No description available.

Aggressive driving is not clearly and consistently defined in the literature, neither in terms of the specific behaviors chosen for inclusion nor the degree to which the emotional state of the driver is taken into account. Principally, the aim of this current research is to determine the extent to which aggressive driving and road rage overlap. This will be accomplished primarily by applying two well-supported dichotomies in aggression research: hostile/instrumental and impulsive/premeditated. Relevant personality traits will also be measured to help discern the aggressive driving- road rage overlap and to explore secondary areas of interest, such as sex and age differences in driver aggression.

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No description available.

No description available.

Periodontal infection can manifest itself in many different clinical presentations. The aggressive form of this disease is frequently seen in the younger patient population referred for treatment to the Temple University Kornberg School of Dentistry (TUKSD). This study was done to assess the demographics of aggressive periodontitis cases and the types of periodontal treatment methods provided to these patients, antibiotic prescription patterns and compliance with treatment. A chart review was conducted to identify cases of aggressive periodontitis in patients <30 years of age referred for treatment at the Graduate Periodontology and Oral Implantology Clinic, TUKSD. The diagnosis of aggressive periodontitis was validated by presence of characteristic radiographic bone loss at permanent incisors and molars. Exclusion criteria were deficient radiographs, and a medical history of systemic diseases that compromise the immune response. Twenty-two aggressive periodontitis cases were identified among 300 charts surveyed. All patients were 12-26 years old. The patient sample was comprised mainly of African American race-ethnicity, with no predominance of a sex group. Initial treatment with scaling and root planing, was done in 64% of cases with 36% dropout before treatment. Microbial plaque testing was done in 46% of cases, and 59% received systemic antibiotics. A combination antibiotic therapy regimen was often used in combination with nonsurgical periodontal therapy. Most patients did not present for treatment beyond the non-surgical phase, and some even before the treatment started. Because periodontal non-surgical treatment of aggressive periodontitis cases in the pre-doctoral clinic takes relatively long time, it is recommended that the treatment of these cases be expedited by referring the patients to the graduate clinic for all periodontal treatment including the initial phase. / Biology

Objectives: To describe clinical features, demographic characteristics, and treatment outcome in four prepubertal children with severe periodontitis. This is a case report of prepubertal children that have been referred to the Temple University Kornberg School of Dentistry (TUKSD) for the treatment of severe periodontitis. Methods & Materials: Chart review was performed of available paper and electronic records of patients aged ≤ 10 years that have been treated at the Graduate Periodontology Clinic, TUKSD during the past 5 years. Cases were evaluated for periodontal diseases by means of assessing dental plaque, dental calculus, gingivitis, probing depths and clinical attachment level, and radiographic evidence of bone levels. Cases diagnosed with periodontitis were identified and the patients¡¯ demographics, clinical findings, type of treatment provided, treatment outcome, and medical history were noted. Results: Four children with severe periodontitis were identified. All the subjects had deep probing depths around their primary teeth showing significant bone loss on radiographs and were diagnosed with severe periodontitis. These children were treated with scaling and root planing combined with systemic antibiotics and extraction of hopeless primary teeth. The permanent teeth erupted early and there was no radiographic alveolar bone loss. Three subjects had microbiological testing and showed predominance of certain periodontal pathogens such as Prevotella intermedia and Fusobecterium nucleatum. Following treatment all children were inaccessible for follow-up. Conclusion: Periodontitis in prepubertal children causes early loss of primary teeth and early eruption of permanent teeth. Relevant systemic diseases were not detected in any of the children. Compliance with periodontal maintenance is poor among prepubertal children attending the TUKSD clinics for the treatment of periodontitis. / Oral Biology

