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Researchers have considered how school choice policies affect student achievement, but less inquiry explores how the organization of schools may change in the presence of choice. This descriptive and exploratory paper analyzes a state representative sample of school mission statements at two time points: before the enactment of choice policies in Indiana, namely the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program, and again six years into the policy. Using structural topic modeling, this paper examines whether and how school mission statements topics have changed over this period. Descriptive findings suggest mission statement topics differ significantly between sectors but show few changes over time. The most striking shift is that Catholic and other private religious schools appear to be clarifying the religious aspects of their mission in the presence of robust choice policies.

Immunoassays and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with mass spectrometry (MS) are both widely used methods for drug screening in toxicology. We investigated an alternative approach for rapid drug screening: paper spray MS (PS-MS). In paper spray, the biofluid sample is spotted onto a paper substrate. Upon application of a spray solvent and an electric potential, extraction and ionization occur directly from the paper without any need for additional sample preparation. We developed two paper spray high-resolution MS/MS targeted drug screening assays using a quadrupole-orbitrap mass spectrometer, one the positive ion mode and one in the negative ion mode. In the positive ion mode, over 130 drugs and drug metabolites were semi-quantitatively screened at sub-toxic concentrations in a single 2.5 min analysis. Limits of detection and calibration performances for each target compound are reported. The PS-MS/MS assay was tested on authentic postmortem specimens, and its screening ability and semi-quantitative performance were evaluated against independent LC-MS-MS screening and confirmation assays with good agreement. The paper spray MS/MS showed good qualitative agreement with LC-MS-MS; the true positive rate of paper spray MS/MS was 92%, and the true negative rate was over 98%. The quantitative results between the two methods were also acceptable for a screening application; Passing-Bablok regression yielded a slope of 1.17 and a Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.996. A separate PS-MS/MS negative ion screening method was also developed for a small panel of barbiturates and structural analogs, demonstrating its potential for acidic drug detection and screening.

The profession of recreational therapy first established professional membership organizations in the 1940s and 1950s. The most recent national professional membership organization was developed in 1984, when the American Therapeutic Recreation Association (ATRA) was formed. The National Academy of Recreational Therapists (NART) was established in 2011 as an honor society to recognize the most accomplished practitioners and educators in recreational therapy and to provide a clearinghouse for the exchange of ideas that would ultimately lead to the advancement of the recreational therapy profession. Efforts to establish NART began in 2009 when David Austin and Ray West drafted a conceptualization of the academy and its operations, as well as proposed a set of by-laws. A steering committee was subsequently established to review and approve by-laws for NART and to establish the Founding Fellows of NART. The central purpose of the Academy was the advancement of recreational therapy by recognition, education, research, scholarly activity, advocacy, and the provision of advice to decision makers. Since its inception NART has established and funded a Future Scholars Fund to support outstanding graduate students considering pursuing a terminal degree, as well as the Marcia Carter Scholarly Manuscript Award for the best annual publication in the Therapeutic Recreation Journal. Over its first 10 years, NART made revisions to its bylaws to refine criteria and categories for Fellows, and by 2021 there were 77 elected Fellows. The invited paper summarizes the first 10 years and considers a number of original goals that remain to be realized to support and advance this honor society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differencing digital terrain models (DTMs) generated from multitemporal airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) data provide accurate and detailed information about three-dimensional (3D) changes on the Earth. However, noticeable spurious errors along flight paths are often included in the differencing results, hindering the accurate analysis of the topographic changes. This paper proposes a new scalable method to alleviate the problematic systematic errors with a high degree of automation in consideration of the practical limitations raised when processing the rapidly increasing amount of large-scale lidar datasets. The proposed method focused on estimating the displacements caused by vertical positioning errors, which are the most critical error source, and adjusting the DTMs already produced as basic lidar products without access to the point cloud and raw data from the laser scanner. