Crawling Water Beetles of Wisconsin (Coleoptera: Haliplidae)

(excerpt) Haliplidae are smail water beetles, less than 5 mm long, that frequently occur in abundance in ponds, marshes, sloughs, and swamps and also along the margins of slow streams or lakes where there is not severe wave action. Adults are readily recognized by their yelloa- to orange ground color with black maculations on the elytra and sometimes on the head and pronotum (Figs. 1,3,4). They have a distinctive shape, being broadest at the basss of the elytra and tapered toward the posterior end. The metacoxae are covered by dis~ctive plates that are unique among water beetles (Fig. 2). The tarsi and tibiae of the adults are modified for swimming, and the beetles can swim quite well, although they mostly crawl among the vegetation. Adults and larvae are found among vegetation upon which they feed, filamentous algae being the primary source of food for most species, but detrims and animal material may form a portion of the diet in some species. In Wisconsin most species probably have a one-year life cycle and overwinter as adults. Eggs are laid during spring and early summer, usually in or upon algae. There are three larval instars, and pupation takes place in moist soil above the water line. Larvae have been derrihd for only a few species, so identification is based upon adult characteristics

‘Riding the waves’ - an exploration of how students undertaking a pre-registration nursing programme develop emotional resilience

Background The study was prompted by recognition of the many emotional demands and challenges on mature students undertaking professional qualifying programmes. These can cause excessive levels of stress and anxiety with an impact on retention of students on programmes. Aim and objectives The overall aim was to identify what pre-registration nurses identified as challenges or adversity in their transition from health care support workers to accountable professionals and what factors they perceived as significant in contributing to their own emotional resilience. The objective was then to make specific recommendations related to the nursing curriculum, academic and work based support structures in order to promote resilience. Participants Participants were pre-registration nursing students on adult and mental health branches nearing the end of their final year of a pre-registration nursing programme with the Open University. Methods A qualitative methodology was used with use of one focus group and eleven in depth interviews. Results Four different dimensions of resilience were identified; ways of being/personal characteristics, personal survival tactics, immediate social and work based environment and wider social and cultural environment. Key findings included the importance of peer support, positive feedback and enhancing the student’s ability to re-frame difficulties or problems, a positive culture of work place learning , supporting and validating personal reflection outside academic discourses, and support in ‘meaning making’. As well as peer support, examples of good practice demonstrated by mentors, programme tutors and tutors were essential in supporting students in these identified areas. Conclusion and recommendations Emotional resilience is a multi-dimensional concept and different levels of intervention are therefore needed to promote it. The curriculum needs to reflect the importance of affective as well as cognitive aspects of development in order to promote the resilience of students and support structures need to be embedded in programme design to promote peer interaction and sharing of good practice between those in education roles. Key words Pre-registration nursing education, emotional resilience, adversity, communities of practic

An exploratory study into the commonalities of the life scripts of adolescent delinquents in selected institutions

Transactional analysis has been a useful tool for the researcher in categorizing these characteristics. Using it, he was able to recognize both commonalities and differences between types of problem adolescents. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the life scripts of problem adolescents of selected institutions to determine what the commonalities are within and between the categories of injunctions, counter injunctions, basic positions, rackets, games, decisions, programs of life course, and treatment contracts. The purpose and problem are embodied in four basic questions: (1) Do commonalities exist in the categories of injunctions, counter injunctions, basic positions, rackets, games, decision, programs of life course and treatment contracts?; (2) What are the most prevalent commonalities within each category? Example: What is the most common injunction?; (3) What are the commonalities between categories? Example: What is the most common game when the injunction is “Don’t get close?”; and (4) What are the commonalities among total life scripts? Calude Steiner categorizes the alcoholic into three main types: “drunk proud,” “lush,” and “wino;” is it possible to categorize adolescent delinquents into similar personality patterns

The Influence of Visual Cueing on Freezing of Gait Among Individuals with Parkinson\u27s Disease

Freezing of gait (FOG) is a distressing symptom of Parkinson’s disease with a significant impact on fall risk and quality of life. Although medication improves some of the symptoms of slowness and rigidity, it is only minimally effective in treating FOG. Therefore, a better understanding of alternative treatment strategies is needed to manage this symptom. To investigate the effectiveness of visual cueing in the management of FOG, and to determine if visual cueing is dependent upon the spatial location of cue presentation. Six individuals with Parkinson’s disease who experience FOG were asked to complete the Timed Up and Go test three times in each of the following conditions: (i) no visual cue, (ii) cue presented at the users feet, (iii) cue presented at a distance equivalent to step length, and (iv) cue presented at a distance equivalent to stride length. Step length, velocity, and the elapsed time taken to complete a 180 degree turn was assessed using a 10-ft Zeno electronic walkway. In addition, time taken to complete the Timed Up and Go test was recorded, and walker positioning assessed via Kinovea motion analysis software. The results of this study identified that irrespective of the spatial location of cue presentation, visual cueing led to an improvement in four out of the five outcome measures (timed up and go, turn time, walker positioning and step length). Findings from this study may help lead to the development of best practice guidelines for implementing this novel treatment strategy

