Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Pathophysiology

This poster presentation overviews the pathophysiologic process and accompanying disease characteristics associated with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). COPD is a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Studies suggest that its incidence will only increase in the future. COPD risk factors include smoking tobacco, environmental chemical/pollution irritants, and genetic predisposition. Smoking is the most common cause of COPD, and cessation can improve patient outcomes drastically. This chronic obstructive pulmonary disease overview discusses the importance of knowledge of COPD, signs, symptoms, pathophysiology, peri-operative management, treatments, and prevention

Identification of Critical Points for Bacterial Contamination in the Microbrewery Environment

There are 8,884 craft breweries producing over 23 million barrels of beer in the United States as of 2020. These 23 million barrels of craft beer account for 12.3% of the United States beer consumption in 2020. The American craft beer industry is substantial and needs to protect its product from bacterial contamination. Overall, beer is a microbially stable product. Beers pH, ethanol levels, CO2 concentrations, the presence of hop-derived antimicrobial compounds, and low levels of O2 make beer a highly unfavorable environment for most bacterial species. Furthermore, the brewing process, which involves heat treatments and chemical sanitizers further protect beer from bacterial contamination. However, beer sometimes does become contaminated by unwanted bacteria. Primarily these bacteria are members of the Genera Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Pectinatus, and Megasphaera. These bacteria contaminate beer due to a variety of factors that allow them to evade beer’s antibacterial properties or the process hurdles of the brewing process. Protecting beer from these spoilage organisms is crucial to maintain quality and shelf stability. Microbreweries and brewpub are especially vulnerable to bacterial contamination due to the unique challenges they face. These challenges include the use of modular chlorobutyl hose systems and mobile pumps, the overall “open” nature of smaller brewhouses and cellars exposed to the outside environment (such as opening tanks to pitch yeast, dry hop, or introduction of additions), and the proximity of the production and packaging areas to the public. Research was conducted to determine steps in the brewing process that bacterial species were most likely to contaminate the microbrewery/brewpub environment. Samples were collected from three breweries of similar size and scale in Upstate South Carolina, from eleven common locations throughout the brewing process and analyzed via HybriScan D Beer rapid molecular testing kits for the cell counts at each location. The racking arm valve had the highest levels of bacterial contamination

Chord diagrams and BPHZ subtractions

The combinatorics of the BPHZ subtraction scheme for a class of ladder graphs for the three point vertex in $\phi^3$ theory is transcribed into certain connectivity relations for marked chord diagrams (knots with transversal intersections). The resolution of the singular crossings using the equivalence relations in these examples provides confirmation of a proposed fundamental relationship between knot theory and renormalization in perturbative quantum field theory.Comment: 12 pages, 5 Postscript figures, LaTex 2

The embedding structure for linearly ordered topological spaces

In this paper, the class of all linearly ordered topological spaces (LOTS) quasi-ordered by the embeddability relation is investigated. In ZFC it is proved that for countable LOTS this quasi-order has both a maximal (universal) element and a finite basis. For the class of uncountable LOTS of cardinality $\kappa$ it is proved that this quasi-order has no maximal element for $\kappa$ at least the size of the continuum and that in fact the dominating number for such quasi-orders is maximal, i.e. $2^\kappa$. Certain subclasses of LOTS, such as the separable LOTS, are studied with respect to the top and internal structure of their respective embedding quasi-order. The basis problem for uncountable LOTS is also considered; assuming the Proper Forcing Axiom there is an eleven element basis for the class of uncountable LOTS and a six element basis for the class of dense uncountable LOTS in which all points have countable cofinality and coinitiality

Field Theory of Many-Body Lindbladian Dynamics

We review and further develop the Keldysh functional integral technique for the study of Lindbladian evolution of many-body driven-dissipative quantum systems. A systematic and pedagogical account of the dynamics of generic bosonic and fermionic Lindbladians is presented. Our particular emphasis is on unique properties of the stationary distribution function, determined by the Lyapunov equation. This framework is applied to study examples of Lindbladian dynamics in the context of band theory, disorder, collisionless collective modes, and mean-field theory