Margaret Spitz, MD, Oral History Interview, November 01, 2016

Major Topics Covered: Conceptualizing “integrative epidemiology” Women at MD Anderson Training and education for a new generation of epidemiologistshttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewsessions/1189/thumbnail.jp

Margaret Spitz, MD, Oral History Interview, October 13, 2016

Major Topics Covered: Personal background, education, emigration from South Africa History of the Division of Cancer Prevention History of the Department of Epidemiology History of the field of Epidemiology Epidemiology research: predictive models, lung cancerhttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewsessions/1188/thumbnail.jp

State-civil society relations in Syria : EU good governance assistance in an authoritarian state

The EU's good governance policy considers civil society an actor promoting development as well as political accountability of governments, thus contributing to the democratisation of political systems. This study argues that the EU's policy is based on questionable assumptions with respect to the nature of civil society, as well as the willingness of state and civil society to cooperate. Syria, as an extreme case of authoritarianism, is taken as an example. The connotation attached by the EU to civil society in Syria is normative and overlooks its complexity and the character of its relations with the state. Within the context of intergovernmental and multilateral cooperation, the Syrian regime could select and control activities in the domain of good governance, including possible involvement in its implementation by Syrian civil society organisations, which were not perceived as a threat to the regime's power. In fact, this support may have even contributed to the resilience of this authoritarian regimeThe Institutions of Politics; Design, Workings, and implications ( do not use, ended 1-1-2020

Experimenting with Cigarettes and Physical Activity Among Mexican Origin Youth: A Cross Sectional Analysis of the Interdependent Associations Among Sensation Seeking, Acculturation, and Gender

Sensation seeking tendencies tend to manifest during adolescence and are associated with both health-compromising behaviors and health-enhancing behaviors. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between sensation seeking and physical activity, a health-enhancing behavior, and between sensation seeking and experimenting with cigarettes, a health compromising-behavior, among a cohort of Mexican origin adolescents residing in the United States with different levels of acculturation. Methods: In 2009, 1,154 Mexican origin youth (50.5% girls, mean age 14.3 years (SD = 1.04)) provided data on smoking behavior, physical activity, linguistic acculturation, and sensation seeking. We conducted Pearson's chi(2) tests to examine the associations between categorical demographic characteristics (i.e. gender, age, country of birth and parental educational attainment) and both cigarette experimentation and physical activity and Student's t-tests to examine mean differences on the continuous variables (i.e. sensation seeking subscale) by the behaviors. We examined mean differences in the demographic characteristics, acculturation, and both behaviors for each of the sensation seeking subscales using analysis of variance (ANOVA). To examine relationships between the sensation seeking subscales, gender, and both behaviors, at different levels of acculturation we completed unconditional logistic regression analyses stratified by level of acculturation. Results: Overall, 23.3% had experimented with cigarettes and 29.0% reported being physically active for at least 60 minutes/day on at least 5 days/week. Experimenting with cigarettes and being physically active were more prevalent among boys than girls. Among girls, higher levels of sensation seeking tendencies were associated with higher levels of acculturation and experimentation with cigarettes, but not with physical activity. Among boys, higher levels of sensation seeking tendencies were associated with higher levels of acculturation, experimenting with cigarettes and being physically active. Conclusions: Our results suggest that interventions designed to prevent smoking among Mexican origin youth may need to address social aspects associated with acculturation, paying close attention to gendered manifestations of sensation seeking.National Cancer Institute CA105203, CA126988Caroline W. Law Fund for Cancer PreventionDan Duncan Family Institute for Cancer Prevention and Risk AssessmentCenter for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research in Underserved Population

QUALITY OF LIFE AND EPIDEMIOLOGICAL PROFILE OF PATIENTS UNDERGOING BOTULINUM TOXIN TREATMENT

The botulinum toxin (BTX) is a therapeutic modality used in diverse range of diseases in neurology such as dystonia, tics and tremors and spasticity. The literature about the relation between the use of BTX and its impact in quality of life scales are conflicting, our study proposes to aid answering this question. We selected 110 patients between April 2014 and January 2015, from two tertiary hospitals (movement disorder outpatient clinic), which have been evaluated for age, gender, type of BTX applied, technic of application, adverse events, clinical syndrome and etiology. To evaluate quality of life we used the SF-36® scale. The most prevalent clinical syndromes were dystonia, spasticity and daytime bruxism. We applied the scale in 55 patients pre and post treatment to trace a clinical and epidemiological profile of patients treated with botulinum toxin, evaluating its impact on quality of life. Main etiologies were: idiopathic, stroke and peripheral facial palsy. SF-36® scale applied to 55 patients showed that 35 of them improved, with higher impact upon the mental health, vitality, physical functioning and body pain subsections. Incidence of adverse events (21,8%) was similar to the literature. Botulinum toxin application was associated with higher scores on SF-36®, therefore representing a good therapeutic option dystonia and spasticity.

Severe Constraints on New Physics Explanations of the MiniBooNE Excess

The MiniBooNE experiment has recently reported an anomalous 4.5$\sigma$ excess of electron-like events consistent with $\nu_e$ appearance from a $\nu_\mu$ beam at short-baseline. Given the lack of corresponding $\nu_\mu$ disappearance observations, required in the case of oscillations involving a sterile flavor, there is strong motivation for alternative explanations of this anomaly. We consider the possibility that the observed electron-like signal may actually be due to hypothetical new particles,which do not involve new sources of neutrino production or oscillations. We find that the electron-like event energy and angular distributions in the full MiniBooNE data-set, including neutrino mode, antineutrino mode, and beam dump mode, severely limit, and in some cases rule out, new physics scenarios as an explanation for the observed neutrino and antineutrino mode excesses. Specifically, scenarios in which the new particle decays (visibly or semi-visibly) or scatters elastically in the detector are strongly disfavored. Using generic kinematic arguments, this paper extends the existing MiniBooNE results and interpretations to exhaustively constrain previously unconsidered new physics signatures and emphasizes the power of the MiniBooNE beam dump search to further constrain models for the excess.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Position Paper: Collaborative Gamification Design for Scientific Software

Gamification, a design trend that is extensively applied to education and citizen science, is regarded as a means to improve scientific software usability. However, development and use of scientific software have special needs and characteristics that might present design challenges. Our position is that gamifi-cation and usability design for scientific software should be facilitated by an open, collaborative design process supported by conversational media. We believe this approach is compatible with qualities often attributed to computational science community re-garding openness and collaboration between members of varied professional backgrounds. Through an illustrative scenario, we ex-emplify the use of conversational media for collaborative design. We expect the synergy between collaborators to result in better us-ability, greater user acceptance, and adequacy to requirements, obtaining optimal design solutions in a sustainable way

The Lens of the Lab: Design Challenges in Scientific Software

Playful and gameful design could improve the quality of scientific software. However, literature about gamification methods for that particular type of software is presently scarce. As an effort to fill that gap, this paper introduces a set of design challenges and opportunities that should be informative to professionals approaching the area. This research is based on literature review on scientific software development, also contemplating material on the gamification of science, software, and work. From the gathered information, we identify, map, and discuss key aspects of development and use of professional scientific software. Those findings are, then, formatted as a Design Lens—a set of questions designers should ask themselves to gain insight, from a particular perspective, on their work. We propose the Lens of the Lab as a design lens to support designers working in collaboration with scientists and software engineers in professional scientific software initiatives