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- Creators: Arizona State University
- Creators: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
RESEARCH QUESTION: Does Online "Working Out Work" as a Treatment and Prevention for Depression in Older Adults? An Analysis of a Prescribed and Monitored Exercise Program Administered via the Internet for Senior Adults with Depression.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to investigate and access the effectiveness of an online prescribed and monitored exercise program for the treatment of depression in Older Adults. The Dependent Variable for the study is Depression. The Independent Variable for the study is the Effects of Exercise administered via the Internet and the population is geriatric adults defined as senior adults aged 50 and older. Depression is defined by Princeton University Scholars (Wordnet, 2006) as a mental state characterized by a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity.
METHODS: The presence and severity of depression will be assessed by using The Merck Manual of Geriatrics (GDS-15) Geriatric Depression Scale. Assessments will be performed at baseline, before and after the treatment is concluded. The subjects will complete the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q) prior to participating in an exercise program three times per week.
LIMITATIONS OF RESEARCH: The limitations of this study are: 1) There is a small sample size limited to Senior Adults aged 50 - 80, and 2) there is no control group with structured activity or placebo, therefore researcher is unable to evaluate if the marked improvement was due to a non-specific therapeutic effect associated with taking part in a social activity (group online exercise program). Further research could compare and analyze the positive effects of a muscular strength training exercise program verses a cardiovascular training exercise program.
The field of radio broadcast requires the cohesion of several different skill sets in order to be a success. KHEA Radio has used a traditional form of teaching, which means taking a one-on-one approach. Taking this approach has worked for years in the past and has been the only option for teaching. The down side to this method of teaching is that it requires one seasoned employee to stop their work and take the time to train a new employee. Because of the significant void in the area of instructional content for radio sound engineering, my co-worker and I had to troubleshoot this console and basically teach ourselves its functions. I saw the need for better instructional content on the Internet and in print based on my own experiences. The skills used to create the following instructional content were gained from course work at Arizona State University. The graduate department of Technical Communication makes every effort to equip students with varied skills that can be applied to different fields within the overall scheme of technical communication. This guide serves as a tool for radio broadcast novices to learn the basics of sound board operation.
YourBrandPartner.com exists to provide content to those seeking specific advice and information on purchasing custom promotional items. For this investigation, I conducted a usability test with a select user group to identify user experience issues. The primary goal of this research was to conduct general usability testing through large group survey and a small in-person usability testing group. I designed surveys and tests to investigate if users experienced difficulties in finding the information they were looking for on the website. Based on the results of this study, I recommend reviewing the visual design of the website, increasing site speed, creating a better experience between the blog and e- commerce interactions, and creating an environment that is more accommodating of where the user is in the buying process. This full report includes expanded participant feedback, methodology behind the study, and full recommendations for improvement.
The purpose of this applied project was to research and recommend to Phoenix Children’s Hospital (PCH) improvements to their website in order to provide parents whose child has been newly diagnosed with cancer the most clear and appropriate health information. I conducted a study in order to analyze and evaluate the health information content currently provided to parents at PCH. This was done by through qualitative coding methods on both printed documents provided by The Emily Center Library, as well as interviews conducted with three Hematology/Oncology nurses at PCH. Additionally, I researched the current literature surrounding this topic in order to provide a background of information. Based on the results, I recommended that PCH offer parents a comprehensive cancer database in which all provided information would be searchable via their website. This database would also allow them to expand on their two topic focuses: home care and emotional support. Additionally, I recommended that parents are provided information on how to identify credible and non- credible sources on the Internet so that they can find information that is truly medically valuable when searching for information on their own. Lastly, I offered future recommendations that will require continued research so that PCH’s provided health information can continue to grow and improve.
The transmission dynamics of Tuberculosis (TB) involve complex epidemiological and socio-economical interactions between individuals living in highly distinct regional conditions. The level of exogenous reinfection and first time infection rates within high-incidence settings may influence the impact of control programs on TB prevalence. The impact that effective population size and the distribution of individuals’ residence times in different patches have on TB transmission and control are studied using selected scenarios where risk is defined by the estimated or perceive first time infection and/or exogenous re-infection rates.
