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Youth with disabilities are overall less engaged in extracurricular, community, and social activities than their peers without disabilities. Across diagnoses, youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (e.g., autism, intellectual disability) are less likely to participate in extracurricular or social activities compared to peers with other disabilities (e.g., learning disability; Lipscomb et al., 2017). Religious congregations may be one of the most prominent resources in rural and underrepresented communities (Institute for Emerging Issues, 2018; Pargament, 1998) and can be an important resource for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families (Carter, 2021; Liu et al., 2014). However, leaders of religious congregations (e.g., clergy; religious education directors) may not know how to support and include these youth in their congregation (Stewart-Ginsburg et al., 2020). This study measured the effects of asynchronous professional development on religious leaders’ knowledge and confidence implementing inclusive language and inclusive learning to support youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Sixty leaders participated in a mixed method study featuring a randomized control trial paired with concurrent qualitative questionnaires. Results indicated the asynchronous professional development was effective in improving religious leaders’ knowledge of and confidence in implementing inclusive language and inclusive learning in their religious congregations. Further, the professional development helped religious leaders identify opportunities, barriers, and drivers to implementing inclusive language and learning within their congregations. Limitations, suggestions for future research, and implications for policy and practice will be discussed.
More than two-thirds of adults and one-sixth of children and adolescents in the United States experience higher levels of body fat and/or obesity (Hales et al., 2020). Individuals with higher levels of body fat often experience weight-bias, prejudice, and discrimination from various sources including mental health professionals in the fields of psychology, social work, and marriage and family therapy (Cravens, et al., 2016; Davis-Coelho, et al., 2000; Pratt, et al., 2015; Young & Powell, 1985). However, little is known about the presence of weight-bias within the counseling field. Literature shows that weight-bias can negatively impact physical and mental health (Friedman & Puhl, 2012; Himmelstein et al., 2017; Puhl et al., 2017). Counselors may be exhibiting weight-bias towards clients, thus causing harm (Feister, 2012). The counseling profession has committed to developing multiculturally competent counselors, yet body weight is not included in discussions of bias, prejudice, oppression, and power (Bergen & Mollen, 2019). This study used a correlational, non-experimental research design and a standard multiple regression to explore relationships between weight-bias and race, gender, weight-bias education, multicultural competence, and personal experiences with weight-bias among licensed counselors (N= 587). Results indicated there were statistically significant relationships between weight-bias and gender, weight-bias education, and multicultural competence. The group of predictor variables explained a significant portion of the variance in weight-bias among counselors (F(5,553)=9.459, p<.001, R^2=.079, adjusted R^2=.070), which accounted for 7.9% of the variance.
Lung cancer is the second most common cancer and maintains a small survival rate (~20%). Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) makes up 80-85% of all lung cancer diagnoses. Lung cancer patients routinely undergo surgical procedures, chemotherapy, and/or radiation and these therapies can drive ongoing systemic issues, greatly hindering patient welfare and recovery timelines. Importantly, chemotherapy and radiation can induce deleterious systemic side effects, particularly within skeletal muscle, that are not reversible even in remission. We conducted experiments to determine whether Metformin can reduce lung cancer tumor burden in immunocompetent mice while maintaining skeletal muscle health. Mice were given Lewis Lung Cancer, a form of NSCLC, in the left lung. Control animals received a vehicle treatment of saline and treated animals received Metformin. The cancer cells contained a bioluminescent reporter allowing tumor growth tracking throughout the study. Skeletal muscle homogenates from the cancer-bearing mice were analyzed for changes related to inflammation, muscle mass, and metabolism. Experiments with lung cancer cells in vitro were also conducted to determine how Metformin influences the oncogenic program of NSCLC. These findings led us to conclude that Metformin treatment, while exhibiting anti-neoplastic characteristics for many other cancers, may not be the best monotherapy for NSCLC tumor growth.
In this dissertation document, we describe the potential for Information Extraction, Information Retrieval, and Machine Learning methods to improve the process of analyzing medical texts and, in particular, Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs). We present the results of three in-depth studies consisting of dozens of experiments on finding condition-action and other conditional sentences in guideline documents. We are improving the state-of-the-art results (from 5% to 17%) and showing for the first time the applicability of domain adaptation and transfer learning to this problem.
