An Investigation into the Practical Applications of Psycholinguistic Theory

The purpose of this study was to explore the practical applications of psycholinguistic theory. Meaning-emphasis programs are not widely used in schools and are difficult to quantify. A case study format was designed to examine the effectiveness of this approach through in-depth observation. Data was compiled in the form of anecdotal records and student notebooks. Diagnostic tests developed by Clay (1979b ) were also used as measures of growth. Materials and procedures were described in terms of their psycholinguistic focus. The student was successful in the program and used meaning as the preferred strategy for word attack. Writing and oral expressive language also improved during the course of this study. Research with larger populations is needed to validate the effectiveness of applications of psycholinguistics to the reading process

The resource constrained shortest path problem with uncertain data: a robust formulation and optimal solution approach

International audienceThe Resource Constrained Shortest Path Problem (RCSP P) models several applications in the fields of transportation and communications. The classical problem supposes that the resource consumptions and the costs are certain and looks for the cheapest feasible path. These parameters are however hardly known with precision in real applications, so that the deterministic solution is likely to be infeasible or suboptimal. We address this issue by considering a robust counterpart of the RCSP P. We focus here on resource variation and model its variability through the uncertainty set defined by Bertismas and Sim (2003,2004), which can model the risk aversion of the decision maker through a budget of uncertainty. We solve the resulting problem to optimality through the well-known three phase approach dealing with bounds computation, network reduction and gap closing. In particular, we compute robust bounds on the resource consumption and cost by solving the robust shortest path problem and the dual robust Lagrangian relaxation, respectively. Dynamic programming is used to close the duality gap. Upper and lower bounds are used to reduce the dimension of the network and incorporated in the dynamic programming in order to fathom unpromising states. An extensive computational phase is carried out in order to asses the behavior of the defined strategy comparing its performance with the state-of-the-art. The results highlight the effectiveness of our approach in solving to optimality * 1 benchmark instances for RCSP P when Γ is not too large, tailored for the robust counterpart. For larger values of Γ, we show that the most efficient method combines deterministic preprocesing with the iterative algorithm from Bertsimas and Sim (2003). We also illustrate the failure probability of the robust solutions through Monte Carlo sampling

Minimizing Energy Use of Mixed-Fleet Public Transit for Fixed-Route Service

Public transit can have significantly lower environmental impact than personal vehicles; however, it still uses a substantial amount of energy, causing air pollution and greenhouse gas emission. While electric vehicles (EVs) can reduce energy use, most public transit agencies have to employ them in combination with conventional, internal-combustion engine vehicles due to the high upfront costs of EVs. To make the best use of such a mixed fleet of vehicles, transit agencies need to optimize route assignments and charging schedules, which presents a challenging problem for large public transit networks. We introduce a novel problem formulation to minimize fuel and electricity use by assigning vehicles to transit trips and scheduling them for charging while serving an existing fixed-route transit schedule. We present an integer program for optimal discrete-time scheduling, and we propose polynomial-time heuristic algorithms and a genetic algorithm for finding solutions for larger networks. We evaluate our algorithms on the transit service of a mid-size U.S. city using operational data collected from public transit vehicles. Our results show that the proposed algorithms are scalable and achieve near-minimum energy use

Device for the Capture and Extraction of Waste Anesthetic Gas

Background: Leaks occur often throughout the process of delivering inhaled anesthesia prior to and during surgery. Leaks typically occur around the patient’s mouth, nose, and eyes. Potent inhaled anesthetics (PIAs) include halothane, sevoflurane, desflurane, and isoflurane. All PIAs, to one degree or another, pose hazards to human health. PIAs are associated with reproductive toxicity, spontaneous miscarriages in pregnant persons as well as an increased risk of congenital abnormalities in offspring. In other words, PIAs are thought to be both abortifacients as well as teratogens. PIAs are also associated with hepatotoxicity, neurotoxicity, cognitive impairment, as well as increased incidence of malignancy. Methods: Preliminary interviews with stakeholders were conducted to assess the desirability, viability, and utility of a product to trap and remove waste anesthetic gas (WAG) from the perifacial region before it diffuses into the ambient air. We used wearable detector badges (similar to a dosimeter) from Assay Technology Inc. for qualitative measurements of WAG levels in several operating rooms. We used low-fidelity mockups for early prototyping, FDM and SLA 3D printing techniques, and urethane casts for high-fidelity working prototypes. We also performed real-time simulations using a visible aerosol agent in order to record and study the efficacy of our device. Results: We found dramatically elevated levels of sevoflurane in the operating room, with our highest readings at ~10x NIOSH permissible exposure limits. With our visual simulation we saw a markedly reduced flow of WAG into the surrounding air. Conclusions: Our device adequately addresses a significant and unaddressed issue in healthcare and shows viability from an economic standpoint as well. We are currently designing a study to further evaluate levels of WAG and exploring potential studies with live anesthetic agents

Scavenger of Waste Anesthetic

Waste anesthetic gases (WAGs) are associated with spontaneous miscarriages in pregnant persons, an increased risk of congenital abnormalities, hepatotoxicity, neurotoxicity, and cognitive impairment. Through monitoring anesthesiologists we found levels of WAGs to be 5-10x the current standard inside the OR. Currently, no solutions exist for the mitigation of WAG release. Remora is a solution to removing WAGs that fits on top of existing anesthesia masks. A flexible skirt is joined to a rigid ring, which deforms under hand pressure to facilitate effective hand-to-mask placement. The suction system is plugged into an unused suction port to create an area under the anesthesia mask that is depressurized, creating circumferential suction around the mask. The negative pressure gradient between the Remora-mask unit and room air pulls WAGs into the gap between the anesthesia mask and Remora, and then into the anesthesia machine\u27s suction system. From there, WAGs are exhausted into the air handling system which receives other waste gases. Using visible gas we were able to show how much WAGs may be escaping during induction and the amount Remora was able to scavenge. While we were unable to quantify our results, we were able to qualitatively show that the amount of gas was significantly less once Remora was turned on. Our hope is to perform further studies to prove that with the use of Remora the concentration of WAGs will decrease in the OR and decrease the negative side effects associated with WAGs

A Strategy for Deploying Large-Scale Volunteer Continuous Bag Valve Tube (BVT) Ventilation

Part 1: Hospital Guide The hospital guide outlines steps and considerations for the healthcare system to successfully implement a manual ventilation strategy Part 2: Online BVT Training Module We created an online articulate evidence based training module for safe and effective Bag-Valve-Tube (BVT) ventilation for medical and nonmedical providers