A Conceptual Harmonization between the SSA Disability Determination Process and ICF and DOT Frameworks: A Guide to Assessing the Mental Residual Functional Capacity of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The aim of the current project is to create a useful product that cross-walks the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Mental Residual Functional Capacity Assessment (MRFCA) with the International Classification of Functioning (ICF) and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) applied to a population of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). SSA’s MRFCA is cross-walked with the ICF in order to allow for a more in depth and functional breakdown of the purposefully more generic categories of the MRFCA. Worker Functions derived from the DOT are then added to the SSA/ICF crosswalk in order to better operationalize the functional manifestations associated with disability states as they occur in a natural (work) environment. Finally, a decision tree is developed from the crosswalk to increase ease of use of the product, titled the MRFCA Decision Tree. ASD was chosen as an exemplar to test this process. Inter-rater reliability on the MRFCA Decision Tree is assessed. The outcomes are the following: (a) A MRFCA Decision Tree that will allow a disability examiner to derive a more reliable disability decision when assessing individuals with ASD,(b) A breakdown of the current DDP process including problem areas and improvement suggestions based on the implementation of the decision tree, and (c) A narrative review of how coordinating the DOT with the ICF can provide a deeper understanding of how functional manifestations of a disability relate to job demands. Plans for future research aimed at improving the decision tree are discussed

Report of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH) Hypertension Teaching Seminar organized by the ISH Africa Regional Advisory Group: Maputo, Mozambique, 2016

The International Society of Hypertension (ISH), in fulfilment of its mission of promoting hypertension control and prevention and also of advancing knowledge globally, organizes hypertension teaching seminars or ‘summer schools’ worldwide through the ISH Regional Advisory Groups. In Africa, seven of such seminars have been organized. This is a report of the eighth seminar held in Maputo, Mozambique, April, 2016. The seminar was attended by over 65 participants from 11 African countries. The Faculty consisted of 11 international hypertension experts. The eighth African hypertension seminar was a great success as confirmed by a pre- and post-test questionnaire

The air quality perceptions of the residents of Bayview, Mossel Bay

Background: In developing countries, it often occurs that little attention is given to air pollution emissions due to a lack of proper town planning, household combustion processes, energy production and the continuous growth in the transport sector (Norman et al., 2007:783). There is an increase in urban air pollution in most of the major cities of developing countries which is amplified by population growth and industrialization (World Resource Institute, 1998, 1999:1). Air pollution studies are not complete, and may fail if the quality of life and the perceptions of the studied community are not taken into consideration. This paper investigates the air quality perceptions of a high income residency surrounded by industrial activities and Mossel Bay was rated as to have potentially poor air quality by the South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out in Bayview, Mossel Bay. The perceptions of the respondents were collected by a structured questionnaire. Components of perceptions that were tested included general opinion regarding air quality, visual perceptions of air quality, type of pollutants such as smoke and dust, perceptions regarding the source of air pollution, perceptions regarding the municipal health institution controlling air quality in Bayview, etc. These perceptions were investigated by age, gender, socio-economic status etc

Blackbody-radiation-assisted molecular laser cooling

The translational motion of molecular ions can be effectively cooled sympathetically to temperatures below 100 mK in ion traps through Coulomb interactions with laser-cooled atomic ions. The distribution of internal rovibrational states, however, gets in thermal equilibrium with the typically much higher temperature of the environment within tens of seconds. We consider a concept for rotational cooling of such internally hot, but translationally cold heteronuclear diatomic molecular ions. The scheme relies on a combination of optical pumping from a few specific rotational levels into a ``dark state'' with redistribution of rotational populations mediated by blackbody radiation.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Advection Drives Nitrate Past the Microphytobenthos in Intertidal Sands, Fueling Deeper Denitrification

