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"Hutchinson, George"
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Incubator-based active noise control device: comparison to ear covers and noise reduction zone quantification
Background
Noise exposure in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is consistently higher than current recommendations. This may adversely affect neonatal sleep, weight gain, and overall health. We sought to evaluate the effect of a novel active noise control (ANC) system.
Methods
An ANC device’s noise reduction performance was compared to that of adhesively affixed foam ear covers in response to alarm and voice sounds in a simulated NICU environment. The zone of noise reduction of the ANC device was quantified with the same set of alarm and voice sounds.
Results
The ANC device provided greater noise reduction than the ear covers in seven of the eight sound sequences tested in which a noise reduction greater than the just noticeable difference was achieved. For noise in the 500 Hz octave band, the ANC device exhibited consistent noise reduction throughout expected patient positions. It provided better performance for noise below 1000 Hz than above 1000 Hz.
Conclusions
The ANC device provided generally superior noise reduction to the ear covers and provided a zone of noise reduction throughout the range where an infant would be placed within an incubator. Implications for patient sleep and weight gain are discussed.
Impact
Active noise control device can effectively reduce noise inside an infant incubator due to bedside device alarms.
This is the first analysis of an incubator-based active noise control device and comparison to adhesively affixed silicone ear covers.
A non-contact noise reduction device may be an appropriate means of reducing noise exposure of the hospitalized preterm infant.
Journal Article
Facing the abyss : American literature and culture in the 1940s
\"Mythologized as the era of the \"good war\" and the \"Greatest Generation,\" the 1940s are frequently understood as a more heroic, uncomplicated time in American history. Yet just below the surface, a sense of dread, alienation, and the haunting specter of radical evil permeated American art and literature. Writers returned home from World War II and gave form to their disorienting experiences of violence and cruelty. They probed the darkness that the war opened up and confronted bigotry, existential guilt, ecological concerns, and fear about the nature and survival of the human race. In Facing the Abyss, George Hutchinson offers readings of individual works and the larger intellectual and cultural scene to reveal the 1940s as a period of profound and influential accomplishment. Facing the Abyss examines the relation of aesthetics to politics, the idea of universalism, and the connections among authors across racial, ethnic, and gender divisions. Modernist and avant-garde styles were absorbed into popular culture as writers and artists turned away from social realism to emphasize the process of artistic creation. Hutchinson explores a range of important writers, from Saul Bellow and Mary McCarthy to Richard Wright and James Baldwin. African American and Jewish novelists critiqued racism and anti-Semitism, women writers pushed back on the misogyny unleashed during the war, and authors such as Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams reflected a new openness in the depiction of homosexuality. The decade also witnessed an awakening of American environmental and ecological consciousness. Hutchinson argues that a common belief in art's ability to communicate the universal in particulars united the most important works of literature and art during the 1940s\" -- Provided by publisher.
Book
Computing high-degree polynomial gradients in memory
Specialized function gradient computing hardware could greatly improve the performance of state-of-the-art optimization algorithms. Prior work on such hardware, performed in the context of Ising Machines and related concepts, is limited to quadratic polynomials and not scalable to commonly used higher-order functions. Here, we propose an approach for massively parallel gradient calculations of high-degree polynomials, which is conducive to efficient mixed-signal in-memory computing circuit implementations and whose area scales proportionally with the product of the number of variables and terms in the function and, most importantly, independent of its degree. Two flavors of such an approach are proposed. The first is limited to binary-variable polynomials typical in combinatorial optimization problems, while the second type is broader at the cost of a more complex periphery. To validate the former approach, we experimentally demonstrated solving a small-scale third-order Boolean satisfiability problem based on integrated metal-oxide memristor crossbar circuits, with competitive heuristics algorithm. Simulation results for larger-scale, more practical problems show orders of magnitude improvements in area, speed and energy efficiency compared to the state-of-the-art. We discuss how our work could enable even higher-performance systems after co-designing algorithms to exploit massively parallel gradient computation.
Current specialized function gradient computing hardware is not scalable to common higher-order functions. This work reports an approach for massively parallel gradient calculations of high-degree polynomials. Solving a Boolean satisfiability problem was experimentally implemented on an in-memory computing circuit.