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method were evaluated with experiments with county-level multitemporal airborne lidar datasets in Indiana, USA. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method could estimate the vertical displacement reasonably along the flight paths and improve the county-level lidar differencing results by reducing the problematic errors and increasing consistency across the flight paths. The improved differencing results presented in this paper are expected to provide more consistent information about topographic changes in Indiana. In addition, the proposed method can be a feasible solution to upcoming problems induced by rapidly increasing large-scale multitemporal lidar given recent active government-driven lidar data acquisition programs, such as the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 3D Elevation Program (3DEP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bibliometric analysis identifies the most influential manuscripts that shape our understanding of various congenital gastrointestinal pathologies. This study sets out to analyse the 100 most cited manuscripts on congenital gastrointestinal surgery. The Thomson Reuters Web of Science database was searched for all manuscripts relevant to paediatric congenital gastrointestinal surgery. The number of citations, authorship, publication date, journal of publication, institution and country were recorded for each paper. Eigenfactor and impact factor rankings were obtained for each journal of publication. 971 eligible manuscripts were returned by the search. Within the top 100 manuscripts, the most cited paper (by Metkus et al.) investigated fetal diaphragmatic hernia and was cited 413 times. University of Indianapolis had the most publications (n=5) and Journal of Pediatric Surgery had the most citations (n=3231). The country with the most publications in top 100 were the USA (n=39). The most commonly published topics were diaphragmatic hernia (n=23), abdominal wall defect (n=20) and atresia (n=6). The most cited manuscripts include various topics with a primary focus on the aetiology, diagnosis, management and outcome of diaphragmatic hernia and abdominal wall defects. Additionally, by collecting the most influential works, this study serves to reference what makes a manuscript 'citable'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Springs provide ideal monitoring points for groundwater chemistry, which are important for managing groundwater resources. The chemistry of these spring waters aggregate geochemical reactions along the flow path. In this paper, part two of a two-part investigation, 104 perennial springs in the classic karst landscape of the Mitchell Plateau, Indiana, USA were sampled at base flow. Many of these springs are historically important for domestic, agricultural, commercial, and recreational use. Multifactor analysis of field measurements, principal ions, and stable isotopes revealed five primary clusters of springs emerging from the Mitchell Aquifer. Two clusters represented earth-alkaline-type karst groundwater that were discriminated by temperature and inorganic carbon concentration. Two other clusters comprised mineralized alkaline-earth-type groundwater with excess alkalis and elevated sulfate. The fifth cluster appeared to be groundwater that included meteoric and mineralized sources. Using the longitudinal data over two years from part one of this investigation, two mixing lines were used to describe the data set. The mixing lines pointed to sources of sulfur in mineralized springs from deep brines and from evaporite dissolution. Collectively, these regional data allow for a better delineation of water types and differentiation between the Upper and Lower Mitchell Aquifer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Split failures have been a conventional method to estimate overcapacity at signalized intersections. Currently, split failures are estimated from high-resolution (HR) traffic signal controller event data by evaluating occupancy at the stop bar. Recently, a technique that uses high-fidelity connected vehicle (CV) trajectory data to estimate split failures has been developed and has been adopted by some agencies. This paper compares cycle-by-cycle split failure estimations from both techniques for 42 signalized intersections across central Indiana. CV trajectories were assigned to a cycle based on their arrival characteristics. Then, HR and CV data were used to determine whether each cycle split fails. Finally, agreements and discrepancies were quantified and evaluated. The results obtained after analyzing over 35,000 cycles showed that both techniques produce similar overall split failure estimations. The HR and the CV methods identified 4% and 3% of all cycles as split failing, respectively. However, only 23% of all cycles determined as split failing with the HR approach were also identified as split failing with CV data. Similarly, only 30% of all cycles