Evaluating service mitigation proposals for the MBTA Green Line extension construction delay using simplified planning methods

Thesis (S.M. in Transportation)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-172).This thesis reviews a select group of transit environmental mitigation proposals through the application of ridership estimation methodologies. In recent years, rider demands and environmental concerns have led many transit agencies to explore options for increasing service even within constrained budgets. Anticipated state and metropolitan area climate change mitigation strategies are likely to result in the need for further transportation system changes in many cities. In response to environmental concerns raised during the construction of the Central Artery/Tunnel, Massachusetts committed to extending the Green Line light rail from its Cambridge terminal at Lechmere into Somerville and Medford. The Massachusetts State Implementation Plan requires that the Green Line be extended in two branches by the end of 2014. Massachusetts has delayed construction on the extension, and it must therefore undertake mitigation for the delay. Facing both financial constraints and pressure to increase service, transit agencies such as the MBTA need new ways to improve transportation systems with limited financial input and means by which to evaluate the impact of proposals. Several mitigation proposals focusing on transit services in the Lechmere Station area are presented in this thesis. Increasing service on the Green Line to Lechmere is found to be a good first step towards improving service in Somerville. Proposals for increasing bus feeder service to and from Lechmere and the surrounding areas include both increasing service on existing routes and introducing new routes. Partnerships with existing private providers could also help decrease the costs to the MBTA of introducing a new route. In order to analyze the mitigation proposals, several methodologies are explored including area wide transportation planning models, direct demand (regression) models and comparison equations. A rail elasticity of demand with respect to service is calculated based on a prior MBTA system experience, while elasticities from literature are used for buses. In addition, a direct demand model is estimated for the MBTA bus network, and the results are compared to elasticity analysis. Regional planning models are found to be important for predicting system-wide responses but often are too detailed and expensive to use to evaluate every proposal. Instead, direct demand models can help with initial rankings of proposals, and service elasticities can help further examine expected ridership changes due to service improvements.by Jamie C. Rosen.S.M.in Transportatio

The Effect of Telehealth Interventions on Quality of Life of Cancer Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Introduction:In 2016, ∼1.7 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed. Cancer patients can have physical, functional, and psychosocial issues when dealing with cancer treatment. Telehealth has been effectively introduced to help deliver treatment to patients suffering from chronic disease; however, there is little consensus on its effectiveness in administering sociobehavioral cancer treatments. Thus, this study determines the benefits of telehealth-based interventions providing emotional and symptom support in improving quality of life (QOL) among cancer patients. Methods:Two researchers conducted comprehensive searches on PubMed, SCOPUS, Medline, PsycINFO, ERIC, Psychology and Behavioral Collection, and Medline Complete. Key search terms included telehealth or telemedicine and QOL and cancer. Articles were included if they assessed a telehealth-delivered intervention for adult cancer patients and provided a QOL assessment. Data were extracted to calculate mean effect sizes for QOL measures on the effectiveness of telehealth relative to usual care (UC) for cancer treatments. Results:Out of 414 articles identified in our initial search, nine articles fit our inclusion criteria. Both telehealth (Hedges g = 0.211, p = 0.016) and standard of care (Hedges g = 0.217, p \u3c 0.001) cancer treatment delivery methods demonstrated small, but statistically significant improvements in QOL measures. However, there were no statistically significant differences in effectiveness between the telehealth interventions and UC (p = 0.76). Conclusions:The results indicate that telehealth interventions are as effective at improving QOL scores in patients undergoing cancer treatment as in-person UC. Further studies should be undertaken on different modalities of telehealth to determine its appropriate and effective use in interventions to improve the QOL for cancer patients undergoing treatment

Uncertainty in multitask learning: joint representations for probabilistic MR-only radiotherapy planning

Multi-task neural network architectures provide a mechanism that jointly integrates information from distinct sources. It is ideal in the context of MR-only radiotherapy planning as it can jointly regress a synthetic CT (synCT) scan and segment organs-at-risk (OAR) from MRI. We propose a probabilistic multi-task network that estimates: 1) intrinsic uncertainty through a heteroscedastic noise model for spatially-adaptive task loss weighting and 2) parameter uncertainty through approximate Bayesian inference. This allows sampling of multiple segmentations and synCTs that share their network representation. We test our model on prostate cancer scans and show that it produces more accurate and consistent synCTs with a better estimation in the variance of the errors, state of the art results in OAR segmentation and a methodology for quality assurance in radiotherapy treatment planning.Comment: Early-accept at MICCAI 2018, 8 pages, 4 figure

Nitric Oxide-Releasing Nanoparticles Prevent Propionibacterium acnes-Induced Inflammation by Both Clearing the Organism and Inhibiting Microbial Stimulation of the Innate Immune Response.