We also present new methods for identifying inconsistencies in disagreements between medical guidelines, and for analyzing them using a combination of machine learning, information retrieval, and text mining methods. We show the need for a formal distinction between contradictions and disagreements in natural language texts to formally reason between contradictory medical guidelines.
We introduce new representations for collections of guideline documents and an algorithm for comparing collections of documents. We use these to investigate conceptual distances between guidelines for the same conditions. Throughout this process, we prove the hypothesis that the difference in recommendations largely (by 69% to 86%) correlates with the differences in concepts used by the medical bodies authoring the guidelines.
Finally, we show the applicability of text analysis methods to practical problems of analyzing textual information in electronic health records. We achieved 83% accuracy in matching medical records with a list of pre-defined conditions in an EHR system, resulting in clinical system support changes in one of the leading US hospitals.
In the modern airspace, small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) such as multi-rotor aircraft, commonly referred to as "drones", are becoming increasingly popular with both amateur enthusiasts as well as professional pilots. In recognition of the necessity to integrate sUAS traffic into the national airspace system, Congress passed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, which created the mandate for the FAA to regulate sUAS operation in United States national airspace. This legislation also created a number of obligations and duties for UAS pilots, including avoidance of restricted airspace, maximum flight levels, safe separation from aircraft (including other UAS), as well as avoiding flight over civilian human population and contact with personal property such as buildings or cars. Because of the nature of flying a drone either for pleasure or commercial purpose, it is very easy for operators to lose their situational awareness (SA) of the operating environment. A study published by the NASA Langley Research Center in 2017 found that the majority of commercial aviation accidents not attributable to aircraft systems failure involved the crew’s loss of SA of the aircraft or the environment, and that crew distraction from operation was associated with all of these accidents. If this is the case with commercial aircraft pilots inside of an enclosed aircraft cockpit in relative isolation, it is easy to imagine that the potential for distraction in the UAS environment is at least as great. This demonstrates the potential for a decreased SA state to create an unsafe environment for other pilots and bystanders and lead to fines and penalties for the UAS pilot if damage, injury, or disruption to the airspace occurs.
One mode of pathological flight phenomena in fixed-wing aircraft is that of pilot-induced oscillations (PIOs). These PIOs can occur either as a result of pilot-airframe coupling as in the case of biodynamic feedthrough or as a result of the lag between pilot observation and action and the propagation of the pilot’s actions and the control response of the aircraft under the influence of structural or environmental stimulus on the aircraft system. Under either scenario, the actions necessary to identify and resolve PIOs can quickly distract the pilot and cause a degradation of pilot SA level. This pilot distraction can lead to mission task element (MTE) failure, loss of aircraft control, or damage or destruction of the aircraft and surrounding persons and property. In the case of UAS, some PIOs can be induced as a result of a lack of direct tactile feedback and neurosensory coupling between the remote pilot and the aircraft. While some of these effects can be mitigated with the addition of haptics in the control actuators or through the use of first-person view monitor goggles, increased distance between the remote pilot and the UAS reduces the ability for the remote pilot to judge the effects of fine control inputs on UAS attitude. This can lead to the development of PIOs as the remote pilot attempts to control the UAS from a distance. Long-range, beyond line-of-sight missions rely upon autonomous flight control system to guide the UAS using global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) or more complex navigational methods such as inertial guidance, celestial navigation, or terrain-matching in communications-denied environments; however, these autonomous methods do not work well for primarily human remote pilot operations with augmented control applications such as bridge or communications tower inspection, where the UAS must be guided from a distance by a human pilot while focusing on specific tasks identified during the mission. To better enable an individual UAS operator to carry out complex mission task elements, we sought to develop a head-mounted display (HMD) equipped with see-through augmented reality (AR) capabilities. The objective of this HMD is to provide information to the pilot using low-complexity visual cues with sufficient information capacity to help improve mission performance and maintain pilot SA while minimally increasing or even decreasing pilot cognitive processing workload. We refer to this system as AviatAR. The contributions of this research include: new and additional insights into the development of PIO phenomena during rotary-wing UAS operation, the detection of PIO development in real-time during flight operation of rotary-wing UAS, and comparisons of the effects of communication of visual flight information to a pilot through the primary and peripheral visual fields using a see-through AR headset.
