Enhancing Ontario’s Rural Infrastructure Preparedness: Inter-Community Service Sharing in a Changing Climate — Policy Brief

This policy brief draws together the insights from a three-year (2016-19) Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) funded research study. The purpose of the research project was to 1) assess the potential of inter-community service cooperation (ICSC) as a possible tool to address the impacts of climate change (CC) in small (500-7500 pop.) Ontario rural communities south of the Sudbury region and 2) understand the extent to which such collaboration and the impacts of CC are, or could be, embedded within the community’s infrastructure (asset) management processes (AMP). While the conclusions of policy brief are generalized to represent an overall picture of Ontario rural municipalities, each jurisdiction is distinctive with its own history and geography. Thus, any policy recommendations must take into consideration local circumstances, needs and preferences. This document is part of a larger suite of documents on rural Ontario inter-community service cooperation. To access the complete rural ICSC toolkit please visit http://www.resilientresearch.ca/research-publications/

Enhancing Ontario’s Rural Infrastructure Preparedness: Inter-Community Service Sharing in a Changing Climate — Rural Community Practitioners Workbook

This practitioner workbook draws together the insights from a three-year (2016-19) Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) funded research study. The purpose of the research project was to 1) assess the potential of inter-community service cooperation (ICSC) as a possible tool to address the impacts of climate change (CC) in small (500-7500 pop.) Ontario rural communities south of the Sudbury region and 2) understand the extent to which such collaboration and the impacts of CC are, or could be, embedded within the community’s infrastructure (asset) management processes (AMP). While the conclusions of this workbook are generalized to represent an overall picture of Ontario rural municipalities, each jurisdiction is distinctive with its own history and geography. Thus, any practitioner recommendations must take into consideration local circumstances, needs and preferences. This report is part of a larger suite of documents on rural Ontario inter-community service cooperation. To access the complete rural ICSC toolkit please visit http://www.resilientresearch.ca/research-publications

Stability of the Infant Car Seat Challenge and Risk Factors for Oxygen Desaturation Events

Research suggests that infants with poor neck and upper torso muscle tone experience lateral slouching and a compromised airway when placed in the semi-upright seating position. Studies reveal that 4-60% of premature infants (born at less than 3-7 weeks gestation) may experience oxygen desaturation events when in their child safety seats (CSS), potentially resulting in adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes. Therefore, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that premature infants be tested in their CSS prior to hospital discharge. However, neonatal healthcare providers are concerned that this method of testing might not be reliable. No formal studies have investigated the outcomes of repeat testing of premature infants, and little is known about the risk factors for oxygen desaturation events. Therefore, the purpose of this descriptive, non-experimental, observational study was to explore the stability of the one-point Infant Car Seat Challenge (ICSC) and risk factors that may be associated with oxygen desaturation events. A sample of 49 premature infants was used to explore the following variables: 1) pass/fail rates following two (ICSC) observation points, 2) oxygen saturation and desaturation patterns, sleep/wake activity, and a measure of head lag (using the pull-to-sit maneuver) during two ICSCs, and 3) the association between head lag, chronological age, time spent sleeping in the CSS and oxygen desaturation events. Data were analyzed by descriptive and nonparametric statistical tests. This study\u27s findings indicated that 86% of premature infants had stable results, 8% passed rcsc 1 but not ICSC 2, and 6% failed ICSC l and passed ICSC 2. In addition the odds for oxygen desaturation events increased in infants that are born at a gestational age ≤ 34 weeks, were discharged home at a chronological age of \u3e 7 days and had a corrected gestational age of ≤ 37 weeks. Neither head lag or sleep time influenced the ICSC outcomes. Furthermore the ICSC success rate for identifying at risk infants was equal to or better than that of other screening tests for newborn medical conditions. These findings will assist neonatal healthcare providers in making appropriate recommendations for safe travel

An Enhanced Features Extractor for a Portfolio of Constraint Solvers

Recent research has shown that a single arbitrarily efficient solver can be significantly outperformed by a portfolio of possibly slower on-average solvers. The solver selection is usually done by means of (un)supervised learning techniques which exploit features extracted from the problem specification. In this paper we present an useful and flexible framework that is able to extract an extensive set of features from a Constraint (Satisfaction/Optimization) Problem defined in possibly different modeling languages: MiniZinc, FlatZinc or XCSP. We also report some empirical results showing that the performances that can be obtained using these features are effective and competitive with state of the art CSP portfolio techniques

Spartan Daily, October 18, 1979

Volume 73, Issue 32https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6530/thumbnail.jp