#NARCISSUS

My senior BFA exhibition is a project bringing awareness and reflection to the college subculture of drinking. I am creating a large installation (approx. 10x20ft) made out of over 4,000 red plastic cups in the shape of a Catholic Church altar. The cups are stacked and glued together in order to create patterns to separate the forms of the altar (three stairs, columns, the facade arches). The installation is shown at Chapman University\u27s Guggenheim Gallery and must be site specific in order to reflect the nature of its existence and purpose. The installation reflects a parallel between forms of ritual: the ritual of binge drinking college students participate in, and the rituals associated with being in church. By using the form of an altar to display the cups, I hope to signify that drinking is a form of ritual. The form also represents a place of worship, as it seems as if students often seem to worship or place unusual reverence on the drinking and partying culture as if it had divine importance. Most viewers will be able to instantly recognize the red cup as a popular drinking vessel made famous by its symbolism of college party culture. I hope to harness this symbol and create a physical space with repetition of the material in order to question the culture in which I currently live in

An Evaluation of Asthma Surveillance Packaging and Dissemination Efforts in Georgia

Asthma is a serious chronic disease that causes inflammation and narrowing of the airways. Due to the prevalence rates among children, asthma is a priority public health concern in the state of Georgia. The Georgia Asthma Control Program (GACP) seeks to improve asthma control by maximizing comprehensive asthma services. Surveillance is one of the ways this is done. This evaluation sought to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of asthma surveillance product packaging and dissemination efforts. The findings will be used to gain recommendations on how to improve surveillance products, reports, and the efforts that are made to disseminate the information. Four stakeholders were involved in the evaluation planning process to insure stakeholders’ needs would be met through the evaluation. Twelve stakeholders participated in evaluation interviews and focus groups in order to assess the effectiveness of current asthma surveillance products and dissemination. Interviews and focus group discussions were audio recorded to insure accuracy. A document review on current surveillance documents and the OASIS service were also performed. Stakeholders expressed their satisfaction with GACP surveillance products and dissemination efforts, and most also agreed that the data was easily accessible. Additionally, respondents indicated that there were few gaps in the data that is presently available, however others suggested additional measures and analysis that should be reported. Future recommendations include, making more efforts to get data and surveillance products to parents and community leaders, producing multiple surveillance documents for different audiences, updating surveillance data in a reasonable timeframe, and training all school staff to handle asthma events in children

Attention-Based Deep Learning Methods for Predicting Gas Turbine Emissions

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/W522089/1].Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Tabular Machine Learning Methods for Predicting Gas Turbine Emissions

The work presented here received funding from EPSRC (EP/W522089/1) and Siemens Energy Industrial Turbomachinery Ltd. as part of the iCASE EPSRC PhD studentship “Predictive Emission Monitoring Systems for Gas Turbines”.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Tabular Machine Learning Methods for Predicting Gas Turbine Emissions

The work presented here received funding from EPSRC (EP/W522089/1) and Siemens Energy Industrial Turbomachinery Ltd. as part of the iCASE EPSRC PhD studentship ”Predictive Emission Monitoring Systems for Gas Turbines”.Preprin

Boots and Bail on the Ground: Assessing the Implementation of Misdemeanor Bail Reforms in Georgia

This Article presents a mixed-methods study of misdemeanor bail practice across Georgia in the wake of reform. We observed bail hearings and interviewed system actors in a representative sample of fifty-five counties to assess the extent to which pretrial practice conforms to legal standards clarified in Senate Bill 407 and Walker v. Calhoun. We also analyzed jail population data published by county jails and by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. We found that a handful of counties have made promising headway in adhering to law and best practices, but that the majority have some distance to go. Most counties assessed do not assure a bail hearing within forty-eight hours of arrest, provide counsel at the initial bail hearing, consistently evaluate arrestees’ financial circumstances, or guarantee release within forty-eight hours of arrest for those who cannot pay bail. In a combined eighteen counties, 37% of misdemeanor arrestees remained in jail for at least three days after arrest. In DeKalb County, 53% of all those arrested on misdemeanor charges between 2000 and 2019 were jailed for three days or more, but the annual rate has declined from 63% in 2009 to 26.5% in 2019. Per capita pretrial detention rates varied widely by county in 2019, with most of the higher rates in the southern portion of the state. Overall, the qualitative and quantitative data demonstrate both progress and substantial variation by county

Ladies that UX Leadership and Organization Report

Ladies that UX (LTUX) is an international organization focused on mentoring women in the software industry. In order to explore both the mission and the focus of the international organization and smaller, localized chapters of LTUX, we conducted a series of surveys and interviews. These surveys focused on how local groups of LTUX were formed and structured, what leaders see as the goals and needs of their chapters, and how members interact with both each other and with the broader international organization. Our research goal was to gain some insight into means of formation, communication, and structure of these local chapters and to understand and anticipate what chapter needs are, in order to better grow LTUX as an organization

How notifications affect engagement with a behaviour change app: Results from a micro-randomised trial

