The Quality of Death: Ranking End-of-Life Care Across the World

As the proportion of the world's population grows disproportionately older, the need for end-of-life services will only increase. This paper ranks 40 countries in terms of the quality and availability of end-of-life care. For this paper, the author also conducted in-depth interviews with over 20 experts on the subject from across the world -- including palliative care specialists, physicians, healthcare economists and sociologists -- and reviewed existing research on the topic

A tool-mediated cognitive apprenticeship approach for a computer engineering course

Teaching database engineers involves a variety of learning activities. A strong focus is on practical problems that go beyond the acquisition of knowledge. Skills and experience are equally important. We propose a virtual apprenticeship model for the knowledge- and skillsoriented Web-based education of database students. We adapt the classical cognitive apprenticeship theory to the Web context utilising scaffolding and activity theory. The choice of educational media and the forms of student interaction with the media are central success criteria

Safety Performance Evaluation for Elder Pedestrians

According to the latest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s report, there were 5,977 pedestrians killed in traffic crashes, which accounted for 16% of all traffic fatalities in 2017. Florida has much higher pedestrian fatalities rate at 70% higher than the national average. By 2020, approximately 40.8% of Florida residents will be reaching above 50 years of age. More than 15.5 million 65+ Americans live in areas where public transportation is inadequate or nonexistent. These non-driving adults must then either walk or use another nonmotorized mode of transportation. Elder adults are more vulnerable as pedestrians, and safety issues have not been well addressed for them. Even though the 65+ population accounts for 13.7% of overall population in the US, about 18% percent of all fatalities people were 65+. Not many researches or countermeasures have been researched and developed for this age group. This group may suffer age-related physical changes such as vision impairments, hearing impairments, chronic conditions, cognition changes, less muscle efficiency, etc., which place them at a higher risk for injury or death. The objectives for this research project are to: 1) determine the safety performance of elder adults as pedestrians; 2) understand crash prone locations and major contributing factors through historical crash data; 3) develop measurements by using conflict studies in the field. The results from this study will provide traffic agencies with a better understanding of the crash occurrences, help in incident management, and improve safety and reduce the number of crashes and crash severity levels. Keywords: Elderly Pedestrian, Crash Study, Conflict Study, Countermeasures, Safety Performanc

Evaluation of linkage disequilibrium and its effect on non-parametric multipoint linkage analysis using two high density single-nucleotide polymorphism mapping panels

Genotype data from the Illumina Linkage III SNP panel (n = 4,720 SNPs) and the Affymetrix 10 k mapping array (n = 11,120 SNPs) were used to test the effects of linkage disequilibrium (LD) between SNPs in a linkage analysis in the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism pedigree collection (143 pedigrees; 1,614 individuals). The average r(2 )between adjacent markers across the genetic map was 0.099 ± 0.003 in the Illumina III panel and 0.17 ± 0.003 in the Affymetrix 10 k array. In order to determine the effect of LD between marker loci in a nonparametric multipoint linkage analysis, markers in strong LD with another marker (r(2 )> 0.40) were removed (n = 471 loci in the Illumina panel; n = 1,804 loci in the Affymetrix panel) and the linkage analysis results were compared to the results using the entire marker sets. In all analyses using the ALDX1 phenotype, 8 linkage regions on 5 chromosomes (2, 7, 10, 11, X) were detected (peak markers p < 0.01), and the Illumina panel detected an additional region on chromosome 6. Analysis of the same pedigree set and ALDX1 phenotype using short tandem repeat markers (STRs) resulted in 3 linkage regions on 3 chromosomes (peak markers p < 0.01). These results suggest that in this pedigree set, LD between loci with spacing similar to the SNP panels tested may not significantly affect the overall detection of linkage regions in a genome scan. Moreover, since the data quality and information content are greatly improved in the SNP panels over STR genotyping methods, new linkage regions may be identified due to higher information content and data quality in a dense SNP linkage panel

Spatial Analysis and Humanities Data: A Case Study from the Grand Tour Travelers Project

A Case Study describing research on Sicilian travel in the 18th century from the Grand Tour Travelers Projec

Imported Exotica and Mortuary Ritual at Perati in Late Helladic IIIC East Attica

The first page of an article on mortuary ritual at a LH IIIC cemetery in Attic

Community Reintegration of the Severely Wounded Veteran: A Mixed Methods Study.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Microplastics Recovered from Galveston Bay Oysters: Trends in Recorded Measurements

Filter feeders in marine ecosystems are vulnerable to pollutants on a microscopic level which has presented a growing concern for the unknown health risks, as species exposed to ubiquitous plastic particulate are commonly sold for human consumption. The parameters of such species’ intake of microscopic plastic debris has been the subject of research due to these potential risks. For the purposes of this study, the biomass of an oyster was hypothesized to show a positive linear relationship with the size of plastic debris found in its tissue. The plastics in this instance were microplastics, measuring between 0.1µm and 5mm. This study presents the analysis of size distributions of microplastics recovered from chemically digested oyster tissues in comparison to the recorded tissue weight of oysters that fell within the same size range of oysters commonly available for consumption. The null hypothesis would then indicate that the biomass of the market-sized oysters cannot be used to predict the size of the microplastics they intake. To test the hypothesis, isolated tissues from Crassostrea virginica collected from oyster reefs in the sub-bays of the greater Galveston Bay estuary underwent KOH digestion protocol to extract identifiable microplastics from bivalve tissues. The image analysis of recovered microplastic data helped to consolidate the range in size variability of the microplastic content against the range in oyster tissue weight. Using regression to analyze microplastic size (mean, median, minimum, and maximum) by oyster tissue mass, no definitive correlation was found between the response and predictor variables. These findings supported the null hypothesis, suggesting that the biomass of the market-sized oysters cannot be used to predict the size of the microplastics they retain in their tissues

Multi-scalar Spatial Analysis and Humanities Data: A Case Study from the Grand Tour Travelers Project

A case study from the Grand Tour project that illustrates how combining computer-driven data analysis and more traditional humanistic inquiry can aid research