Propionibacterium acnes induction of IL-1 cytokines through the NLRP3 (NLR, nucleotide oligomerization domain-like receptor) inflammasome was recently highlighted as a dominant etiological factor for acne vulgaris. Therefore, therapeutics targeting both the stimulus and the cascade would be ideal. Nitric oxide (NO), a potent biological messenger, has documented broad-spectrum antimicrobial and immunomodulatory properties. To harness these characteristics to target acne, we used an established nanotechnology capable of generating/releasing NO over time (NO-np). P. acnes was found to be highly sensitive to all concentrations of NO-np tested, although human keratinocyte, monocyte, and embryonic zebra fish assays revealed no cytotoxicity. NO-np significantly suppressed IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), IL-8, and IL-6 from human monocytes, and IL-8 and IL-6 from human keratinocytes, respectively. Importantly, silencing of NLRP3 expression by small interfering RNA did not limit NO-np inhibition of IL-1 β secretion from monocytes, and neither TNF-α nor IL-6 secretion, nor inhibition by NO-np was found to be dependent on this pathway. The observed mechanism by which NO-np impacts IL-1β secretion was through inhibition of caspase-1 and IL-1β gene expression. Together, these data suggest that NO-np can effectively prevent P. acnes-induced inflammation by both clearing the organism and inhibiting microbial stimulation of the innate immune response

A Call to Action: Taking the Untenable out of Women Professors’ Pregnancy, Postpartum, and Caregiving Demands

Despite becoming increasingly represented in academic departments, women scholars face a critical lack of support as they navigate demands pertaining to pregnancy, motherhood, and child caregiving. In addition, cultural norms surrounding how faculty and academic leaders discuss and talk about tenure, promotion, and career success have created pressure for women who wish to grow their family and care for their children, leading to questions about whether it is possible for these women to have a family and an academic career. The current paper is a call to action for academia to build structures that support women professors as they navigate the complexities of pregnancy, the postpartum period, and the caregiving demands of their children. We specifically call on those of us in I-O psychology, management, and related departments to lead the way. In making this call, we first present the realistic, moral, and financial cases for why this issue needs to be at the forefront of discussions surrounding success in the academy. We then discuss how in the U.S. and elsewhere, an absence of policies supporting women places two groups of academics—department heads (as the leaders of departments who have discretion outside of formal policies to make work better for women) and other faculty members (as potential allies both in the department and within our professional organizations)—in a critical position to enact support and change. We conclude with our boldest call—to make a cultural shift that shatters the assumption that having a family is not compatible with academic success. Combined, we seek to launch a discussion that leads directly to necessary and overdue changes in how women scholars are supported in academia

Basal parasympathetic deficits in C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion carriers relate to smaller frontoinsula and thalamus volume and lower empathy

Diminished basal parasympathetic nervous system activity is a feature of frontotemporal dementia that relates to left frontoinsula dysfunction and empathy impairment. Individuals with a pathogenic expansion of the hexanucleotide repeat in chromosome 9 open reading frame 72 (C9orf72), the most common genetic cause of frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, provide a unique opportunity to examine whether parasympathetic activity is disrupted in genetic forms of frontotemporal dementia and to investigate when parasympathetic deficits manifest in the pathophysiological cascade. We measured baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a parasympathetic measure of heart rate variability, over two minutes in a sample of 102 participants that included 19 asymptomatic expansion carriers (C9+ asymp), 14 expansion carriers with mild cognitive impairment (C9+ MCI), 16 symptomatic expansion carriers with frontotemporal dementia (C9+ FTD), and 53 expansion-negative healthy controls (C9- HC) who also underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging. In follow-up analyses, we compared baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia in the C9+ FTD group with an independent age-, sex-, and clinical severity-matched group of 26 people with sporadic behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. The Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration-modified Clinical Dementia Rating-Sum of Boxes score was used to quantify behavioral symptom severity, and informant ratings on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index provided measures of participants' current emotional (empathic concern) and cognitive (perspective-taking) empathy. Results indicated that the C9+ FTD group had lower baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia than the C9+ MCI, C9+ asymp, and C9- HC groups, a deficit that was comparable to that of sporadic behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia. Linear regression analyses indicated that lower baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia was associated with worse behavioral symptom severity and lower empathic concern and perspective-taking across the C9orf72 expansion carrier clinical spectrum. Whole-brain voxel-based morphometry analyses in participants with C9orf72 pathogenic expansions found that lower baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia correlated with smaller gray matter volume in the left frontoinsula and bilateral thalamus, key structures that support parasympathetic function, and in the bilateral parietal lobes, occipital lobes, and cerebellum, regions that are also vulnerable in individuals with C9orf72 expansions. This study provides novel evidence that basal parasympathetic functioning is diminished in FTD due to C9orf72 expansions and suggests that baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia may be a potential non-invasive biomarker that is sensitive to behavioral symptoms in the early stages of disease

Reporting Guidelines for Survey Research: An Analysis of Published Guidance and Reporting Practices

Carol Bennett and colleagues review the evidence and find that there is limited guidance and no consensus on the optimal reporting of survey research