Identifying Factors That Influence Dropout Rates in Lee County, North Carolina

Lee County, North Carolina has been challenged by a steadily increasing dropout rate since 2002. During the 2005-2006 school year, Lee County Schools experienced the third highest dropout rate in the state of North Carolina, prompting school administrators to intensify efforts to identify and address contributing factors. Dropout data are collected annually on the state level and made publicly available through the North Carolina Department of Education website. Analysis of these data between the years 1999-2005 clearly shows a link between age and dropout with students between the ages of 15-16 years experiencing a significantly higher rate of dropout than all other ages (p<0.001). Analysis of gender and race issues is also quite telling, with males having a greater rate of dropout than women overall (p<0.001) and White females and White males and females combined experienced a much higher rate of dropout than the corresponding Black students (p=0.006, 0.03, respectively). The Department of Education data also provides information pertaining to reasons for dropout based on up to 20 indicators. The most frequently reported reasons for dropout in Lee County between the years 1999-2005 were attendance (excessive absences) and academic issues. Unfortunately these classifications are non-specific in nature and could be the result of any number of other issues such as behavioral problems, social issues, or language barriers. Based on this analysis, a determination was made that additional information is required to identify specific factors that could explain the high dropout rate in Lee County before potential interventions can be explored. The best means of obtaining this information will be approaching students who have left school early in the past. To aid in this effort, a modified version of the 2002 Educational Longitudinal Study questionnaire for dropouts was developed (National Center for Education Statistics, 2002). Additional questions were added to address specific concerns within Lee County Schools related to the growing Hispanic population. This questionnaire will serve as a critical tool in gathering the data necessary to ensure that a relevant intervention strategy is developed to address the specific dropout issues faced in Lee County.Master of Public Healt

Programming Protocol-Independent Packet Processors

P4 is a high-level language for programming protocol-independent packet processors. P4 works in conjunction with SDN control protocols like OpenFlow. In its current form, OpenFlow explicitly specifies protocol headers on which it operates. This set has grown from 12 to 41 fields in a few years, increasing the complexity of the specification while still not providing the flexibility to add new headers. In this paper we propose P4 as a strawman proposal for how OpenFlow should evolve in the future. We have three goals: (1) Reconfigurability in the field: Programmers should be able to change the way switches process packets once they are deployed. (2) Protocol independence: Switches should not be tied to any specific network protocols. (3) Target independence: Programmers should be able to describe packet-processing functionality independently of the specifics of the underlying hardware. As an example, we describe how to use P4 to configure a switch to add a new hierarchical label

Common ground: the opportunity of male contraceptives as MPTs

Multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) and male contraceptive methods are currently in development to address unique and critical needs facing the global reproductive health community. Currently, MPT products in development are exclusively female-focused due to the readily available nature and regulatory precedent offered by female contraceptive active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs); however, the opportunity to explore codevelopment with male contraceptive methods, which are at a comparatively early stage of development, should not be overlooked. These fields face parallel challenges including research and development, commercialization, regulatory approval, and market uptake, and these parallels can inform strategic alignment between the fields. One challenge that precludes codevelopment, however, is the path to market and associated funding models for these innovative, yet underappreciated fields. Without candid review, reconsideration, prioritization, and innovation led by the donor and investment communities, product developers will have no compelling reason to consider accepting the added regulatory and fiscal burden associated with combining development streams

Graph Annotations in Modeling Complex Network Topologies

The coarsest approximation of the structure of a complex network, such as the Internet, is a simple undirected unweighted graph. This approximation, however, loses too much detail. In reality, objects represented by vertices and edges in such a graph possess some non-trivial internal structure that varies across and differentiates among distinct types of links or nodes. In this work, we abstract such additional information as network annotations. We introduce a network topology modeling framework that treats annotations as an extended correlation profile of a network. Assuming we have this profile measured for a given network, we present an algorithm to rescale it in order to construct networks of varying size that still reproduce the original measured annotation profile. Using this methodology, we accurately capture the network properties essential for realistic simulations of network applications and protocols, or any other simulations involving complex network topologies, including modeling and simulation of network evolution. We apply our approach to the Autonomous System (AS) topology of the Internet annotated with business relationships between ASs. This topology captures the large-scale structure of the Internet. In depth understanding of this structure and tools to model it are cornerstones of research on future Internet architectures and designs. We find that our techniques are able to accurately capture the structure of annotation correlations within this topology, thus reproducing a number of its important properties in synthetically-generated random graphs

Glembatumumab vedotin for patients with metastatic, gpNMB overexpressing, triple-negative breast cancer (“METRIC”): a randomized multicenter study

