More Nonelderly Americans Face Problems Affording Prescription Drugs

Analyzes 2003-07 trends in unmet prescription drug needs among Americans under age 65 by insurance status and type of coverage, income level, and the presence of chronic conditions. Explores implications of the economic downturn and changes to Medicaid

Adolescent Sexual Norms and College Sexual Experiences: Do High School Norms Influence College Behavior?

Research on adolescent and young adult sexuality typically does not examine how social norms and other messages learned in adolescence may impact sexual behavior in emerging adulthood. This research uses a life course framework to examine how social norms about sexuality in high school influence subsequent sexual behavior within university cultures promoting casual sex. Forty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with undergraduate women on a large public Western United States university campus. Women were asked about family, peer, school, and community norms about sexuality in adolescence, and their sexual and romantic relationships in college. Five groups of women emerged from the data: the Religious, the Relationship Seekers, the High School Partiers, the Late Bloomers, and the Career Women. Women within each group had similar normative backgrounds and also utilized similar strategies to integrate into cultures of casual sex on their University campus. It is concluded that social norms from adolescence have striking implications for sexual behavior in the college setting, and that research on sexuality must adopt a life course perspective that acknowledges women’s previous normative environments in order to understand women’s sexual behavior in college

Establishment Wage Differentials

Economists have long known that individual wages depend on a combination of employee and employer characteristics, as well as the interaction of the two. Although it is important to understand how employee and employer characteristics are related to wages, little is known about the magnitude and relation of these wage effects. This is primarily due to the lack of microdata which links individuals to the establishments where they work, but also due to technical difficulties associated with separating out employee and employer effects. This paper uses data from the Occupational Employment Statistics program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics that permit both of these issues to be addressed. Our results show that employer effects contribute substantially to earnings differences across individuals. We also find that establishments that pay well for one occupation also pay well for others. This paper contributes to the growing literature that analyzes firms’ compensation policies, and specifically the topic of employer effects on wages.Establishment Wage Differentials; Occupational Employment Statistics

Dots Explode in Hawaiʻi

Teachers are wonderful advocates of mathematics for future generations, and they are continually looking for ways to get students more engaged in mathematics. Through visuals and hands-on activities, the Exploding Dots concept can help teachers and students understand many elementary arithmetic and algebra topics. The implemented tasks promote problem-solving by allowing multiple entry points and varied solution strategies. This paper explored this idea beyond drawing clusters of dots by Locking Legos activity. With a thorough understanding of math content, participants in multiple Math Teachers’ Circle of Hawai‘i (MaTCH) meetings expressed confidence in creating and developing meaningful and relevant differentiated learning opportunities, which include teacher candidates through classroom activities and demonstrations. This paper presents these participants\u27 experiences of a simple concept that grew into a mathematical story

Explainable Deep Learning for Tumor Dynamic Modeling and Overall Survival Prediction using Neural-ODE

While tumor dynamic modeling has been widely applied to support the development of oncology drugs, there remains a need to increase predictivity, enable personalized therapy, and improve decision-making. We propose the use of Tumor Dynamic Neural-ODE (TDNODE) as a pharmacology-informed neural network to enable model discovery from longitudinal tumor size data. We show that TDNODE overcomes a key limitation of existing models in its ability to make unbiased predictions from truncated data. The encoder-decoder architecture is designed to express an underlying dynamical law which possesses the fundamental property of generalized homogeneity with respect to time. Thus, the modeling formalism enables the encoder output to be interpreted as kinetic rate metrics, with inverse time as the physical unit. We show that the generated metrics can be used to predict patients' overall survival (OS) with high accuracy. The proposed modeling formalism provides a principled way to integrate multimodal dynamical datasets in oncology disease modeling.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures and 2 table

The Measurement of Eye Movements in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Structured Review of an Emerging Area

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), or concussion, occurs following a direct or indirect force to the head that causes a change in brain function. Many neurological signs and symptoms of mTBI can be subtle and transient, and some can persist beyond the usual recovery timeframe, such as balance, cognitive or sensory disturbance that may pre-dispose to further injury in the future. There is currently no accepted definition or diagnostic criteria for mTBI and therefore no single assessment has been developed or accepted as being able to identify those with an mTBI. Eye-movement assessment may be useful, as specific eye-movements and their metrics can be attributed to specific brain regions or functions, and eye-movement involves a multitude of brain regions. Recently, research has focused on quantitative eye-movement assessments using eye-tracking technology for diagnosis and monitoring symptoms of an mTBI. However, the approaches taken to objectively measure eye-movements varies with respect to instrumentation, protocols and recognition of factors that may influence results, such as cognitive function or basic visual function. This review aimed to examine previous work that has measured eye-movements within those with mTBI to inform the development of robust or standardized testing protocols. Medline/PubMed, CINAHL, PsychInfo and Scopus databases were searched. Twenty-two articles met inclusion/exclusion criteria and were reviewed, which examined saccades, smooth pursuits, fixations and nystagmus in mTBI compared to controls. Current methodologies for data collection, analysis and interpretation from eye-tracking technology in individuals following an mTBI are discussed. In brief, a wide range of eye-movement instruments and outcome measures were reported, but validity and reliability of devices and metrics were insufficiently reported across studies. Interpretation of outcomes was complicated by poor study reporting of demographics, mTBI-related features (e.g., time since injury), and few studies considered the influence that cognitive or visual functions may have on eye-movements. The reviewed evidence suggests that eye-movements are impaired in mTBI, but future research is required to accurately and robustly establish findings. Standardization and reporting of eye-movement instruments, data collection procedures, processing algorithms and analysis methods are required. Recommendations also include comprehensive reporting of demographics, mTBI-related features, and confounding variables