Nitrification rates are low in permeable intertidal sand flats such that the water column is the primary source of nitrate to the sediment. During tidal inundation, nitrate is supplied to the pore space by advection rather than diffusion, relieving the microorganisms that reside in the sand from nitrate limitation and supporting higher denitrification rates than those observed under diffusive transport. Sand flats are also home to an abundant community of benthic photosynthetic microorganisms, the microphytobenthos (MPB). Diatoms are an important component of the MPB that can take up and store high concentrations of nitrate within their cells, giving them the potential to alter nitrate availability in the surrounding porewater. We tested whether nitrate uptake by the MPB near the sediment surface decreases its availability to denitrifiers along deeper porewater flow paths. In laboratory experiments, we used NOx (nitrate + nitrite) microbiosensors to confirm that, in the spring, net NOx consumption in the zone of MPB photosynthetic activity was stimulated by light. The maximum potential denitrification rate, measured at high spatial resolution using microsensors with acetylene and nitrate added, occurred below 1.4 cm, much deeper than light-induced NOx uptake (0.13 cm). Therefore, the shallower MPB had the potential to decrease NOx supply to the deeper sediments and limit denitrification. However, when applying a realistic downward advective flow to sediment from our study site, NOx always reached the depths of maximum denitrification potential, regardless of light availability or season. We conclude that during tidal inundation porewater advection overwhelms any influence of shallow NOx uptake by the MPB and drives water column NOx to the depths of maximum denitrification potential

Repeated Induction of Inattentional Blindness in a Simulated Aviation Environment

The study reported herein is a subset of a larger investigation on the role of automation in the context of the flight deck and used a fixed-based, human-in-the-loop simulator. This paper explored the relationship between automation and inattentional blindness (IB) occurrences in a repeated induction paradigm using two types of runway incursions. The critical stimuli for both runway incursions were directly relevant to primary task performance. Sixty non-pilot participants performed the final five minutes of a landing scenario twice in one of three automation conditions: full automation (FA), partial automation (PA), and no automation (NA). The first induction resulted in a 70 percent (42 of 60) detection failure rate with those in the PA condition significantly more likely to detect the incursion compared to the FA condition or the NA condition. The second induction yielded a 50 percent detection failure rate. Although detection improved (detection failure rates declined) in all conditions, those in the FA condition demonstrated the greatest improvement with doubled detection rates. The detection behavior in the first trial did not preclude a failed detection in the second induction. Group membership (IB vs. Detection) in the FA condition showed a greater improvement than those in the NA condition and rated the Mental Demand and Effort subscales of the NASA-TLX (NASA Task Load Index) significantly higher for Time 2 compared Time 1. Participants in the FA condition used the experience of IB exposure to improve task performance whereas those in the NA condition did not, indicating the availability and reallocation of attentional resources in the FA condition. These findings support the role of engagement in operational attention detriment and the consideration of attentional failure causation to determine appropriate mitigation strategies

The peculiar new state of the blazar PKS 1510-089

Contemporaneous multiwavelength observations with H.E.S.S., SALT, Fermi-LAT, Swift, and ATOM show that the blazar PKS 1510-089 suffered a significant decrease in its optical flux, degree of optical polarization and high-energy gamma-ray (E > 100 MeV) flux since July 2021. Meanwhile, the X-ray and very-high-energy gamma-ray (E > 100 GeV) fluxes remained steady throughout 2021 and 2022. The degree of optical polarization decreased to about zero in 2022, indicating an unpolarized dominating accretion disk component in the optical-UV domain that is completely diluting the polarized electron synchrotron component. In this proceeding we will discuss, via theoretical SED modeling, possible reasons for this dramatic change in the appearance of this blazar.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, ICRC conferenc

A Variational Approach to Bound States in Quantum Field Theory

We consider here in a toy model an approach to bound state problem in a nonperturbative manner using equal time algebra for the interacting field operators. Potential is replaced by offshell bosonic quanta inside the bound state of nonrelativistic particles. The bosonic dressing is determined through energy minimisation, and mass renormalisation is carried out in a nonperturbative manner. Since the interaction is through a scalar field, it does not include spin effects. The model however nicely incorporates an intuitive picture of hadronic bound states in which the gluon fields dress the quarks providing the binding between them and also simulate the gluonic content of hadrons in deep inelastic collisions.Comment: latex, revtex, 22 page