Developing an Operational Definition of Intellectual Disability for the Purpose of National Health Surveillance

This report summarizes recommendations that were developed to establish a more consistent approach to operationalizing the case definition for the purpose of public health surveillance among adults with intellectual disability in the United States. The approach included consideration of well established conceptual definitions, such as in the International Classification of Disability, Health, and Function (ICF), and the most recent version of the definition established by the American Association on Intellectual Disability (AAIDD). Additionally, the definitions used in current national and state level major data collection efforts, as well as those used in targeted research studies were considered, with a recognition that these sources are likely to remain the foundation upon which a national surveillance system will be built, and that any recommended definition must accommodate or ‘fit over’ those used in current data collection

Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services Medication Review

This presentation by Alixe Bonardi goes over the use of pharmaceutical drugs among adults with developmental disabilities, touching on why adults use drugs, when, and the situations that lead pharmacists to prescribe certain drugs. Presented at the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services (NASDDDS) Reinventing Quality Conference 2012

Nonparametric estimation of risk measures of collective risks

This thesis is devoted to the nonparametric estimatiohttps://publikationen.sulb.uni-saarland.de/n of risk measures against the background of the determination of insurance premiums. We will discuss two approaches in this context. In the first part we will assume the ratio between the collective size and the observation size to be asymptotically constant, whereas in the second part we will assume the collective size to be constant and the observations size to tend to infinity. The goal of this thesis is to determine strong rates and asymptotic distributions of the deviation of the estimated premiums from the true ones. Furthermore we will discuss bootstrap methods and their applicability to the premium estimation. Our particular attention will be paid to prove consistency, as well as almost sure bootstrap consistency for the sequence of estimated premiums. To this end, we will highlight several options how to choose suitable estimators in the individual model, as well as the collective model of insurance mathematics. The performance of these estimators will then be assessed with the help of a numerical simulation.Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der nichtparametrischen Schätzung von Risikomaßen vor dem Hintergrund der Bestimmung von Versicherungsprämien. Hierbei werden zwei Ansätze näher beleuchtet. Im ersten Teil wird angenommen, dass das Verhältnis der Beobachtungsgröße zur Kollektivgröße asymptotisch konstant ist, während im zweiten Teil der Arbeit die Kollektivgröße als konstant angenommen wird und die Beobachtungsgröße wächst. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit besteht darin starke Raten und asymptotische Verteilungen der Abweichungen der geschätzten Prämie von der tatsächlichen herzuleiten. Des Weiteren beschäftigen wir uns mit Bootstrap-Methoden und deren Anwendbarkeit auf die Prämienschätzung. Ein besonderes Augenmerk liegt dabei darauf Konsistenz, sowie fast sichere Bootstrap- Konsistenz für die Folge der geschätzten Prämien zu zeigen. Wir werden hierzu in den beiden gängigen Modellen der Versicherungsmathematik, dem individuellen und dem kollektiven Modell, Möglichkeiten zur Wahl nichtparametrischer Schätzer angeben und deren Performanz anschließend anhand numerischer Simulationen überprüfen

An Intervention to Monitor and Reduce Fall Rates Among Adults with Intellectual Disability (ID)

Courtney Noblett-Dutra, Alexandra Bonardi, Emily Lauer and Sharon Oxx present their research on fall rates among adults with intellectual disabilities and possible ways to reduce them. Presented at the 2012 International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability (IASSID) World Congress

Clinical manifestations and immunomodulatory treatment experiences in psychiatric patients with suspected autoimmune encephalitis: a case series of 91 patients from Germany

