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; and 2) to understand crash prone locations and major contributing factors through historical crash data of several years. 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

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

A Hamblin semantics for evidentials

The evidential contribution of sentences containing evidentials is typically analyzed as belonging to a separate level of illocutionary meaning (e.g. a sincerity condition, [2]) or as a presupposition (e.g., [6, 7]). In this talk, I discuss the evidential system of Cheyenne, an Algonquian language spoken in Montana. Based primarily on data collected in the field, I argue for a compositional analysis of evidentials in Cheyenne where the evidential contribution is truth-conditional, but not part of the proposition expressed. This analysis separates the evidential and propositional contributions of sentences with evidentials without appealing to a separate level of illocutionary meaning while explaining the informativeness of the evidential contribution. The Data: A hallmark of ‘illocutionary ’ evidentials cross-linguistically is that the reportative doesn’t commit the speaker to the truth, falsity, or possibility of the evidential’s scope [2, 3, 1]. Thus, the speaker can use the reportative evidential to report information she believes to be false. This pattern is exemplified in (1a), adapted from a Quechua example discussed in [2]. Such examples are infelicitous with other evidentials (e.g., direct, conjectural) as well as reportative evidentials in some languages (‘propositional ’ evidentials, e.g. St’át’imcets, [7]). (1) a. É-háéána-s˙ests

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