Implementation of an evidenced-based opioid treatment program to improve maternal-child outcomes in Eastern Kentucky

The Kentucky River Area District Health Department proposes implementation of CHARM-Kentucky, a treatment program for pregnant women with opioid use disorder (OUD), in eastern Kentucky. Over 115 Americans die each day from an opioid overdose, resulting in approximately 42,000 deaths in 2016. In addition to an overall increase in opioid use in recent years, the use of opioids in pregnancy has also increased from 1.19 per 1,000 hospital births in 2000 to 5.63 in 2009. Opioid use during pregnancy results in poor neonatal outcomes including: low birth weight, preterm delivery, small head circumference, increased child maltreatment, and risk for long-term foster care. There are many different professionals, both medical and nonmedical, that may be involved in the treatment, care, and decision-making surrounding a woman with OUD and her baby. The CHARM program combines medication-assisted therapy (MAT) with early access to prenatal care, counseling, early child welfare involvement prior to birth, parenting education, nutrition support, and social services support. Participants in the program receive prenatal care, access to MAT, participate in mandatory substance abuse counseling, submit mandatory urine drug testing, attend group educational sessions relating to addiction and parenting, and have coordination of services by a case manager. The original CHARM program in Vermont has been shown to increase the number of women receiving treatment, move women into treatment earlier in their pregnancy, increase infant birth weights, and have more infants remain in the care of their mothers. CHARM-Kentucky will operate from the Primary Care Centers of Eastern Kentucky Clinic in Hazard, a clinic serving communities significantly burdened by the opioid epidemic in Kentucky

Does Gut Microbiota Affect the Diet Preference In Anurans?

Gut microbiota is a community of bacteria that live in the digestive track of a host. These microbes assist in the breakdown of indigestible materials as food passes through the alimentary canal. Metabolites from bacteria may play a role cell to cell communication with their host and thus gut microbiota may affect the diet preference of the animal host. Southern Leopard frogs (Rana sphenocephala) and Green Tree frogs (Hyla cinerea) were used as focal species to test whether gut microbiota affect their diet preference. Three groups of tadpoles were tested. The control group was fed a commercial diet called Frog Brittle which contains essential vitamins and nutrients for the tadpole. The second diet contained Frog Brittle with the addition of Timothy grass which has high cellulose content. The third diet contained Frog Brittle with the addition of chitin. Both cellulose and chitin are generally considered indigestible by animals. Therefore, my hypothesis is that gut microbes that benefit from cellulose or chitin would produce chemical cues that influence diet choice among tadpoles with gut microbiota adapted to diets containing either Timothy grass or chitin. The gut microbiota was analyzed by amplifying the V3 region of the 16S rDNA using DNA extracted from tadpole feces. The amplified DNA was analyzed using Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE) and/or High Resolution Melt (HRM) Analysis. Diet preference tests were conducted using diets containing fluorescent microspheres as a tracer. My results using both DGGE and HRM showed that diet composition affected the gut microbiota in tadpoles with certain groups of bacteria being more dominant in a diet dependent manner. However, diet preferences ranged from 0.6443-0.8888 and were insufficient to support the hypothesis that gut microbiota effects diet preference

The LEAN Payload Integration Process

It is recognized that payload development and integration with the International Space Station (ISS) can be complex. This streamlined integration approach is a first step toward simplifying payload integration; making it easier to fly payloads on ISS, thereby increasing feasibility and interest for more research and commercial organizations to sponsor ISS payloads and take advantage of the ISS as a National Laboratory asset. The streamlined integration approach was addressed from the perspective of highly likely initial payload types to evolve from the National Lab Pathfinder program. Payloads to be accommodated by the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) Racks and Microgravity Sciences Glovebox (MSG) pressurized facilities have been addressed. It is hoped that the streamlined principles applied to these types of payloads will be analyzed and implemented in the future for other host facilities as well as unpressurized payloads to be accommodated by the EXPRESS Logistics Carrier (ELC). Further, a payload does not have to be classified as a National Lab payload in order to be processed according to the lean payload integration process; any payload that meets certain criteria can follow the lean payload integration process

