Fracking in Pennsylvania: A Spatial Analysis of Impacts on Land Cover and Land Use, the Viewshed, and the Audioshed

Hydraulic fracturing is the process of extracting natural gas from layers of shale rock beneath the surface of the Earth. The largest source of natural gas in the US is the Marcellus Shale, largely located in Pennsylvania, and it is believed to hold about 141 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in its shale deposits. My study examined the impacts of well sites on land cover and land use, the viewshed, and the audioshed. To study the effect of wellpads on land use and land cover, we overlaid a layer of wellpads over land cover data as well as a layer of Pennsylvania natural resources. To study the visual and sound impacts of wellpads and compressor stations, we generated viewsheds and audiosheds and then calculated the percent of land, road, and trails impacted within different environment types. We found that the majority of producing wells are currently found in forested areas and within 1320 feet of a stream or wetland. However, we found that there is also seemingly a bias against placing wellpads near wetland areas. Additionally, rural land cover areas were found to have a disproportionate number of wellpads in relation to their area within the Marcellus shale region. Rural environments were also found to be impacted the highest in regards to the viewshed, having over 20% of the tile within the fracking viewshed for tiles with at least 2 wellpads. In regards to noise impacts, high road density areas and state forest areas were found to have similar percentages within the audioshed for tiles with at least one compressor station. So overall, in areas with at least 2 wellpads, rural areas have the most potential impacts due to fracking for both land cover and land use as well as the viewshed

Exploring Fieldwork Educator Development: Preparation Methods and Support Tools

Fieldwork education is a critical piece to professional development and competency in occupational therapy. As part of their core curriculum, all students enrolled in accredited occupational therapy programs must complete full-time fieldwork experiences under the direct supervision of a licensed occupational therapy practitioner. This component of the student’s education relies on the skills and training of the fieldwork educator. Academic programs are expected to support occupational therapy practitioners in their role as fieldwork educators in the form of resource provisions to enhance supervisory skills. However, there are no clear standards that describe how to vet, effectively disseminate, or implement the use of fieldwork educator resources. This study sought to identify and explore how occupational therapy practitioners prepare for the role of fieldwork educator, and how they maintain professional competence in that role through the use and effectiveness of available support tools for fieldwork educators. Results of the study highlight underutilization of readily available materials, effective programs that may not be readily accessed due to cost, and the need to establish more structured educational experiences that would serve to support the role of the fieldwork educator. These findings point to potential areas of fieldwork educator development that may be designed and addressed by Academic Fieldwork Coordinators through both continued research and program development. Future research examining pre and post tool use assessment would provide further insight on effectiveness and progression of growth in the fieldwork educator role

Rapid Synthesis of Copper Zinc Tin Sulfide (CZTS) & Lead Perovskite Nanocrystals for Solar Cells & Associated Environmental Nanotoxicity

Copper zinc tin sulfide (CZTS or Cu2ZnSnS4) and lead perovskite (CH3 NH3 PbI3) nanoparticles were synthesized and then transformed to be dispersible in nonpolar solvents through an exchange reaction. These water soluble particles were then added to colonies of common Shewanella oneidensis bacterium and results of the effect of the particles on the bacterium are currently in process.This research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

Evolving robotic surgery training and improving patient safety, with the integration of novel technologies

INTRODUCTION: Robot-assisted surgery is becoming increasingly adopted by multiple surgical specialties. There is evidence of inherent risks of utilising new technologies that are unfamiliar early in the learning curve. The development of standardised and validated training programmes is crucial to deliver safe introduction. In this review, we aim to evaluate the current evidence and opportunities to integrate novel technologies into modern digitalised robotic training curricula. METHODS: A systematic literature review of the current evidence for novel technologies in surgical training was conducted online and relevant publications and information were identified. Evaluation was made on how these technologies could further enable digitalisation of training. RESULTS: Overall, the quality of available studies was found to be low with current available evidence consisting largely of expert opinion, consensus statements and small qualitative studies. The review identified that there are several novel technologies already being utilised in robotic surgery training. There is also a trend towards standardised validated robotic training curricula. Currently, the majority of the validated curricula do not incorporate novel technologies and training is delivered with more traditional methods that includes centralisation of training services with wet laboratories that have access to cadavers and dedicated training robots. CONCLUSIONS: Improvements to training standards and understanding performance data have good potential to significantly lower complications in patients. Digitalisation automates data collection and brings data together for analysis. Machine learning has potential to develop automated performance feedback for trainees. Digitalised training aims to build on the current gold standards and to further improve the 'continuum of training' by integrating PBP training, 3D-printed models, telementoring, telemetry and machine learning

Thermal transport measurements of individual multiwalled nanotubes

The thermal conductivity and thermoelectric power of a single carbon nanotube were measured using a microfabricated suspended device. The observed thermal conductivity is more than 3000 W/K m at room temperature, which is two orders of magnitude higher than the estimation from previous experiments that used macroscopic mat samples. The temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity of nanotubes exhibits a peak at 320 K due to the onset of Umklapp phonon scattering. The measured thermoelectric power shows linear temperature dependence with a value of 80 $\mu$V/K at room temperature.Comment: 4 pages, figures include

Phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase-1 (PDK1)-independent activation of the protein kinase C substrate, protein kinase D

Phosphoinoisitide dependent kinase l (PDK1) is proposed to phosphorylate a key threonine residue within the catalytic domain of the protein kinase C (PKC) superfamily that controls the stability and catalytic competence of these kinases. Hence, in PDK1-null embryonic stem cells intracellular levels of PKCalpha, PKCbeta1, PKCgamma, and PKCepsilon are strikingly reduced. Although PDK1-null cells have reduced endogenous PKC levels they are not completely devoid of PKCs and the integrity of downstream PKC effector pathways in the absence of PDK1 has not been determined. In the present report, the PDK1 requirement for controlling the phosphorylation and activity of a well characterised substrate for PKCs, the serine kinase protein kinase D, has been examined. The data show that in embryonic stem cells and thymocytes loss of PDK1 does not prevent PKC-mediated phosphorylation and activation of protein kinase D. These results reveal that loss of PDK1 does not functionally inactivate all PKC-mediated signal transduction

Protein-RNA specificity by high-throughput principal component analysis of NMR spectra

Defining the RNA target selectivity of the proteins regulating mRNA metabolism is a key issue in RNA biology. Here we present a novel use of principal component analysis (PCA) to extract the RNA sequence preference of RNA binding proteins. We show that PCA can be used to compare the changes in the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrum of a protein upon binding a set of quasi-degenerate RNAs and define the nucleobase specificity. We couple this application of PCA to an automated NMR spectra recording and processing protocol and obtain an unbiased and high-throughput NMR method for the analysis of nucleobase preference in protein–RNA interactions. We test the method on the RNA binding domains of three important regulators of RNA metabolism