Predictability Bounds of Electronic Health Records

The ability to intervene in disease progression given a person’s disease history has the potential to solve one of society’s most pressing issues: advancing health care delivery and reducing its cost. Controlling disease progression is inherently associated with the ability to predict possible future diseases given a patient’s medical history. We invoke an information-theoretic methodology to quantify the level of predictability inherent in disease histories of a large electronic health records dataset with over half a million patients. In our analysis, we progress from zeroth order through temporal informed statistics, both from an individual patient’s standpoint and also considering the collective effects. Our findings confirm our intuition that knowledge of common disease progressions results in higher predictability bounds than treating disease histories independently. We complement this result by showing the point at which the temporal dependence structure vanishes with increasing orders of the time-correlated statistic. Surprisingly, we also show that shuffling individual disease histories only marginally degrades the predictability bounds. This apparent contradiction with respect to the importance of time-ordered information is indicative of the complexities involved in capturing the health-care process and the difficulties associated with utilising this information in universal prediction algorithms.General Electric CompanyAT&T FoundationNational Science Foundation (U.S.)American Society for Engineering Education. National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate FellowshipAudi Volkswage

Opportunities for industrial CO2 capture and utilization in the US

Carbon dioxide capture from flue gases has largely failed to gain traction due to their prohibitively high cost. One strategy to lower capture costs is to target capture from emissions with higher CO2 concentration. This presentation focuses specifically on a sub-section of industrial CO2 emissions, of which there are no carbon-free routes for the formation of products such as cement, glass, iron and other metals. Although these emissions do not represent the majority, unlike the electricity and transportation sectors, they are not replaceable with renewables or bio-energy routes, and in fact, their scale matches well with CO2 utilization opportunities. A low-cost pathway, including separation, compression and transportation to currently available utilization opportunities has been identified. In particular, our cost model corrects for differences in exhaust composition, flow rate, and geo-specific utilization demand. A regional case-study for the US state of Pennsylvania reveals steel and cement manufacturing as the least cost options. Further, we find that transportation via trucks is generally the low-cost alternative compared to pipeline transport for small volumes on the order of 100 kt CO2/a. These results are presented in the context of other complexities such as the relative feasibility of extracting CO2 process emissions from combustion emissions, theoretical maximum commodity outputs by region, and competitive-based commodity trading (regional and international) inspired by localized CCUS efforts

Host cell and ultraviolet reactivation of ultraviolet-irradiated mycoplasmaviruses.

The mycoplasma Acholeplasma laidlawii was shown to have mechanisms for both host cell and ultraviolet (UV) reactivation of UV-irradiated mycoplasmaviruses. Host cell reactivation was examined by comparing the survival abilities of UV-irradiated double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid mycoplasmavirus plated on both untreated and on acriflavine-treated cells. Acriflavine treatment inhibited cell exision repair. Decreased survival on the acriflavine-treated cells demonstrated host cell reactivation. UV reactivation was studied by comparing the survival of UV-irradiated virus plated on untreated cells with its survival on cells that received a small UV dose before plating. The UV-irradiated cells gave increased virus survival, showing UV reactivation. Similar experiments with a single-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid mycoplasmavirus showed that this virus could be UV reactivated, but not host cell reactivated

Antecedents of Job Satisfaction among Intimate Partner Violence Shelter Staff: Coworker Relational Maintenance Strategies, Communication Satisfaction, Burnout and Organizational Commitment

poster abstractThis study sought to extend prior research by examining the prevalence of relational maintenance strategies between coworkers and the impact of such strategies on work related attitude of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, communication satisfaction, and burnout with work. The targeted samples for this research were the employees of a battered women’s shelter located in Indianapolis, Indiana. A questionnaire was constructed that included established scales in order to measure independent and dependent variables. The questionnaires were distributed among the employees and 47.82% agreed to participate in this study. Regression analyses were conducted to analyze the collected data. The findings indicated the importance of assurances and conflict management among staffs in mitigating their job stresses and increasing their personal accomplishment, communication satisfaction, organizational commitment and job satisfaction

Ultrafast holography and transient-absorption spectroscopy in charge-transfer polymers

Charge-transfer polymers are a new class of nonlinear optical materials which can be used for generating femtosecond holographic gratings. Using semiconducting polymers sensitized with varying concentrations of C{sub 60}, holographic gratings were recorded by individual ultrafast laser pulses; the diffraction efficiency and time decay of the gratings were measured using non-degenerate four-wave mixing. Using a figure of merit for dynamic data processing, the temporal diffraction efficiency, this new class of materials exhibits between two and 12 orders of magnitude higher response than previous reports. The charge transfer range at polymer/C{sub 60} interfaces was further studied using transient absorption spectroscopy. The fact that charge-transfer occurs in the picosecond-time scale in bilayer structures (thickness 200 {angstrom}) implies that diffusion of localized excitations to the interface is not the dominant mechanism; the charge transfer range is a significant fraction of the film thickness. From analysis of the excited state decay curves, we estimate the charge transfer range to be 80 {angstrom} and interpret that range as resulting from quantum delocalization of the photoexcitations