Background: Drink Less is a behavior change app to help higher-risk drinkers in the United Kingdom reduce their alcohol consumption. The app includes a daily notification asking users to “Please complete your drinks and mood diary,” yet we did not understand the causal effect of the notification on engagement nor how to improve this component of Drink Less. We developed a new bank of 30 new messages to increase users’ reflective motivation to engage with Drink Less. This study aimed to determine how standard and new notifications affect engagement. Objective: Our objective was to estimate the causal effect of the notification on near-term engagement, to explore whether this effect changed over time, and to create an evidence base to further inform the optimization of the notification policy. Methods: We conducted a micro-randomized trial (MRT) with 2 additional parallel arms. Inclusion criteria were Drink Less users who consented to participate in the trial, self-reported a baseline Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test score of ≥8, resided in the United Kingdom, were aged ≥18 years, and reported interest in drinking less alcohol. Our MRT randomized 350 new users to test whether receiving a notification, compared with receiving no notification, increased the probability of opening the app in the subsequent hour, over the first 30 days since downloading Drink Less. Each day at 8 PM, users were randomized with a 30% probability of receiving the standard message, a 30% probability of receiving a new message, or a 40% probability of receiving no message. We additionally explored time to disengagement, with the allocation of 60% of eligible users randomized to the MRT (n=350) and 40% of eligible users randomized in equal number to the 2 parallel arms, either receiving the no notification policy (n=98) or the standard notification policy (n=121). Ancillary analyses explored effect moderation by recent states of habituation and engagement. Results: Receiving a notification, compared with not receiving a notification, increased the probability of opening the app in the next hour by 3.5-fold (95% CI 2.91-4.25). Both types of messages were similarly effective. The effect of the notification did not change significantly over time. A user being in a state of already engaged lowered the new notification effect by 0.80 (95% CI 0.55-1.16), although not significantly. Across the 3 arms, time to disengagement was not significantly different. Conclusions: We found a strong near-term effect of engagement on the notification, but no overall difference in time to disengagement between users receiving the standard fixed notification, no notification at all, or the random sequence of notifications within the MRT. The strong near-term effect of the notification presents an opportunity to target notifications to increase “in-the-moment” engagement. Further optimization is required to improve the long-term engagement. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): RR2-10.2196/1869

Notifications to Improve Engagement With an Alcohol Reduction App: Protocol for a Micro-Randomized Trial (Preprint)

BACKGROUND &lt;i&gt;Drink Less&lt;/i&gt; is a behavior change app that aims to help users in the general adult population reduce hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption. The app includes a daily push notification, delivered at 11 am, asking users to “Please complete your mood and drinking diaries.” Previous analysis of &lt;i&gt;Drink Less&lt;/i&gt; engagement data suggests the current notification strongly influences how users engage with the app in the subsequent hour. To exploit a potential increase of vulnerability of excess drinking and opportunity to engage with the app in the evenings, we changed the delivery time from 11 am to 8 pm. We now aim to further optimise the content and sequence of notifications, testing 30 new evidence-informed notifications targeting the user’s perceived usefulness of the app. OBJECTIVE The primary objective is to assess whether sending a notification at 8 pm increases behavioral engagement (opening the app) in the subsequent hour. Secondary objectives include comparing the effect of the new bank of messages with the standard message and effect moderation over time. We also aim to more generally understand the role notifications have on the overall duration, depth, and frequency of engagement with &lt;i&gt;Drink Less&lt;/i&gt; over the first 30 days after download. METHODS This is a protocol for a micro-randomized trial with two additional parallel arms. Inclusion criteria are &lt;i&gt;Drink Less&lt;/i&gt; users who (1) consent to participate in the trial; (2) self-report a baseline Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test score of 8 or above; (3) reside in the United Kingdom; (4) age ≥18 years and; (5) report interest in drinking less alcohol. In the micro-randomized trial, participants will be randomized daily at 8 pm to receive no notification, a notification with text from the new message bank, or the standard message. The primary outcome is the time-varying, binary outcome of &lt;i&gt;“Did the user open the app in the hour from 8 pm to 9 pm?”&lt;/i&gt;. The primary analysis will estimate the marginal relative risk for the notifications using an estimator developed for micro-randomized trials with binary outcomes. Participants randomized to the parallel arms will receive no notifications (Secondary Arm A), or the standard notification delivered daily at 11 am (Secondary Arm B) over 30 days, allowing the comparison of overall engagement between different notification delivery strategies. RESULTS Approval was granted by the University College of London’s Departmental Research Ethics Committee (CEHP/2016/556) on October 11, 2019, and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Interventions Research Ethics Committee (17929) on November 27, 2019. Recruitment began on January 2, 2020, and is ongoing. CONCLUSIONS Understanding how push notifications may impact engagement with a behavior change app can lead to further improvements in engagement, and ultimately help users reduce their alcohol consumption. This understanding may also be generalizable to other apps that target a variety of behavior changes. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT DERR1-10.2196/18690 </sec