Assistant Suite

This project was conducted to demonstrate a voice-to-mechanical application from one source to multiple platforms with the use of hardware-to-software technology. The main platforms that are used for implementation is an Amazon Echo Dot, which serves as the voice interceptor to transcribe speech through integrated software hosted within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud network, and a Raspberry Pi microcontroller, which serves as the device which controlled mechanical movements based on what is transcribed from the Echo. The user can speak a command into the Echo to control the movement of one of two RC cars without any physical engagement. The Echo utilizes Wi-Fi to connect to the AWS cloud network to transcribe the speech, which then goes through a series of channels to communicate with a microcontroller that is connected to its own RC car to cause that selected RC car to move in a specified direction. For example, the user can speak a command that says “Alexa, move car A forward for two seconds,” and this will translate to the selected car to motion forward for a total of two seconds. The project also displays the usefulness of being able to speak to multiple microcontrollers connected to separate devices under a single application; this caters to the convenience of not having to close and open separate applications every time a different connection is needed.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1193/thumbnail.jp

Membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis in patients with chronic venous catheters: a case report and literature review.

Chronic indwelling catheters have been reported to be associated with membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis (MPGN) via the activation of the classical complement pathway in association with bacterial infections such as coagulase negative staphylococcus. We herein provide supporting evidence for the direct causal relationship between chronic catheter infections and MPGN via a case of recurrent MPGN associated with recurrent catheter infections used for total parenteral nutrition (TPN) in a man with short gut syndrome. We also present a literature review of similar cases and identify common clinical manifestations that may serve to aid clinicians in the early identification of MPGN associated with infected central venous catheterization or vice versa. The importance of routine monitoring of kidney function and urinalysis among patients with chronic central venous catheterization is highlighted as kidney injury may herald or coincide with overtly infected chronic indwelling central venous catheters

Almost all extraspecial p-groups are Swan groups

Let P be an extraspecial p-group which is neither dihedral of order 8, nor of odd order p^3 and exponent p. Let G be a finite group having P as a Sylow p-subgroup. Then the mod-p cohomology ring of G coincides with that of the normalizer N_G(P).Comment: 5 page

TBI Contusion Segmentation from MRI using Convolutional Neural Networks

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is caused by a sudden trauma to the head that may result in hematomas and contusions and can lead to stroke or chronic disability. An accurate quantification of the lesion volumes and their locations is essential to understand the pathophysiology of TBI and its progression. In this paper, we propose a fully convolutional neural network (CNN) model to segment contusions and lesions from brain magnetic resonance (MR) images of patients with TBI. The CNN architecture proposed here was based on a state of the art CNN architecture from Google, called Inception. Using a 3-layer Inception network, lesions are segmented from multi-contrast MR images. When compared with two recent TBI lesion segmentation methods, one based on CNN (called DeepMedic) and another based on random forests, the proposed algorithm showed improved segmentation accuracy on images of 18 patients with mild to severe TBI. Using a leave-one-out cross validation, the proposed model achieved a median Dice of 0.75, which was significantly better (p<0.01) than the two competing methods.Comment: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8363545/, IEEE 15th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2018

Classification of Student Developed Annual Goals

Objective: This study categorizes goals (personal vs professional and long vs short-term) of student pharmacists. An increase in the proportion of long-term, professional goals is expected as students advance through the program. Methods: Annual student goals were classified into categories (personal vs professional and long vs short term). Definitions were developed and a beta-test was conducted to confirm interpretations were consistent between raters. Multiple one-tail Z-tests with Bonferroni correction were used to compare the proportion of personal/professional and short-term/long-term goals for P1 students to the proportion of each of the classes of P2-P5 for the years of 2018 and 2019, respectively. Results: Comparison of goals indicated the proportion of personal goals for P1 students was significantly higher than the proportion of personal goals in all other years of the program for 2018 and 2019 with limited exceptions. The proportion of short-term goals for P1 students was higher than the proportion of short-term goals for most other years of the program. Conclusion: As students progress through the program, self-identified goals become more professional and long-term. Recognition of this difference could aid the College in providing differentiated support for student achievement of their goals

Renovation of El Camino Real of Santa Clara

In this project we focus on a section of the El Camino Real that is a major corridor that connects the South Bay to much of the Peninsula. The portion that we are looking at is by Santa Clara University from Lafayette Street to Scott Boulevard which consists of 3lanes in both directions. This is much wider than sections farther north as there are much higher traffic volumes in the spread out South Bay. As a result, El Camino Real can be dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. Along with pedestrian safety concerns, our project goes into the inadequate service levels for public transit, the VTA 522El Camino Real Rapid Bus in particular. Our redesign of El Camino Real was inspired by the VTA’s BRT, Bus Rapid Transit, which converts 1 of 3 car lanes into a Bus Only lane and adds a bike lane. We created several alternative design options for the project and discuss each option’s strengths and weaknesses. After we decided on a design, we ran a Synchro simulation to see how the traffic conditions would be affected by our redesign. We noted the different service levels and safety improvements

ciftiTools: A package for reading, writing, visualizing and manipulating CIFTI files in R

Surface- and grayordinate-based analysis of MR data has well-recognized advantages, including improved whole-cortex visualization, the ability to perform surface smoothing to avoid issues associated with volumetric smoothing, improved inter-subject alignment, and reduced dimensionality. The CIFTI grayordinate file format introduced by the Human Connectome Project further advances grayordinate-based analysis by combining gray matter data from the left and right cortical hemispheres with gray matter data from the subcortex and cerebellum into a single file. Analyses performed in grayordinate space are well-suited to leverage information shared across the brain and across subjects through both traditional analysis techniques and more advanced statistical methods, including Bayesian methods. The R statistical environment facilitates use of advanced statistical techniques, yet little support for grayordinates analysis has been previously available in R. Indeed, few comprehensive programmatic tools for working with CIFTI files have been available in any language. Here, we present the ciftiTools R package, which provides a unified environment for reading, writing, visualizing, and manipulating CIFTI files and related data formats. We illustrate ciftiTools' convenient and user-friendly suite of tools for working with grayordinates and surface geometry data in R, and we describe how ciftiTools is being utilized to advance the statistical analysis of grayordinate-based functional MRI data.Comment: 41 pages, 6 figure

A profiling analysis of contributions of cigarette smoking, dietary calcium intakes, and physical activity to fragility fracture in the elderly

Fragility fracture and bone mineral density (BMD) are influenced by common and modifiable lifestyle factors. In this study, we sought to define the contribution of lifestyle factors to fracture risk by using a profiling approach. The study involved 1683 women and 1010 men (50+ years old, followed up for up to 20 years). The incidence of new fractures was ascertained by X-ray reports. A “lifestyle risk score” (LRS) was derived as the weighted sum of effects of dietary calcium intake, physical activity index, and cigarette smoking. Each individual had a unique LRS, with higher scores being associated with a healthier lifestyle. Baseline values of lifestyle factors were assessed. In either men or women, individuals with a fracture had a significantly lower age-adjusted LRS than those without a fracture. In men, each unit lower in LRS was associated with a 66% increase in the risk of total fracture (non-adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 1.66; 95% CI, 1.26 to 2.20) and still significant after adjusting for age, weight or BMD. However, in women, the association was uncertain (HR 1.30; 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.53). These data suggest that unhealthy lifestyle habits are associated with an increased risk of fracture in men, but not in women, and that the association is mediated by BMD