Agent-Based Team Aiding in a Time Critical Task

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of agent-based aiding in support of a time-critical team-planning task for teams of both humans and heterogeneous software agents. The team task consists of human subjects playing the role of military commanders and cooperatively planning to move their respective units to a common rendezvous point, given time and resource constraints. The objective of the experiment was to compare the effectiveness of agent-based aiding for individual and team tasks as opposed to the baseline condition of manual route planning. There were two experimental conditions: the Aided condition, where a Route Planning Agent (RPA) finds a least cost plan between the start and rendezvous points for a given composition of force units; and the Baseline condition, where the commanders determine initial routes manually, and receive basic feedback about the route. We demonstrate that the Aided condition provides significantly better assistance for individual route planning and team-based re-planning

Authorsâ reply to the letter to the editor by Sabour

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147224/1/ejp1345.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147224/2/ejp1345_am.pd

Sexual Risk Behaviors of African American Adolescent Females: The Role of Cognitive and Religious Factors

Introduction: African American (AA) high school-age girls are more likely to have had sex before age 13 years and have higher rates of all sexually transmitted infections. Cognition and religion/spirituality are associated with adolescent sexuality, therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify cognitive and religious substrates of AA girls’ risky sexual behaviors. Method: A descriptive study was conducted with 65 AA girls aged 15 to 20 years using computerized questionnaires and cognitive function tasks. Results: Average age was 17.8 ± 1.9 years and average sexual initiation age was 15.5 ± 2.6 years. Overall, 57.6% reported a history of vaginal sex. Girls who reported low/moderate religious importance were significantly younger at vaginal sex initiation than girls for whom religion was very/extremely important. Girls who attended church infrequently reported significantly more sexual partners. Implications: Health care providers can use these findings to deliver culturally congruent health care by assessing and addressing these psychosocial factors in this population

Internalizing Problems: A Potential Pathway From Childhood Maltreatment to Adolescent Smoking

This study examines the association between child maltreatment and adolescent smoking and the extent to which internalizing behavior problems mediate this hypothesized link

Trajectories of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Early Adolescent HIV/AIDS Risk Behaviors: The Role of Other Maltreatment, Witnessed Violence, and Child Gender

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been associated with HIV/AIDS risk behavior; however, much of this work is retrospective and focuses on women. The current study used semiparametric mixture modeling with youth (n = 844; 48.8% boys) from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) to examine the link between trajectories of CSA (2 to 12 y.o.) and HIV/AIDS risk behavior at age 14 (i.e., sexual intercourse & alcohol use). Trajectory analyses revealed a link between a history of CSA and the development of risky behavior. In addition, trajectories for physical and emotional abuse, but not neglect or witnessed violence, contributed to risky behavior over and above the role of CSA. Child gender did not moderate the findings. Findings highlight the signficance of CSA histories, as well as the broader context of maltreatment, for better understanding the development of risk behaviors in both girls and boys

IMI - Myopia Genetics Report

The knowledge on the genetic background of refractive error and myopia has expanded dramatically in the past few years. This white paper aims to provide a concise summary of current genetic findings and defines the direction where development is needed. We performed an extensive literature search and conducted informal discussions with key stakeholders. Specific topics reviewed included common refractive error, any and high myopia, and myopia related to syndromes. To date, almost 200 genetic loci have been identified for refractive error and myopia, and risk variants mostly carry low risk but are highly prevalent in the general population. Several genes for secondary syndromic myopia overlap with those for common myopia. Polygenic risk scores show overrepresentation of high myopia in the higher deciles of risk. Annotated genes have a wide variety of functions, and all retinal layers appear to be sites of expression. The current genetic findings offer a world of new molecules involved in myopiagenesis. As the missing heritability is still large, further genetic advances are needed. This Committee recommends expanding large-scale, in-depth genetic studies using complementary big data analytics, consideration of gene-environment effects by thorough measurement of environmental exposures, and focus on subgroups with extreme phenotypes and high familial occurrence. Functional characterization of associated variants is simultaneously needed to bridge the knowledge gap between sequence variance and consequence for eye growth