Geothermal reservoir engineering research

The Stanford University research program on the study of stimulation and reservoir engineering of geothermal resources commenced as an interdisciplinary program in September, 1972. The broad objectives of this program have been: (1) the development of experimental and computational data to evaluate the optimum performance of fracture-stimulated geothermal reservoirs; (2) the development of a geothermal reservoir model to evaluate important thermophysical, hydrodynamic, and chemical parameters based on fluid-energy-volume balances as part of standard reservoir engineering practice; and (3) the construction of a laboratory model of an explosion-produced chimney to obtain experimental data on the processes of in-place boiling, moving flash fronts, and two-phase flow in porous and fractured hydrothermal reservoirs

The Potential of Polyhydroxyalkanoate Production from Food Wastes

Background and objective: Over 1 billion tons of foods are wasted every year (not consumed by humans or animals). Most of this waste ends up in landfills. As the global population increases, mankind must look for more sustainable means of living. A recently popular idea is the use of organic wastes as carbon feedstocks for fermentation that produces value added products. Polyhydroxyalkanoates are a family of bio-based, biodegradable polymers that can be produced in large quantities using food and food processing wastes as the main feedstocks. In many cases, biocatalysts have been engineered to efficiently use these waste compounds to produce large quantities of useful intracellular polyhydroxyalkanoates.Results and conclusion: In the current study, various polyhydroxyalkanoates were produced; each with different thermal and mechanical characteristics useful for different applications. If polyhydroxyalkanoate production facilities are established next to food waste accumulation sites (e.g., large landfills), potentials for the economical and sustainable polyhydroxyalkanoate production sound promising.Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest

Many-body Green's function theory for electron-phonon interactions: the Kadanoff-Baym approach to spectral properties of the Holstein dimer

We present a Kadanoff-Baym formalism to study time-dependent phenomena for systems of interacting electrons and phonons in the framework of many-body perturbation theory. The formalism takes correctly into account effects of the initial preparation of an equilibrium state, and allows for an explicit time-dependence of both the electronic and phononic degrees of freedom. The method is applied to investigate the charge neutral and non-neutral excitation spectra of a homogeneous, two-site, two-electron Holstein model. This is an extension of a previous study of the ground state properties in the Hartree (H), partially self-consistent Born (Gd) and fully self-consistent Born (GD) approximations published in Ref. [arXiv:1403.2968]. We show that choosing a homogeneous ground state solution leads to unstable dynamics for a sufficiently strong interaction, and that allowing a symmetry-broken state prevents this. The instability is caused by the bifurcation of the ground state and understood physically to be connected with the bipolaronic crossover of the exact system. This mean-field instability persists in the partially self-consistent Born approximation but is not found for the fully self-consistent Born approximation. By understanding the stability properties, we are able to study the linear response regime by calculating the density-density response function by time-propagation. This functions amounts to a solution of the Bethe-Salpeter equation with a sophisticated kernel. The results indicate that none of the approximations is able to describe the response function during or beyond the bipolaronic crossover for the parameters investigated. Overall, we provide an extensive discussion on when the approximations are valid, and how they fail to describe the studied exact properties of the chosen model system.Comment: 12 figure

Fractal Descriptors in the Fourier Domain Applied to Color Texture Analysis

The present work proposes the development of a novel method to provide descriptors for colored texture images. The method consists in two steps. In the first, we apply a linear transform in the color space of the image aiming at highlighting spatial structuring relations among the color of pixels. In a second moment, we apply a multiscale approach to the calculus of fractal dimension based on Fourier transform. From this multiscale operation, we extract the descriptors used to discriminate the texture represented in digital images. The accuracy of the method is verified in the classification of two color texture datasets, by comparing the performance of the proposed technique to other classical and state-of-the-art methods for color texture analysis. The results showed an advantage of almost 3% of the proposed technique over the second best approach.Comment: Chaos, Volume 21, Issue 4, 201

Metabolic Profiling of Pancreatic Cancer for Early Detection and Determining Therapeutic Efficacy

https://openworks.mdanderson.org/sumexp21/1098/thumbnail.jp

A TPD and RAIRS comparison of the low temperature behavior of benzene, toluene, and xylene on graphite

The first comparative study of the surface behavior of four small aromatic molecules, benzene, toluene, p-xylene, and o-xylene, adsorbed on graphite at temperatures ≤30 K, is presented. Intermolecular interactions are shown to be important in determining the growth of the molecules on the graphite surface at low (monolayer) exposures. Repulsive intermolecular interactions dominate the behavior of benzene and toluene. By contrast, stronger interactions with the graphite surface are observed for the xylene isomers, with islanding observed for o-xylene. Multilayer desorption temperatures and energies increase with the size of the molecule, ranging from 45.5 to 59.5 kJ mol−1 for benzene and p-xylene, respectively. Reflection absorption infrared spectroscopy gives insight into the effects of thermal processing on the ordering of the molecules. Multilayer benzene, p-xylene, and o-xylene form crystalline structures following annealing of the ice. However, we do not observe an ordered structure for toluene in this study. The ordering of p-xylene shows a complex relationship dependent on both the annealing temperature and exposure