Turning point: Fostering relationships, advancing education, and changing lives of foster care youth

Research shows that foster care youth have “poorer mental and physical health, are more likely to be involved with the legal system, and are at a higher risk of being engaged in substance abuse” than children who are not in the foster care system.1 This paper will address how mentoring programs such as Eastern Michigan University’s Write-Link Community Connections and Student-to-Student Higher Learning Initiative (SSHLI) can increase the success rate of foster care adolescents once they age out of the system by having a significant impact on their future careers, while also determining what factors make these programs successful. Based on the results, this paper will also recommend the need for a third program dubbed Turning Point, which is proposed to start through EMU’s Public Relations Student Society of America Chapter (PRSSA). Turning Point encompasses certain aspects of both Write-Link and SSHLI that will further inspire former foster care youth to pursue higher education

Shower Safety

This patient education handout shares shower safety strategies

A computational multi-objective optimization method to improve energy efficiency and thermal comfort in dwellings

In the last years, multi-objective optimization techniques became into one of the main challenges of the building energy efficiency area. The objective of this paper is to develop and validate a computational code for multi-objective building performance optimization by linking an evolutionary algorithm and a building simulation software in a powerful cluster. A sophisticated version of the multi-objective Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) was implemented in Python code to determine the optimal building design, which allows working with categorical and discrete variables, and the objectives were evaluated using the building energy simulation software EnergyPlus. NSGA-II was implemented to run in a high-performance cluster for the parallel computing of the fitness of each population (set of possible designs). In this work, the strengths of the proposed method were demonstrated by its application to the optimal design of a typical single-family house, located in the Argentine Littoral region. This house has some rooms conditioned only by natural ventilation, and other rooms with natural ventilation supplemented by mechanical air-conditioning (hybrid ventilation). The most influential design variables like roof types, external and internal wall types, solar orientation, solar absorptance, size, type, and windows shading of this house among others were studied in two complex cases of 108 and 1016 possibilities to obtain the best trade-off (Pareto front) between heating and cooling performance. Finally, a decision-making method was applied to select one configuration of the Pareto front. Optimal simulation results for the study cases indicated that is possible to improve up to 95% the thermal comfort in naturally ventilated rooms and up to 82% energy performance in air-conditioned rooms of the building with respect to the original configuration by using a design that takes simultaneous advantage of passive strategies like thermal inertia and natural ventilation. The methodology was proved to give a robust and powerful tool to design efficient dwellings reducing the optimization time from almost 12 days to 4.4 h.Fil: Bre, Facundo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Centro de Investigaciones en Métodos Computacionales. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Centro de Investigaciones en Métodos Computacionales; Argentina. Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. Facultad Regional Concepción del Uruguay; ArgentinaFil: Fachinotti, Victor Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Centro de Investigaciones en Métodos Computacionales. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Centro de Investigaciones en Métodos Computacionales; Argentin

Food Security @ Pitt State

A college student’s current socioeconomic status contributes to food insecurity. A student’s current living situa­tion may cause barriers to food access. When students do not have a sense of security of food and a student is hungry, he does not feel safe, and it is hard to help him synthesize class material. Meeting students’ basic needs is vital for them to fully concentrate on obtaining the information in a class in a way that they can apply it, learn, and take it forward eventually acquiring assimilation into society. We are conducting a qualitative study of PSU undergraduate students ages 18+. The research questions we will be using to conduct are research are as fol­lowed. Within the last year (What have your eating conditions been like?) In the last 30 days have you skipped a meal because you could not afford it? In the last week have you skipped or missed a meal because you could not afford it? If you have been lacking food what may be some of the reasons? What emotions do you have about your food insecurity? Do you have a job? Do you have access to a vehicle? Do you live on or off campus? Please describe your living arrangement. Are you from a low-income family receiving a Pell grant or other finan­cial assistance/benefits? Do you feel that your grades are affected by your hunger? What interventions would make you feel more secure with food? Have you received food from a food pantry before? If you responded no on the previous question what is the reason? Do you think that your school offers enough support for students in need of food assistance? Why do you think it would be important for the food pantry here at PSU to be ex­panded? If a food pantry with a bigger food variety would be implemented here at PSU would you be willing to seek assistance if needed? Current grade level? When did you first experience food insecurity