Justification of oromaxillofacial trials using systematic reviews

Aims: In 2017 alone, $12.7 billion was spent on clinical trial research, though basis for conducting these trials is often questionable, absent, or based in industry interest. Systematic reviews (SR's) provide summaries of existing research and can be used to formulate effective research questions that have not been answered. In this study, we analyzed the scientific bases of randomized controlled trials (RCT's) in Oromaxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) journals to determine if SR's formed the basis of the research question.Methods: This study analyzed RCT's in the top 10 ranked OMFS journals by h5 index as of October 10, 2018. It includes all manuscripts published January 1, 2015 - December 31, 2017. We screened each study to extract data relating to funding sources, presence of SR citations, and research methodology.Results: Nearly half of the RCTs cited at least one SR in the introduction of the paper, but less than half of those used the SR review as justification of the trial. 34.5% of the manuscripts did not report their funding, and 25.6% explicitly declared no funding. Self-funded manuscripts cited SR's at the lowest rates in this study. Interestingly, the highest incidence of SR justification occurred when funding was received from a combination of non-profits and industry. Nonprofit papers and those without funding had the lowest incidence of SRs justification.Conclusions: Proper justification for OMFS clinical trials most often occurs when both industry and nonprofit organizations are invested in the research. More effective research could be performed if journal editors required researchers to cite evidence that their studies were necessary.Significance: While a minority of manuscripts published in high-impact OMFS journals mention SR's as justification for conducting the trial, awareness of proper justification should be increased among the scientific community. This is most likely to occur when both the public and private sectors are invested in the research

An Abstract Architecture for Explainable Autonomy in Hazardous Environments

Autonomous robotic systems are being proposed for use in hazardous environments, often to reduce the risks to human workers. In the immediate future, it is likely that human workers will continue to use and direct these autonomous robots, much like other computerised tools but with more sophisticated decision-making. Therefore, one important area on which to focus engineering effort is ensuring that these users trust the system. Recent literature suggests that explainability is closely related to how trustworthy a system is. Like safety and security properties, explainability should be designed into a system, instead of being added afterwards. This paper presents an abstract architecture that supports an autonomous system explaining its behaviour (explainable autonomy), providing a design template for implementing explainable autonomous systems. We present a worked example of how our architecture could be applied in the civil nuclear industry, where both workers and regulators need to trust the system’s decision-making capabilities

All in for Privacy: Cultivating a Community of Information Privacy Awareness

The Library Freedom Project supports librarianship’s values of freedom of information and privacy by providing relevant tools and education to LIS professionals. A group from the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western aligned with the project to encourage student participation in local and global privacy issues. Our programming encourages hands-on use of open source and anti-surveillance software, such as Tor Browser for anonymous web browsing. In addition, we detail how we configured our Tor relay to route anonymous encrypted global traffic, so that other libraries can join the 280 relays currently running in Canada and 7000 worldwide

The Laryngeal-Modular Skin Retractor

Self-retaining skin retractors provide an open and wide surgical window during procedures without the need for additional manual retraction from OR staff. These devices are prevalent across a variety of surgeries, but in our area of interest, laryngectomy procedures, there are no current devices available on the market. Therefore, the extensive amount of skin and muscle tissue must be retracted manually by the surgical assistants. Laryngectomies are a very lengthy procedure. Therefore, the surgical assistants can become fatigued, increasing the probability of human error when manually retracting these tissues. The goal of our device is to provide a viable solution that will retract the skin and muscle tissues without compromising the surgical window for the physicians so that surgical assistants would be allowed to aid in other components of the procedure. Our device will reduce the amount of operating room time and lower the cost of expenses, for both the hospital and the patient

Manure and Wastewater Sampling Guide

Manure and wastewater are resources that can reduce your fertilizer needs and help improve soil and your bottom line. It is important that manure and wastewater be sampled and tested so one can apply the manure and nutrients appropriately. Sampling and analysis should occur as close to land application as possible as nutrient concentration in manure and wastewater can change over time due to runoff, leaching, and changes in moisture percentage. Nitrogen can also be lost due to volatilization. There are two primary approaches for when to sample: (1) just before land application, and (2) at the time of land application. Guidelines for how to sample solid manure, liquid manure, and slurries are provided in this document

Student Success Outside-the-Box

Traditional instruction methods, while serving a vital purpose, may not excite students as much as other events on campus. Using outside-the-box ideas to engage students while challenging them to think critically and interact with library resources allows libraries to reach students in new and creative ways. During this session, we will describe the design, learning goals, and outcomes of a game night, escape room, and pop-ups our library system created that focus on student success