CHBE 9130A - Research Methods in Community and Behavioral Health

General Course Description: This course introduces students to research methods in health science. Development and presentation of practicum and research proposals will be the focus of the course. Additional emphasis will be placed on writing skills that will contribute to research projects and grant applications

PUBH 8136 01P - Theoretical Perspectives of the Social and Behavioral Sciences in Public Health

This course will explore social and behavioral science theories, models, and approaches that inform public health research and practice, as well as their philosophical foundations. With emphasis on an ecological perspective, students will apply relevant theories to understanding community health issues and to developing interventions. The course also examines social and behavioral determinants of health equity across the ecological spectrum. In this course students will gain an enhanced understanding of the contributions of the social and behavioral sciences to public health

Qualitative Systematic Review of Barber-Administered Health Education, Promotion, Screening and Outreach Programs in African-American Communities

The barbershop has been portrayed as a culturally appropriate venue for reaching Black men with health information and preventive health screenings to overcome institutional and socio-cultural barriers. The purpose of this review is to synthesize the peer-reviewed literature on barbershop-based health programs to provide lessons learned for researchers and practitioners. A literature search was conducted to identify articles for the review. Inclusion criteria specified that studies had to be based in the United States and reported about research where barbers were either being assessed for the feasibility of their participation or recruited to administer health education/screening outreach or research activities. The literature search produced 901 unique bibliographic records from peer-reviewed publications. After eliminating articles not meeting the inclusion criteria, 35 articles remained for full-text review. The final article sample consisted of 16 articles for complete abstraction to assess characteristics of studies, role and training of barbers, outcomes targeted, effectiveness, and key findings. All barbershop-based studies reviewed targeted Black men in urban settings. Common study designs were cross-sectional studies, feasibility studies, needs assessments, and one-shot case studies. Barber administered interventions addressed primarily prostate cancer and hypertension, and barbers provided health education, screening, and referrals to health care. Nonintervention studies focused mostly on surveying or interviewing barbers for assessing the feasibility of future interventions. Barbershops are a culturally appropriate venue for disseminating health education materials in both print and media formats. Barbershops are also acceptable venues for training barbers to conduct education and screening. In studies where barbers received training, their knowledge of various health conditions increased significantly and knowledge gains were sustained over time. They were also able to increase knowledge and promote positive health behaviors among their customers, but these outcomes were variable and not consistently documented.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10900-013-9744-

Video Manipulation Techniques for the Protection of Privacy in Remote Presence Systems

Systems that give control of a mobile robot to a remote user raise privacy concerns about what the remote user can see and do through the robot. We aim to preserve some of that privacy by manipulating the video data that the remote user sees. Through two user studies, we explore the effectiveness of different video manipulation techniques at providing different types of privacy. We simultaneously examine task performance in the presence of privacy protection. In the first study, participants were asked to watch a video captured by a robot exploring an office environment and to complete a series of observational tasks under differing video manipulation conditions. Our results show that using manipulations of the video stream can lead to fewer privacy violations for different privacy types. Through a second user study, it was demonstrated that these privacy-protecting techniques were effective without diminishing the task performance of the remote user.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figure

Design and development of a tornado intercept unmanned aerial vehicle

Very little data surrounding tornado genesis exists, and this is due in part to the lack of tools necessary to deliver weather-sensing instruments into the severe weather phenomenon. Though current UAS are able to accurately gather weather data, they typically cannot operate in high winds or in rain. To help bridge this data gap, a custom delta wing UAS was developed to withstand both of these shortcomings.The aircraft was outfitted with an autopilot, long range RC control, and FPV systems for control over long distances. Despite utilizing a new turbojet that generates 50% more thrust at the cost of a 50% increase to fuel consumption, custom fuel tanks were designed and fabricated double the flight time of the previous system. Considerations for preventing ingested water from damaging internal avionics are explored, as operation in rain is a requirement.Aircraft performance approximations were generated using both analytical approximations and flight test data from the autopilot's flight log. An approach to generating a longitudinal aerodynamic control model is explored to estimate performance in extreme winds (75+ mph), but ultimately fails due to lack of conventional horizontal tail and the coupling of pitch and yaw controls to the turbine's exhaust speed (controlled by throttle setting).A car-based launcher system was also created for utilization in the field, reducing the required personnel's experience to execute a mission effectively. Multiple aircraft, as well as a prototype of the TIV, has launched successfully multiple times from this system, even exhibiting full auto-launching functionality.The longest recorded flight was over a ground track of 22 miles with an average airspeed of 100 knots over 16 minutes, consuming 60% of the total fuel available. The top speed achieved by the aircraft was 160 mph at 90% throttle

Stable unidimensional arrays of coherent strained islands

We investigate the equilibrium properties of arrays of coherent strained islands in heteroepitaxial thin films of bidimensional materials. The model we use takes into account only three essential ingredients : surface energies, elastic energies of the film and of the substrate and interaction energies between islands via the substrate. Using numerical simulations for a simple Lennard-Jones solid, we can assess the validity of the analytical expressions used to describe each of these contributions. A simple analytical expression is obtained for the total energy of the system. Minimizing this energy, we show that arrays of coherent islands can exist as stable configurations. Even in this simple approach, the quantitative results turn out to be very sensitive to some details of the surface energy.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures. to be published in Surface Scienc