An Investigation Into the Development of a Practical Gis Mapping tool Supporting Emissions Inventory Information

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations call for States to submit for EPA review and approval State Implementation Plans (SIPs) which establish goals and emission reduction strategies for improving air quality in national parks and wilderness areas. State and tribe air quality analysts therefore need the ability to display and analyze emissions inventory data in relation to geographic locations. However, due to budget and other constraints, traditional Graphical Information Systems (GIS) tools are often not available. Today, traditional GIS are being challenged in various domains by a variety of free or low-cost internet accessible services. Leveraging the availability of the Google Maps web service and published API combined with the built-in spatial capabilities of Oracle Database, this paper presents the research, design, development, instantiation and evaluation of an easy-to-use and feature-rich yet economical GIS mapping tool for the presentation of emissions inventory data

Numerical algebraic geometry for model selection and its application to the life sciences

Researchers working with mathematical models are often confronted by the related problems of parameter estimation, model validation, and model selection. These are all optimization problems, well-known to be challenging due to non-linearity, non-convexity and multiple local optima. Furthermore, the challenges are compounded when only partial data is available. Here, we consider polynomial models (e.g., mass-action chemical reaction networks at steady state) and describe a framework for their analysis based on optimization using numerical algebraic geometry. Specifically, we use probability-one polynomial homotopy continuation methods to compute all critical points of the objective function, then filter to recover the global optima. Our approach exploits the geometric structures relating models and data, and we demonstrate its utility on examples from cell signaling, synthetic biology, and epidemiology.Comment: References added, additional clarification

Using Educative Curriculum Materials to Support Preservice Elementary Teachers' Curricular Planning: A Comparison Between Two Different Forms of Support

Educative curriculum materials—materials designed to promote both teacher and student learning—may help novice teachers learn how to engage in productive curricular planning. However, little is known about how educative supports within these materials should be written to best support teachers. This quasi-experimental study examines the affordances and constraints of two different forms of educative support, general supports and lesson-specific supports, in helping preservice elementary teachers critique and adapt science curriculum materials. The lesson-specific narrative supports helped the preservice teachers identify specific adaptations that they could make to lesson plans. They also led the preservice teachers to view the educative supports as useful and relevant, motivating them to use the supports in their analysis. In contrast, the general expository supports helped the preservice teachers identify principles of practice to use in their analysis of lesson plans. Implications for teacher education and curriculum materials design are discussed, including the need to provide a blend of both forms of support to help teachers make productive design decisions when planning with curriculum materials.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78681/1/j.1467-873X.2009.00464.x.pd

Exploiting Self-Organization in Bioengineered Systems: A Computational Approach

The productivity of bioengineered cell factories is limited by inefficiencies in nutrient delivery and waste and product removal. Current solution approaches explore changes in the physical configurations of the bioreactors. This work investigates the possibilities of exploiting self-organizing vascular networks to support producer cells within the factory. A computational model simulates de novo vascular development of endothelial-like cells and the resultant network functioning to deliver nutrients and extract product and waste from the cell culture. Microbial factories with vascular networks are evaluated for their scalability, robustness, and productivity compared to the cell factories without a vascular network. Initial studies demonstrate that at least an order of magnitude increase in production is possible, the system can be scaled up, and the self-organization of an efficient vascular network is robust. The work suggests that bioengineered multicellularity may offer efficiency improvements difficult to achieve with physical engineering approaches

Risk of second primary tumors in men diagnosed with prostate cancer: A population‐based cohort study

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108272/1/cncr28769.pd

Neuroanatomical Tracing of the Gut -- Brain Axis

This poster summarizes a variety of methods to further characterize the gut-brain axis by tracing motor and sensory nerves between the gut and brain and identifying cell bodies in the sensory ganglia. Determines the meth method to trace the sensory and motor nerves was through fluorescence and the best method to identify sensory neuron cell bodies was the Nissi stain

Chimpanzees demonstrate individual differences in social information use

Studies of transmission biases in social learning have greatly informed our understanding of how behaviour patterns may diffuse through animal populations, yet within-species inter-individual variation in social information use has received little attention and remains poorly understood. We have addressed this question by examining individual performances across multiple experiments with the same population of primates. We compiled a dataset spanning 16 social learning studies (26 experimental conditions) carried out at the same study site over a 12-year period, incorporating a total of 167 chimpanzees. We applied a binary scoring system to code each participant’s performance in each study according to whether they demonstrated evidence of using social information from conspecifics to solve the experimental task or not (Social Information Score—‘SIS’). Bayesian binomial mixed effects models were then used to estimate the extent to which individual differences influenced SIS, together with any effects of sex, rearing history, age, prior involvement in research and task type on SIS. An estimate of repeatability found that approximately half of the variance in SIS was accounted for by individual identity, indicating that individual differences play a critical role in the social learning behaviour of chimpanzees. According to the model that best fit the data, females were, depending on their rearing history, 15–24% more likely to use social information to solve experimental tasks than males. However, there was no strong evidence of an effect of age or research experience, and pedigree records indicated that SIS was not a strongly heritable trait. Our study offers a novel, transferable method for the study of individual differences in social learning

A pediatric airway atlas and its application in subglottic stenosis

Young children with upper airway problems are at risk for hypoxia, respiratory insufficiency and long term morbidity. Computational models and quantitative analysis would reveal airway growth patterns and benefit clinical care. To capture expected growth patterns we propose a method to build a pediatric airway atlas as a function of age. The atlas is based on a simplified airway model in combination with kernel regression. We show experimental results on children with subglottic stenosis to demonstrate that our method is able to track and measure the stenosis in pediatric airways