The Historic American Buildings Survey and Interpretive Drawing: Using Digital Tools to Facilitate Comprehensive Heritage Documentation

The Historic American Building Survey (HABS), a federal New Deal program largely unchanged since its inception in 1933, is the nation’s largest archive of historic architectural documentation. Surveys include three sections that describe a historical building and/ or site: written historical research, measured drawings, and black and white photography. Today, nearly 40,000 records exist in the Library of Congress, providing copyright free public access in both digital and hard copy format. This thesis focuses on the drawing portion of a HABS survey; specifically investigating the nature and usefulness of the types of drawings allowed by the current drawing guidelines and standards and how contemporary digital tools can facilitate drawing production and analysis. While the current HABS standards call for a strict method of researched and measured documentation, within that methodology exists a diverse range of drawing types that accurately express the desired information but are not all necessarily utilized in practice. In an attempt to rejoin contemporary practice of architectural drawing within the limits of the Drawing Guidelines for HABS, this thesis will investigate the Interpretive Drawing clause within the Guidelines and how these interpretive drawings can reunite a new generation of architects with the federal program for documenting historic structures. By analyzing HABS’s history and its sister programs, which include the Historic American Engineering Record and the Historic American Landscape Survey, analyzing drawing theory, and critiquing current practices in drawing (both in the HABS world and in contemporary architectural practice), this thesis will ultimately synthesize those analyses by putting to practice different techniques for producing interpretive drawings in the form of case studies

Pre-Visit Planning in Primary Care

Pre-visit planning is the process of collecting and organizing data prior to a patient appointment. The pre-visit planning process requires a team member to call the patient a week before the appointment through the use of a questionnaire form. This helps identify incomplete tests, screenings, immunizations and referrals that are currently outstanding. The pre-visit process results in scheduling needed appointments and lab work as well as gathering necessary information from the patient to streamline their upcoming visit. The use of pre-visit planning may result in improved patient satisfaction and decreased physician time with each patient visit.https://scholar.rochesterregional.org/nursingresearchday_2023/1016/thumbnail.jp

Mitotic Evolution of Plasmodium falciparum Shows a Stable Core Genome but Recombination in Antigen Families

Malaria parasites elude eradication attempts both within the human host and across nations. At the individual level, parasites evade the host immune responses through antigenic variation. At the global level, parasites escape drug pressure through single nucleotide variants and gene copy amplification events conferring drug resistance. Despite their importance to global health, the rates at which these genomic alterations emerge have not been determined. We studied the complete genomes of different Plasmodium falciparum clones that had been propagated asexually over one year in the presence and absence of drug pressure. A combination of whole-genome microarray analysis and next-generation deep resequencing (totaling 14 terabases) revealed a stable core genome with only 38 novel single nucleotide variants appearing in seventeen evolved clones (avg. 5.4 per clone). In clones exposed to atovaquone, we found cytochrome b mutations as well as an amplification event encompassing the P. falciparum multidrug resistance associated protein (mrp1) on chromosome 1. We observed 18 large-scale (greater than 1 kb on average) deletions of telomere-proximal regions encoding multigene families, involved in immune evasion (9.5×10−6 structural variants per base pair per generation). Six of these deletions were associated with chromosomal crossovers generated during mitosis. We found only minor differences in rates between genetically distinct strains and between parasites cultured in the presence or absence of drug. Using these derived mutation rates for P. falciparum (1.0–9.7×10−9 mutations per base pair per generation), we can now model the frequency at which drug or immune resistance alleles will emerge under a well-defined set of assumptions. Further, the detection of mitotic recombination events in var gene families illustrates how multigene families can arise and change over time in P. falciparum. These results will help improve our understanding of how P. falciparum evolves to evade control efforts within both the individual hosts and large populations

Potent acyl-CoA synthetase 10 inhibitors kill <i>Plasmodium falciparum</i> by disrupting triglyceride formation

