Safe Drinking Water How Can We Provide it in Our Community?

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Synthesis of Dopant-Segregated Tin-Doped Indium Oxide (ITO) Nanocrystals

The use of a localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) in nanostructures has been explored in sensing, spectroscopy, and smart window applications. Furthermore, the ability to synthetically or post-synthetically tune the LSPR frequency has made these materials an increasingly interesting area of study. Metal oxide nanocrystals (NCs) exhibit an LSPR frequency in the infrared region, making them useful for molecular sensing. LSPR also results in an enhanced electric field near the NC surface. The near-field enhancement (NFE) can improve sensing, but the presence of a depletion layer at the NC surface reduces NC sensitivity. By segregating dopants to the surface of the NC, the depletion layer can be reduced, thereby improving NC sensitivity to its surroundings. To study the impact of radial dopant distribution in the NC, it is necessary to independently maintain a high degree of synthetic control over the dopant concentration and NC size. In this work, the synthesis of ITO NCs with dopants segregated to the surface is demonstrated. A method to extract the optical and electronic properties of the core/shell NCs is also described.Chemical Engineerin

Bright spots, physical activity investments that work: Beat the Street

Programme card Country/locality United Kingdom, Europe (Austria, Greece, Ireland, Italy & Poland), United States, Canada, and Shanghai. Target population Primary focus: the physically inactive and those from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. However, the programme is open to all members of the public. What modes/types/domains of physical activity does the programme promote? Walking, cycling and running through active travel, recreation and exploration of the local, outdoor environment. Which of the seven best investments the programme addresses? Four of the seven best investments: communication and public education; education; community-wide programs and sport and recreation. What sectors does it involve? NHS, public health, transport, education, physical activity and sport, workforce and nature. The aim is to get the whole community engaged. Estimated programme reach Since 2011, the programme has engaged 877,409 participants, with over 300,000 people taking part in consecutive years in 2016 and 2017. What is special about this programme? The programme uses online, print and face to face engagement to affect behaviour change and help people sustain that change

Can lay-led walking programmes increase physical activity in middle aged adults? : a randomised controlled trial

Study objective: To compare health walks, a community based lay-led walking scheme versus advice only on physical activity and cardiovascular health status in middle aged adults. Design: Randomised controlled trial with one year follow up. Physical activity was measured by questionnaire. Other measures included attitudes to exercise, body mass index, cholesterol, aerobic capacity, and blood pressure. Setting: Primary care and community. Participants: 260 men and women aged 40–70 years, taking less than 120 minutes of moderate intensity activity per week. Main results: Seventy three per cent of people completed the trial. Of these, the proportion increasing their activity above 120 minutes of moderate intensity activity per week was 22.6% in the advice only and 35.7% in the health walks group at 12 months (between group difference =13% (95% CI 0.003% to 25.9%) p=0.05). Intention to treat analysis, using the last known value for missing cases, demonstrated smaller differences between the groups (between group difference =6% (95% CI -5% to 16.4%)) with the trend in favour of health walks. There were improvements in the total time spent and number of occasions of moderate intensity activity, and aerobic capacity, but no statistically significant differences between the groups. Other cardiovascular risk factors remained unchanged. Conclusions: There were no significant between group differences in self reported physical activity at 12 month follow up when the analysis was by intention to treat. In people who completed the trial, health walks was more effective than giving advice only in increasing moderate intensity activity above 120 minutes per week

Seeing Speech: Ultrasound-based Multimedia Resources for Pronunciation Learning in Indigenous Languages

Pronunciation is an important aspect of Indigenous language learning, and one which requires creative community-oriented solutions. Towards this end, we have developed a pronunciation learning tool that incorporates ultrasound technology to give learners a visual aid to help them articulate unfamiliar and/or challenging sounds. Ultrasound is used to create videos of a model speaker’s tongue movements during speech, which are then overlaid on videos of an external profile view of the model’s head to create ultrasound-enhanced pronunciation videos for individual words or sounds. A key advantage of these videos is that learners are able see how speech is produced rather than just hear and try to mimic it. Although ultrasound-enhanced videos were originally developed for commonly taught languages such as Japanese and French, there has been widespread interest from Indigenous communities in Western Canada to develop their own customized videos. This paper reports on three collaborations between linguists and communities in British Columbia to develop ultrasound-enhanced videos for the SENĆOŦEN, Secwepemc, and Halq’emeylem languages. These videos can give learners a new way to learn pronunciation that focuses on seeing speech, and can create new documentation of understudied sound systems for future generations.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Achieving greater productivity with a peer writing group

