Early multifocal stenosis after coronary artery snaring during off-pump coronary artery bypass in a patient with diabetes

AbstractJ Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 2001;122:1044-

The Evolution of Teacher Certification and the Qualifications to Teach in Four States, 1890-1930.

The period between 1890 and 1930 witnessed a dramatic change in state policies for certifying and training teachers in public elementary and, high schools. During this period, educational professionals who favored centralized control of education used their growing influence to reform teacher certification and the qualifications required to teach. At the same time, a series of demographic and economic trends also influenced efforts to make certification follow specific state standards. Despite the current debate about teacher certification, the history of the teacher qualifications has not been fully explored. This dissertation adds to the understanding of this development by examining the evolution of teacher certification from primarily a function of local government with minimal requirements to that of a state action requiring both a specified amount of subject matter and pedagogical knowledge. This study investigates how economic trends, demographic changes, and efforts to professionalize education influenced these qualifications between 1890 and 1930. This dissertation examines how these factors influenced teacher certification and qualifications in four states: Michigan, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Virginia. Using state superintendent and board of education reports from the four states, reports of the U.S. Commissioner of Education, the Biennial Survey of Education; reports issued by the U.S. Office of Education on the status of teacher certification, and dissertations from the case study states, this dissertation constructs a new, detailed narrative of the evolution of teacher certification and qualifications in the U.S. in this period. A key finding from this study is that the unprecedented growth of high school enrollments and graduation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries played a particularly important role in the shaping the nature and content of teacher certification. High schools aided efforts to create stronger standards for teacher certification in both the supply and demand side of the equation. For example, high schools not only provided better educated candidates for teacher certification thus helping state educational leaders to raise the bar in terms of the qualifications demanded of prospective teachers but also created a wide range of new teaching positions due to the expansion of high school curricula between 1890 and 1930.Ph.D.EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78849/1/paulperr_1.pd

Epigeneti-What? Approaches on Translating Research for Primary Breast Cancer Prevention

In fiscal year 2017, the National Cancer Institute devoted more than a half billion dollars to breast cancer research. Since 2012, the total investment has been more than $3 billion. Despite this significant investment, breast cancer still has no known immediate causes as it generally develops over the life course. Therefore, research is unable to provide the public any sort of magic bullet, or conclusive link between certain environmental exposures and the development of breast cancer later in life. What research is only able to report are likelihoods—possible links—things people might want to consider avoiding or doing in their everyday lives to reduce their future risks of developing breast cancer. This abundance of rigorously performed, albeit causally inconclusive, research focused on “plausible” links poses a challenge for health communicators who are tasked with seeking to find ways to translate this science into advice that people can act upon today. However, if society must wait for the science to provide 100% conclusive evidence before anyone ever takes action, how many lives could have been saved in the interim? Therefore, we advocate a two-pronged approach to translating scientific findings regarding environmental exposures and breast cancer prevention: a bottom-up approach—focused on informing the lay public and individuals, while simultaneously performing a top-down approach—focused on influencing policymakers. The current perspective analyzes the strengths and weaknesses to both of these approaches, and encourages scientists to work closely with health communicators to develop theoretically-driven strategies to drive positive changes over time

Metaphoric coherence: Distinguishing verbal metaphor from `anomaly\u27

Theories and computational models of metaphor comprehension generally circumvent the question of metaphor versus “anomaly” in favor of a treatment of metaphor versus literal language. Making the distinction between metaphoric and “anomalous” expressions is subject to wide variation in judgment, yet humans agree that some potentially metaphoric expressions are much more comprehensible than others. In the context of a program which interprets simple isolated sentences that are potential instances of cross‐modal and other verbal metaphor, I consider some possible coherence criteria which must be satisfied for an expression to be “conceivable” metaphorically. Metaphoric constraints on object nominals are represented as abstracted or extended along with the invariant structural components of the verb meaning in a metaphor. This approach distinguishes what is preserved in metaphoric extension from that which is “violated”, thus referring to both “similarity” and “dissimilarity” views of metaphor. The role and potential limits of represented abstracted properties and constraints is discussed as they relate to the recognition of incoherent semantic combinations and the rejection or adjustment of metaphoric interpretations