determined as split failing with the CV approach were also identified as split failing with the HR approach. This indicates significant discrepancies on a cycle-by-cycle basis. Using CV data to identify split failing cycles produces more conservative results and is based on the entire experience of traversing vehicles. If data are available, the authors recommend the CV approach when allocating limited agency resources for operational improvement activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corn and soybeans play pivotal roles in the agricultural landscape of the United States, and accurately delineating their cultivation areas is indispensable for ensuring food security and addressing hunger-related challenges. Traditional methods for crop mapping are both labor-intensive and time-consuming. Fortunately, the advent of high-resolution imagery, exemplified by Sentinel-2A (S2A), has opened avenues for precise identification of these crops at a field scale, with the added advantage of cloud computing. This paper presents an innovative algorithm designed for large-scale mapping of corn and soybean planting areas on the Google Cloud Engine, drawing inspiration from symmetrical theory. The proposed methodology encompasses several sequential steps. First, S2A data undergo processing incorporating phenological information and spectral characteristics. Subsequently, texture features derived from the grayscale matrix are synergistically integrated with spectral features in the first step. To enhance algorithmic efficiency, the third step involves a feature importance analysis, facilitating the retention of influential bands while eliminating redundant features. The ensuing phase employs three base classifiers for feature training, and the final result maps are generated through a collective voting mechanism based on the classification results from the three classifiers. Validation of the proposed algorithm was conducted in two distinct research areas: Ford in Illinois and White in Indiana, showcasing its commendable classification capabilities for these crops. The experiments underscore the potential of this method for large-scale mapping of crop areas through the integration of cloud computing and high-resolution imagery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Threshold public-key encryption (threshold PKE) has various useful applications. A lot of threshold PKE schemes are proposed based on RSA, Diffie–Hellman and lattice, but to the best of our knowledge, code-based threshold PKEs have not been proposed. In this paper, we provide three IND-CCA secure code-based threshold PKE schemes. The first scheme is the concrete instantiation of Dodis–Katz conversion (Dodis and Katz, TCC'05) that converts an IND-CCA secure PKE into an IND-CCA secure threshold PKE using parallel encryption and a signature scheme. This approach provides non-interactive threshold decryption, but ciphertexts are large (about 16 kilobytes for 128-bit security) due to long code-based signatures even in the state-of-the-art one. The second scheme is a new parallel encryption-based construction without signature schemes. Unlike the Dodis–Katz conversion, our parallel encryption converts an OW-CPA secure PKE into an OW-CPA secure threshold PKE. To enhance security, we use Cong et al.'s conversion (Cong et al., ASIACRYPT'21). Thanks to eliminating signatures, its ciphertext is 512 bytes, which is only 3% of the first scheme. The decryption process needs an MPC for computing hash functions, but decryption of OW-CPA secure PKE can be done locally. The third scheme is an MPC-based threshold PKE scheme from code-based assumption. We take the same approach Cong et al. took to construct efficient lattice-based threshold PKEs. We build an MPC for the decryption algorithm of OW-CPA secure Classic McEliece PKE. This scheme has the shortest ciphertext among the three schemes at just 192 bytes. Compared to the regular CCA secure Classic McEliece PKE, the additional ciphertext length is only 100 bytes. The cons are heavy distributed computation in the decryption process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of Indiana maintains approximately 120 salt storage facilities strategically distributed across the state for winter operations. In April 2023, those facilities contained approximately 217,000 tons of salt with an estimated value of USD 21 million. Accurate inventories at each facility during the winter season are important for scheduling re-supply so the facilities do not run out of salt. Inventories are also important at the end of the season for restocking to provide balanced inventories. This paper describes the implementation of a portable pole-mounted LiDAR system to measure salt stockpile inventory at 120 salt storage facilities in Indiana. Using two INDOT staff members, the end-of-season inventory took 9 working days, with volumetric inventories provided within 24 h of data collection. To provide an independent evaluation of the methodologies, the Hovermap ST backpack was used at selected facilities to provide control volumes. This system has a range of 100 m and an accuracy of ±3 cm, which reduces the