Increasing Awareness of the Risks Associated with Juuls in High School Students

The use of Juuls and other e-cigarettes has increased in Vermont high schools over the past year. Many students are not aware of the risks associated with the use of these products and believe that they cause no harm. This project focused on increasing communication between high school students and their healthcare providers to improve dialogue and learn the facts about using these projects.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1434/thumbnail.jp

The political carousel: elite power-sharing, political instability and the allocation of senior government posts in Africa

This research project examines how various political events and factors influence the composition of senior government elites in a range of African states. Using a newly created dataset of African cabinet ministers, this thesis creates a number of metrics to measure elite volatility and ethnic, regional and political representation. These metrics are used to assess leader and regime strategies of elite power-sharing. It then employs a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate how factors such as ethnic demography, regime strength, economic performance, opposition cohesion and popular unrest influence these metrics. Through this process the thesis aims to demonstrate how the distribution of political power within a state can be estimated by allocation and reshuffling of cabinet ministers. This research project contributes a number of key findings. Firstly, most regimes represent the majority relevant subnational groups within the senior government, but that representation is unbalanced with certain groups being overrepresented and others underrepresented. Secondly, these imbalances and variation in which groups are favoured provide information on the distribution of political power. Thirdly, that different political environments lend themselves to different compositions in the senior government and different strategies of elite power-sharing. In the same vein, individual political events which alter the balance of power are accompanied with corresponding changes in senior government which reflect these shifts in the political hierarchy. These findings contribute to the debates on the determinants of African political power distributions, elite designations and processes, formal vs informal institutions and the political survival literature. A broad benefit of this work is to demonstrate the variance in power sharing arrangements across the African continent. Furthermore, this project demonstrates that external events change leader and elite calculations, which in turn changes strategies of power sharing

Ethnic identity, political identity and ethnic conflict: simulating the effect of congruence between the two identities on ethnic violence and conflict

This thesis outlines and presents an alternative hypothetical process to the emergence of ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflicts, rather than being dependent upon pre-existing 'ancient hatreds', are instead the result of a congruence between ethnic and political identity which grants individuals the ability to use ethnicity to identify and eliminate political threats. This hypothesis is formed by the examination of three case studies of ethnic conflict: Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Croatia. This hypothesis is then formalised and tested using an agent based simulation in which agent interactions are dependent upon ethnic and political identity and the congruence between the two. As predicted there was a strong positive correlation between how accurately ethnic identity reflected political identity and the level of ethnically motivated violence in the simulation, although the relationship was not linear. Furthermore the effect of a shift in congruence was found to be roughly comparable to the effect of initialising agents with a moderate level of pre-existing ethnic antagonism

The Political Carousel

"This research project examines how various political events and factors influence the composition of senior government elites in a range of African states. Using a newly created dataset of African cabinet ministers, this thesis creates a number of metrics to measure elite volatility and ethnic, regional and political representation. These metrics are used to assess leader and regime strategies of elite power-sharing. It then employs a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate how factors such as ethnic demography, regime strength, economic performance, opposition cohesion and popular unrest influence these metrics. Through this process the thesis aims to demonstrate how the distribution of political power within a state can be estimated by allocation and reshuffling of cabinet ministers. This research project contributes a number of key findings. Firstly, most regimes represent the majority relevant subnational groups within the senior government, but that representation is unbalanced with certain groups being overrepresented and others underrepresented. Secondly, these imbalances and variation in which groups are favoured provide information on the distribution of political power. Thirdly, that different political environments lend themselves to different compositions in the senior government and different strategies of elite power-sharing. In the same vein, individual political events which alter the balance of power are accompanied with corresponding changes in senior government which reflect these shifts in the political hierarchy. These findings contribute to the debates on the determinants of African political power distributions, elite designations and processes, formal vs informal institutions and the political survival literature. A broad benefit of this work is to demonstrate the variance in power sharing arrangements across the African continent. Furthermore, this project demonstrates that external events change leader and elite calculations, which in turn changes strategies of power sharing.

The 2017 Vermont Opioid Prescribing Rules: Prescriber Attitudes

Introduction. In July of 2017, Vermont enacted new rules on acute opioid pre- scribing to reduce misuse, addiction, and overdose associated with prescription opioids. The new rules include requirements of non-opioid therapy use when possible, querying VPMS, patient education and informed consent, and co-prescription of naloxone. Our study objective was to gain insight into the perspectives of opioid prescribers on the new rules. Methods. The 17-item survey included closed and open-ended questions addressing prescriber perceptions about the new rules as well as demographic information about respondents. The survey was sent to Vermont-based opioid prescribers via email, to multiple healthcare organizations and professional societies, and through personal contacts. Open-ended responses were categorized using paired reviewers and group consensus, using a grounded theory approach. Results. A total of 431 responses were obtained, with MD/DOs accounting for 65%, APRNs- 14%, DDS/DMD- 7%, PAs-13%, and NDs- 1%. Of the respondents, 75% thought that more restrictive opioid prescribing rules were necessary, 74% felt the new rules would have some positive effect on the opioid crisis, but only 48% were in favor of the new rules. Barriers to implementation included co-prescribing naloxone (50% were unsuccessful), justifying exceptions to rules in medical record (46% unsuc- cessful), considering non-pharmacologic therapies (39% unsuccessful), and adhering to prescription limits (31% unsuccessful). Conclusions. Roll-out of the new rules has been criticized for implementation issues, overall reducing favorability among prescribers. Feedback obtained may be utilized by the Vermont Health Department and by other states to improve current models of opioid prescribing.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1264/thumbnail.jp

Using thermal UAV imagery to simulate distributed debris thicknesses and sub-debris melt rates on debris-covered glaciers