Non-thermal transport of energy driven by photoexcited carriers in switchable solid states of GeTe

Phase change alloys have seen widespread use from rewritable optical discs to the present day interest in their use in emerging neuromorphic computing architectures. In spite of this enormous commercial interest, the physics of carriers in these materials is still not fully understood. Here, we describe the time and space dependence of the coupling between photoexcited carriers and the lattice in both the amorphous and crystalline states of one phase change material, GeTe. We study this using a time-resolved optical technique called picosecond acoustic method to investigate the \textit{in situ} thermally assisted amorphous to crystalline phase transformation in GeTe. Our work reveals a clear evolution of the electron-phonon coupling during the phase transformation as the spectra of photoexcited acoustic phonons in the amorphous ($a$-GeTe) and crystalline ($\alpha$-GeTe) phases are different. In particular and surprisingly, our analysis of the photoinduced acoustic pulse duration in crystalline GeTe suggests that a part of the energy deposited during the photoexcitation process takes place over a distance that clearly exceeds that defined by the pump light skin depth. In the opposite, the lattice photoexcitation process remains localized within that skin depth in the amorphous state. We then demonstrate that this is due to supersonic diffusion of photoexcited electron-hole plasma in the crystalline state. Consequently these findings prove the existence of a non-thermal transport of energy which is much faster than lattice heat diffusion

Monitoring of northern climate exposure

Currently, facility managers are faced with many advanced decisions regarding when and how to inspect, maintain, repair or renew existing facilities in a costeffective manner. The evolution of the deteriorations of road structures in reinforced concrete depends on the exposure of the elements to water in liquid form or vapour and to other aggressive agents such as chloride. Current models of ionic transport neglect the effect of real ionic concentration in contact with concrete structures, it means boundary conditions are considered with simple tendency as uniform concentration during the winter period and model parameters are derived from the fitting method. Therefore, it implies in ineffective prediction models of deterioration, i.e. steel rebar corrosion by chloride presence or carbonation, alkali-granular reaction, acid attacks, etc. Structure are sensitive to their environment and their interaction with it is directly related to the processes of deterioration. The degradation of structures exposed to salt-laden mist is faster in the wetter areas. On the contrary, the deterioration of the structures caused by salt spray in the drier zone is slower. The structures, exposed to splashing (precipitation, wind, splash, etc.), have a slower rate of degradation in the wetter regions. The amount of rain has an indirect effect in the process of deterioration of the structure exposed to salt-laden mist because it changes the contact time of chloride on the surface of the structures. For this purpose, a unique exposure monitoring was developed. This mobile station, named MExStUL, contains an atmospheric sensor and new possibilities of chloride detection contained in splashes, mist and static water near the road improving the real exposure of structure and the boundary conditions. First results highlight the real influence of environmental parameters on structures durability on highways. Salt concentration is not uniform during winter period and water thickness demonstrate important periods of drying

Detection of Variants in 15 Genes in 87 Unrelated Chinese Patients with Leber Congenital Amaurosis

BACKGROUND: Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) is the earliest onset and most severe form of hereditary retinal dystrophy. So far, full spectrum of variations in the 15 genes known to cause LCA has not been systemically evaluated in East Asians. Therefore, we performed comprehensive detection of variants in these 15 genes in 87 unrelated Han Chinese patients with LCA. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The 51 most frequently mutated exons and introns in the 15 genes were selected for an initial scan using cycle sequencing. All the remaining exons in 11 of the 15 genes were subsequently sequenced. Fifty-three different variants were identified in 44 of the 87 patients (50.6%), involving 78 of the 88 alleles (11 homozygous and 56 heterozygous variants). Of the 53 variants, 35 (66%) were novel pathogenic mutations. In these Chinese patients, variants in GUCY2D are the most common cause of LCA (16.1% cases), followed by CRB1 (11.5%), RPGRIP1 (8%), RPE65 (5.7%), SPATA7 (4.6%), CEP290 (4.6%), CRX (3.4%), LCA5 (2.3%), MERTK (2.3%), AIPL1 (1.1%), and RDH12 (1.1%). This differs from the variation spectrum described in other populations. An initial scan of 55 of 215 PCR amplicons, including 214 exons and 1 intron, detected 83.3% (65/78) of the mutant alleles ultimately found in these 87 patients. In addition, sequencing only 9 exons would detect over 50% of the identified variants and require less than 5% of the labor and cost of comprehensive sequencing for all exons. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results suggest that specific difference in the variation spectrum found in LCA patients from the Han Chinese and other populations are related by ethnicity. Sequencing exons in order of decreasing risk is a cost-effective way to identify causative mutations responsible for LCA, especially in the context of genetic counseling for individual patients in a clinical setting