Breast cancer; CancerCàncer de mama; CàncerCáncer de mama; CáncerThe METRIC study (NCT#0199733) explored a novel antibody–drug conjugate, glembatumumab vedotin (GV), targeting gpNMB that is overexpressed in ~40% of patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and associated with poor prognosis. The study was a randomized, open-label, phase 2b study that evaluated progression-free survival (PFS) of GV compared with capecitabine in gpNMB-overexpressing TNBC. Patients who had previously received anthracycline and taxane-based therapy were randomized 2:1 to receive, GV (1.88 mg/kg IV q21 days) or capecitabine (2500 mg/m2 PO daily d1–14 q21 days). The primary endpoint was RECIST 1.1 PFS per independent, blinded central review. In all, 327 patients were randomized to GV (213 treated) or capecitabine (92 treated). Median PFS was 2.9 months for GV vs. 2.8 months for capecitabine. The most common grade ≥3 toxicities for GV were neutropenia, rash, and leukopenia, and for capecitabine were fatigue, diarrhea, and palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia. The study did not meet the primary endpoint of improved PFS over capecitabine or demonstrate a relative risk/benefit improvement over capecitabine.Funding provided by Celldex Therapeutics, Inc

Spin measurement of 4U 1543-47 with Insight-HXMT and NICER from its 2021 outburst: A test of accretion disk models at high luminosities

4U 1543--47 is one of a handful of known black hole candidates located in the Milky Way Galaxy, and has undergone a very bright outburst in 2021, reaching a total of $\sim$9 Crab, as observed by the Monitor of All-sky Image (MAXI), and exceeding twice its Eddington luminosity. The unprecedented bright outburst of 4U 1543--47 provides a unique opportunity to test the behavior of accretion disk models at high luminosities and accretion rates. In addition, we explore the possibility of constraining the spin of the source at high accretion rates, given that previous spin measurements of 4U 1543--47 have been largely inconsistent with each other. We measure the spectral evolution of the source throughout its outburst as observed by Insight-HXMT, and compare the behavior of both the thin disk model kerrbb2, as well as the slim disk model slimbh up to the Eddington limit for two different values of disk $\alpha$-viscosity. In addition, given the behavior of these two models, we identify two `golden' epochs for which it is most suitable to measure the spin with continuum fitting.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Self-organized Emergence of Navigability on Small-World Networks

This paper mainly investigates why small-world networks are navigable and how to navigate small-world networks. We find that the navigability can naturally emerge from self-organization in the absence of prior knowledge about underlying reference frames of networks. Through a process of information exchange and accumulation on networks, a hidden metric space for navigation on networks is constructed. Navigation based on distances between vertices in the hidden metric space can efficiently deliver messages on small-world networks, in which long range connections play an important role. Numerical simulations further suggest that high cluster coefficient and low diameter are both necessary for navigability. These interesting results provide profound insights into scalable routing on the Internet due to its distributed and localized requirements.Comment: 3 figure

Conservative management of ovarian fibroma in a case of Gorlin-Goltz syndrome comorbid with endometriosis

Ovarian fibromas are the most common benign solid ovarian tumors, which are often difficult to diagnose preoperatively. Ovarian fibromas, especially in bilateral cases, may be cases of Gorlin-Goltz syndrome (GGS), a rare autosomal dominant disorder with predisposition to basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and other various benign and malignant tumors. This case report describes a 25 year-old female with GGS, bilateral ovarian fibroma, endometriosis and septated uterus, which was referred to the Gynecology Clinic of Rasoul-e-Akram Hospital in October 2016. This patient had facial asymmetry due to recurrent odontogenic keratocysts. In young cases of ovarian fibromas as reported here, conservative surgical management can preserve ovarian function and fertility. These patients must be followed up by a multidisciplinary team and submitted to periodic tests. © 2018, Royan Institute (ACECR). All rights reserved

Conservative management of ovarian fibroma in a case of Gorlin-Goltz syndrome comorbid with endometriosis

Ovarian fibromas are the most common benign solid ovarian tumors, which are often difficult to diagnose preoperatively. Ovarian fibromas, especially in bilateral cases, may be cases of Gorlin-Goltz syndrome (GGS), a rare autosomal dominant disorder with predisposition to basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and other various benign and malignant tumors. This case report describes a 25 year-old female with GGS, bilateral ovarian fibroma, endometriosis and septated uterus, which was referred to the Gynecology Clinic of Rasoul-e-Akram Hospital in October 2016. This patient had facial asymmetry due to recurrent odontogenic keratocysts. In young cases of ovarian fibromas as reported here, conservative surgical management can preserve ovarian function and fertility. These patients must be followed up by a multidisciplinary team and submitted to periodic tests. © 2018, Royan Institute (ACECR). All rights reserved

Social Internet of Things and New Generation Computing -- A Survey

Social Internet of Things (SIoT) tries to overcome the challenges of Internet of Things (IoT) such as scalability, trust and discovery of resources, by inspiration from social computing. This survey aims to investigate the research done on SIoT from two perspectives including application domain and the integration to the new computing models. For this, a two-dimensional framework is proposed and the projects are investigated, accordingly. The first dimension considers and classifies available research from the application domain perspective and the second dimension performs the same from the integration to new computing models standpoint. The aim is to technically describe SIoT, to classify related research, to foster the dissemination of state-of-the-art, and to discuss open research directions in this field.Comment: IoT, Social computing, Surve