Si/C composite materials have attracted enormous research interest as the most promising candidates for the anodes of next-generation lithium-ion batteries, owing to their high energy density and mechanical buffering property. However, the major disadvantage of materials with ultra-high capacities, such as Si-based materials, is the significant volume change during cycling, which further leads to mechanical and electrochemical degradation. A comprehensive computational model is indispensable in the developing process of the excellent performance of anode material due to the low realizability, inconvenience, and high cost of experiments, which also provides powerful tools for fabrication guidance of novel Si/C composites designs. Hence, this study explores the multiphysics behavior of Si/C anodes material from the atomic level to cell level using DFT modeling and FEA methodology, systematically revealing the coupling mechanism among various physical fields, as well as providing efficient and powerful tools in the design, development, and evaluation of high energy density lithium-ion batteries.
The purpose of this narrative qualitative study was to explore how artist-teachers perceive themselves, their strategies for maintaining a balance of the artist-teacher dual identity and their perceived benefits for students. This study included eight participants with a minimum of five years of teaching art in a K-12 public school and considered themselves an artist-teacher. The analyzed data resulted in the following findings:
K-12 artist-teachers perceive themselves as having a dual identity of both an art educator and practicing artist, that early artmaking experiences and past art teachers were influential in their identity formation and that in addition to teaching, personal artmaking is needed for their job satisfaction and life fulfillment. Findings also include:
K-12 artist-teachers maintain the balance of their dual identity by having a designated place for art making, prioritizing and scheduling time for their art practice and connecting with other creative individuals or groups for accountability and collaboration. Additionally, this study’s findings demonstrates that K-12 artist-teachers perceive their dual identity benefitting students by infusing excitement and energy from their own artistic practice into their teaching, building strong connections through shared experiences and explorations, and readily integrating and introducing students to diverse and relevant contemporary artists. Implications include increased professional development for art educators in opportunities for collaboration, knowledge of new media and techniques and methods for integration of diverse and contemporary artists Additional implications include increased training for preservice art educators on attaining and sustaining the balance of the artist-teacher identity .
Maternity leave policies in the United States have begun to shift in recent decades, often offering women more maternity leave and parental bonding time than in the past. Whereas women were once expected to leave the workforce after the birth of a child, modern women often return to the workforce to continue their careers, prompting organizations to align their benefits to needs of expecting and/or new mothers. Using a human capital lens, this dissertation aimed to understand the experiences and perceptions of women who took longer than the 12 weeks of maternity leave protected by FMLA. Utilizing qualitative methodology, semi-structed interviews were conducted with women who took longer than 12 weeks of leave upon the birth of their child. The findings from this project suggest women do experience their leaves as ‘long’ and women often describe their leave as compared to others in their social network. The women in the study often found themselves navigating policies alone, completing the planning for their leave alone, and being contacted while on leave for business questions. The findings in this study have various practical, theoretical, and methodological implications.
Patients with patellofemoral pain (PFP) experience pain during or after physical activities. According to recent researches, they are at risk of developing patellofemoral osteoarthritis (PFOA). Isolated PFOA is also considered a marker for future development of tibiofemoral osteoarthritis (TFOA), which is recognized as knee osteoarthritis. Researchers found feedback motion retraining to be an effective mode of intervention to alter movement patterns. However, there is no research synthesizing the efficacy of feedback motion retraining for patients with PFP. Therefore, in Chapter 2, we assessed the efficacy of feedback motion retraining by summarizing relevant scientific evidence. Diagnostic ultrasound (US) is a cost-effective imaging tool to assess morphology of soft tissue, but it is rarely used for evaluating cartilage health in individuals with PFP. Therefore, our aims were to evaluate femoral cartilage health in patients with PFP using US. We identified significant correlations between patient-reported outcomes and echo intensity following loading conditions. We also identified statistically significant differences of femoral cartilage image quality between individuals with and without PFP which indicates increased risk of osteoarthritis in individuals with PFP.
