The Process of Decision-Making in Tribal Courts

17 p. ; 28 cmhttps://scholar.law.colorado.edu/books_reports_studies/1110/thumbnail.jp

Prevalence of patientreported gastrointestinal symptoms and agreement with clinician toxicity assessments in radiation therapy for anal cancer.

Purpose Gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms pose a significant burden to patients receiving chemoradiation therapy (CRT) for anal cancer; however, the impact of symptoms from the patient perspective has not been quantified. This retrospective study examined and compared patient and clinician reports of acute GI toxicity during CRT. Materials and methods Patients treated with definitive RT using intensity-modulated radiation therapy for anal cancer between 9/09 and 11/12 were reviewed. Median RT dose was 56 Gy (range 45–56), and 76 patients (97%) received concurrent 5-fluorouracil-based chemotherapy. During RT, patients completed the 7-item Bowel Problem Scale (BPS) weekly. Clinicians assessed toxicity separately using CTCAE v. 3.0. Scores of BPS C 3 and CTCAE C 1 were considered to be clinically meaningful. Agreement of the two assessments was evaluated by Cohen’s kappa coefficient. Results Seventy-eight patients completed at least one BPS and had a corresponding clinician assessment. Patients reporting scores of C3 was highest at week 5 (n = 68) for diarrhea (44.1%), proctitis (57.4%), and mucus (48.4%), while urgency (47.6%), tenesmus (31.7%), and cramping (27%) were highest at week 4 (n = 63). Baseline bleeding scores (26.7%; score C3) improved during treatment (13.4% at week 5). ‘‘Poor’’ agreement was observed between patient- and clinician-reported proctitis (Cohen’s k = 0.11; n = 58); however, there was ‘‘good’’ agreement for diarrhea (Cohen’s k = 0.68; n = 58). Conclusions Acute GI toxicity during definitive CRT for anal cancer was most significant during weeks 4–5, while rectal bleeding improved during treatment. Discrepancies in patient- and clinician-reported symptoms demonstrate the potential for patient-reported outcomes to be useful tools for anal cancer clinical assessments

Adversarial Pulmonary Pathology Translation for Pairwise Chest X-ray Data Augmentation

Recent works show that Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) can be successfully applied to chest X-ray data augmentation for lung disease recognition. However, the implausible and distorted pathology features generated from the less than perfect generator may lead to wrong clinical decisions. Why not keep the original pathology region? We proposed a novel approach that allows our generative model to generate high quality plausible images that contain undistorted pathology areas. The main idea is to design a training scheme based on an image-to-image translation network to introduce variations of new lung features around the pathology ground-truth area. Moreover, our model is able to leverage both annotated disease images and unannotated healthy lung images for the purpose of generation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model on two tasks: (i) we invite certified radiologists to assess the quality of the generated synthetic images against real and other state-of-the-art generative models, and (ii) data augmentation to improve the performance of disease localisation.Comment: Code: https://github.com/yunyanxing/pairwise_xray_augmentation - Accepted to the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) 201

Environmental Regulation of Oil and Gas Development on Tribal Lands: Who Has the Authority?

14 pages. Collection of 3 papers presented at the Hot Topics in Natural Resources Law program held on Nov. 1, 1995. Includes bibliographical references. Contents: Environmental regulation of oil and gas development on tribal lands : who has authority? / Richard Collins -- Environmental regulation of energy resource development on Indian reservation land / Tom Shipps -- Colorado Oil and Gas [Conservation] Commission jurisdiction over environmental matters on Indian lands / Marla Williams Jurisdiction to regulate the environmental impacts of oil and gas development on the reservation has been contested by tribes, the state, private land owners and federal agencies. Should the state be able to regulate the environmental consequences of this development? Should the tribes? What is the role of the federal government? These questions will be addressed by CU Law Professor Richard Collins, Durango attorney Tom Shipps, and Marla Williams, Colorado Oil and Gas Commissioner

Chatbots for social good

Chatbots are emerging as an increasingly important area for the HCI community, as they provide a novel means for users to interact with service providers. Due to their conversational character, chatbots are potentially effective tools for engaging with customers, and are often developed with commercial interests at the core. However, chatbots also represent opportunities for positive social impact. Chatbots can make needed services more accessible, available, and affordable. They can strengthen users' autonomy, competence, and (possibly counter-intuitively) social relatedness. In this SIG we address the possible social benefits of chatbots and conversational user interfaces. We will bring together the existing, but disparate, community of researchers and practitioners within the CHI community and broader fields who have an interest in chatbots. We aim to discuss the potential for chatbots to move beyond their assumed role as channels for commercial service providers, explore how they may be used for social good, and how the HCI community may contribute to realize this.acceptedVersio

Environmental Regulation of Oil and Gas Development on Tribal Lands: Who Has the Authority?

14 pages. Collection of 3 papers presented at the Hot Topics in Natural Resources Law program held on Nov. 1, 1995. Includes bibliographical references. Contents: Environmental regulation of oil and gas development on tribal lands : who has authority? / Richard Collins -- Environmental regulation of energy resource development on Indian reservation land / Tom Shipps -- Colorado Oil and Gas [Conservation] Commission jurisdiction over environmental matters on Indian lands / Marla Williams Jurisdiction to regulate the environmental impacts of oil and gas development on the reservation has been contested by tribes, the state, private land owners and federal agencies. Should the state be able to regulate the environmental consequences of this development? Should the tribes? What is the role of the federal government? These questions will be addressed by CU Law Professor Richard Collins, Durango attorney Tom Shipps, and Marla Williams, Colorado Oil and Gas Commissioner

Mixed methods in pre-hospital research : understanding complex clinical problems

Healthcare is becoming increasingly complex. The pre-hospital setting is no exception, especially when considering the unpredictable environment. To address complex clinical problems and improve quality of care for patients, researchers need to use innovative methods to create the necessary depth and breadth of knowledge. Quantitative approaches such as randomised controlled trials and observational (e.g. cross-sectional, case control, cohort) methods, along with qualitative approaches including interviews, focus groups and ethnography, have traditionally been used independently to gain understanding of clinical problems and how to address these. Both approaches, however, have drawbacks: quantitative methods focus on objective, numerical data and provide limited understanding of context, whereas qualitative methods explore more subjective aspects and provide perspective, but can be harder to demonstrate rigour. We argue that mixed methods research, where quantitative and qualitative methods are integrated, is an ideal solution to comprehensively understand complex clinical problems in the pre-hospital setting. The aim of this article is to discuss mixed methods in the field of pre-hospital research, highlight its strengths and limitations and provide examples. This article is tailored to clinicians and early career researchers and covers the basic aspects of mixed methods research. We conclude that mixed methods is a useful research design to help develop our understanding of complex clinical problems in the pre-hospital setting