Sistema agroecológico sustentable en el cinturón verde sur de Córdoba

Trabajo Final Integrador (Área de Consolidación Agroecología y Desarrollo Territorial) -- UNC- Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias, 2017El Trabajo Académico Integrador del Área de Consolidación Agroecología y Desarrollo Territorial tiene como objetivo el análisis de un sistema de producción agroecológico sustentable, ubicado en el cinturón verde sur de Córdoba, en el cual se proponen alternativas agroecológicas de producción y de comercialización para mejorar el sistema agroecológico, además de propuestas de políticas para el fortalecimiento de la agricultura familiar y el desarrollo territorial. Se realizó la observación de los métodos y técnicas de producción de la unidad productiva agroecológica a través de visitas al predio y a la Feria Agroecológica de Córdoba en conjunto con entrevistas a los productores. Se identificaron problemas en el sistema productivo para los cuales se elaboraron propuestas de intervención, las mismas fueron planteadas y discutidas con los productores. La fuerte influencia del contexto en el que se desempeña la unidad productivaes muy importante, ya que mediante la organización de productores, la participación en la feria, la relación con cooperativas, institucionespúblicas y privadas tales como la Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias (FCA), Escuela de gastronomía Azafrán, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA),Universidad Libre del Ambiente(ULA), entre otros, así a través del entramado de redes que se forma entre estos actores sociales, se logra el desarrollo regional

La agricultura familiar, factor clave en el fortalecimiento del proyecto turístico de la comunidad Mbyá-Guaraní Jasy Porá

El desarrollo del Turismo Comunitario, en tanto actividad complementaria de las prácticas productivas tradicionales, ha permitido la diversificación de las economías locales de las comunidades indígenas de Argentina, en un contexto donde la expansión de la agroindustria perjudica el acceso a los recursos necesarios para su subsistencia. La Comunidad Mbya-Guaraní Jasy Porá (Iguazú, Misiones) desarrolla su propuesta turística desde el año 2007. Desde entonces, este proyecto se ha fortalecido, especialmente durante el transcurso del 2020, a partir de la creación de la Asociación Mbyá en Turismo, que busca potenciar las redes de conexión entre las comunidades que la conforman reforzando su autogestión. Tomando en consideración los avances logrados por la comunidad en un contexto de crisis mundial, el objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar aquellos factores que posibilitaron el fortalecimiento de su proyecto turístico. Al respecto, los resultados evidencian que uno de los factores determinantes fue el sustento que la agricultura familiar les provee, ya que la seguridad del acceso a alimentos generados bajo los principios de la Soberanía Alimentaria, les permitió centrar su tiempo en reorganizar su propuesta turística. No obstante, se señala la relevancia del territorio como una variable fundamental para el desarrollo endógeno de sus proyectos comunitarios.Facultad de Ciencias Económica

Controlled Stark shifts in Er3+^{3+}-doped crystalline and amorphous waveguides for quantum state storage

We present measurements of the linear Stark effect on the $^{4}$I$_{15/2} \to$ $^{4}$I$_{13/2}$ transition in an Er$^{3+}$-doped proton-exchanged LiNbO$_{3}$ crystalline waveguide and an Er$^{3+}$-doped silicate fiber. The measurements were made using spectral hole burning techniques at temperatures below 4 K. We measured an effective Stark coefficient $(\Delta\mu_{e}\chi)/(h)=25\pm1$kHz/Vcm$^{-1}$ in the crystalline waveguide and $(\bar{\Delta\mu_{e}}\chi)/(h)=15\pm1$kHz/Vcm$^{-1}$ in the silicate fiber. These results confirm the potential of Erbium doped waveguides for quantum state storage based on controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures v2. typo in formula correcte

Investigations of Optical Coherence Properties in an Erbium-doped Silicate Fiber for Quantum State Storage

We studied optical coherence properties of the 1.53 $\mu$m telecommunication transition in an Er$^{3+}$-doped silicate optical fiber through spectral holeburning and photon echoes. We find decoherence times of up to 3.8 $\mu$s at a magnetic field of 2.2 Tesla and a temperature of 150 mK. A strong magnetic-field dependent optical dephasing was observed and is believed to arise from an interaction between the electronic Er$^{3+}$ spin and the magnetic moment of tunneling modes in the glass. Furthermore, we observed fine-structure in the Erbium holeburning spectrum originating from superhyperfine interaction with $^{27}$Al host nuclei. Our results show that Er$^{3+}$-doped silicate fibers are promising material candidates for quantum state storage