Publications by authors named "Nathan Lau"

Article Synopsis
  • The study compares scene-independent and scene-dependent eye metrics to evaluate how well they assess performance in simulated psychomotor tasks for trainees.
  • Scene-dependent metrics showed a stronger correlation with performance levels compared to scene-independent metrics, based on the analysis of eye-tracking and task completion data.
  • The results suggest that using scene-dependent eye metrics could improve skill assessment and training, ultimately enhancing the competency of operators in various fields like surgery and aviation.
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  • Sensory stimuli gain motivational significance through learned associations, but there's still much to discover about how these associations are processed in the brain.
  • This study compared the mouse anteromedial olfactory tubercle (OT) and ventral pallidum (VP) to understand their roles in reward processing, revealing that OT neurons are mainly focused on identifying odors, while VP neurons primarily encode reward expectations.
  • Findings suggest that OT encodes complex odor identities in a detailed manner, whereas VP simplifies this information into a more general sense of reward, indicating a specialized mapping of sensory information to motivational value in the brain’s circuitry.
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  • The study analyzes the FDA's MAUDE database to identify and characterize adverse events linked to femtosecond (FS) laser-assisted LASIK surgeries from January 2012 to April 2022.
  • A total of 1,136 relevant adverse events were identified from 3,491 reports, with common intraoperative complications being incomplete cuts and difficulties with the flap, while diffuse lamellar keratitis (DLK) was the most frequent postoperative issue.
  • This research highlights the prevalence of specific complications during and after FS-assisted LASIK and aims to improve awareness and patient counseling for ophthalmologists.
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Magnitude processing and executive functions (EFs) have emerged as robust predictors of mathematics achievement. However, the nature of these associations is still unclear. For example, it is uncertain if EFs applied in the context of domain-specific mathematical cognition (i.

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  • There is a strong connection between math anxiety and math achievement, where higher anxiety levels generally lead to lower performance in math.
  • The review discusses two main theories: Reduced Competency Theory, which posits that low math skills can lead to increased anxiety, and Processing Efficiency Theory, which argues that anxiety distracts cognitive resources, hindering performance.
  • It introduces 'math avoidance' as a significant factor that mediates this relationship, indicating that avoidance behaviors can create a cycle that worsens both anxiety and math proficiency.
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  • Castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) includes various subtypes, notably androgen receptor-active prostate cancer (ARPC) and neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC), which can exist simultaneously in patients, complicating treatment strategies.
  • Current therapies lack effectiveness across these different CRPC subtypes, prompting research on a new combined treatment approach.
  • The study found that fimepinostat, a dual inhibitor of histone deacetylase (HDAC) and PI3K/AKT, significantly inhibits tumor growth in both ARPC and NEPC models, showing better results when both pathways are targeted together rather than separately.
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The ways in which sensory stimuli acquire motivational valence through association with other stimuli is one of the simplest forms of learning. Though we have identified many brain nuclei that play various roles in reward processing, a significant gap remains in understanding how valence encoding transforms through the layers of sensory processing. To address this gap, we carried out a comparative investigation of the anteromedial olfactory tubercle (OT), and the ventral pallidum (VP) - 2 connected nuclei of the basal ganglia which have both been implicated in reward processing.

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Objectives: To estimate the variability of the cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections among elementary school students attributable to individual schools and/or their geographic areas, and to ascertain whether socio-economic characteristics of school populations and/or geographic areas may be predictive of this variability.

Design: Population-based observational study of SARS-CoV-2 infections among elementary school children.

Setting: 3994 publicly funded elementary schools in 491 forward sortation areas (designated geographic unit based on first three characters of Canadian postal code), Ontario, Canada, September 2020 to April 2021.

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Introduction: In laparoscopic surgery, looking in the target areas is an indicator of proficiency. However, gaze behaviors revealing feedforward control (i.e.

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Older adults in the United States rely heavily on driving their own vehicles to commute to work, shop for groceries, and access public services. To effectively help older adults maintain mobility and independence,we need to better understand how thecognitive, visual functioning, and health declines influence their tendency to self-restrict their driving. The objective of this study is to develop a causal model to examine the effects of age, gender, household status (specifically living alone), physical, cognitive, visual abilities, and health status on older adults' driving mobility in terms of driving exposure and avoidance.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the globe have been exposed to large amounts of statistical data. Previous studies have shown that individuals' mathematical understanding of health-related information affects their attitudes and behaviours. Here, we investigate the relation between (i) basic numeracy, (ii) COVID-19 health numeracy, and (iii) COVID-19 health-related attitudes and behaviours.

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Math anxiety is a common affective disorder in students that is characterized by intrusive thoughts that disrupt critical cognitive resources required for math problem-solving. Consistent associations between math anxiety and math achievement have been observed across countries and age groups, placing math anxiety among other important correlates of math achievement, such as socioeconomic status and magnitude representation ability. However, studies examining math anxiety's relation to achievement have largely focused on the effect of students' own math anxiety (individual effect), while little is known regarding the effect of math anxiety in students' educational context (contextual effect).