The "other" trace DNA - forensic STR typing of ancient human remains and environmental samples left by non-human primates

Poster presented at Human Identification Solutions (HIDS) 2017, 16th-17th May, 2017, Vienna, Austria

On-Line Distributed Traffic Grooming

This paper addresses the problem of on-line traffic grooming in WDM paths. Each request consists of a source node, a destination node, and the desired bandwidth for the connection. Connections may be multi-hop, permitting the use of multiple lightpaths. We describe a new distributed on-line algorithm for this problem that is provably wide-sense non-blocking under cer- tain assumptions. Moreover, we use simulations to demonstrate that the algorithm is extremely effective even when some of these assumptions are relaxed

Physical dynamics of quasi-particles in nonlinear wave equations

By treating the centers of solitons as point particles and studying their discrete dynamics, we demonstrate a new approach to the quantization of the soliton solutions of the sine-Gordon equation, one of the first model nonlinear field equations. In particular, we show that a linear superposition of the non-interacting shapes of two solitons offers a qualitative (and to a good approximation quantitative) description of the true two-soliton solution, provided that the trajectories of the centers of the superimposed solitons are considered unknown. Via variational calculus, we establish that the dynamics of the quasi-particles obey a pseudo-Newtonian law, which includes cross-mass terms. The successful identification of the governing equations of the (discrete) quasi-particles from the (continuous) field equation shows that the proposed approach provides a basis for the passage from the continuous to a discrete description of the field.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures (6 images); v2: revised and improved the presentation, updated the references, fixed typos; v3: corrected a few minor mistakes and typos, version accepted for publication in Phys. Lett.

The Effect of Coloring on Perceived Stress Levels of Hospital Nurses: A Quasi-Experimental Pilot Study

Hospital nurses experience stress specific to their occupation, due to shift work, intense workload, and unsupportive management. Current literature suggests coloring offers a holistic approach to stress management, but most workplace wellness programs focus primarily on physical health. The purpose of our research is to describe the effect of coloring on perceived stress levels of hospital nurses. In this empirical, quasi-experimental pilot study, four female participants completed Perceived Stress Scale surveys (PSS-10), stress meter ratings (using visual analog scales) and responded to a brief journal prompt following individual coloring sessions over the course of two weeks. Through quantitative and qualitative data analysis, we discovered coloring has short-term stress management benefits; however, we could not confirm long-term stress reduction over the study period. We conclude coloring is an easy and cost- effective short-term stress management intervention for hospital nurses that needs more research. Future research should include a longitudinal study to investigate long-term effects of coloring as a holistic stress management technique for workplace wellness

HE0241-0155 - Evidence for a large scale homogeneous field in a highly magnetic white dwarf

In the course of the Hamburg/ESO survey we have discovered a white dwarf whose spectrum exhibits many similarities with the prototype of magnetic white dwarfs Grw+70$^{\circ}$8247. In particular several stationary line components indicative for magnetic fields between about 150 and 400 MG are found in both objects. However, the features between 5000 and 5500 \AA in the spectrum of HE0241-0155 cannot be explained by stationary line components and demand a relatively homogeneous magnetic field with clustering around 200 MG. For this reason a pure dipole model failed to reproduce this spectral region.An offset-dipole configuration led to some improvement in the fit but a good agreement was only possible for a geometry -- described by an expansion into spherical harmonics -- where most of the surface is covered with magnetic field strengths strongly clustered around 200 MG. This may indicate the presence of a large magnetic spot whose presence could be tested with time resolved spectro-polarimetry.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. accepted for publication by Astronomy and Astrophysic

Panel 9 Playing Politics with Information Technology: A Global Perspective

[No abstract available