale for BepiColombo Studies of Mercury's Surface and Composition

BepiColombo has a larger and in many ways more capable suite of instruments relevant for determination of the topographic, physical, chemical and mineralogical properties of Mercury's surface than the suite carried by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft. Moreover, BepiColombo's data rate is substantially higher. This equips it to confirm, elaborate upon, and go beyond many of MESSENGER's remarkable achievements. Furthermore, the geometry of BepiColombo's orbital science campaign, beginning in 2026, will enable it to make uniformly resolved observations of both northern and southern hemispheres. This will offer more detailed and complete imaging and topographic mapping, element mapping with better sensitivity and improved spatial resolution, and totally new mineralogical mapping. We discuss MESSENGER data in the context of preparing for BepiColombo, and describe the contributions that we expect BepiColombo to make towards increased knowledge and understanding of Mercury's surface and its composition. Much current work, including analysis of analogue materials, is directed towards better preparing ourselves to understand what BepiColombo might reveal. Some of MESSENGER's more remarkable observations were obtained under unique or extreme conditions. BepiColombo should be able to confirm the validity of these observations and reveal the extent to which they are representative of the planet as a whole. It will also make new observations to clarify geological processes governing and reflecting crustal origin and evolution. We anticipate that the insights gained into Mercury's geological history and its current space weathering environment will enable us to better understand the relationships of surface chemistry, morphologies and structures with the composition of crustal types, including the nature and mobility of volatile species. This will enable estimation of the composition of the mantle from which the crust was derived, and lead to tighter constraints on models for Mercury's origin including the nature and original heliocentric distance of the material from which it formed.Peer reviewe

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Albiglutide and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (Harmony Outcomes): a double-blind, randomised placebo-controlled trial

Background: Glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists differ in chemical structure, duration of action, and in their effects on clinical outcomes. The cardiovascular effects of once-weekly albiglutide in type 2 diabetes are unknown. We aimed to determine the safety and efficacy of albiglutide in preventing cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke. Methods: We did a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial in 610 sites across 28 countries. We randomly assigned patients aged 40 years and older with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease (at a 1:1 ratio) to groups that either received a subcutaneous injection of albiglutide (30–50 mg, based on glycaemic response and tolerability) or of a matched volume of placebo once a week, in addition to their standard care. Investigators used an interactive voice or web response system to obtain treatment assignment, and patients and all study investigators were masked to their treatment allocation. We hypothesised that albiglutide would be non-inferior to placebo for the primary outcome of the first occurrence of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or stroke, which was assessed in the intention-to-treat population. If non-inferiority was confirmed by an upper limit of the 95% CI for a hazard ratio of less than 1·30, closed testing for superiority was prespecified. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT02465515. Findings: Patients were screened between July 1, 2015, and Nov 24, 2016. 10 793 patients were screened and 9463 participants were enrolled and randomly assigned to groups: 4731 patients were assigned to receive albiglutide and 4732 patients to receive placebo. On Nov 8, 2017, it was determined that 611 primary endpoints and a median follow-up of at least 1·5 years had accrued, and participants returned for a final visit and discontinuation from study treatment; the last patient visit was on March 12, 2018. These 9463 patients, the intention-to-treat population, were evaluated for a median duration of 1·6 years and were assessed for the primary outcome. The primary composite outcome occurred in 338 (7%) of 4731 patients at an incidence rate of 4·6 events per 100 person-years in the albiglutide group and in 428 (9%) of 4732 patients at an incidence rate of 5·9 events per 100 person-years in the placebo group (hazard ratio 0·78, 95% CI 0·68–0·90), which indicated that albiglutide was superior to placebo (p<0·0001 for non-inferiority; p=0·0006 for superiority). The incidence of acute pancreatitis (ten patients in the albiglutide group and seven patients in the placebo group), pancreatic cancer (six patients in the albiglutide group and five patients in the placebo group), medullary thyroid carcinoma (zero patients in both groups), and other serious adverse events did not differ between the two groups. There were three (<1%) deaths in the placebo group that were assessed by investigators, who were masked to study drug assignment, to be treatment-related and two (<1%) deaths in the albiglutide group. Interpretation: In patients with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, albiglutide was superior to placebo with respect to major adverse cardiovascular events. Evidence-based glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists should therefore be considered as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes. Funding: GlaxoSmithKline