320 research outputs found
The Application of Coaching Techniques to Financial Issues
Financial coaching is emerging as a distinct approach to building personal financial capability. However, the term financial coaching refers to a wide array of interventions. This article reviews the literature in order to define financial coaching. Financial coaching includes helping individuals define financial goals, develop plans of action, and implement steps toward their goals. The coaching approach is designed to help people develop and sustain positive financial behaviors. This article also presents findings from three financial coaching field studies; the results suggest that working with a financial coach increases clients’ ability to focus on their financial goals and engage in positive financial behaviors. Despite these beneficial outcomes, the coaching field faces several challenges including a lack of practice standards and consistent outcomes measures
LeaPi: Wireless Diagnostic Assistant
Nearly every person who usesWiFi on a daily basis has had trouble with a bad connection. Wireless connectivity issues are often difficult to diagnose and fix. Current solutions such as wired extenders, and MeshWiFi commercial packages are expensive and do not provide the user with a system that suggests placement of mesh units to maximize coverage. Our solution is an inexpensive and open-source diagnostic tool that maps out Wifi quality and informs the user of interference. With a simple, meaningful display, users will find trouble spots in their house, diagnose why IoT devices are not working, effectively place WiFi extenders and mesh nodes, and more
Extraction of from the Decay
We develop the perturbative QCD formalism including Sudakov effects for
semi-leptonic meson decays. We evaluate the differential decay rate of
, and find that the perturbative calculation is reliable for
the energy fraction of the pion above 0.3. Combining predictions from the soft
pion theorems, we extract the value of the matrix element which is
roughly .Comment: 10 pages, CCUTH-94-05, IP-ASTP-13-9
The molecular products and biogeochemical significance of lipid photooxidation in West Antarctic surface waters
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 232 (2018): 244-264, doi:10.1016/j.gca.2018.04.030.The seasonal depletion of stratospheric ozone over the Southern Hemisphere allows abnormally
high doses of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) to reach surface waters of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP)
in the austral spring, creating a natural laboratory for the study of lipid photooxidation in the shallow
mixed layer of the marginal ice zone. The photooxidation of lipids under such conditions has been
identified as a significant source of stress to microorganisms, and short-chain fatty acids altered by
photochemical processes have been found in both marine aerosols and sinking marine particle material.
However, the biogeochemical impact of lipid photooxidation has not been quantitatively compared at
ecosystem scale to the many other biological and abiotic processes that can transform particulate organic
matter in the surface ocean. We combined results from field experiments with diverse environmental data,
including high-resolution, accurate-mass HPLC-ESI-MS analysis of lipid extracts and in situ
measurements of ultraviolet irradiance, to address several unresolved questions about lipid photooxidation
in the marine environment. In our experiments, we used liposomes — nonliving, cell-like aggregations of
lipids — to examine the photolability of various moieties of the intact polar diacylglycerol (IP-DAG)
phosphatidylcholine (PC), a structural component of membranes in a broad range of microorganisms. We
observed significant rates of photooxidation only when the molecule contained the polyunsaturated fatty
acid (PUFA) docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). As the DHA-containing lipid was oxidized, we observed the
steady ingrowth of a diversity of oxylipins and oxidized IP-DAG; our results suggest both the intact IPDAG
the degradation products were amenable to heterotrophic assimilation. To complement our
experiments, we used an enhanced version of a new lipidomics discovery software package to identify the
lipids in water column samples and in several diatom isolates. The galactolipid digalactosyldiacylglycerol
(DGDG), the sulfolipid sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerol (SQDG) and the phospholipids PC and
phosphatidylglycerol (PG) accounted for the majority of IP-DAG in the water column particulate (≥ 0.2
μm) size fraction; between 3.4 and 5.3 % of the IP-DAG contained fatty acids that were both highly
polyunsaturated (i.e., each containing ≥ 5 double bonds). Using a broadband apparent quantum yield (AQY) that accounted for direct and Type I (i.e., radical-mediated) photooxidation of PUFA-containing
IP-DAG, we estimated that 0.7 ± 0.2 μmol IP-DAG m-2 d-1 (0.5 ± 0.1 mg C m-2 d-1) were oxidized by
photochemical processes in the mixed layer. This rate represented 4.4 % (range, 3-21 %) of the mean
bacterial production rate measured in the same waters immediately following the retreat of the sea ice.