Derzeit ist es gängige Praxis, die Chemotherapie entsprechend der Körperoberfläche des Patienten zu dosieren. Diese Praxis ist jedoch nicht ideal, da es Patienten gibt, die starke Nebenwirkungen haben und andere, die kaum Nebenwirkungen aufweisen. Damit intelligentere Dosierungsschemata entwickelt werden können und prophylaktische Maßnahmen zum Verhindern von Therapienebenwirkungen besser geplant werden können, ist die Kenntnis der Faktoren erforderlich, welche die Nebenwirkungen verursachen. Die hämatologischen Nebenwirkungen der Chemotherapie sind dabei am stärksten ausgeprägt und führen oft zu Dosiserosionen, Zeitverschiebungen zwischen den Chemotherapiezyklen oder sogar zu einem Abbruch der Therapie. Das hat wiederum negative Auswirkungen auf den Therapieerfolg. In dieser Arbeit wurden daher Prognosemodelle für chemotherapieinduzierte hämatologische Nebenwirkungen aufgebaut. Die Daten von 1399 Patienten mit aggressivem Non-Hodgkin-Lymphom und einem breiten Altersspektrum von 18-75 Jahren aus der NHL-B1/B2-Studie (Pfreundschuh et al. 2004a und b) gingen in die Analyse ein. Es wurden für die jüngeren (<= 60 Jahre) und die älteren Patienten (> 60 Jahre) multivariate Proportionale Odds Regressionsmodelle für die drei hämatopoetischen Linien der Leukozytopenie, Thrombozytopenie und Anämie gerechnet und an zwei unabhängigen Datensätzen, auch unter Rituximab-haltigen Chemotherapieschemata, validiert. Die hier entwickelten Modelle konnten ein breites Heterogenitätsspektrum für die hämatologischen Nebenwirkungen erklären. Bemerkenswert ist, dass einige der Faktoren für hämatologische Nebenwirkungen gleichzeitig auch Faktoren des Internationalen Prognostischen Index für das Therapieergebnis sind. Die im ersten Chemotherapiezyklus beobachtete Nebenwirkung war der stärkste prognostische Faktor. Mit einigen der Modelle konnte die kumulative Nebenwirkung über die Chemotherapiezyklen hinweg gezeigt werden. Die Demonstration des Zusammenhangs zwischen den für Leukozytopenie ermittelten Risikogruppen und den klinisch relevanten Größen Infektion, Antibiotikagabe, Hospitalisierungstage und therapieassoziierte Todesfälle ist ein sehr wichtiges Ergebnis der Arbeit. Es wurde eine Internetseite (www.toxcalculator.com) entwickelt, welche den Ärzten die Möglichkeit bietet, die bei dem Patienten vorliegenden Prognosefaktoren einzugeben und dann die Modellvorhersagen für die zu erwartenden hämatologischen Nebenwirkungen zu erhalten. Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit wurden in der hochrangigen Zeitschrift ‚Annals of Oncology‘ publiziert (Ziepert et al. 2008).

Des problèmes de Bandit constituent une séquence d’allocation dynamique. D’une part, l’agent de système doit explorer son environnement ( à savoir des bras de machine) pour recueillir des informations; d’autre part, il doit exploiter les informations collectées pour augmenter la récompense. Comment d’équilibrer adéquatement la phase d’exploration et la phase d’exploitation, c’est une obscurité des problèmes de Bandit, et la plupart des chercheurs se concentrent des efforts sur les stratégies d’équilibration entre l’exploration et l’exploitation. Dans cette dissertation, nous nous concentrons sur l’étude de deux problèmes spécifiques de Bandit: les problèmes de Bandit contextuel et les problèmes de Bandit Multi- objectives. Cette dissertation propose deux aspects de contributions. La première concerne la classification sous la surveillance partielle, laquelle nous codons comme le problème de Bandit contextuel avec des informations partielles. Ce type des problèmes est abondamment étudié par des chercheurs, en appliquant aux réseaux sociaux ou systèmes de recommandation. Nous proposons une série d’algorithmes sur la base d’algorithme Passive-Aggressive pour résoudre des problèmes de Bandit contextuel. Nous profitons de sa fondations, et montrons que nos algorithmes sont plus simples à mettre en œuvre que les algorithmes en état de l’art. Ils réalisent des biens performances de classification. Pour des problèmes de Bandit Multi-objective (MOMAB), nous proposons une méthode motivée efficace et théoriquement à identifier le front de Pareto entre des bras. En particulier, nous montrons que nous pouvons trouver tous les éléments du front de Pareto avec un budget minimal dans le cadre de PAC borne. / Bandit problems constitute a sequential dynamic allocation problem. The pulling agent has to explore its environment (i.e. the arms) to gather information on the one hand, and it has to exploit the collected clues to increase its rewards on the other hand. How to adequately balance the exploration phase and the exploitation phase is the crux of bandit problems and most of the efforts devoted by the research community from this fields has focused on finding the right exploitation/exploration tradeoff. In this dissertation, we focus on investigating two specific bandit problems: the contextual bandit problems and the multi-objective bandit problems. This dissertation provides two contributions. The first contribution is about the classification under partial supervision, which we encode as a contextual bandit problem with side informa- tion. This kind of problem is heavily studied by researchers working on social networks and recommendation systems. We provide a series of algorithms to solve the Bandit feedback problem that pertain to the Passive-Aggressive family of algorithms. We take advantage of its grounded foundations and we are able to show that our algorithms are much simpler to implement than state-of-the-art algorithms for bandit with partial feedback, and they yet achieve better perfor- mances of classification. For multi-objective multi-armed bandit problem (MOMAB), we propose an effective and theoretically motivated method to identify the Pareto front of arms. We in particular show that we can find all elements of the Pareto front with a minimal budget.

No description available.