Eliminating Modern Day Slavery

All too often, human trafficking victims – like victims of other crimes – are overlooked. When these victims are in need of support and resources, our governments are often underprepared and overburdened. As public servants, Congressman Ted Poe and State Senator Leticia Van de Putte recognize the deficiency in attention and resources dedicated to trafficked victims at both levels of government. Federal and state governments should provide the necessary resources for victims and victim service providers and help facilitate restitution for trafficking victims. In addition, the federal and state governments should help raise awareness of this crime’s impact on our nation. The problem of human trafficking cannot be dealt with at only one level of government. It will take the cooperation of all relevant local, state, and federal government entities to truly make an impact in combating human trafficking in the United States. We will continue to be a voice in Washington and in the State of Texas for victims and victim advocates to provide the needed resources for victims around the country and to draw attention to growing concerns surrounding human trafficking.

Modern approaches to pediatric brain injury therapy.

Each year, pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) accounts for 435,000 emergency department visits, 37,000 hospital admissions, and approximately 2,500 deaths in the United States. TBI results in immediate injury from direct mechanical force and shear. Secondary injury results from the release of biochemical or inflammatory factors that alter the loco-regional milieu in the acute, subacute, and delayed intervals after a mechanical insult. Preliminary preclinical and clinical research is underway to evaluate the benefit from progenitor cell therapeutics, hypertonic saline infusion, and controlled hypothermia. However, all phase III clinical trials investigating pharmacologic monotherapy for TBI have shown no benefit. A recent National Institutes of Health consensus statement recommends research into multimodality treatments for TBI. This article will review the complex pathophysiology of TBI as well as the possible therapeutic mechanisms of progenitor cell transplantation, hypertonic saline infusion, and controlled hypothermia for possible utilization in multimodality clinical trials.

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE COUNT RATE PERFORMANCE AND EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTS OF HIGH COUNT RATES ON MODERN GAMMA CAMERAS

CHARACTERIZATION OF THE COUNT RATE PERFORMANCE AND EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTS OF HIGH COUNT RATES ON MODERN GAMMA CAMERAS Michael Stephen Silosky, B.S. Supervisory Professor: S. Cheenu Kappadath, Ph.D. Evaluation of count rate performance (CRP) is an integral component of gamma camera quality assurance and measurement of system dead time (τ) is important for quantitative SPECT. The CRP of three modern gamma cameras was characterized using established methods (Decay and Dual Source) under a variety of experimental conditions. For the Decay method, input count rate was plotted against observed count rate and fit to the paralyzable detector model (PDM) to estimate τ (Rates method). A novel expression for observed counts as a function of measurement time interval was derived and the observed counts were fit to this expression to estimate τ (Counts method). Correlation and Bland-Altman analysis were performed to assess agreement in estimates of τ between methods. The dependencies of τ on energy window definition and incident energy spectrum were characterized. The Dual Source method was also used to estimate τ and its agreement with the Decay method under identical conditions and the effects of total activity and the ratio of source activities were investigated. Additionally, the effects of count rate on several performance metrics were evaluated. The CRP curves for each system agreed with the PDM at low count rates but deviated substantially at high count rates. Estimates of τ for the paralyzable portion of the CRP curves using the Rates and Counts methods were highly correlated (r=0.999) but with a small (~6%) difference. No significant difference was observed between the highly correlated estimates of τ using the Decay or Dual Source methods under identical experimental conditions (r=0.996). Estimates of τ increased as a power-law function with decreasing ratio of counts in the photopeak to the total counts and linearly with decreasing spectral effective energy. Dual Source method estimates of τ varied as a quadratic with the ratio of the single source to combined source activities and linearly with total activity used across a large range. Image uniformity, spatial resolution, and energy resolution degraded linearly with count rate and image distorting effects were observed. Guidelines for CRP testing and a possible method for the correction of count rate losses for clinical images have been proposed.