Repeatability and Reproducibility of Decisions by Latent Fingerprint Examiners

The interpretation of forensic fingerprint evidence relies on the expertise of latent print examiners. We tested latent print examiners on the extent to which they reached consistent decisions. This study assessed intra-examiner repeatability by retesting 72 examiners on comparisons of latent and exemplar fingerprints, after an interval of approximately seven months; each examiner was reassigned 25 image pairs for comparison, out of total pool of 744 image pairs. We compare these repeatability results with reproducibility (inter-examiner) results derived from our previous study. Examiners repeated 89.1% of their individualization decisions, and 90.1% of their exclusion decisions; most of the changed decisions resulted in inconclusive decisions. Repeatability of comparison decisions (individualization, exclusion, inconclusive) was 90.0% for mated pairs, and 85.9% for nonmated pairs. Repeatability and reproducibility were notably lower for comparisons assessed by the examiners as “difficult” than for “easy” or “moderate” comparisons, indicating that examiners' assessments of difficulty may be useful for quality assurance. No false positive errors were repeated (n = 4); 30% of false negative errors were repeated. One percent of latent value decisions were completely reversed (no value even for exclusion vs. of value for individualization). Most of the inter- and intra-examiner variability concerned whether the examiners considered the information available to be sufficient to reach a conclusion; this variability was concentrated on specific image pairs such that repeatability and reproducibility were very high on some comparisons and very low on others. Much of the variability appears to be due to making categorical decisions in borderline cases

Cone rod dystrophies

Cone rod dystrophies (CRDs) (prevalence 1/40,000) are inherited retinal dystrophies that belong to the group of pigmentary retinopathies. CRDs are characterized by retinal pigment deposits visible on fundus examination, predominantly localized to the macular region. In contrast to typical retinitis pigmentosa (RP), also called the rod cone dystrophies (RCDs) resulting from the primary loss in rod photoreceptors and later followed by the secondary loss in cone photoreceptors, CRDs reflect the opposite sequence of events. CRD is characterized by primary cone involvement, or, sometimes, by concomitant loss of both cones and rods that explains the predominant symptoms of CRDs: decreased visual acuity, color vision defects, photoaversion and decreased sensitivity in the central visual field, later followed by progressive loss in peripheral vision and night blindness. The clinical course of CRDs is generally more severe and rapid than that of RCDs, leading to earlier legal blindness and disability. At end stage, however, CRDs do not differ from RCDs. CRDs are most frequently non syndromic, but they may also be part of several syndromes, such as Bardet Biedl syndrome and Spinocerebellar Ataxia Type 7 (SCA7). Non syndromic CRDs are genetically heterogeneous (ten cloned genes and three loci have been identified so far). The four major causative genes involved in the pathogenesis of CRDs are ABCA4 (which causes Stargardt disease and also 30 to 60% of autosomal recessive CRDs), CRX and GUCY2D (which are responsible for many reported cases of autosomal dominant CRDs), and RPGR (which causes about 2/3 of X-linked RP and also an undetermined percentage of X-linked CRDs). It is likely that highly deleterious mutations in genes that otherwise cause RP or macular dystrophy may also lead to CRDs. The diagnosis of CRDs is based on clinical history, fundus examination and electroretinogram. Molecular diagnosis can be made for some genes, genetic counseling is always advised. Currently, there is no therapy that stops the evolution of the disease or restores the vision, and the visual prognosis is poor. Management aims at slowing down the degenerative process, treating the complications and helping patients to cope with the social and psychological impact of blindness