Fluvial Erosion Impacts on Infrastructure Along Indiana Rivers and Streams

Rivers provide for storm water drainage, municipal water usage, and recreation, and they add to the natural aesthetics of a community. As we encroach on river corridors, flooding and damage due to streambank erosion endangers our built environment. In this session we use the recently completed White Lick Creek System Assessment in Hendricks County as a case study to discuss the importance of understanding system-wide stream evolution and movement processes in evaluating and addressing impacts on infrastructures along Indiana streams

Fluvial Erosion Hazard Mitigation

Fluvial erosion—erosion that occurs along a river—is a major threat to infrastructure, and most commonly to roads. This presentation provides an overview of the Indiana Fluvial Erosion Hazard Mitigation Manual, which was recently developed on behalf of the Indiana Silver Jackets. The manual provides a framework for analyzing, designing, and post-construction management / maintenance for fluvial erosion hazard mitigation projects in Indiana

A Polytropic Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis Virus Promoter Isolated from Multiple Tissues from a Sheep with Multisystemic Lentivirus-Associated Inflammatory Disease

Caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV) is a lentivirus that infects both goats and sheep and is closely related to maedi-visna virus that infects sheep; collectively, these viruses are known as small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLV). Infection of goats and sheep with SRLV typically results in discrete inflammatory diseases which include arthritis, mastitis, pneumonia or encephalomyelitis. SRLV-infected animals concurrently demonstrating lentivirus-associated lesions in tissues of lung, mammary gland, joint synovium and the central nervous system are either very rare or have not been reported. Here we describe a novel CAEV promoter isolated from a sheep with multisystemic lentivirus-associated inflammatory disease including interstitial pneumonia, mastitis, polyarthritis and leukomyelitis. A single, novel SRLV promoter was cloned and sequenced from five different anatomical locations (brain stem, spinal cord, lung, mammary gland and carpal joint synovium), all of which demonstrated lesions characteristic of lentivirus associated inflammation. This SRLV promoter isolate was found to be closely related to CAEV promoters isolated from goats in northern California and other parts of the world. The promoter was denoted CAEV-ovine-MS (multisystemic disease); the stability of the transcription factor binding sites within the U3 promoter sequence are discussed

Big Data in Finance: Highlights from the Big Data in Finance Conference Hosted at the University of Michigan October 27-28, 2016

How can financial data be made more accessible and more secure, as well as more useful to regulators, market participants, and the public? As new data sets are created, opportunities emerge. Vast quantities of financial data may help identify emerging risks, enable market participants and regulators to see and better understand financial networks and interconnections, enhance financial stability, bolster consumer protection, and increase access to the underserved. Data can also increase transparency in the financial system for market participants, regulators and the public. These data sets, however, can raise significant questions about security and privacy; ensuring data quality; protecting against discrimination or privacy intrusions; managing, synthesizing, presenting, and analyzing data in usable form; and sharing data among regulators, researchers, and the public. Moreover, any conflicts among regulators and financial firms over such data could create opportunities for regulatory arbitrage and gaps in understanding risk in the financial system. The Big Data in Finance Conference, co-sponsored by the federal Office of Financial Research and the University of Michigan Center on Finance, Law, and Policy, and held at the University of Michigan Law School on October 27-28, 2016, covered a number of important and timely topics in the worlds of Big Data and finance. This paper highlights several key issues and conference takeaways as originally presented by the contributors and panelists who took part

The Disagreement Problem in Faithfulness Metrics

The field of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) aims to explain how black-box machine learning models work. Much of the work centers around the holy grail of providing post-hoc feature attributions to any model architecture. While the pace of innovation around novel methods has slowed down, the question remains of how to choose a method, and how to make it fit for purpose. Recently, efforts around benchmarking XAI methods have suggested metrics for that purpose -- but there are many choices. That bounty of choice still leaves an end user unclear on how to proceed. This paper focuses on comparing metrics with the aim of measuring faithfulness of local explanations on tabular classification problems -- and shows that the current metrics don't agree; leaving users unsure how to choose the most faithful explanations.Comment: 6 pages (excluding refs and appendix

Performance of a repetitive task by aged rats leads to median neuropathy and spinal cord inflammation with associated sensorimotor declines

Epidemiological studies have demonstrated a relationship between advancing age and susceptibility to risk factors for median neuropathies and musculoskeletal disorders. In this study, we determined if performance of a voluntary reaching task by aged rats induced sensorimotor declines, median nerve dysfunction and increased inflammatory cytokines in peripheral nerves, muscle and spinal cord neurons. Aged (14 mon) rats were trained for 15 min/day for 4 weeks to learn a high repetition, low force (HRLF) task (19 reaches/min; 15% maximum pulling force). Aged task rats performed the task for 2 h/day, 3 days/wk, for 12 weeks (until they were 18 mon of age). No behavioral changes were detected in normal controls (NC) or food-restricted controls (FR C) as they aged. However, grip strength declined in HRLF rats in weeks 6-12 (P\u3c0.01 each) and 12-week trained-only rats (TR; P\u3c0.05), compared to NC. Mechanical hypersensitivity was present in weeks 9 and 12 HRLF reach limb forepaws (P\u3c0.01 and P\u3c0.05, respectively), and 12-week HRLF support limb forepaws (P\u3c0.01) and hindpaws (P=0.03), compared to NC. By week 12, median nerve conduction velocity declined 23%, bilaterally, in HRLF (P\u3c0.001 each), and 13% in TR (P\u3c0.05), compared to NC. Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) increased in 12-week HRLF muscle (P=0.005), median nerve (P\u3c0.01), and neurons in superficial lamina of HRLF cervical spinal cords (P\u3c0.01), compared to NC. interleukin 1 beta (IL1β) also increased in superficial lamina neurons (P\u3c0.01). Loss of grip strength was correlated with median nerve conduction slowing (r=0.70) as well as increased nerve and muscle TNFα (r=-0.38 and r=-0.41, respectively); decrease in forepaw withdrawal thresholds was correlated with median nerve conduction slowing (r=0.81), increased nerve TNFα (r=-0.59), and increased TNFα and IL1β in neurons in spinal cord dorsal horns (r=-0.52 and r=-0.47, respectively). Thus, aged rats performing a repetitive task exhibited sensorimotor declines that were associated with decreased median nerve conduction, and increased pro-inflammatory cytokines in the median nerve and cervical spinal cord neurons