Does Athletic Success Influence Persistence at Higher Education Institutions? New Evidence Using Panel Data

This study examines the relationship between athletic success and student persistence toward a degree. We build an updated panel of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I institutions and utilize within-institution variation to identify the effects of athletic success. Using a ranking of all institutions, we find that having more successful men\u27s basketball and football teams has a significant positive effect on first-year retention rates. We also find some evidence that improved basketball rankings increase graduation rates, and that success in the NCAA tournament may have a sizable impact on retention. Although the estimated effects are generally modest in scale, we find rather limited evidence of other institutional factors affecting persistence, suggesting that athletics can be one avenue for institutions of higher education to engage and retain students

Improving clinical skills to support the emotional and psychological well-being of patients with end-stage renal disease : a qualitative evaluation of two interventions

BACKGROUND Many patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) need and want improved emotional and psychological support. Explicit attention to patients' emotional issues during consultations can help, yet renal consultants rarely address emotional problems. This qualitative study aimed to evaluate whether two different low-cost interventions could individually enable consultants to talk with patients about their emotional concerns during routine outpatient consultations. METHOD One intervention involved patients using a Patient Issues Sheet to identify two to three issues they would like to talk about in their consultation and the second involved consultants asking patients a direct question about their emotional feelings. Consultants were trained to handle any emotional issues raised. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five consultants and 36 ESRD patients from two UK renal units. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the constant comparative method. RESULTS Although consultants and patients tended to use the two interventions in different ways, they expressed generally positive views about how helpful the interventions were in promoting discussion of emotional issues. Consultants appreciated the training for facilitating empathetic handling of patients' emotional disclosures and containment of discussion. Most patients who raised emotional concerns were satisfied with their consultant's responses, while others were dissuaded from more explicit discussion by their consultant's concentration on physical considerations. CONCLUSIONS These qualitative study findings suggest that both interventions are feasible and acceptable and have the potential to help consultants improve emotional and psychological patient care, providing cognitive and behavioural tools to enable discussion of emotional issues during routine outpatient consultations

Project VALHALLA

Project VALHALLA (Vertical Air Lifted High Altitude Light Launch Apparatus) is a high altitude launch platform with the objective of providing a cost efficient option for collegiate rocket organizations to perform high altitude research. This project primarily consists of a platform that will be lifted to 100,000 feet using several clusters of high altitude balloons that will be inflated using Helium. From 100,000 feet, the rocket will be launched and the platform will then descend to the ground by retrieving the helium and absorbing it back into storage tanks while pressurizing it. Currently, the project is on phase two which is prototyping and testing of various systems prior to implementing those systems in a Mk.0 build. This involves using simulation programs such as Ansys to test how air will flow around the structure and visualize the structural strains on the platform. This phase is expected to last through the 2019-2020 academic year and will allow the team to begin building the Mk.0 system in Fall 2020

Star Formation and AGN Activity in Galaxy Clusters from z=1−2z=1-2: a Multi-wavelength Analysis Featuring HerschelHerschel/PACS

We present a detailed, multi-wavelength study of star formation (SF) and AGN activity in 11 near-infrared (IR) selected, spectroscopically confirmed, massive ($\gtrsim10^{14}\,\rm{M_{\odot}}$) galaxy clusters at $1<z<1.75$. Using new, deep $Herschel$/PACS imaging, we characterize the optical to far-IR spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for IR-luminous cluster galaxies, finding that they can, on average, be well described by field galaxy templates. Identification and decomposition of AGN through SED fittings allows us to include the contribution to cluster SF from AGN host galaxies. We quantify the star-forming fraction, dust-obscured SF rates (SFRs), and specific-SFRs for cluster galaxies as a function of cluster-centric radius and redshift. In good agreement with previous studies, we find that SF in cluster galaxies at $z\gtrsim1.4$ is largely consistent with field galaxies at similar epochs, indicating an era before significant quenching in the cluster cores ($r<0.5\,$Mpc). This is followed by a transition to lower SF activity as environmental quenching dominates by $z\sim1$. Enhanced SFRs are found in lower mass ($10.1< \log \rm{M_{\star}}/\rm{M_{\odot}}<10.8$) cluster galaxies. We find significant variation in SF from cluster-to-cluster within our uniformly selected sample, indicating that caution should be taken when evaluating individual clusters. We examine AGN in clusters from $z=0.5-2$, finding an excess AGN fraction at $z\gtrsim1$, suggesting environmental triggering of AGN during this epoch. We argue that our results $-$ a transition from field-like to quenched SF, enhanced SF in lower mass galaxies in the cluster cores, and excess AGN $-$ are consistent with a co-evolution between SF and AGN in clusters and an increased merger rate in massive haloes at high redshift.Comment: 26 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables with appendix, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Online Heart Rate Prediction using Acceleration from a Wrist Worn Wearable

In this paper we study the prediction of heart rate from acceleration using a wrist worn wearable. Although existing photoplethysmography (PPG) heart rate sensors provide reliable measurements, they use considerably more energy than accelerometers and have a major impact on battery life of wearable devices. By using energy-efficient accelerometers to predict heart rate, significant energy savings can be made. Further, we are interested in understanding patient recovery after a heart rate intervention, where we expect a variation in heart rate over time. Therefore, we propose an online approach to tackle the concept as time passes. We evaluate the methods on approximately 4 weeks of free living data from three patients over a number of months. We show that our approach can achieve good predictive performance (e.g., 2.89 Mean Absolute Error) while using the PPG heart rate sensor infrequently (e.g., 20.25% of the samples).Comment: MLMH 2018: 2018 KDD Workshop on Machine Learning for Medicine and Healthcar

Vesta:A Digital Health Analytics Platform for a Smart Home in a Box

© 2020 This paper presents Vesta, a digital health platform composed of a smart home in a box for data collection and a machine learning based analytic system for deriving health indicators using activity recognition, sleep analysis and indoor localization. This system has been deployed in the homes of 40 patients undergoing a heart valve intervention in the United Kingdom (UK) as part of the EurValve project, measuring patients health and well-being before and after their operation. In this work a cohort of 20 patients are analyzed, and 2 patients are analyzed in detail as example case studies. A quantitative evaluation of the platform is provided using patient collected data, as well as a comparison using standardized Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) which are commonly used in hospitals, and a custom survey. It is shown how the ubiquitous in-home Vesta platform can increase clinical confidence in self-reported patient feedback. Demonstrating its suitability for digital health studies, Vesta provides deeper insight into the health, well-being and recovery of patients within their home

Fibre Bundles and Generalised Dimensional Reduction

We study some geometrical and topological aspects of the generalised dimensional reduction of supergravities in D=11 and D=10 dimensions, which give rise to massive theories in lower dimensions. In these reductions, a global symmetry is used in order to allow some of the fields to have a non-trivial dependence on the compactifying coordinates. Global consistency in the internal space imposes topological restrictions on the parameters of the compactification as well as the structure of the space itself. Examples that we consider include the generalised reduction of the type IIA and type IIB theories on a circle, and also the massive ten-dimensional theory obtained by the generalised reduction of D=11 supergravity.Comment: 23 pages, Late