Chronic Strain, Gendered Coping, and Health Outcomes in a Rural Context

Although there is a considerable body of literature examining mental and physical health outcomes among adolescents and adults, there is less research that focuses on emerging adulthood and how emerging adults - especially within a rural context – experience mental and physical health. Furthermore, less is known regarding how or if gender impacts the relationships between coping style and outcomes among this population. Studies historically show that women report higher rates of anxiety, depressed mood, and chronically debilitating physical illnesses than men. The differences in rates of disorders between men and women is often explained by citing traditional gender roles; psychological and physical stress results when these gender roles and identities are faced with threats, demands, constraints and challenges – or chronic strain. Gender socialization and traditional gender roles also play a part in how men and women may employ different coping styles to manage chronic strain. However, there has been little research regarding gender differences in coping among a rural, emerging adult sample. To address the gaps in research, this thesis uses data collected from emerging adults in a rural New Hampshire county. I find that among the rural emerging adult sample, men and women report similar levels of depressed mood while females report higher levels of both anxiety and physical illness. Men and women report similar levels of chronic strain, and report using problem-focused and avoidance-oriented coping at similar rates. Women report using emotion-focused coping and religious-coping more frequently than their men counterparts. However, gender does not moderate the relationship between each coping style and each outcome. Avoidance-oriented coping is significantly and positively associated with depressed mood, anxiety, and physical illness suggesting the use of avoidance-oriented coping increases one’s risk of those outcomes. However, the interaction between avoidance-oriented coping and chronic strain shows significant buffering effects; that is, the effect of chronic strain on depressed mood and anxiety is weaker among those who report using avoidance-oriented coping with high frequency. These findings have implications for how rural health and mental health policies address coping and chronic strain among emerging adults

Fast data recovery for improved mobility support in multiradio dual connectivity

© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Data aggregation is one of the crucial features of the 3GPP Multi-Radio Dual Connectivity (MR-DC) technology. However, mobility events and radio link failures, which may occur during the data aggregation, may pose challenges in meeting the latency, reliability, and throughput key performance indicators (KPIs). Unlike single connectivity, the user equipment (UE) in MR-DC operation can experience such events in either of the two base stations (BSs) serving the UE with MR-DC. In typical MR-DC deployments, these events occur more frequently in the BS acting as the secondary node (SN) since the SN operates at a higher frequency band. In this paper, we show that handovers (HOs) and signal blockage events that occur at the SN can create out-of-order data reception or losses at the UE’s Packet Data Control Protocol (PDCP) layer, making the application stop receiving data for up to hundreds of milliseconds. Thus, challenging to meet the KPIs defined for such an application. To mitigate this effect, we propose an intelligent and efficient mechanism that operates in the transmitting PDCP layer and significantly minimizes the data interruption periods suffered by the application when the UE aggregates data and HOs or failures of the SN occur. We use LTE/NR testbed experiments to show that the proposed mechanism achieves a high and stable aggregate throughput with near-zero interruption time and data reliability of at least 99.999% without transport layer retransmissions. The experiments are conducted for saturated TCP traffic and under-link quality variations based on traces extracted from a Nokia-proprietary system-level simulator.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Capacity and congestion aware flow control mechanism for efficient traffic aggregation in multi-radio dual connectivity

© 2021 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Multi-Radio Dual Connectivity (MR-DC) is a key 3GPP technology that enables traffic aggregation between two base stations (BSs), and thus, increasing the per-user data rate. However, the schemes for traffic aggregation management of such technology are left up to vendor implementation. In this paper we show the importance of using an efficient traffic aggregation method to increase the throughput performance of both TCP and UDP-based applications in MR-DC operation. Targeting the gap on the state-of-the-art on this topic, we propose a cross-layer low control mechanism, which efficiently aggregates traffic based on the instantaneous available radio resources and buffering delay of both BSs. The aggregation is performed independently of the MR-DC architecture option, MAC scheduler logic, and transport layer protocol in use. By means of exhaustive testbed experiments, we show that the proposed method exceeds the performance of a benchmark and state-of-the-art low control solutions and achieves at least the 85% and 95% of the theoretical aggregate throughput for TCP and UDP traffic expected from the use of MR-DC, respectively.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The era of CFTR modulators: improvements made and remaining challenges

The entry into the clinic of CFTR modulators such as TRIKAFTA has significantly improved life for ∼90% CF patients carrying one or two F508del mutations but challenges remain for rare CFTR mutations and the management of lung infections @SaraOcana1 https://bit.ly/3aRafQF

SON for LTE-WLAN access network selection : design and performance

Mobile network operators (MNOs) are deploying carrier-grade Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) as an important complementary system to cellular networks. Access network selection (ANS) between cellular and WLAN is an essential component to improve network performance and user quality-of-service (QoS) via controlled loading of these systems. In emerging heterogeneous networks characterized by different cell sizes and diverse WLAN deployments, automatic tuning of the network selection functionality plays a crucial role. In this article, we present two distinct Self-Organizing Network (SON) schemes for tuning the ANS between the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and WLAN systems. The SON functions differ in terms of availability of inter-system information exchange and internal algorithm design for traffic load control. System level simulations in a site-specific dense urban network show that the proposed schemes improve significantly the user quality of service (QoS), and network capacity over the reference scheme when offloading to WLAN is performed simply based on signal coverage

Anticipating New Treatments for Cystic Fibrosis: A Global Survey of Researchers

Cystic fibrosis is a life-threatening disease that affects at least 100,000 people worldwide. It is caused by a defect in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) gene and presently, 360 CFTR-causing mutations have been identified. Since the discovery of the CFTR gene, the expectation of developing treatments that can substantially increase the quality of life or even cure cystic fibrosis patients is growing. Yet, it is still uncertain today which developing treatments will be successful against cystic fibrosis. This study addresses this gap by assessing the opinions of over 524 cystic fibrosis researchers who participated in a global web-based survey. For most respondents, CFTR modulator therapies are the most likely to succeed in treating cystic fibrosis in the next 15 years, especially through the use of CFTR modulator combinations. Most respondents also believe that fixing or replacing the CFTR gene will lead to a cure for cystic fibrosis within 15 years, with CRISPR-Cas9 being the most likely genetic tool for this purpose