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Research has shown that two different, though related, ways of representing magnitude play foundational roles in the development of numerical and mathematical skills: a nonverbal approximate number system and an exact symbolic number system. While there have been numerous studies suggesting that the two systems are important predictors of math achievement, there has been substantial debate regarding whether and how these basic numerical competencies may be developmentally interrelated. Specifically, the causal direction of their relation has been the subject of debate: whether children's approximate number abilities predict later symbolic number abilities (the mapping account) or the other way around (the refinement account).

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Background: Surgical training includes the development of technical and nontechnical skills. While technical skills are more easily quantified, nontechnical skills such as situation awareness (SA) are more difficult to measure and quantify. This study investigated the relationships between different SA elements and expertise.

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Background And Objectives: The increasing number of senior drivers may introduce new road risks due to age-related declines in physical and cognitive abilities. Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) have been proposed as solutions to minimize age-related declines, thereby increasing both senior safety and mobility. This study examined factors that influence seniors' attitudes toward adopting ADAS after significant exposure to the technology in naturalistic settings.

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The increased treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) with second-generation antiandrogen therapies (ADT) has coincided with a greater incidence of lethal, aggressive variant prostate cancer (AVPC) tumors that have lost dependence on androgen receptor (AR) signaling. These AR-independent tumors may also transdifferentiate to express neuroendocrine lineage markers and are termed neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC). Recent evidence suggests kinase signaling may be an important driver of NEPC.

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Patient flow management is a system-wide process but many healthcare providers do not integrate multiple departments into the process to minimise the time between treatments or medical services for maximum patient throughput. This paper presents a case study of applying Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA) to characterise system-wide patient flow management and identify opportunities for improvements in a healthcare system. This case study employed a three-part method of data elicitation, extraction, and representation to investigate DSA.

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Cyber threats are targeting vulnerabilities of human workers performing tasks in manufacturing processes, including visual inspection to bias their decision-making, thereby sabotaging product quality. This article examines the use of priming as a form of "cognitive hacking" to adversely affect quality inspection decisions in manufacturing, and investigates physiological measurements as means to detect such intrusion. In a within-subject design experiment, twenty participants inspected surface roughness of a manufactured component with and without exposure to priming on the display of an inspection logging system.

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Introduction: Brain tumors are the most common solid malignancy and leading cause of cancer-related deaths in infants. Current epidemiological data is limited by low numbers of reported cases. This study used a population-based approach with analysis of contemporary and historical survival curves to provide up-to-date prognostication.

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Objective: With recent changes to graduate medical education, the balance between resident autonomy and need for supervision impacts the educational and training experience of residents. The objective of this study was to understand the relationship between the confidence of attendings and residents and their different perspectives of perceived educational experience and autonomy in the operating room (OR). We hypothesized that the attending's confidence in the resident would be an important factor in improving the educational experience and resident's autonomy in the OR.

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Background: Eye-gaze metrics derived from areas of interest (AOIs) have been suggested to be effective for surgical skill assessment. However, prior research is mostly based on static images and simulated tasks that may not translate to complex and dynamic surgical scenes. Therefore, eye-gaze metrics must advance to account for changes in the location of important information during a surgical procedure.

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We reviewed the available literature on measuring human performance to evaluate human-system interfaces (HSIs), focused on high-fidelity simulations of industrial process control systems, to identify best practices and future directions for research and operations. We searched the available literature and then conducted in-depth review, structured coding, and analysis of 49 articles, which described 42 studies. Human performance measures were classified across six dimensions: task performance, workload, situation awareness, teamwork/collaboration, plant performance, and other cognitive performance indicators.

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Objective: The aim of this study was to apply work domain analysis for cybersecurity assessment and design of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems.

Background: Adoption of information and communication technology in cyberphysical systems (CPSs) for critical infrastructures enables automated and distributed control but introduces cybersecurity risk. Many CPSs employ SCADA industrial control systems that have become the target of cyberattacks, which inflict physical damage without use of force.

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Study Objectives: This study investigated the association between driving safety and seven sleep disorders amongst 3541 participants of the Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) naturalistic driving study.

Methods: SHRP 2 collected naturalistic driving data from participants between 16 and 98 years old by instrumenting participants' vehicles. The analyses used logistic regression to determine the likelihood of crash or near-crash involvement, Poisson log-linear regression to assess crash or near-crash rate, and ordinal logistic regression to assess driver maneuver appropriateness and crash or near-crash severity.

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Synopsis of recent research by authors named "Nathan Lau"

  • - Nathan Lau's recent research focuses on the interplay of cognitive functions and emotional responses, particularly in relation to valence signaling, executive function, math anxiety, and the implications for learning and behavior.
  • - Notably, his work includes a study on valence encoding in mouse brain circuits related to reward processing, the effects of socio-economic factors on COVID-19 infections in schools, and an analysis of the relationship between executive functions and mathematics achievement in children.
  • - Additionally, Lau has contributed to understanding the adverse events associated with laser-assisted eye surgeries and explored the complexities of treating different subtypes of castration-resistant prostate cancer, demonstrating a diverse research portfolio across neuroscience, education, and health.