Individualized Music Improves Social Interaction of Women, But Not Men, With Dementia

Dementia is tragic both for patients with the disease and for their family members. As this neurodegenerative disorder progresses, cognitive functions deteriorate, agitation and aggression increase, and mood worsens (McDermott, Orrell, et al., 2014; Spiro, 2010; Vasionyté & Madison, 2013). Non-pharmacological approaches, such as active music therapy or passive music listening, can be effective in reducing these symptoms. However, no past studies have examined how music listening affects the social interactions of patients with dementia. As such, this study examined whether nursing home residents with dementia are more engaged and interactive if they listen to individually selected music for 15 minutes just prior to a visit with loved ones. Twelve nursing home residents (4 men, 8 women) with dementia (MMSE M=5.00, SD=7.25) and their loved ones experienced 5 visits preceded by music and 5 visits not preceded by music, with the exception of one resident who passed away after 3 music and 4 non-music visits. Following each visit, the loved one, blinded to the music vs non-music condition, completed a Social Interaction Questionnaire assessing the resident’s alertness, engagement, talkativeness, appropriateness, physical responsiveness, relaxation, happiness, agitation and repetitiveness. Results demonstrated that female residents’ social interactions were rated more positively, but male residents’ social interactions were rated more negatively, after music than non-music visits. These results support the efficacy of music as an intervention for improving the social interactions of women, but not men, with dementia

Isolating and Sequencing Genes Coding for Metal-Reducing Enzymes in Shewanella algae, BrY

The Natural and Accelerated Bioremediation Research (NABIR) Program focuses on efficiently managing and reducing contamination of soil and groundwater by heavy metals and nuclear materials at Department of Energy (DOE) sites across the United States. In an effort to learn how to use microbes to accomplish this goal, four genes that code for metal-reducing enzymes expressed by the soil bacterium Shewanella algae, strain BrY are being sequenced. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is used to amplify the genes of interest, and the PCR products are purified by cloning and sent to the University of Chicago for sequencing. So far, partial sequences of two genes have been obtained. Once the complete sequences of all four genes have been obtained, the research will focus on the characterization of the metal-reducing enzymes themselves

Partitioning Bipartite Graphs: A Modified Louvain

Abstract How do we find communities in a graph? How does this change if the graph is bipartite? The Louvain method maximizes links within communities and minimizes those between in order to determine an optimal grouping. Yet, because it may fail when bipartite restrictions are introduced, we have adjusted the null model so as to improve performance in these conditions. Conclusion Our Bipartite Louvain is more robust with respect to permutations of vertices than the standard Louvain. For our synthetic examples, Bipartite Louvain typically yields a higher modularity and uncovers the ground truth communities with a higher probability. In the future, we will examine real world data sets with our modified algorithm

Recovering S1S^1-invariant metrics on S2S^2 from the equivariant spectrum

We prove an inverse spectral result for $S^1$-invariant metrics on $S^2$ based on the so-called asymptotic equivariant spectrum. This is roughly the spectrum together with large weights of the $S^1$ action on the eigenspaces. Our result generalizes an inverse spectral result of the first and last named authors, together with Victor Guillemin, concerning $S^1$-invariant metrics on $S^2$ which are invariant under the antipodal map. We use higher order terms in the asymptotic expansion of a natural spectral measure associated with the Laplacian and the $S^1$ action.Comment: 16 pages; minor revisions throughout following comments from referee

Correcting Underrepresentation and Intersectional Bias for Fair Classification

We consider the problem of learning from data corrupted by underrepresentation bias, where positive examples are filtered from the data at different, unknown rates for a fixed number of sensitive groups. We show that with a small amount of unbiased data, we can efficiently estimate the group-wise drop-out parameters, even in settings where intersectional group membership makes learning each intersectional rate computationally infeasible. Using this estimate for the group-wise drop-out rate, we construct a re-weighting scheme that allows us to approximate the loss of any hypothesis on the true distribution, even if we only observe the empirical error on a biased sample. Finally, we present an algorithm encapsulating this learning and re-weighting process, and we provide strong PAC-style guarantees that, with high probability, our estimate of the risk of the hypothesis over the true distribution will be arbitrarily close to the true risk

NAU is abuzz about career

In 2013, NAU Career Development implemented a robust 3 year assessment strategy. Year One, showcased at the 2015 Assessment Fair, focused on assessing the Reach of our program. In Year Two, we continued to assess Reach and added measures of Perception, including satisfaction surveys targeted towards students, employers, and campus partners, as well as interviews with faculty. Assessing outcomes of both quantitative and qualitative data analyses, our results demonstrated something exciting….NAU is Abuzz about Career! The busy bees at NAU Career Development are having an impact, resulting in prepared students, engaged partners, and satisfied employers. Our data is reviewed throughout the year, and continues to inform future priorities and next steps. Come see what the buzz is about

«Healthy» Housing for Children Living in Slums: A new assessment tool to score the impact of house environment on children’s health

High child mortality rate is associated with extreme poverty and insufficient services, like in slums. To guarantee social equality since childhood, governments should plan improvements in living conditions, starting from interventions on existing housing. Assessing the healthiness of a house for children’s health can help in prioritizing interventions. This study proposes a multi-factor assessment tool of house environment that ranks dwellings based on the risk that children (0-5 y/o) living in slums have on contracting five diseases with the highest mortality rate. The ranking scale associates dwelling and environmental factors with selected diseases through ORs. Final scores are standardized through coefficients, customizing results for the specific considered location. The assessment tool was tested on a database from slum’s dwellings located in Delhi (India). Results showed usability and clear interpretation of final scores. With further literature, a more accurate and improvement to the tool could be possible

Economic Analysis of Children's Surgical Care in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review and Analysis.

BackgroundUnderstanding the economic value of health interventions is essential for policy makers to make informed resource allocation decisions. The objective of this systematic review was to summarize available information on the economic impact of children's surgical care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).MethodsWe searched MEDLINE (Pubmed), Embase, and Web of Science for relevant articles published between Jan. 1996 and Jan. 2015. We summarized reported cost information for individual interventions by country, including all costs, disability weights, health outcome measurements (most commonly disability-adjusted life years [DALYs] averted) and cost-effectiveness ratios (CERs). We calculated median CER as well as societal economic benefits (using a human capital approach) by procedure group across all studies. The methodological quality of each article was assessed using the Drummond checklist and the overall quality of evidence was summarized using a scale adapted from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.FindingsWe identified 86 articles that met inclusion criteria, spanning 36 groups of surgical interventions. The procedure group with the lowest median CER was inguinal hernia repair ($15/DALY). The procedure group with the highest median societal economic benefit was neurosurgical procedures ($58,977). We found a wide range of study quality, with only 35% of studies having a Drummond score ≥ 7.InterpretationOur findings show that many areas of children's surgical care are extremely cost-effective in LMICs, provide substantial societal benefits, and are an appropriate target for enhanced investment. Several areas, including inguinal hernia repair, trichiasis surgery, cleft lip and palate repair, circumcision, congenital heart surgery and orthopedic procedures, should be considered "Essential Pediatric Surgical Procedures" as they offer considerable economic value. However, there are major gaps in existing research quality and methodology which limit our current understanding of the economic value of surgical care