occlusion to less than 8%. The pre-season facility capacity ranged from 0% to 100%, with an average of 66% full across all facilities. The post-season facility percentage ranged from 3% to 100%, with an average of 70% full. In addition, permanent roof-mounted LiDAR systems were deployed at two facilities to evaluate the effectiveness of monitoring salt stockpile inventories during winter operation activities. Plans are now underway to install fixed LiDAR systems at 15 additional facilities for the 2023–2024 winter season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined optimal grain marketing strategies for a southeast Indiana case farm. Specifically, a downside risk model was used to examine the tradeoffs between net return and downside risk, and to determine whether the optimal marketing strategy changed as downside risk was reduced. The hedge and roll marketing strategy had the highest net return for both corn and soybeans. Even when downside risk was reduced, the hedge and roll strategy was an important component of optimal marketing strategies. Results stress the importance of using a portfolio of marketing strategies for corn and soybeans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science and technology studies scholars have discussed the concept of nature within the context of Christian settler hierarchies (Cronon; Haraway; Titon). However, despite an emerging literature (Doolittle; Mundy), the narrativization of interspecies relations in musical contexts remains undertheorized. In this paper, I examine the ways that music has been used to construct seventeen-year Magicicada Brood X as biologically necessary within Christian environmentalism in the Midwestern United States, despite widespread popular claims that cicadas are "annoying" or "gross." Utilizing a mixture of gastromusicological and multispecies ethnographic techniques, I examine the 2021 event "All Creatures Yum!" in Bloomington, IN, which featured a combination of cicada culinary pop-ups with an album of cicada music. Critiquing David Rothenberg's claim that cicada noise is evidence of a prior stage of human musical evolution, I argue that the pairing of cicadas-as-food with cicadas-as-musical-collaborators suggests a complex negotiation by which participants are involved in "eating the Other" as theorized by bell hooks. The violence of consumption, contrasted with narratives of benevolent bio-musical harmony, brings to light questions of "what particular forms of life and death mean and why they matter" (Van Dooren 7). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an R-based approach to mapping dynamics of the flooded areas in the Inner Niger Delta (IND), Mali, using time series analysis of Landsat 8–9 satellite images. As the largest inland wetland in West Africa, the habitats of IND offers high potential for biodiversity of the flood-dependent eco systems. IND is one of the most productive areas in West Africa. Mapping flooded areas based on satellite images enables to provide strategies for land management and rice planting and modelling vegetation types of IND. Our approach is based on using libraries of R programming language for processing six Landsat images, and each image was taken on November from 2013 to 2022. By capturing spatial and temporal structures of the satellite images on 2013, 2015, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022, the remote sensing data are combined to yield estimates of landscape dynamics that is temporally coherent, while helping to analyse fluctuations of spatial extent in fluvial wetlands caused by the hydrological processes of seasonal flooding. Further, by allowing packages of R to support image processing, an approach to mapping vegetation by NDVI, SAVI and EVI indices and visualising changes in distribution of different land cover classes over time is realised. In this context, processing Earth observation data by advanced scripting tools of R language provides new insights into complex interlace of climate-hydrological processes and vegetation responses. Our study contributes to the sustainable management of natural resources and improving knowledge on the functioning of IND ecosystems in Mali, West Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern vehicles have extensive instrumentation that can be used to actively assess the condition of infrastructure such as pavement markings, signs, and pavement smoothness. Currently, pavement condition evaluations are performed by state and federal officials typically using the industry standard of the International Roughness Index (IRI) or visual inspections. This paper looks at the use of on-board sensors integrated in Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) connected vehicles to obtain crowdsource estimates of ride quality using the International Rough Index (IRI). This paper presents a case study where over 112 km (70 mi) of Interstate-65 in Indiana were assessed, utilizing both an inertial profiler and connected production vehicle data. By comparing the inertial profiler to crowdsourced connected vehicle data, there was a linear correlation with an R2 of 0.79 and a p-value of <0.001. Although there are no published standards for using connected vehicle roughness data to evaluate pavement quality, these results suggest that connected vehicle roughness data is a viable tool for network level monitoring of pavement quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbonic acid and sulfuric acid speleogenesis describe a dichotomy between epigenetic and hypogenetic caves and carbon and sulfur cycling in karst, but do not acknowledge the global spectrum of cave formation. This paper, part one of a two-part investigation, tests and revises speleogenetic models from a classic karst landscape using dissolved ion concentrations δ13CDIC, and δ34S in water samples collected at four sites across the Bluespring and Lost River karst basins in the Mitchell Plateau, Indiana, USA. Analyses revealed elevated sulfur in both karst basins but differently sourced; H2S (δ34S = −14.2‰) evolved from petroleum seeps in Bluespring Caverns accounted for up to 61% of sulfur in the cave stream, while evaporite beds (δ34S = [+14.50‰, +17.91‰]) of the St. Louis Limestone contributed up to 100% of sulfur at Orangeville Rise, a terminal spring of the Lost River karst basin. These results have implications for carbon–sulfur cycle linkages, particularly the potential acceleration of carbon flux from sulfuric acid dissolution in otherwise epigenetic settings. We suggest a new paradigm for speleogenesis in the North American midcontinent—speleogenesis in the Mitchell Plateau and similar settings is not epigenetic or hypogenetic, but instead polygenetic with competing chemical processes varying across space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The purpose of this article is to introduce nuclear medicine technology (NMT) educators to a method of incorporating research methodologies into the curriculum. Methods: The research methodology in the NMT program at Indiana University (IU) is taught in five steps (1. Introduction to research articles and statistics 2. Mock project and individual project design 3. Data collection 4. Writing the research paper 5. Presenting the abstract and mentoring new students). These steps could be combined for programs of shorter length or with credit hour restrictions. Results: All IU NMT students (100%) presented their research abstracts as part of a continuing education program for technologists. Seventeen of twenty-five (68%) presented their abstracts at a regional professional meeting. Six of twenty-five (24%) presented their research abstracts at a national professional meeting. Three of those six (50%) received travel grants. Two students submitted their research for publication and one was successful. Conclusion: The goal of incorporating a research methodology program into the nuclear medicine program should be to introduce undergraduates to the research process and instill excitement for new technologists to continue participation in research throughout their career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Brachial plexopathy is a potentially serious complication from stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) that has not been widely studied. Therefore, we compared datasets from two different institutions and generated a brachial plexus dose-response model, to quantify what dose constraints would be needed to minimize the effect on normal tissue while still enabling potent therapy for the tumor.Methods: Two published SBRT datasets were pooled and modeled from patients at Indiana University and the Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Administration Medical Center from 1998 to 2007, as well as the Karolinska Institute from 2008 to 2013. All patients in both studies were treated with SBRT for apically located lung tumors localized superior to the aortic arch. Toxicities were graded according to Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events, and a probit dose response model was created with maximum likelihood parameter fitting.Results: This analysis includes a total of 89 brachial plexus maximum point dose (Dmax) values from both institutions. Among the 14 patients who developed brachial plexopathy, the most common complications were grade 2, comprising 7 patients. The median follow-up was 30 months (range 6.1-72.2) in the Karolinska dataset, and the Indiana dataset had a median of 13 months (range 1-71). Both studies had a median range of 3 fractions, but in the Indiana dataset, 9 patients were treated in 4 fractions, and the paper did not differentiate between the two, so our analysis is considered to be in 3-4 fractions, one of the main limitations. The probit model showed that the risk of brachial plexopathy with Dmax of 26 Gy in 3-4 fractions is 10%, and 50% with Dmax of 70 Gy in 3-4 fractions.Conclusions: This analysis is only a preliminary result because more details are needed as well as additional comprehensive datasets from a much broader cross-section of clinical practices. When more institutions join the QUANTEC and HyTEC methodology of reporting sufficient details to enable data pooling, our field will finally reach an improved understanding of human dose tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transportation