Identifying how small molecules act to kill malaria parasites can lead to new chemically validated targets. By pressuring Plasmodium falciparum asexual blood stage parasites with three novel structurally-unrelated antimalarial compounds (MMV665924, MMV019719 and MMV897615), and performing whole-genome sequence analysis on resistant parasite lines, we identify multiple mutations in the P. falciparum acyl-CoA synthetase (ACS) genes PfACS10 (PF3D7_0525100, M300I, A268D/V, F427L) and PfACS11 (PF3D7_1238800, F387V, D648Y, and E668K). Allelic replacement and thermal proteome profiling validates PfACS10 as a target of these compounds. We demonstrate that this protein is essential for parasite growth by conditional knockdown and observe increased compound susceptibility upon reduced expression. Inhibition of PfACS10 leads to a reduction in triacylglycerols and a buildup of its lipid precursors, providing key insights into its function. Analysis of the PfACS11 gene and its mutations point to a role in mediating resistance via decreased protein&nbsp;stability

Projecting marine fish production and catch potential in Bangladesh in the 21st century under long-term environmental change and management scenarios

The fisheries sector is crucial to the Bangladeshi economy and wellbeing, accounting for 4.4% of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 22.8% of agriculture sector production, and supplying ca.60% of the national animal protein intake. Fish is vital to the 16 million Bangladeshis living near the coast, a number that has doubled since the 1980s. Here we develop and apply tools to project the long term productive capacity of Bangladesh marine fisheries under climate and fisheries management scenarios, based on downscaling a global climate model, using associated river flow and nutrient loading estimates, projecting high resolution changes in physical and biochemical ocean properties, and eventually projecting fish production and catch potential under different fishing mortality targets. We place particular interest on Hilsa shad (Tenualosa ilisha), which accounts for ca.11% of total catches, and Bombay duck (Harpadon nehereus), a low price fish that is the second highest catch in Bangladesh and is highly consumed by low income communities. It is concluded that the impacts of climate change, under greenhouse emissions scenario A1B, are likely to reduce the potential fish production in the Bangladesh Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) by less than 10%. However, these impacts are larger for the two target species. Under sustainable management practices we expect Hilsa shad catches to show a minor decline in potential catch by 2030 but a significant (25%) decline by 2060. However, if overexploitation is allowed catches are projected to fall much further, by almost 95% by 2060, compared to the Business as Usual scenario for the start of the 21st century. For Bombay duck, potential catches by 2060 under sustainable scenarios will produce a decline of less than 20% compared to current catches. The results demonstrate that management can mitigate or exacerbate the effects of climate change on ecosystem productivity

Conducting a Hispanic health needs assessment in rural Kansas: building the foundation for community action

Healthy People 2020 states that ethnic health disparities are a priority for the US. Although considerable national statistics document ethnic-related health disparities, information specific to rural areas is scarce and does not provide direction for implementing chronic disease prevention programming. Therefore, the purpose of our project was to undertake the Hispanic Health Needs Assessment (HHNA), a tool designed by the National Alliance for Hispanic Health (NAHH), in culturally-diverse rural Southwest Kansas. Our focus areas included: access to healthcare, heart disease, diabetes, overweight, nutrition, and physical activity. Methods: The assessment followed six steps: (1) developing the assessment team, (2) data gathering using community member surveys, existing statistics, and community leader interviews, (3) assembling the findings, (4) formulating recommendations for action at individual, institutional, community and policy levels, (5) sharing findings and program planning (6) sharing findings with NAHH. We identified several challenges collecting health related data in rural communities. But overall, the HHNA was a comprehensive and useful tool for guiding a community level health assessment. Conclusion: This process has provided our community partners with locally relevant statistics regarding the current status of health, health behaviors, and perceived community needs to inform resource allocation, program planning and applications for new funding initiatives

An Optimization Model for Planning Natural Gas Purchases, Transportation, Storage and Deliverability

Natural gas local distribution companies (LDCs) face the problem of managing natural gas purchases under conditions of uncertain demand and frequent price change. In this paper, we present a stochastic optimization model to solve this problem. Unlike other models, this model explicitly considers deliverability, the rate at which gas can be added to and withdrawn from a storage facility, as a variable, and considers its role in ensuring a secure supply of gas. Deliverability is often overlooked in gas supply planning, yet is a critical factor in achieving a secure gas supply. Using data from an LDC in Huntsville, Alabama, we show how this model can be used to minimize total cost while meeting constraints regarding the security of gas supply. We also demonstrate that security is dependent on the rate of deliverability, which in turn is affected by a number of factors including gas availability, storage and transportation considerations, and weather conditions