Contribution of clinical pharmacists to patient care

Literature reports of the contributions of clinical pharmacists to patient care are reviewed. The topics covered are: clinical pharmacist functions in the drug use process, specific clinical activities of clinical pharmacists, and specialty areas of clinical pharmacy practice. It is concluded that more research needs to be done on the effectiveness and legal basis of clinical pharmacy services, and that adequate methods of payment for clinical pharmacy services must be developed.     

Genetic Algorithms,Operators, and DNA Fragment Assembly

We study different genetic algorithm operators for one permutation problem associated with the Human Genome Project—the assembly of DNA sequence fragments from a parent clone whose sequence is unknown into a consensus sequence corresponding to the parent sequence. The sorted-order representation, which does not require specialized operators, is compared with a more traditional permutation representation, which does require specialized operators. The two representations and their associated operators are compared on problems ranging from 2K to 34K base pairs (KB). Edge-recombination crossover used in conjunction with several specialized operators is found to perform best in these experiments; these operators solved a 10KB sequence, consisting of 177 fragments, with no manual intervention. Natural building blocks in the problem are exploited at progressively higher levels through macro-operators. This significantly improves performance.     

Loneliness and generalized problematic Internet use: Parents’ perceived knowledge of adolescents’ online activities as a moderator

This study examined adolescents’ perceptions of parents’ knowledge of their online activities as a moderator of the relationship between loneliness and generalized problematic Internet use (PIU). The purpose of this study was to address two gaps in research. First, previous research has only investigated these relationships from a main effects perspective; the present study extended research by examining generalized PIU from an interaction effects perspective. Second, it is timely to examine the relationship between loneliness and generalized PIU in an adolescent sample which has not been previously explored. A total of 1098 adolescents (49.2% male, 50.8% female) from Grade 8 and Grade 9 classes participated in this study. The key finding was that perceived parental knowledge was a moderator of the relationship between loneliness and generalized PIU; parental knowledge was better able to differentiate adolescents’ level of generalized PIU at lower rather than at higher levels of loneliness. This moderator effect was stronger in magnitude for parents who had no awareness of their adolescents’ online activities compared to parents who were in the know about their adolescents’ online activities. These findings emphasize the importance of prevention and early intervention work with early adolescents and their parents with respect to adolescent loneliness and generalized PIU.     

To text or not to text? The importance of text messaging among college-aged youth

As the availability, affordability, and popularity of mobile phones has increased in the last decade, text messaging has become one of the primary means of communication among adolescent peer groups. As such, it can be speculated that mobile phones and text messaging have become an integral aspect of the culture of young people today. However, little research has of yet identified how people react to an absence of texting behavior. This study attempts to demonstrate the extent to which people have become reliant upon text messaging to maintain daily relationships with peers, as well as their own self-concept. Frequencies and patterns of alternative behaviors, non-compliance, and anxiety are measured during separate restriction periods among a group of high and low text users, ages 18–23. Results indicate that there was a significant difference between individuals identified as ’high’ and ’low’ text users, although regardless of this distinction, texting emerged as the preferred form of contact among peers within this cohort. A high degree of quantitatively and qualitatively reported anxiety during periods of restriction was also noted, suggesting that this behavior has become an integrated element of daily living for this group.     

Mesohabitat and macroecological correlates for blue sucker (Cycleptus elongatus) occurrence in regulated rivers

Blue sucker (Cycleptus elongatus) populations occur in the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico drainages of North America and are negatively affected by habitat fragmentation and flow regime alteration caused by dams. During fish assemblage surveys in August of 2022, we collected five juvenile blue suckers (312–428 mm total length) in the Angelina River upstream of Sam Rayburn Reservoir in East Texas (46,335 ha surface area) where the occurrence of the species was previously unconfirmed. Given this unexpected finding, we (1) analyzed mesohabitat associations to compare habitats we sampled with reports in the literature and (2) reviewed blue sucker occurrences in state, national, and global databases across historical (1950–1980) and contemporary (1981–2022) time periods to assess occurrence across gradients of habitat fragmentation and streamflow regulation. The blue sucker population in the Angelina River upstream of Sam Rayburn Reservoir was previously unconfirmed but is within the native range. Mesohabitats occupied by blue suckers were consistent with literature reports, including fast velocity, shallow depth, and coarse substrates. The low degree of regulation (19% of natural runoff stored by upstream reservoirs) and a high degree of habitat connectivity (287 rkm of unfragmented mainstem habitat) for the Angelina River upstream of Sam Rayburn Reservoir matched range-wide patterns of persistence within relatively intact (unfragmented and unregulated) or remnant (fragmented but unregulated) riverscapes. Our review reveals that blue sucker populations might persist (1) in remnant river fragments where local habitat conditions are appropriate and (2) where effects of habitat fragmentation and flow regulation are not coupled.     

ArgRewrite V.2: an annotated argumentative revisions corpus

Language Resources and Evaluation - Analyzing how humans revise their writings is an interesting research question, not only from an educational perspective but also in terms of artificial...     

A process for predicting manhole events in Manhattan

We present a knowledge discovery and data mining process developed as part of the Columbia/Con Edison project on manhole event prediction. This process can assist with real-world prioritization problems that involve raw data in the form of noisy documents requiring significant amounts of pre-processing. The documents are linked to a set of instances to be ranked according to prediction criteria. In the case of manhole event prediction, which is a new application for machine learning, the goal is to rank the electrical grid structures in Manhattan (manholes and service boxes) according to their vulnerability to serious manhole events such as fires, explosions and smoking manholes. Our ranking results are currently being used to help prioritize repair work on the Manhattan electrical grid.     

An extended assessment of type-3 clones as detected by state-of-the-art tools

Code reuse through copying and pasting leads to so-called software clones. These clones can be roughly categorized into identical fragments (type-1 clones), fragments with parameter substitution (type-2 clones), and similar fragments that differ through modified, deleted, or added statements (type-3 clones). Although there has been extensive research on detecting clones, detection of type-3 clones is still an open research issue due to the inherent vagueness in their definition. In this paper, we analyze type-3 clones detected by state-of-the-art tools and investigate type-3 clones in terms of their syntactic differences. Then, we derive their underlying semantic abstractions from their syntactic differences. Finally, we investigate whether there are code characteristics that indicate that a tool-suggested clone candidate is a real type-3 clone from a human’s perspective. Our findings can help developers of clone detectors and clone refactoring tools to improve their tools.     

Emulating cellular automata in chemical reaction–diffusion networks

Chemical reactions and diffusion can produce a wide variety of static or transient spatial patterns in the concentrations of chemical species. Little is known, however, about what dynamical patterns of concentrations can be reliably programmed into such reaction–diffusion systems. Here we show that given simple, periodic inputs, chemical reactions and diffusion can reliably emulate the dynamics of a deterministic cellular automaton, and can therefore be programmed to produce a wide range of complex, discrete dynamics. We describe a modular reaction–diffusion program that orchestrates each of the fundamental operations of a cellular automaton: storage of cell state, communication between neighboring cells, and calculation of cells’ subsequent states. Starting from a pattern that encodes an automaton’s initial state, the concentration of a “state” species evolves in space and time according to the automaton’s specified rules. To show that the reaction–diffusion program we describe produces the target dynamics, we simulate the reaction–diffusion network for two simple one-dimensional cellular automata using coupled partial differential equations. Reaction–diffusion based cellular automata could potentially be built in vitro using networks of DNA molecules that interact via branch migration processes and could in principle perform universal computation, storing their state as a pattern of molecular concentrations, or deliver spatiotemporal instructions encoded in concentrations to direct the behavior of intelligent materials.