Supraglacial debris cover regulates the melt rates of many glaciers in mountainous regions around the world, thereby modifying the availability and quality of downstream water resources. However, the influence of supraglacial debris is often poorly represented within glaciological models, due to the absence of a technique to provide high-precision, spatially continuous measurements of debris thickness. Here, we use high-resolution UAV-derived thermal imagery, in conjunction with local meteorological data, visible UAV imagery and vertically profiled debris temperature time series, to model the spatially distributed debris thickness across a portion of Llaca Glacier in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru. Based on our results, we simulate daily sub-debris melt rates over a 3-month period during 2019. We demonstrate that, by effectively calibrating the radiometric thermal imagery and accounting for temporal and spatial variations in meteorological variables during UAV surveys, thermal UAV data can be used to more precisely represent the highly heterogeneous patterns of debris thickness and sub-debris melt on debris-covered glaciers. Additionally, our results indicate a mean sub-debris melt rate nearly three times greater than the mean melt rate simulated from satellite-derived debris thicknesses, emphasising the importance of acquiring further high-precision debris thickness data for the purposes of investigating glacier-scale melt processes, calibrating regional melt models and improving the accuracy of runoff predictions

Using thermal UAV imagery to model distributed debris thicknesses and sub-debris melt rates on debris-covered glaciers

Supraglacial debris cover regulates the melt rates of many glaciers in mountainous regions around the world, thereby modifying the availability and quality of downstream water resources. However, the influence of supraglacial debris is often poorly represented within glaciological models, due to the absence of a technique to provide high-precision, spatially continuous measurements of debris thickness. Here, we use high-resolution UAV-derived thermal imagery, in conjunction with local meteorological data, visible UAV imagery and vertically profiled debris temperature time series, to model the spatially distributed debris thickness across a portion of Llaca Glacier in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru. Based on our results, we simulate daily sub-debris melt rates over a 3-month period during 2019. We demonstrate that, by effectively calibrating the radiometric thermal imagery and accounting for temporal and spatial variations in meteorological variables during UAV surveys, thermal UAV data can be used to more precisely represent the highly heterogeneous patterns of debris thickness and sub-debris melt on debris-covered glaciers. Additionally, our results indicate a mean sub-debris melt rate nearly three times greater than the mean melt rate simulated from satellite-derived debris thicknesses, emphasising the importance of acquiring further high-precision debris thickness data for the purposes of investigating glacier-scale melt processes, calibrating regional melt models and improving the accuracy of runoff predictions

NEWS AND NOTES 1988, VOL.19, NO.3

https://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/news_and_notes_1988/1001/thumbnail.jp

Inferring Visuomotor Priors for Sensorimotor Learning

Sensorimotor learning has been shown to depend on both prior expectations and sensory evidence in a way that is consistent with Bayesian integration. Thus, prior beliefs play a key role during the learning process, especially when only ambiguous sensory information is available. Here we develop a novel technique to estimate the covariance structure of the prior over visuomotor transformations – the mapping between actual and visual location of the hand – during a learning task. Subjects performed reaching movements under multiple visuomotor transformations in which they received visual feedback of their hand position only at the end of the movement. After experiencing a particular transformation for one reach, subjects have insufficient information to determine the exact transformation, and so their second reach reflects a combination of their prior over visuomotor transformations and the sensory evidence from the first reach. We developed a Bayesian observer model in order to infer the covariance structure of the subjects' prior, which was found to give high probability to parameter settings consistent with visuomotor rotations. Therefore, although the set of visuomotor transformations experienced had little structure, the subjects had a strong tendency to interpret ambiguous sensory evidence as arising from rotation-like transformations. We then exposed the same subjects to a highly-structured set of visuomotor transformations, designed to be very different from the set of visuomotor rotations. During this exposure the prior was found to have changed significantly to have a covariance structure that no longer favored rotation-like transformations. In summary, we have developed a technique which can estimate the full covariance structure of a prior in a sensorimotor task and have shown that the prior over visuomotor transformations favor a rotation-like structure. Moreover, through experience of a novel task structure, participants can appropriately alter the covariance structure of their prior

A Single-Rate Context-Dependent Learning Process Underlies Rapid Adaptation to Familiar Object Dynamics

Motor learning has been extensively studied using dynamic (force-field) perturbations. These induce movement errors that result in adaptive changes to the motor commands. Several state-space models have been developed to explain how trial-by-trial errors drive the progressive adaptation observed in such studies. These models have been applied to adaptation involving novel dynamics, which typically occurs over tens to hundreds of trials, and which appears to be mediated by a dual-rate adaptation process. In contrast, when manipulating objects with familiar dynamics, subjects adapt rapidly within a few trials. Here, we apply state-space models to familiar dynamics, asking whether adaptation is mediated by a single-rate or dual-rate process. Previously, we reported a task in which subjects rotate an object with known dynamics. By presenting the object at different visual orientations, adaptation was shown to be context-specific, with limited generalization to novel orientations. Here we show that a multiple-context state-space model, with a generalization function tuned to visual object orientation, can reproduce the time-course of adaptation and de-adaptation as well as the observed context-dependent behavior. In contrast to the dual-rate process associated with novel dynamics, we show that a single-rate process mediates adaptation to familiar object dynamics. The model predicts that during exposure to the object across multiple orientations, there will be a degree of independence for adaptation and de-adaptation within each context, and that the states associated with all contexts will slowly de-adapt during exposure in one particular context. We confirm these predictions in two new experiments. Results of the current study thus highlight similarities and differences in the processes engaged during exposure to novel versus familiar dynamics. In both cases, adaptation is mediated by multiple context-specific representations. In the case of familiar object dynamics, however, the representations can be engaged based on visual context, and are updated by a single-rate process