agencies in northern environments spend a considerable amount of their budget on salt for winter operations. For example, in the state of Indiana, there are approximately 140 salt storage facilities distributed throughout the state and the state expends between USD 30 M and USD 60 M on inventory and delivery each year. Historical techniques of relying on visual estimates of salt stockpiles can be inaccurate and do not scale well for managing the supply chain during the winter or planning for re-supply during summer months. This paper describes the implementation of a portable pole mounted LiDAR system that can be used to inventory a large barn in under 15 min and describes how this system has been deployed over 90 times at 30 facilities. A quick and easy accuracy test, based upon conservation of volume, was used to provide an independent check on the system performance by repositioning portions of the salt pile. Those tests indicated stockpile volumes can be estimated with an accuracy of approximately 0.1%. The paper concludes by discussing how this technology can be permanently installed near the roof for systematic monitoring throughout the year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an influx of public and private sector investment in the electric vehicle (EV) domain, public agencies and stakeholders need objective, equitable and systematic processes for identifying candidate sites for siting charging stations. This paper reports on a case study examining the Indiana Interstate network using connected vehicle data (CV). The Indiana Interstate network analyzed by this study is composed of 1247 centerline miles along nine routes. Each month, approximately 13 billion CV records representing more than 44 million unique trips are generated along all roads in Indiana. For this study 3.02 billion records comprising 4.78 million trips on and around Indiana Interstates and Exits were analyzed for usage patterns. The CV data was predominantly from internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) passenger cars, but provides insight into exit utilization and dwell times at 544 exits on 9 interstate roadways to evaluate how their current usage would align with building out Indiana's Alternative Fuel Corridors. A pareto sorted graphic for the top 50 busiest exits in the state shows that all but two are not well served by fast charging infrastructure. The paper suggests this pareto sorted list as a good starting point for further analysis and identified 15 exits on Indiana interstates, if chosen for deploying charging infrastructure, would ensure full compliance. The results provide a systemwide look at present dwell patterns among ICEVs and help identify locations of interest that would most benefit from addition of charging infrastructure as the current fleet of ICEVs gradually transitions to EVs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommendation to screen adults for unhealthy alcohol use, the implementation of alcohol screening in primary care remains suboptimal. Methods: A pre and post-implementation study design that used Agile implementation process to increase screening for unhealthy alcohol use in adult patients from October 2021 to June 2022 at a large primary care clinic serving minority and underprivileged adults in Indianapolis. Results: In comparison to a baseline screening rate of 0%, the agile implementation process increased and sustained screening rates above 80% for alcohol use using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test – Consumption tool (AUDIT-C). Conclusions: Using the agile implementation process, we were able to successfully implement evidence-based recommendations to screen for unhealthy alcohol use in primary care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impacts of reviewing the time to replace of spare parts under the lenses of reliability- and cost-based optimization with the attempt to reduce the cost of a maintenance plan within a harshly constrained maintenance tasks' scheduling problem. A hierarchical procedure for a robust reliability prediction and scheduling of maintenance tasks is introduced to this purpose. This study takes inspiration from real applications of the preventive maintenance (PM) scheduling process on high-throughput packing and manufacturing lines counting hundreds of functional groups and thousands of components subject to failures and replacements. We investigate the role and the criticality of data entry in the not polynomial (NP)-hard cost-based and reliability-based scheduling problem proposed by Manzini et al. (R. Manzini, R. Accorsi, T. Cennerazzo, E. Ferrari and F. Maranesi, The scheduling of maintenance. A resource-constraints mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model, Comput. Ind. Eng.87 (2015) 561–568). The proposed reliability-based analysis aids the setting of proper time to failures for spare parts and combines with an analytical single-component and cost-based model to set which maintenance tasks are the most sensitive to the overall cost reduction of a maintenance plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]