Professional Services Group (United States)

Introduction:Age related hearing loss is in the top ten contributors to the global burden of disease and one of the largest modifiable risk factors for age-related dementia. However, awareness of the consequences of untreated hearing loss is poor and many adults do not seek hearing assessment. Despite World Health Organisation recommendations, no EU country currently has a national adult screening programme.Method:The aim of this trial was to raise awareness of hearing loss by providing screening audiograms in a range of community settings. Results were explained to every participant and professional advice given. Seven hundred participants came forward for testing with a mean age of 60 to 70 years old.Results:Data was recorded from 597 individuals (51% female and 49% male), 44% had a disabling hearing loss (≥35 dB HL in the better ear) and 15% of individuals had a moderately severe loss or greater. No participants currently wore or had been fitted with a hearing aid. Both the proportion of those with hearing loss and the severity of the hearing loss increased with age. Tinnitus was present in 38% of the sample and wax occlusion in 24%.Conclusion:Many individuals came forward who had not accessed the audiological services currently provided. This indicates a need for more awareness of hearing care in the population and an unmet need for audiological services.

This textbook and supplemental materials introduce students to federal income taxation for individuals, help prepare them for the CPA and enrolled agent exams, and advance their careers in tax and financial accounting.The textbook utilizes a code-based model and includes the most current tax code updates, enabling students to master today's tax concepts and law.Each of the textbook's 14 chapters begins with a storyline that introduces a taxpayer facing a specific tax-related situation.This enables students to learn the code in context and apply their knowledge to real-life scenarios.Tax and nontax considerations for transactions are provided to enable students to integrate financial and tax accounting acumen and sharpen critical thinking skills.Tax return problems and research assignments enable students to develop the essential skills required of a tax professional.Online learning tools, such as guided example videos, Excel, Alteryx, and Tableau, provide students with the opportunity to apply what they learn within the framework of analytics and critical thinking.In addition, the textbook offers educational TaxAct tax preparation software as well as UWorld CPA Exam review content, provided directly through the McGraw Hill learning management system, Connect.A series of artificial intelligence (AI)/critical thinking questions enable students to evaluate an AI tool's response to tax questions related to material covered in the related chapter.Professors would assign the utilization of this textbook in their introductory course in taxation.It is organized to lay an excellent foundation for students taking their first tax course.The first three chapters provide an introduction to taxation, tax planning, and research.Part II (Chapters 4-8) discusses tax fundamentals, starting with the tax formula and proceeding to a discussion of income, deductions, and tax liability computations.Part III (Chapters 9-11) provides an overview of business-related concepts, such as income recognition, deductions, and asset acquisition and disposition.Part IV (Chapters 12-14) addresses special topics for individuals, such as compensation issues, retirement savings, and home ownership.The following chapter-by-chapter synopsis provides details on chapter content.

The peptide-protein docking problem is an important problem in structural biology that facilitates rational and efficient drug design. In this work, we explore modeling and solving this problem with the quantum-amenable quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) formalism. Our work extends recent efforts by incorporating the objectives and constraints associated with peptide cyclization and peptide-protein docking in the two-particle model on a tetrahedral lattice. We propose a “resource efficient” QUBO encoding for this problem, and baseline its performance with a novel constraint programming (CP) approach. We implement an end-to-end framework that enables the evaluation of our methods on instances from the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Our results show that the QUBO approach, using a classical simulated annealing solver, is able to find feasible conformations for problems with up to 6 peptide residues and 34 target protein residues (PDB 3WNE, 5LSO), but has trouble scaling beyond this problem size. In contrast, the CP approach can solve the largest instance in our test set, containing 11 peptide residues and 49 target protein residues (PDB 2F58). We conclude that while QUBO can be used to successfully tackle this problem, its scaling limitations and the strong performance of the CP method suggest that it may not be the best choice.

A growing body of literature on broaching supports its effectiveness and addresses some challenges for applying this method to counseling practice. A thematic analysis with a phenomenological perspective was used to explore counselors’ experiences with broaching in their clinical practice to gain a greater understanding of its actual implementations in counseling. Four themes were identified through analysis of semi-structured interviews with five participants. They are: 1) demonstrating social justice and advocacy orientation as a foundation for broaching; 2) acknowledging the role of counselor self-disclosure in broaching; 3) contextual nature of broaching; and 4) commitment to engaging in ongoing development of broaching skills.