Because our liposome experiments were not designed to account for oxidation by Type II photosensitized
processes that often dominate in marine phytodetritus, our rate estimates may represent a sizeable
underestimate of the true rate of lipid photooxidation in the water column. While production of such
diverse oxidized lipids and oxylipins has been previously observed in terrestrial plants and mammals in
response to biological stressors such as disease, we show here that a similar suite of molecules can be
produced via an abiotic process in the environment and that the effect can be commensurate in magnitude
with other ecosystem-scale biogeochemical processes.J.R.C. acknowledges support
from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) STAR Graduate Fellowship (Fellowship
Assistance agreement FP-91744301-0). This work was also supported by U.S. National
Science Foundation awards OCE-1059884 and PLR-1543328 to B.A.S.V.M., NSF award PLR-
1341479 to A. M., the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through grant GBMF3301 to B.A.S.V.M.,
and a WHOI Ocean Ventures Fund award to J.R.C
Second chances: Investigating athletes’ experiences of talent transfer
Talent transfer initiatives seek to transfer talented, mature individuals from one sport to another. Unfortunately talent transfer initiatives seem to lack an evidence-based direction and a rigorous exploration of the mechanisms underpinning the approach. The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the factors which successfully transferring athletes cite as facilitative of talent transfer. In contrast to the anthropometric and performance variables that underpin current talent transfer initiatives, participants identified a range of psychobehavioral and environmental factors as key to successful transfer. We argue that further research into the mechanisms of talent transfer is needed in order to provide a strong evidence base for the methodologies employed in these initiatives
Climate warming erodes tropical reef habitat through frequency and intensity of episodic hypoxia
Climate warming threatens marine life by increasing metabolic oxygen demand while decreasing oxygen availability. Tropical species living in warm, low oxygen environments may be most at risk, but their tolerances and exposures to these stressors remain poorly documented. We evaluated habitat restrictions for two brittle star species from Caribbean coral reefs by integrating field observations, laboratory experiments and an ecophysiological model. The absence of one species from the warmest reefs results from vital activity restrictions during episodic low oxygen extremes, even though average conditions are well within physiological tolerance limits. Over the past decade, warmer temperatures have been significantly correlated with a greater frequency and intensity of hypoxic events. Continued warming will progressively exclude hypoxia-tolerant species, even if average oxygen remains constant. A warming-driven increase in frequency or intensity of low oxygen extremes could similarly accelerate habitat loss across other marine ecosystems. -- Keywords : Oxygen ; Aquatic hypoxia ; Hypoxia ; Coral reefs ; Oxygen metabolism ; Ocean temperature ; Echinoderms ; Climate change
Supermassive Binaries and Extragalactic Jets
Some quasars show Doppler shifted broad emission line peaks. I give new
statistics of the occurrence of these peaks and show that, while the most
spectacular cases are in quasars with strong radio jets inclined to the line of
sight, they are also almost as common in radio-quiet quasars. Theories of the
origin of the peaks are reviewed and it is argued that the displaced peaks are
most likely produced by the supermassive binary model. The separations of the
peaks in the 3C 390.3-type objects are consistent with orientation-dependent
"unified models" of quasar activity. If the supermassive binary model is
correct, all members of "the jet set" (astrophysical objects showing jets)
could be binaries.Comment: 31 pages, PostScript, missing figure is in ApJ 464, L105 (see
http://www.aas.org/ApJ/v464n2/5736/5736.html
Systematic Study of High p_T Hadron Spectra in pp, pA and AA Collisions from SPS to RHIC Energies
High- particle spectra in (), and
collisions are calculated within a QCD parton model in which intrinsic
transverse momentum, its broadening due to initial multiple parton scattering,
and jet quenching due to parton energy loss inside a dense medium are included
phenomenologically. The intrinsic and its broadening in and
collisions due to initial multiple parton scattering are found to be very
important at low energies ( GeV). Comparisons with ,
and data with different centrality cuts show that the differential
cross sections of large transverse momentum pion production ( GeV/)
in collisions scale very well with the number of binary nucleon-nucleon
collisions (modulo effects of multiple initial scattering). This indicates that
semi-hard parton scattering is the dominant particle production mechanism
underlying the hadron spectra at moderate GeV/.
However, there is no evidence of jet quenching or parton energy loss. Within
the parton model, one can exclude an effective parton energy loss
GeV/fm and a mean free path fm from the
experimental data of collisions at the SPS energies. Predictions for high
particle spectra in and collisions with and without jet
quenching at the RHIC energy are also given. Uncertainties due to initial
multiple scattering and nuclear shadowing of parton distributions are also
discussed.Comment: 13 pages in RevTex with 14 figures, the final published version (with
some typos corrected
An outreach intervention to implement evidence based practice in residential care: a randomized controlled trial [ISRCTN67855475]
BACKGROUND: The aim of this project was to assess whether outreach visits would improve the implementation of evidence based clinical practice in the area of falls reduction and stroke prevention in a residential care setting. METHODS: Twenty facilities took part in a randomized controlled trial with a seven month follow-up period. Two outreach visits were delivered by a pharmacist. At the first a summary of the relevant evidence was provided and at the second detailed audit information was provided about fall rates, psychotropic drug prescribing and stroke risk reduction practices (BP monitoring, aspirin and warfarin use) for the facility relevant to the physician. The effect of the interventions was determined via pre- and post-intervention case note audit. Outcomes included change in percentage patients at risk of falling who fell in a three month period prior to follow-up and changes in use of psychotropic medications. Chi-square tests, independent samples t-test, and logistic regression were used in the analysis. RESULTS: Data were available from case notes at baseline (n = 897) and seven months follow-up (n = 902), 452 residential care staff were surveyed and 121 physicians were involved with 61 receiving outreach visits. Pre-and post-intervention data were available for 715 participants. There were no differences between the intervention and control groups for the three month fall rate. We were unable to detect statistically significant differences between groups for the psychotropic drug use of the patients before or after the intervention. The exception was significantly greater use of "as required" antipsychotics in the intervention group compared with the control group after the pharmacy intervention (RR = 4.95; 95%CI 1.69–14.50). There was no statistically significant difference between groups for the numbers of patients "at risk of stroke" on aspirin at follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: While the strategy was well received by the physicians involved, there was no change in prescribing patterns. Patient care in residential settings is complex and involves contributions from the patient's physician, family and residential care staff. The project highlights challenges of delivering evidence based care in a setting in which there is a paucity of well controlled trial evidence but where significant health outcomes can be attained
The ocean sampling day consortium
Ocean Sampling Day was initiated by the EU-funded Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project to obtain a snapshot of the marine microbial biodiversity and function of the world’s oceans. It is a simultaneous global mega-sequencing campaign aiming to generate the largest standardized microbial data set in a single day. This will be achievable only through the coordinated efforts of an Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, supportive partnerships and networks between sites. This commentary outlines the establishment, function and aims of the Consortium and describes our vision for a sustainable study of marine microbial communities and their embedded functional traits
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