It Happened to a Friend of Mine: The Influence of Perspective-Taking on the Acknowledgement of Sexual Assault Following Ambiguous Sexual Encounters

Failure to acknowledge that one has been the victim of sexual violence is an important, yet understudied, barrier that prevents women from seeking appropriate support following sexual violence. Drawing from a literature of demonstrating the benefits of self-distancing when evaluating emotionally charged personal information, the effects of self-distancing on acknowledgement of sexual assault were tested. Four experimental studies (Ntotal=1,609) manipulated perspective-taking, either by asking women to imagine a series of hypothetical sexual encounters as experiences that happened to themselves or to their friends, or by asking women to describe a sexual experience from a first-or third-person perspective. Findings from the studies suggest that taking another person’s perspective can help women to label ambiguous sexual experiences as more inappropriate and coercive. Notably, this did not seem to stem from women downplaying or dismissing experiences when they imagined themselves, as they reported anticipating more negative and less positive emotions in the scenarios where they imagined themselves compared to a friend. Nonetheless, in spite of the stronger anticipated negative emotional response when imagining themselves, women were less open to information about resources associated with sexual assault and support when they imagined themselves compared to a friend. This pattern of findings replicated for own, past sexual experiences but only to the extent that women spontaneously engaged in distanced perspective-taking themselves. This research suggests in addition to using contextual information to disambiguate and determine whether a sexual experience was inappropriate, taking a distanced perspective might provide a route through which women can come to terms with the experience and open up to the use of community-based services and sexual assault resources

Model Validation of Recent Ground Motion Prediction Relations for Shallow Crustal Earthquakes in Active Tectonic Regions

Recent earthquake ground motion prediction relations, such as those developed from the Next Generation Attenuation of Ground Motions (NGA) project in 2008, have established a new baseline for the estimation of ground motion parameters such as peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV), and spectral acceleration (Sa). When these models were published, very little was written about model validation or prediction accuracy. We perform statistical goodness-of-fit analyses to quantitatively compare the predictive abilities of these recent models. The prediction accuracy of the models is compared using several testing subsets of the master database used to develop the NGA models. In addition, we perform a blind comparison of the new models with previous simpler models, using ground motion records from the two most recent earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater to strike mainland California: (1) the 2004 M 6.0 Parkfield earthquake, and (2) the 2003 M 6.5 San Simeon earthquake. By comparing the predictor variables and performance of different models, we discuss the sources of uncertainty in the estimates of ground motion parameters and offer recommendations for model development. This paper presents a model validation framework for assessing the prediction accuracy of ground motion prediction relations and aiding in their future development

The Evolution of Active Droplets in Chemorobotic Platforms

There is great interest in oil-in-water droplets as simple systems that display astonishingly complex behaviours. Recently, we reported a chemorobotic platform capable of autonomously exploring and evolving the behaviours these droplets can exhibit. The platform enabled us to undertake a large number of reproducible experiments, allowing us to probe the non-linear relationship between droplet composition and behaviour. Herein we introduce this work, and also report on the recent developments we have made to this system. These include new platforms to simultaneously evolve the droplets’ physical and chemical environments and the inclusion of selfreplicating molecules in the droplets

Why Principals Hire Recent Graduates from a Teacher Preparation Program

Principals want to hire the most qualified teacher when positions are open at their schools. Oftentimes a preservice teacher, who recently earned their teaching certificate is their first choice. The purpose of this research was to look at the satisfaction level of elementary, middle-level, and high school principals who hired graduates from a local teacher preparation program at a nationally accredited 4-year baccalaureate-granting university in Leeward O‘ahu. The methodology utilized in the study includes four individual face-to-face interviews. Questions were asked to determine 1) desired qualities principals look for when hiring a new teacher and 2) what a local teacher preparation program does well to prepare future teachers to have a positive impact on student learning. The findings suggest that principals were highly satisfied with local graduates because they demonstrate life-long learning, leadership skills, technology skills, connect with diverse student populations, and are part of the community. In this study, the local teacher preparation program is meeting the expectations of principals. Nevertheless, further investigations into this research are important to understand more about the rationale principals use to hire new teachers