238 research outputs found
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Improving Access to Trails and Green Space: Brightwood Neighborhood, Springfield, Massachusetts
Accessibility has been an issue with the Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway (River Walk) since its completion in 2003. Our project focuses on designing better connections between this Springfield, MA rail trail and the local environmental justice communities it is meant to serve. As a team of four undergraduate design students, we have spent three months conducting a comprehensive research study on the trail. Ultimately, we will be turning over our research to the Appalachian Mountain Club which intends to use it for reference in their efforts to secure funding for improving River Walk access in the city of Springfield.
As part of an undergraduate design studio class under the instruction of Professor Michael DiPasquale, our team conducted extensive research on the Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway. Looking through the lens of equity, we identified a cogent lack of access to this rail trail from the Brightwood neighborhood, to which it runs parallel.
Similar environmental justice issues in Springfield have been studied by UMass students in the past, such as âMaking Connections â Envisioning Springfieldâs North End,â and Healthy Place-Making: Revitalizing Springfieldâs Medical District, completed in graduate urban design studios in 2009 and 2019, respectively. Our work this semester builds upon these previous studies, while also delineating itself through our focus on the River Walk specifically.
Our study consists of four parts: research, community engagement, design solutions, and deliverables. Much like a traditional planning project, these objectives were completed in a partially chronological fashion. Our approach consisted of overlaps between each component â as much as our research informed our engagement, what we learned from our engagement also informed our research, and so on.
With the ultimate goal of providing the Appalachian Mountain Club with a wealth of information supporting the need for funding for improvements to the Connecticut River Walk and Bikeway, our team combined the results of our research, engagement, and design into this document: our deliverable for the project
Isotopic Tracking of Hanford 300 Area Derived Uranium in the Columbia River
Our objectives in this study are to quantify the discharge rate of uranium (U) to the Columbia River from the Hanford Site's 300 Area, and to follow that U down river to constrain its fate. Uranium from the Hanford Site has variable isotopic composition due to nuclear industrial processes carried out at the site. This characteristic makes it possible to use high-precision isotopic measurements of U in environmental samples to identify even trace levels of contaminant U, determine its sources, and estimate discharge rates. Our data on river water samples indicate that as much as 3.2 kg/day can enter the Columbia River from the 300 Area, which is only a small fraction of the total load of dissolved natural background U carried by the Columbia River. This very low-level of Hanford derived U can be discerned, despite dilution to < 1 percent of natural background U, 350 km downstream from the Hanford Site. These results indicate that isotopic methods can allow the amounts of U from the 300 Area of the Hanford Site entering the Columbia River to be measured accurately to ascertain whether they are an environmental concern, or are insignificant relative to natural uranium background in the Columbia River
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Natural language processing-based COTS software and related technologies survey.
Natural language processing-based knowledge management software, traditionally developed for security organizations, is now becoming commercially available. An informal survey was conducted to discover and examine current NLP and related technologies and potential applications for information retrieval, information extraction, summarization, categorization, terminology management, link analysis, and visualization for possible implementation at Sandia National Laboratories. This report documents our current understanding of the technologies, lists software vendors and their products, and identifies potential applications of these technologies
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Coordinated machine learning and decision support for situation awareness.
For applications such as force protection, an effective decision maker needs to maintain an unambiguous grasp of the environment. Opportunities exist to leverage computational mechanisms for the adaptive fusion of diverse information sources. The current research employs neural networks and Markov chains to process information from sources including sensors, weather data, and law enforcement. Furthermore, the system operator's input is used as a point of reference for the machine learning algorithms. More detailed features of the approach are provided, along with an example force protection scenario
Selenoprotein gene nomenclature
The human genome contains 25 genes coding for selenocysteine-containing proteins (selenoproteins). These proteins are involved in a variety of functions, most notably redox homeostasis. Selenoprotein enzymes with known functions are designated according to these functions: TXNRD1, TXNRD2, and TXNRD3 (thioredoxin reductases), GPX1, GPX2, GPX3, GPX4 and GPX6 (glutathione peroxidases), DIO1, DIO2, and DIO3 (iodothyronine deiodinases), MSRB1 (methionine-R-sulfoxide reductase 1) and SEPHS2 (selenophosphate synthetase 2). Selenoproteins without known functions have traditionally been denoted by SEL or SEP symbols. However, these symbols are sometimes ambiguous and conflict with the approved nomenclature for several other genes. Therefore, there is a need to implement a rational and coherent nomenclature system for selenoprotein-encoding genes. Our solution is to use the root symbol SELENO followed by a letter. This nomenclature applies to SELENOF (selenoprotein F, the 15 kDa selenoprotein, SEP15), SELENOH (selenoprotein H, SELH, C11orf31), SELENOI (selenoprotein I, SELI, EPT1), SELENOK (selenoprotein K, SELK), SELENOM (selenoprotein M, SELM), SELENON (selenoprotein N, SEPN1, SELN), SELENOO (selenoprotein O, SELO), SELENOP (selenoprotein P, SeP, SEPP1, SELP), SELENOS (selenoprotein S, SELS, SEPS1, VIMP), SELENOT (selenoprotein T, SELT), SELENOV (selenoprotein V, SELV) and SELENOW (selenoprotein W, SELW, SEPW1). This system, approved by the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee, also resolves conflicting, missing and ambiguous designations for selenoprotein genes and is applicable to selenoproteins across vertebrates