As an academic you rise and fall based on your publication record. For science academics moving from their original discipline to publish educational research outcomes there is a risk of decreased publication rates and an associated reduction in perceived self-worth. This paper examines the experiences of the authors who established a cross-institutional peer writing group to enhance writing productivity. Over a two-year period, we communicated regularly by telephone and email, committed to specific writing tasks, discussed publishing plans, challenges and outcomes, and wrote reflective journals to document our journey. This paper discusses the positive and negative influences on productivity highlighted by the journal entries and proposes four recommendations for optimising the effects of peer writing groups

2017 Final Evaluation Report for Better Together

Program DescriptionHeartland Family Service (HFS) partnered with Nebraska Families Collaborative (NFC) and the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (NDHHS) to begin Better Together, a comprehensive support service program for families affected by substance abuse in Omaha, Nebraska. Better Together seeks to prevent infant abandonment by increasing wellbeing, improving permanency, and enhancing the safety of infants and young children who have been exposed to dangerous drugs. Utilizing a community-based treatment setting, Better Together provides intensive outpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment to families impacted by substance abuse. NDHHS and NFC identify families as being at risk for out-of-home placement of their children and recommend the appropriate services. The target population is families in which the mother is pregnant and using drugs and/or alcohol, families where infants screen positive for illegal substances, or families with young children who are at risk for placement due to parental substance abuse. HFS treats each family as a unit, providing comprehensive treatment and support services for the parents, infants, young children, older children, and any self-identified family members. Better Together services include the following: Intensive outpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment. Mental health treatment. Case management. Parenting education. Peer support. Family therapy. Housing assistance. Infant and child developmental screening and intervention. Physical health care coordination and support. Transportation assistance. Families live in a community-based treatment setting, in individually-leased apartments, for up to two years. As they move through the program, their treatment becomes progressively less intensive. Better Together outcomes include improved child well-being, sustained parental recovery from substance abuse, and reunification of families

Design, Optimization, and Evaluation of Integrally-Stiffened Al-2139 Panel with Curved Stiffeners

A curvilinear stiffened panel was designed, manufactured, and tested in the Combined Load Test Fixture at NASA Langley Research Center. The panel is representative of a large wing engine pylon rib and was optimized for minimum mass subjected to three combined load cases. The optimization included constraints on web buckling, material yielding, crippling or local stiffener failure, and damage tolerance using a new analysis tool named EBF3PanelOpt. Testing was performed for the critical combined compression-shear loading configuration. The panel was loaded beyond initial buckling, and strains and out-of-plane displacements were extracted from a total of 20 strain gages and 6 linear variable displacement transducers. The VIC-3D system was utilized to obtain full field displacements/strains in the stiffened side of the panel. The experimental data were compared with the strains and out-of-plane deflections from a high fidelity nonlinear finite element analysis. The experimental data were also compared with linear elastic finite element results of the panel/test-fixture assembly. Overall, the panel buckled very near to the predicted load in the web regions

Design, Optimization, and Evaluation of A1-2139 Compression Panel with Integral T-Stiffeners

A T-stiffened panel was designed and optimized for minimum mass subjected to constraints on buckling load, yielding, and crippling or local stiffener failure using a new analysis and design tool named EBF3PanelOpt. The panel was designed for a compression loading configuration, a realistic load case for a typical aircraft skin-stiffened panel. The panel was integrally machined from 2139 aluminum alloy plate and was tested in compression. The panel was loaded beyond buckling and strains and out-of-plane displacements were extracted from 36 strain gages and one linear variable displacement transducer. A digital photogrammetric system was used to obtain full field displacements and strains on the smooth (unstiffened) side of the panel. The experimental data were compared with the strains and out-of-plane deflections from a high-fidelity nonlinear finite element analysis

Design, Optimization and Evaluation of Integrally Stiffened Al 7050 Panel with Curved Stiffeners

A curvilinear stiffened panel was designed, manufactured, and tested in the Combined Load Test Fixture at NASA Langley Research Center. The panel was optimized for minimum mass subjected to constraints on buckling load, yielding, and crippling or local stiffener failure using a new analysis tool named EBF3PanelOpt. The panel was designed for a combined compression-shear loading configuration that is a realistic load case for a typical aircraft wing panel. The panel was loaded beyond buckling and strains and out-of-plane displacements were measured. The experimental data were compared with the strains and out-of-plane deflections from a high fidelity nonlinear finite element analysis and linear elastic finite element analysis of the panel/test-fixture assembly. The numerical results indicated that the panel buckled at the linearly elastic buckling eigenvalue predicted for the panel/test-fixture assembly. The experimental strains prior to buckling compared well with both the linear and nonlinear finite element model