Methods
This study aims at enhancing the understanding of TB dynamics, within simplified, two patch, risk-defined environments, in the presence of short term mobility and variations in reinfection and infection rates via a mathematical model. The modeling framework captures the role of individuals’ ‘daily’ dynamics within and between places of residency, work or business via the average proportion of time spent in residence and as visitors to TB-risk environments (patches). As a result, the effective population size of Patch i (home of i-residents) at time t must account for visitors and residents of Patch i, at time t.
Results
The study identifies critical social behaviors mechanisms that can facilitate or eliminate TB infection in vulnerable populations. The results suggest that short-term mobility between heterogeneous patches contributes to significant overall increases in TB prevalence when risk is considered only in terms of direct new infection transmission, compared to the effect of exogenous reinfection. Although, the role of exogenous reinfection increases the risk that come from large movement of individuals, due to catastrophes or conflict, to TB-free areas.
Conclusions
The study highlights that allowing infected individuals to move from high to low TB prevalence areas (for example via the sharing of treatment and isolation facilities) may lead to a reduction in the total TB prevalence in the overall population. The higher the population size heterogeneity between distinct risk patches, the larger the benefit (low overall prevalence) under the same “traveling” patterns. Policies need to account for population specific factors (such as risks that are inherent with high levels of migration, local and regional mobility patterns, and first time infection rates) in order to be long lasting, effective and results in low number of drug resistant cases.
The maintenance of chromosomal integrity is an essential task of every living organism and cellular repair mechanisms exist to guard against insults to DNA. Given the importance of this process, it is expected that DNA repair proteins would be evolutionarily conserved, exhibiting very minimal sequence change over time. However, BRCA1, an essential gene involved in DNA repair, has been reported to be evolving rapidly despite the fact that many protein-altering mutations within this gene convey a significantly elevated risk for breast and ovarian cancers.
Results
To obtain a deeper understanding of the evolutionary trajectory of BRCA1, we analyzed complete BRCA1 gene sequences from 23 primate species. We show that specific amino acid sites have experienced repeated selection for amino acid replacement over primate evolution. This selection has been focused specifically on humans and our closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus). After examining BRCA1 polymorphisms in 7 bonobo, 44 chimpanzee, and 44 rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) individuals, we find considerable variation within each of these species and evidence for recent selection in chimpanzee populations. Finally, we also sequenced and analyzed BRCA2 from 24 primate species and find that this gene has also evolved under positive selection.
Conclusions
While mutations leading to truncated forms of BRCA1 are clearly linked to cancer phenotypes in humans, there is also an underlying selective pressure in favor of amino acid-altering substitutions in this gene. A hypothesis where viruses are the drivers of this natural selection is discussed.
Multicellular organisms consist of cells of many different types that are established during development. Each type of cell is characterized by the unique combination of expressed gene products as a result of spatiotemporal gene regulation. Currently, a fundamental challenge in regulatory biology is to elucidate the gene expression controls that generate the complex body plans during development. Recent advances in high-throughput biotechnologies have generated spatiotemporal expression patterns for thousands of genes in the model organism fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Existing qualitative methods enhanced by a quantitative analysis based on computational tools we present in this paper would provide promising ways for addressing key scientific questions.
Results
We develop a set of computational methods and open source tools for identifying co-expressed embryonic domains and the associated genes simultaneously. To map the expression patterns of many genes into the same coordinate space and account for the embryonic shape variations, we develop a mesh generation method to deform a meshed generic ellipse to each individual embryo. We then develop a co-clustering formulation to cluster the genes and the mesh elements, thereby identifying co-expressed embryonic domains and the associated genes simultaneously. Experimental results indicate that the gene and mesh co-clusters can be correlated to key developmental events during the stages of embryogenesis we study. The open source software tool has been made available at http://compbio.cs.odu.edu/fly/.
Conclusions
Our mesh generation and machine learning methods and tools improve upon the flexibility, ease-of-use and accuracy of existing methods.