Towards a Theory of State Constitutional Jurisprudence

State Constitutional Jurisprudenc

Federalism and State Constitutions: The New Doctrine of Independent and Adequate State Grounds

Adequate State Ground

Right of Privacy

Right of Privac

Addressing Hidden Imperfections in Online Experimentation

Technology companies are increasingly using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as part of their development process. Despite having fine control over engineering systems and data instrumentation, these RCTs can still be imperfectly executed. In fact, online experimentation suffers from many of the same biases seen in biomedical RCTs including opt-in and user activity bias, selection bias, non-compliance with the treatment, and more generally, challenges in the ability to test the question of interest. The result of these imperfections can lead to a bias in the estimated causal effect, a loss in statistical power, an attenuation of the effect, or even a need to reframe the question that can be answered. This paper aims to make practitioners of experimentation more aware of imperfections in technology-industry RCTs, which can be hidden throughout the engineering stack or in the design process.Comment: Presented at CODE@MIT 202

Traumatic brain injury in later life increases risk for Parkinson disease

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111787/1/ana24396.pd

The associations between serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor, potential confounders, and cognitive decline: A longitudinal study

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) plays a role in the maintenance and function of neurons. Although persons with Alzheimer's disease have lower cortical levels of BDNF, evidence regarding the association between circulating BDNF and cognitive function is conflicting. We sought to determine the correlates of BDNF level and whether BDNF level was prospectively associated with cognitive decline in healthy older adults. We measured serum BDNF near baseline in 912 individuals. Cognitive status was assessed repeatedly with the modified Mini-Mental Status Examination and the Digit Symbol Substitution test over the next 10 years. We evaluated the association between BDNF and cognitive decline with longitudinal models. We also assessed the association between BDNF level and demographics, comorbidities and health behaviors. We found an association between serum BDNF and several characteristics that are also associated with dementia (race and depression), suggesting that future studies should control for these potential confounders. We did not find evidence of a longitudinal association between serum BDNF and subsequent cognitive test trajectories in older adults, although we did identify a potential trend toward a cross-sectional association. Our results suggest that serum BDNF may have limited utility as a biomarker of prospective cognitive decline

Monitoring the early signs of cognitive decline in elderly by computer games: an MRI study

BACKGROUND: It is anticipated that current and future preventive therapies will likely be more effective in the early stages of dementia, when everyday functioning is not affected. Accordingly the early identification of people at risk is particularly important. In most cases, when subjects visit an expert and are examined using neuropsychological tests, the disease has already been developed. Contrary to this cognitive games are played by healthy, well functioning elderly people, subjects who should be monitored for early signs. Further advantages of cognitive games are their accessibility and their cost-effectiveness. PURPOSE: The aim of the investigation was to show that computer games can help to identify those who are at risk. In order to validate games analysis was completed which measured the correlations between results of the 'Find the Pairs' memory game and the volumes of the temporal brain regions previously found to be good predictors of later cognitive decline. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: 34 healthy elderly subjects were enrolled in the study. The volume of the cerebral structures was measured by MRI. Cortical reconstruction and volumetric segmentation were performed by Freesurfer. RESULTS: There was a correlation between the number of attempts and the time required to complete the memory game and the volume of the entorhinal cortex, the temporal pole, and the hippocampus. There was also a correlation between the results of the Paired Associates Learning (PAL) test and the memory game. CONCLUSIONS: The results gathered support the initial hypothesis that healthy elderly subjects achieving lower scores in the memory game have increased level of atrophy in the temporal brain structures and showed a decreased performance in the PAL test. Based on these results it can be concluded that memory games may be useful in early screening for cognitive decline

Association of Alzheimer's disease genetic risk loci with cognitive performance and decline: A systematic review.

The association of Apolipoprotein E (APOE) with late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) and cognitive endophenotypes of aging has been widely investigated. There is increasing interest in evaluating the association of other LOAD risk loci with cognitive performance and decline. The results of these studies have been inconsistent and inconclusive. We conducted a systematic review of studies investigating the association of non-APOE LOAD risk loci with cognitive performance in older adults. Studies published from January 2009 to April 2018 were identified through a PubMed database search using keywords and by scanning reference lists. Studies were included if they were either cross-sectional or longitudinal in design, included at least one genome-wide significant LOAD risk loci or a genetic risk score, and had one objective measure of cognition. Quality assessment of the studies was conducted using the quality of genetic studies (Q-Genie) tool. Of 2,466 studies reviewed, 49 met inclusion criteria. Fifteen percent of the associations between non-APOE LOAD risk loci and cognition were significant. However, these associations were not replicated across studies, and the majority were rendered non-significant when adjusting for multiple testing. One-third of the studies included genetic risk scores, and these were typically significant only when APOE was included. The findings of this systematic review do not support a consistent association between individual non-APOE LOAD risk and cognitive performance or decline. However, evidence suggests that aggregate LOAD genetic risk exerts deleterious effects on decline in episodic memory and global cognition