acase@tulane.edu / High-quality end-of-life cancer care supports patients' quality of life by providing care to maximize comfort and minimize the physical or psychological harm often caused by unnecessary aggressive treatments. There are recognized racial inequities in the aggressiveness of end-of-life care between Black and White adults, but these discrepancies have not been examined thoroughly in the Deep South. This study has two aims: (a) to test the feasibility of utilizing a novel database in the Deep South and (b) to examine the association between race and aggressive end-of-life cancer care. Retrospective administrative data were extracted from the Research Action for Health Network (REACHnet) database using their Common Data Model. Logistic regressions were used to analyze the relationship between race and each indicator of aggressive care (chemotherapy use, inpatient hospitalization, emergency department admission, intensive care unit admission, or mechanical ventilation in the 30 days before death). Additionally, ordinal regression was used to examine the relationship between race and a composite measure of all indicators of aggressive care. Utilizing the REACHnet database was successful to provide clinical health data. Results supported the omnibus hypothesis and partially hypotheses focused on specific indicators of aggressive care. Racial disparities in the Deep South exist which may impact a patient’s treatment and subsequent quality of life near death. The mechanisms driving such disparities deserve further attention to eliminate racial disparities in end-of-life care for patients with advanced cancer. / 0 / Leah Walsh

No description available.

No description available.

Master of Science in Engineering - Engineering / Any software project goes through the different stages of a Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Like any other commercial product, software has a design stage but this stage is unique and critical to software due to its soft nature. A system that is given careful thought at the design phase results in a correct and complete system and adheres to software design principle. The “Unified Modelling Language” (UML) is a standard modelling language for object-oriented systems. Many tools are currently available to support the design and implementation of software. Generating skeletal code from a design brings down the implementation time considerably. This research report presents a list of criteria against which one can compare different UML tools, and puts forward a rating system where decisions can be made on them. It presents a comparison between four UML tools: ArgoUML, Rational Rose, Together Control Centre, and MasterCraft. An end-to-end application was developed on each of these tools as part of the evaluation process. During the design phase a detailed design was done using the ICONIX process. The different features of an ideal UML tool is analysed and used to evaluate the four selected tools. Of the four tools, Rational Rose, Together Control Centre, MasterCraft are offthe-shelf modelling softwares whereas ArgoUML is an open source modelling software. From the evaluation it is observed that Together Control Centre attains a high score with Rational Rose following just behind. MasterCraft comes third. Argo UML has the least score but it has the advantage of being an open source software.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Software designers must understand the domain, work practices, and user expectations before determining requirements or generating initial design mock-ups. Users and other stakeholders are a valuable source of information leading to that understanding. Much work has focused on design approaches that include users in the software development process. These approaches vary from surveys and questionnaires that garner responses from a population of potential users to participatory design processes where representative users are included in the design/development team. The Design Exploration approach retains the remote and asynchronous communication of surveys while making expression of feedback easier by providing users alternatives to textual communication for their suggestions and tacit understanding of the domain. To do this, visual and textual modes of expression are combined to facilitate communication from users to designers while allowing a broad user audience to contribute to software design. One challenge to such an approach is how software designers make use of the potentially overwhelming combination of text, graphics, and other content. The Design Exploration process provides users and other stakeholders the Design Exploration Builder, a construction kit where they create annotated partial designs. The Design Exploration Analyzer is an exploration tool that allows software designers to consolidate and explore partial designs. The Analyzer looks for patterns based on textual analysis of annotations and spatial analysis of graphical designs, to help identify interesting examples and patterns within the collection. Then software designers can use this tool to search and browse within the exploration set in order to better understand the task domain, user expectations and work practices. Evaluation of the tools has shown that users will often work to overcome expression constraints to convey information. Moreover, the mode of expression influences the types of information garnered. Furthermore, including more users results in greater coverage of the information gathered. These results provide evidence that Design Exploration is an approach that collects software and domain information from a large group of users that lies somewhere between questionnaires and face to face methods.

Four proteins exhibiting different rates of denaturation or precipitation with increasing cooking temperature from 63 to 73°C for beef and 67 to 79°C for pork were selected for developing a ratio model and incorporating the results into a mathematical expression. Monoclonal antibodies (Mabs) against lactate dehydrogenase isozyme 5 (LDH-5), bovine serum albumin (BSA), porcine enolase, and bovine myoglobin were developed for use in a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to simultaneously investigate changes in protein concentration with incremental increases in temperature. Four groups of mice were immunized separately with commercially available or purified protein (LDH-5, BSA, enolase, or myoglobin). After reporting ample blood serum titers, spleen cells were harvested and fused with SP2 myeloma tumor cells using an electro fusion cell manipulator. Hybridoma containing wells were screened against their respective protein to isolate hybridomas secreting protein specific Mabs. Tissue culture flask produced Mabs were used initially in sandwich ELISA assay testing. Mabs were tested against ground beef and pork cooked to instantaneous endpoint temperatures (EPTs). A 6 g section removed from the geometric center of each sample was homogenized in phosphate buffer, centrifuged, and a 1 ml aliquot collected for analysis. Microtiter plates were coated with goat anti-mouse IgG antibody (2 mg/ml) to act as a capture antibody for the protein specific monoclonal antibody concentrated from cell culture supernatant. Serial diluted muscle (beef or pork) extract (10 ml) from each EPT was applied to a microtiter plate. A protein A/G purified polyclonal antibody (Pab) was applied, followed by a goat anti-rabbit IgG peroxidase conjugated antibody. Concentration was determined by comparison to a standard curve. After multiple cell fusions, 24, 29, 66, and 12 cell lines secreting protein specific Mabs against LDH-5, BSA, enolase, and myoglobin, respectively, were produced. Six Mabs against LDH-5 reported R2 values > 0.9 indicating high specificity and affinity for LDH-5. Sandwich ELISA assays development with Mabs against BSA, enolase, and myoglobin was not as successful. Mouse ascites produced Mabs against BSA, enolase, and myoglobin were also unsuccessful when used in a sandwich ELISA. However, preliminary data suggested a multiple antigen ratio model still remained a viable option.