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Semaglutide and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with obesity and prevalent heart failure: a prespecified analysis of the SELECT trial

Background: Semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, reduces the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in people with overweight or obesity, but the effects of this drug on outcomes in patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and heart failure are unknown. We report a prespecified analysis of the effect of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide 2·4 mg on ischaemic and heart failure cardiovascular outcomes. We aimed to investigate if semaglutide was beneficial in patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease with a history of heart failure compared with placebo; if there was a difference in outcome in patients designated as having heart failure with preserved ejection fraction compared with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction; and if the efficacy and safety of semaglutide in patients with heart failure was related to baseline characteristics or subtype of heart failure. Methods: The SELECT trial was a randomised, double-blind, multicentre, placebo-controlled, event-driven phase 3 trial in 41 countries. Adults aged 45 years and older, with a BMI of 27 kg/m2 or greater and established cardiovascular disease were eligible for the study. Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) with a block size of four using an interactive web response system in a double-blind manner to escalating doses of once-weekly subcutaneous semaglutide over 16 weeks to a target dose of 2·4 mg, or placebo. In a prespecified analysis, we examined the effect of semaglutide compared with placebo in patients with and without a history of heart failure at enrolment, subclassified as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, or unclassified heart failure. Endpoints comprised MACE (a composite of non-fatal myocardial infarction, non-fatal stroke, and cardiovascular death); a composite heart failure outcome (cardiovascular death or hospitalisation or urgent hospital visit for heart failure); cardiovascular death; and all-cause death. The study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03574597. Findings: Between Oct 31, 2018, and March 31, 2021, 17 604 patients with a mean age of 61·6 years (SD 8·9) and a mean BMI of 33·4 kg/m2 (5·0) were randomly assigned to receive semaglutide (8803 [50·0%] patients) or placebo (8801 [50·0%] patients). 4286 (24·3%) of 17 604 patients had a history of investigator-defined heart failure at enrolment: 2273 (53·0%) of 4286 patients had heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, 1347 (31·4%) had heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, and 666 (15·5%) had unclassified heart failure. Baseline characteristics were similar between patients with and without heart failure. Patients with heart failure had a higher incidence of clinical events. Semaglutide improved all outcome measures in patients with heart failure at random assignment compared with those without heart failure (hazard ratio [HR] 0·72, 95% CI 0·60-0·87 for MACE; 0·79, 0·64-0·98 for the heart failure composite endpoint; 0·76, 0·59-0·97 for cardiovascular death; and 0·81, 0·66-1·00 for all-cause death; all pinteraction>0·19). Treatment with semaglutide resulted in improved outcomes in both the heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HR 0·65, 95% CI 0·49-0·87 for MACE; 0·79, 0·58-1·08 for the composite heart failure endpoint) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction groups (0·69, 0·51-0·91 for MACE; 0·75, 0·52-1·07 for the composite heart failure endpoint), although patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction had higher absolute event rates than those with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. For MACE and the heart failure composite, there were no significant differences in benefits across baseline age, sex, BMI, New York Heart Association status, and diuretic use. Serious adverse events were less frequent with semaglutide versus placebo, regardless of heart failure subtype. Interpretation: In patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular diease and overweight or obesity, treatment with semaglutide 2·4 mg reduced MACE and composite heart failure endpoints compared with placebo in those with and without clinical heart failure, regardless of heart failure subtype. Our findings could facilitate prescribing and result in improved clinical outcomes for this patient group. Funding: Novo Nordisk

Characteristics of Adults in the Hepatitis B Research Network in North America Reflect Their Country of Origin and Hepatitis B Virus Genotype

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an important cause of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma worldwide; populations that migrate to the US and Canada might be disproportionately affected. The Hepatitis B Research Network (HBRN) is a cooperative network of investigators from the United States and Canada, created to facilitate clinical, therapeutic, and translational research in adults and children with hepatitis B. We describe the structure of the network and baseline characteristics of adults with hepatitis B enrolled in the network