The cellular networks of the next generation will be dependent on virtualized, programmable, and disaggregated architectures and can be entirely cloud-based. Cellular networks are being made by the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) prototype and the reference design offered through O-RAN Alliance. In this article, a unique Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) agent design that can learn control policies with diverse minimum performance needs and different Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in O-RAN applications is proposed for next generation cellular networks. This method concentrates on RAN slicing and SLAs that define the highest acceptable end-to-end latency levels. For optimal scheduling, pufferfish optimization algorithm (POA) is used. The proposed work has conducted the experiments on Colosseum, the biggest wireless network emulator in the world, to show real-time analytics. Utilizing the O-RAN open interfaces to gather data at the network's edge, the viability of RAN control using xApps operating is demonstrated on the near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller for optimizing coexisting network slices’ scheduling policies.

As part of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, chemical monitoring and surveillance efforts have detected approximately 330 chemicals in surface water of Great Lakes tributaries. There were 140 chemicals for which no empirical toxicity data were available. The aim of this study was to generate transcriptomic points of departure (tPODs) for 10 of these compounds and demonstrate how they could be applied in a screening-level prioritization. Organisms representing three trophic levels of the aquatic food web (Pimephales promelas, Daphnia magna, and Raphidocelis subcapitata) were exposed for 24 hr to a half-log dilution series of nominal exposure concentrations typically ranging from 66.7-0.021 µM of each chemical. In addition to observations of apical effects (e.g., survival and morphology), whole body transcriptomic responses (tPODs) to each chemical were evaluated with targeted analysis using TempO-seq for P. promelas and D. magna and nontargeted RNA-seq for R. subcapitata. The tPODs ranged from 0.18-10.8 µM for P. promelas and 0.32-29 µM for D. magna, with the most potent of the chemicals tested being fipronil carboxamide for both species. For R. subcapitata, the tPODs ranged from 0.04-1.77 µM, with gabapentin as the most potent chemical tested. Empirically derived tPODs from these data-poor chemicals were compared with concentrations detected in the Great Lakes basin. Environmental concentrations were less than the tPODs except for R. subcapitata and 3,4-dichlorophenyl isocyanate. Similarly, tPODs from previously tested data-rich chemicals were compared with environmental concentrations, in which case tPODs from several chemicals overlapped environmental concentrations. This work demonstrates the potential utility of emerging ecological high-throughput transcriptomics assays to support screening and prioritization of data-poor environmental contaminants.

The Idaho Elementary Computer Science (CS) Collaborative (IECC) is a researcher-practitioner partnership dedicated to understanding how to better support the predominately rural districts in Idaho to implement elementary CS education. As part of the IECC's work, we conducted a survey of elementary teachers across the state. This poster will present our initial findings. Two of the research questions we addressed via the survey are: (1) What factors would motivate Idaho elementary teachers to pursue professional development (PD) related to CS? (2) What are elementary teachers' perceptions of the value of connecting CS education to rural community economies and industries? Descriptive analyses of 309 survey responses suggest that about three-quarters of elementary teachers reported that the following factors would be at least somewhat influential in their decisions to pursue CS PD: a K-5 computational thinking requirement, a district-wide CS planning staff, a pathway for elementary teachers to earn a certification in CS teaching, and a way to request CS PD funding. Few (9%) Idaho elementary teachers found that the perception of a disconnect between CS education and rural community interests was a significant barrier to elementary CS education. Even so, over 70% of them were moderately to strongly interested in mechanisms for connecting their CS education efforts to rural community industries through guest speakers and industry partnerships. The poster will discuss the implications of these and other emerging findings from the teacher survey, as well as IECC's related surveys of Idaho district superintendents and elementary school principals.

The Wind River Elementary Computer Science (WRECS) Collaborative is a research-practice partnership (RPP) among three school districts serving Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho communities on the Wind River Reservation, the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE), BootUp Professional Development (BootUp PD), and the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The purpose of the WRECS Collaborative is to develop culturally sustaining elementary computer science (CS) education through integration of CS and Indigenous studies. The Collaborative engaged three cohorts of elementary educators in cycles of professional development, classroom implementation, and group reflection over the 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 school years. In this experience report, we share a set of reflections and lessons learned as the RPP developed relationships and worked through intersecting priorities, instructional goals, and ways of knowing and learning present within the RPP.