Narrative Medicine: Improving Patient Care and Shifting Office Culture

Chronic pain and depression are both prevalent in the Unites States and often co-exist in the same population. According to the literature, there is no consensus between providers as to the best practice of treating chronic pain and concomitant depression. Narrative Medicine, a medical model that uses a patient’s illness narrative to make meaning of their disease, allows patients to tell their stories of chronic pain and other important aspects about their life, while it helps providers better understand patients’ experiences with pain. This project will assess the current culture and attitudes of providers treating chronic pain conditions at the Center for Family Medicine at Eastern Maine Medical Center. It will also assess their current understanding of Narrative Medicine and the Northwestern Life Story Interview. We found that providers who dread visits with patients with chronic pain conditions are more likely to feel less confident when treating those patients.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1282/thumbnail.jp

Using the Bootstrap for Estimating the Sample Size in Statistical Experiments

Efron’s (1979) Bootstrap has been shown to be an effective method for statistical estimation and testing. It provides better estimates than normal approximations for studentized means, least square estimates and many other statistics of interest. It can be used to select the active factors - factors that have an effect on the response - in experimental designs. This article shows that the bootstrap can be used to determine sample size or the number of runs required to achieve a certain confidence level in statistical experiments

Univalent Functions Maximizing Re[f(ζ1)+f(ζ2)]

We study the problem maxh∊Sℜ[h(z1) + h(z2)] with z1, z2 in Δ. We show that no rotation of the Koebe function is a solution for this problem except possibly its real rotation, and only when [formula omitted] or z1, z2 are both real, and are in a neighborhood of the x-axis. We prove that if the omitted set of the extremal function f is part of a straight line that passes through f(z1) or f(z2) then f is the Koebe function or its real rotation. We also show the existence of solutions that are not unique and are different from the Koebe function or its real rotation. The situation where the extremal value is equal to zero can occur and it is proved, in this case, that the Koebe function is a solution if and only if z1 and z2 are both real numbers and z1z2 \u3c 0. © 1996, Hindawi Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved

Comparison of Re-sampling Methods to Generalized Linear Models and Transformations in Factorial and Fractional Factorial Designs

Experimental situations in which observations are not normally distributed frequently occur in practice. A common situation occurs when responses are discrete in nature, for example counts. One way to analyze such experimental data is to use a transformation for the responses; another is to use a link function based on a generalized linear model (GLM) approach. Re-sampling is employed as an alternative method to analyze non-normal, discrete data. Results are compared to those obtained by the previous two methods

Nutrition in Early Childcare Programs: The Benefits and Barriers

Introduction: 1 in 5 Vermont children experience food insecurity. Inadequate nutrition threatens cognitive, social, and emotional development in the first years of life. 49.1% of Vermont children arrive at kindergarten underprepared. It has been shown that undernourished children have reduced activity levels and withdraw from their environment, removing them from critical learning opportunities and social interactions. Supporting the provision of healthy food in early childcare programs may help address the issue of food insecurity and promote healthy childhood development. Currently, there are no existing data on both Vermont childcare providers and parents of these children on their perceptions of the importance of providing food in early childcare programs as well as the associated benefits and barriers to do so.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1228/thumbnail.jp

A Distributed Building Evacuation System

This thesis investigates the feasibility of a smart building evacuation system, capable of guiding occupants along safe paths to exits and responding to changing threats. Inspired by developments in amorphous computing, the design presented is scalable to large networks, robust to hardware and communication failure, and based on simple low-cost components. A simulation and hardware prototype demonstrate that this distributed building evacuation system is both feasible and cost effective

Exploring Factors Contributing to Injury Severity at Freeway Merging and Diverging Locations in Ohio

Identifying factors that affect crash injury severity and understanding how these factors affect injury severity is critical in planning and implementing highway safety improvement programs. Factors such as driver-related, traffic-related, environment-related and geometric design-related were considered when developing statistical models to predict the effects of these factors on the severity of injuries sustained from motor vehicle crashes at merging and diverging locations. Police-reported crash data at selected freeway merging and diverging areas in the state of Ohio were used for the development of the models. A generalized ordinal logit model also known as partial proportional odds model was applied to identify significant factors increasing the likelihood of one of the five KABCO scale of injury severity: no injuries, possible/invisible injuries, non-incapacitating injuries, incapacitating injuries, or fatal injuries. The results of this study show that semi-truck related crashes, higher number of lanes on freeways, higher number of lanes on ramps, speeding related crashes, and alcohol related crashes tend to increase the likelihood of sustaining severe injuries at freeway merging locations. In addition, females and older persons are more likely to sustain severe injuries especially at freeway merge locations. Alcohol related crashes, speeding related crashes, angle-type collisions, and lane-ramp configuration type D significantly increase the likelihood of severe injury crashes at diverging areas. Poor lighting condition tends to increase non-incapacitating injuries at diverging areas only. Moreover, adverse weather condition increases the likelihood of no-injury and fatal injuries at merging areas only and adverse road conditions tend to increase a range of injury severity levels from possible/invisible injuries to incapacitating injuries at merging areas only. Highlights Semi-truck, lanes on freeways and ramps, speeding, angle collisions, and alcohol increase severe injuries at merging areas. Females and older persons sustain severe injuries at freeway merge locations. Alcohol, speeding, angle collisions, and lane-ramp type D increase severe injuries at diverging areas. Adverse weather condition increases no-injury and fatal injuries at merging areas only. Adverse road condition tends to increase a range of non-fatal injury levels at merging areas only