Autoimmune encephalitis (AE) can rarely manifest as a predominantly psychiatric syndrome without overt neurological symptoms. This study’s aim was to characterize psychiatric patients with AE; therefore, anonymized data on patients with suspected AE with predominantly or isolated psychiatric syndromes were retrospectively collected. Patients with readily detectable neurological symptoms suggestive of AE (e.g., epileptic seizures) were excluded. Patients were classified as “probable psychiatric AE (pAE),” if well-characterized neuronal IgG autoantibodies were detected or “possible pAE” (e.g., with detection of nonclassical neuronal autoantibodies or compatible cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) changes). Of the 91 patients included, 21 (23%) fulfilled our criteria for probable (autoantibody-defined) pAE and 70 (77%) those for possible pAE. Among patients with probable pAE, 90% had anti-NMDA receptor (NMDA-R) autoantibodies. Overall, most patients suffered from paranoid-hallucinatory syndromes (53%). Patients with probable pAE suffered more often from disorientation (p < 0.001) and impaired memory (p = 0.001) than patients with possible pAE. Immunotherapies were performed in 69% of all cases, mostly with high-dose corticosteroids. Altogether, 93% of the patients with probable pAE and 80% of patients with possible pAE reportedly benefited from immunotherapies (p = 0.251). In summary, this explorative, cross-sectional evaluation confirms that autoantibody-associated AE syndromes can predominantly manifest as psychiatric syndromes, especially in anti-NMDA-R encephalitis. However, in three out of four patients, diagnosis of possible pAE was based on nonspecific findings (e.g., slight CSF pleocytosis), and well-characterized neuronal autoantibodies were absent. As such, the spectrum of psychiatric syndromes potentially responding to immunotherapies seems not to be limited to currently known autoantibody-associated AE. Further trials are needed

Alignment, orientation, and Coulomb explosion of difluoroiodobenzene studied with the pixel imaging mass spectrometry (PImMS) camera

Citation: Amini, K., Boll, R., Lauer, A., Burt, M., Lee, J. W. L., Christensen, L., . . . Rolles, D. (2017). Alignment, orientation, and Coulomb explosion of difluoroiodobenzene studied with the pixel imaging mass spectrometry (PImMS) camera. Journal of Chemical Physics, 147(1). doi:10.1063/1.4982220Laser-induced adiabatic alignment and mixed-field orientation of 2,6-difluoroiodobenzene (C6H3F2I) molecules are probed by Coulomb explosion imaging following either near-infrared strong-field ionization or extreme-ultraviolet multi-photon inner-shell ionization using free-electron laser pulses. The resulting photoelectrons and fragment ions are captured by a double-sided velocity map imaging spectrometer and projected onto two position-sensitive detectors. The ion side of the spectrometer is equipped with a pixel imaging mass spectrometry camera, a time-stamping pixelated detector that can record the hit positions and arrival times of up to four ions per pixel per acquisition cycle. Thus, the time-of-flight trace and ion momentum distributions for all fragments can be recorded simultaneously. We show that we can obtain a high degree of one-and three-dimensional alignment and mixed-field orientation and compare the Coulomb explosion process induced at both wavelengths. © 2017 Author(s)

Jitter-correction for IR/UV-XUV pump-probe experiments at the FLASH free-electron laser

In pump-probe experiments employing a free-electron laser (FEL) in combination with a synchronized optical femtosecond laser, the arrival-time jitter between the FEL pulse and the optical laser pulse often severely limits the temporal resolution that can be achieved. Here, we present a pump-probe experiment on the UV-induced dissociation of 2,6-difluoroiodobenzene (C6H3F2I) molecules performed at the FLASH FEL that takes advantage of recent upgrades of the FLASH timing and synchronization system to obtain high-quality data that are not limited by the FEL arrival-time jitter. We discuss in detail the necessary data analysis steps and describe the origin of the time-dependent effects in the yields and kinetic energies of the fragment ions that we observe in the experiment

Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above 4×10184{\times}10^{18} eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory

A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding $4{\times}10^{18}$ eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers with zenith angles greater than $60^{\circ}$ detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above $5.3{\times}10^{18}$ eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law $E^{-\gamma}$ with index $\gamma=2.70 \pm 0.02 \,\text{(stat)} \pm 0.1\,\text{(sys)}$ followed by a smooth suppression region. For the energy ($E_\text{s}$) at which the spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence of suppression, we find $E_\text{s}=(5.12\pm0.25\,\text{(stat)}^{+1.0}_{-1.2}\,\text{(sys)}){\times}10^{19}$ eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO