The symptomatic treatment of polycythemia vera

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Idiopathic Bilateral Internal Jugular Vein Thrombosis Diagnosed by Point-of-Care Ultrasound

Internal jugular vein (IJV) thrombosis is an unusual condition, especially when it develops bilaterally. This is a case of bilateral IJV thrombosis in a 77-year old female who presented to the emergency department with neck and arm swelling after discontinuing apixaban and undergoing an oropharyngeal procedure. The diagnosis of bilateral IJV thrombosis was made with the use of point-of-care ultrasound to evaluate bilateral jugular vein distention and bilateral upper extremity pitting edema found on her physical examination

Topology optimization of freeform large-area metasurfaces

We demonstrate optimization of optical metasurfaces over $10^5$--$10^6$ degrees of freedom in two and three dimensions, 100--1000+ wavelengths ($\lambda$) in diameter, with 100+ parameters per $\lambda^2$. In particular, we show how topology optimization, with one degree of freedom per high-resolution "pixel," can be extended to large areas with the help of a locally periodic approximation that was previously only used for a few parameters per $\lambda^2$. In this way, we can computationally discover completely unexpected metasurface designs for challenging multi-frequency, multi-angle problems, including designs for fully coupled multi-layer structures with arbitrary per-layer patterns. Unlike typical metasurface designs based on subwavelength unit cells, our approach can discover both sub- and supra-wavelength patterns and can obtain both the near and far fields

Mapping the policy process in Nigeria

How research contributes to the policy process in developing countries in general, and in Nigeria more specifically, is not well understood. Yet such understanding is a critical part of doing effective policy research. This has become especially critical for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which has set up a country office for policy research in Nigeria. A key challenge for IFPRI, and other research organizations in the country, is how to better integrate research results into policy and communicate research results to Nigerian policymakers. To gain some useful insights into how research does, or does not, influence policy in Nigeria, we examined a case involving the process leading up to the adoption in 2006 of Nigeria’s National Fertilizer Policy. Rather than focusing on how research influences policy in general, examining a particular policy allowed us to trace the actual policy process that took place, the actors involved, and the types of links and interactions between them. A diverse group of stakeholders (government, donors, the research community, farmer organizations, and the private sector) undoubtedly debated the content of the fertilizer policy. Thus, its successful formulation and adoption offered a useful opportunity to examine how it came about in spite of competing vested interests (both for and against it) and what role, if any, research-based information played in developing it. The policy covered some highly contentious political issues, most prominently the issue of privatization of the fertilizer sector in place of the large-scale and long-standing subsidy program. How the actors engaged and appeased people with vested interests who would normally oppose the policy, and the degree to which research-based information played a role in policy development, is of interest to IFPRI and others engaged in policy research. To study the policy process that led to the formulation and adoption of the National Fertilizer Policy, we used a network-mapping tool, Net-Map. Drawing on social network approaches, the tool is particularly suitable since it can help highlight the actors and formal and informal interactions involved in the policy process, as well as examine the flows of information from researchers to help determine the pathways of research-based information. In support of the Net-Map method, we also undertook a content analysis of published and grey literature on fertilizer policies in Nigeria in the years prior to the passing of the fertilizer bill. This provided a context for the knowledge-based and policy discussions, who was involved in them, and who funded or drove them.Development strategies, Fertilizer, Net-Map, policy processes, Social network analysis,

Behavior Associated with Pair Formation in the Banded Shrimp Stenopus hispidus (Olivier)

Field observations of Stenopus hispidus, an incidental cleaning shrimp, indicate that it is normally found on the reef in male-female pairs. Pairs were taken to the laboratory, where they were separated and the individuals subsequently repaired with equally sized "stranger" individuals of both the same and opposite sexes. Stranger shrimps of the same sex were highly aggressive and usually fought to the death. Among shrimp in aquaria there appeared to be no submissive or appeasement behavior. Stranger shrimps of the opposite sex tended to show initial fighting, followed by courtship and the formation of a breeding pair. Experiments were done to determine the major factors involved in mate recognition and hence pair formation. Pairs of shrimp allowed only chemical contact prior to being placed together showed quantitatively more fighting and more courtship than pairs allowed no sensory contact. Pairs of shrimp allowed only visual contact prior to being placed together showed quantitatively less courtship and equal fighting than pairs allowed no sensory contact. The supplement of controlled amounts of tactile contact to vision and olfaction resulted in quantitatively less fighting than occurred in control situations. Transfer to new surroundings seemed to increase the over-all level of aggression. The establishment of pairs and the behavior to other species of shrimps indicate that Stenopus is capable of species as well as individual recognition

Prosecutorial Ethics and Wrongful Convictions

Transcript of a presentation given during the 2017 Symposium by Victor S. (Torry) Johnson former District Attorney General for Davidson County and current visiting Professor of Law at Belmont University College of Law. Today, we are going to talk about lessons from wrongful convictions. We are going to look at the historical contexts of wrongful convictions. We will examine some of the main factors that seem to exist in some of the important cases that illustrate those wrongful convictions. We will also talk about the possible causes and look at the role that lawyers play, regardless of which side of the case you are on. I will also touch on some advice for how you, as an attorney, might better be able to identify the warning signs, and prevent a wrongful conviction altogether

Computational Efficiency Analysis of Customer Churn Prediction Using Spark and Caret Random Forest Classifier

Today’s businesses are buying into technological advancement for productivity, profit maximization and better service delivery. Meanwhile technology as also brought about data coming in at an alarming rate in which businesses need to re-strategize how these data are being handled for them to retain ability to turn them to value. Traditional data mining techniques has proofed beyond doubt that data can be harnessed and turn into value for business growth. But the era of large scale data is posing a challenge of computational efficiency to this traditional approach. This paper therefore address this issue by under-studying a big data analytics tool-Spark with a data mining technique Caret. A churn Telecom dataset was used to analyse both the computational and performance metrics of the two approaches using their Random Forest (RF) classifier. The Classifier was trained with same the train set partitioning and tuning parameters. The result shows that Spark-RF is computational efficient with execution time of 50.25 secs compared to Caret-RF of 847.20 secs. Customer churning rate could be minimized if proper management attention and policy is paid to tenure (ShortTenure), Contract, InternetService and PaymentMethod as the variable importance plot and churn rate count mechanism confirm that. The Classifier accuracy was approximately 80% for both implementation. Keywords: Spark, Caret, Random Forest, Churn, accurac