An \u3cem\u3eIL1RL1\u3c/em\u3e genetic variant lowers soluble ST2 levels and the risk effects of \u3cem\u3eAPOE\u3c/em\u3e-Δ4 in female patients with Alzheimerâs disease
Changes in the levels of circulating proteins are associated with Alzheimerâs disease (AD), whereas their pathogenic roles in AD are unclear. Here, we identified soluble ST2 (sST2), a decoy receptor of interleukin-33âST2 signaling, as a new disease-causing factor in AD. Increased circulating sST2 level is associated with more severe pathological changes in female individuals with AD. Genome-wide association analysis and CRISPRâCas9 genome editing identified rs1921622, a genetic variant in an enhancer element of IL1RL1, which downregulates gene and protein levels of sST2. Mendelian randomization analysis using genetic variants, including rs1921622, demonstrated that decreased sST2 levels lower AD risk and related endophenotypes in females carrying the Apolipoprotein E (APOE)-Δ4 genotype; the association is stronger in Chinese than in European-descent populations. Human and mouse transcriptome and immunohistochemical studies showed that rs1921622/sST2 regulates amyloid-beta (AÎČ) pathology through the modulation of microglial activation and AÎČ clearance. These findings demonstrate how sST2 level is modulated by a genetic variation and plays a disease-causing role in females with AD
Fermi LAT Observations of LS I +61 303: First detection of an orbital modulation in GeV Gamma Rays
This Letter presents the first results from the observations of LSI +61 303
using Large Area Telescope data from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
between 2008 August and 2009 March. Our results indicate variability that is
consistent with the binary period, with the emission being modulated at 26.6
+/- 0.5 days. This constitutes the first detection of orbital periodicity in
high-energy gamma rays (20 MeV-100 GeV, HE). The light curve is characterized
by a broad peak after periastron, as well as a smaller peak just before
apastron. The spectrum is best represented by a power law with an exponential
cutoff, yielding an overall flux above 100 MeV of 0.82 +/- 0.03(stat) +/-
0.07(syst) 10^{-6} ph cm^{-2} s^{-1}, with a cutoff at 6.3 +/- 1.1(stat) +/-
0.4(syst) GeV and photon index Gamma = 2.21 +/- 0.04(stat) +/- 0.06(syst).
There is no significant spectral change with orbital phase. The phase of
maximum emission, close to periastron, hints at inverse Compton scattering as
the main radiation mechanism. However, previous very high-energy gamma ray
(>100 GeV, VHE) observations by MAGIC and VERITAS show peak emission close to
apastron. This and the energy cutoff seen with Fermi suggest the link between
HE and VHE gamma rays is nontrivial.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters 21 July
200
Fermi observations of high-energy gamma-ray emission from GRB 080825C
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST) has opened a new high-energy
window in the study of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). Here we present a thorough
analysis of GRB 080825C, which triggered the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor
(GBM), and was the first firm detection of a GRB by the Fermi Large Area
Telescope (LAT). We discuss the LAT event selections, background estimation,
significance calculations, and localization for Fermi GRBs in general and GRB
080825C in particular. We show the results of temporal and time-resolved
spectral analysis of the GBM and LAT data. We also present some theoretical
interpretation of GRB 080825C observations as well as some common features
observed in other LAT GRBs.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. Corresponding
authors: A. Bouvier, J. Granot, A.J. van der Hors
The Team Keck Treasury Redshift Survey of the GOODS-North Field
We report the results of an extensive imaging and spectroscopic survey in the
GOODS-North field completed using DEIMOS on the Keck II telescope. Observations
of 2018 targets in a magnitude-limited sample of 2911 objects to R=24.4 yield
secure redshifts for a sample of 1440 galaxies and AGN plus 96 stars. In
addition to redshifts and associated quality assessments, our catalog also
includes photometric and astrometric measurements for all targets detected in
our R-band imaging survey of the GOODS-North region. We investigate various
sources of incompleteness and find the redshift catalog to be 53% complete at
its limiting magnitude. The median redshift of z=0.65 is lower than in similar
deep surveys because we did not select against low-redshift targets. Comparison
with other redshift surveys in the same field, including a complementary
Hawaii-led DEIMOS survey, establishes that our velocity uncertainties are as
low as 40 km/s for red galaxies and that our redshift confidence assessments
are accurate. The distributions of rest-frame magnitudes and colors among the
sample agree well with model predictions out to and beyond z=1. We will release
all survey data, including extracted 1-D and sky-subtracted 2-D spectra, thus
providing a sizable and homogeneous database for the GOODS-North field which
will enable studies of large scale structure, spectral indices, internal galaxy
kinematics, and the predictive capabilities of photometric redshifts.Comment: 17 pages, 18 figures, submitted to AJ; v2 minor changes; see survey
database at http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/realpublic/science/tksurvey
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