Journal Article
Incubator-based Sound Attenuation: Active Noise Control In A Simulated Clinical Environment
Noise in the neonatal intensive care unit can be detrimental to the health of the hospitalized infant. Means of reducing that noise include staff training, warning lights, and ear coverings, all of which have had limited success. Single family rooms, while an improvement, also expose the hospitalized infant to the same device alarms and mechanical noises found in open bay units. We evaluated a non-contact incubator-based active noise control device (Neoasis[TM], Invictus Medical, San Antonio, Texas) in a simulated neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting to determine whether it could effectively reduce the noise exposure of infants within an incubator. In the NICU simulation center, we generated a series of clinically appropriate sound sequences with bedside medical devices such as a patient monitor and fluid infusion devices, hospital air handling systems, and device mechanical sounds. A microphone-equipped infant mannequin was oriented within an incubator. Measurements were made with the microphones with the Neoasis[TM] deactivated and activated. The active noise control device decreased sound pressure levels for certain alarm sounds by as much as 14.4 dB (a 5.2-fold reduction in sound pressure) at the alarm tone's primary frequency. Frequencies below the 2 kHz octave band were more effectively attenuated than frequencies at or above the 2 kHz octave band. Background noise levels below 40 dBA were essentially not impacted by the active noise control device. The active noise control device further reduces noise inside infant incubators. Device safety and potential health benefits of the quieter environment should be verified in a clinical setting.
Journal Article
Public resource allocation, strategic behavior, and status quo bias in choice experiments
Choice experiments, a survey methodology in which consumers face a series of choice tasks requiring them to indicate their most preferred option from a choice set containing two or more options are used to generate estimates of consumer preferences to determine the appropriate allocation of public resources to competing projects or programs. The analysis of choice-experimental data typically relies on the assumptions that choices of the non-status quo option are demand-revealing and choices of the status quo option are not demand-revealing, but, rather, reflect an underlying behavioral bias in favor of the status quo. This paper reports the results of an experiment demonstrating that both of those assumptions are likely to be invalid. We demonstrate that choice experiments for a public good are vulnerable to the same types of strategic voting that affect other types of multiple-choice voting mechanisms. We show that owing to the mathematics of choice-set design, what actually is strategic voting often is misinterpreted as a behavioral bias for the status quo option. Therefore, we caution against using current choice-experimental methodologies to inform policy making about public goods.
Journal Article
Publishing blackness : textual constructions of race since 1850
\" From the white editorial authentication of slave narratives, to the cultural hybridity of the Harlem Renaissance, to the overtly independent publications of the Black Arts movement, to the commercial power of Oprah's Book Club, African American textuality has been uniquely shaped by the contests for cultural power inherent in literary production and distribution. Always haunted by the commodification of blackness, African American literary production interfaces with the processes of publication and distribution in particularly charged ways. An energetic exploration of the struggles and complexities of African American print culture, this collection ranges across the history of African American literature, and the authors have much to contribute on such issues as editorial and archival preservation, canonization, and the \"packaging\" and repackaging of black-authored texts. Publishing Blackness aims to project African Americanist scholarship into the discourse of textual scholarship, provoking further work in a vital area of literary study\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Association between time preference, present-bias and physical activity: implications for designing behavior change interventions
Background
The decision to initiate or maintain a healthy habit, such as physical activity involves a trade-off between a short-term cost, such as time and effort, which are commonly identified as barriers to physical activity, and a long-term health benefit. Research suggests that individual time preference may be associated with unhealthy behaviors. However, empirical evidence of this for physical activity is scant. This study investigated the relationship between time preference and physical activity, and how this might influence behavior change.
Methods
Employees (
n
= 176; mean age 42.2 years) who participated in a physical activity intervention were invited to take part in a behavioral economic field experiment. Two economic experiments, using multiple price lists and monetary trade-off tables involving real money choices, were conducted face-to-face with participants to measure the two components of time preference, namely present-bias and discount rate. Together with individual risk preferences, these three variables were jointly estimated by maximum likelihood. These three parameters were expressed as a linear function of the levels of physical activity while controlling for socio-demographic variables within the same maximum likelihood framework.
Results
Those who were present-biased and who had higher discount rates did significantly less physical activity than their patient and non present-biased counterparts. A 3% lower discount rate and 1.14 unit decrement in the present-bias parameter was associated with a 30 min increase of physical activity per week. This negative association was more significant for certain sub-groups, such as younger and married adults and those with higher staff grade and those who have children. Participants who dropped out of the study earlier were more present-biased.
Conclusions
Results demonstrated that discount rate and present-biasedness have a significant impact on physical activity levels. Such concepts have been largely overlooked and underutilized in physical activity interventions. Promising implications include 1) utilizing individuals’ time preferences to better target interventions; 2) taking account of time preferences in the intervention design; 3) interventions attempting to correct for present-biasedness.
Journal Article