The Foxfire Facility : a center for the preservation of mountain crafts and lore

Fifth year student research paper--School of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technolog

Sartre's Debt to Rousseau: Freedom, Faith, and Fulfillment

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Study of Stability of Time-Domain Features for Electromyographic Pattern Recognition

Background: Significant progress has been made towards the clinical application of human-machine interfaces (HMIs) based on electromyographic (EMG) pattern recognition for various rehabilitation purposes. Making this technology practical and available to patients with motor deficits requires overcoming real-world challenges, such as physical and physiological changes, that result in variations in EMG signals and systems that are unreliable for long-term use. In this study, we aimed to address these challenges by (1) investigating the stability of time-domain EMG features during changes in the EMG signals and (2) identifying the feature sets that would provide the most robust EMG pattern recognition. Methods: Variations in EMG signals were introduced during physical experiments. We identified three disturbances that commonly affect EMG signals: EMG electrode location shift, variation in muscle contraction effort, and muscle fatigue. The impact of these disturbances on individual features and combined feature sets was quantified by changes in classification performance. The robustness of feature sets was evaluated by a stability index developed in this study. Results: Muscle fatigue had the smallest effect on the studied EMG features, while electrode location shift and varying effort level significantly reduced the classification accuracy for most of the features. Under these disturbances, the most stable EMG feature set with combination of four features produced at least 16.0% higher classification accuracy than the least stable set. EMG autoregression coefficients and cepstrum coefficients showed the most robust classification performance of all studied time-domain features. Conclusions: Selecting appropriate EMG feature combinations can overcome the impact of the studied disturbances on EMG pattern classification to a certain extent; however, this simple solution is still inadequate. Stabilizing electrode contact locations and developing effective classifier training strategies are suggested to further improve the robustness of HMIs based on EMG pattern recognition

Science, Math, Social Studies, and Language Arts Achievement of High School Students in Complete Programs of Agriscience Education

The purpose of this descriptive and comparative study was to describe the academic achievement of FFA (Future Farmers of America) members in a complete program of agriscience at Jackson County Comprehensive High School (JCCHS). A secondary purpose was to compare science, math, social studies, and language arts achievement of senior agriscience students/FFA members to the achievement of all seniors at JCCHS. The findings indicate that senior agriscience students/FFA members had a higher percentage of students achieving at the highest level (Pass Plus) of Language Arts on the GHSGT (Georgia High School Graduation Test) than the remaining student population at JCCHS. Senior agriscience students/FFA members also had a higher passing rate in comparison to all seniors at JCCHS on the social studies portion of the standardized test. The researchers postulate that further research needs to be conducted to identify the correlations between agriscience participation and performance on language arts and social studies standardized tests – areas where little or no research has been conducted. The researchers also recommend that other public school systems perform similar studies to determine the impact of secondary agriscience programs on student performance

CentraCare Launch of COVID Antiviral Therapy

Efficiently monitor the limited available stock of oral antiviral COVID therapies during surge states Prescribe safely and appropriately Dispense to patients close to home.https://digitalcommons.centracare.com/nursing_posters/1123/thumbnail.jp

Treatment and Prevention of Opioid Use Disorder: Challenges and Opportunities

Treatment for opioid use disorder in the United States evolved in response to changing federal policy and advances in science. Inpatient care began in 1935 with the US Public Health Service Hospitals in Lexington, Kentucky, and Fort Worth, Texas. Outpatient clinics emerged in the 1960s to provide aftercare. Research advances led to opioid agonist and opioid antagonist therapies. When patients complete opioid withdrawal, return to use is often rapid and frequently deadly. US and international authorities recommend opioid agonist therapy (i.e., methadone or buprenorphine). Opioid antagonist therapy (i.e., extended-release naltrexone) may also inhibit return to use. Prevention efforts emphasize public and prescriber education, use of prescription drug monitoring programs, and safe medication disposal options. Overdose education and naloxone distribution promote access to rescue medication and reduce opioid overdose fatalities. Opioid use disorder prevention and treatment must embrace evidence-based care and integrate with physical and mental health care

Modeling raccoon (Procyon lotor) habitat connectivity to identify potential corridors for rabies spread

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Wildlife Services National Rabies Management Program has conducted cooperative oral rabies vaccination (ORV) programs since 1997. Understanding the eco-epidemiology of raccoon (Procyon lotor) variant rabies (raccoon rabies) is critical to successful management. Pine (Pinus spp.)-dominated landscapes generally support low relative raccoon densities that may inhibit rabies spread. However, confounding landscape features, such as wetlands and human development, represent potentially elevated risk corridors for rabies spread, possibly imperiling enhanced rabies surveillance and ORV planning. Raccoon habitat suitability in pine-dominated landscapes in Massachusetts, Florida, and Alabama was modeled by the maximum entropy (Maxent) procedure using raccoon presence, and landscape and environmental data. Replicated (n = 100/state) bootstrapped Maxent models based on raccoon sampling locations from 2012–2014 indicated that soil type was the most influential variable in Alabama (permutation importance PI = 38.3), which, based on its relation to landcover type and resource distribution and abundance, was unsurprising. Precipitation (PI = 46.9) and temperature (PI = 52.1) were the most important variables in Massachusetts and Florida, but these possibly spurious results require further investigation. The Alabama Maxent probability surface map was ingested into Circuitscape for conductance visualizations of potential areas of habitat connectivity. Incorporating these and future results into raccoon rabies containment and elimination strategies could result in significant cost-savings for rabies management here and elsewhere

Heterogeneity in the growth hormone pituitary gland system of rats and humans: Implications to microgravity based research

The cell separation techniques of velocity sedimentation, flow cytometry and continuous flow electrophoresis were used to obtain enriched populations of growth hormone (GH) cells. The goal was to isolate a GH cell subpopulation which releases GH molecules which are very high in biological activity, it was important to use a method which was effective in processing large numbers of cells over a short time span. The techniques based on sedimentation are limited by cell density overlaps and streaming. While flow cytometry is useful in the analytical mode for objectively establishing cell purity, the numbers of cells which can be processed in the sort mode are so small as to make this approach ineffective in terms of the long term goals. It was shown that continuous flow electrophoresis systems (CFES) can separate GH cells from other cell types on the basis of differences in surface charge. The bioreactive producers appear to be more electrophoretically mobile than the low producers. Current ground based CFES efforts are hampered by cell clumping in low ionic strength buffers and poor cell recoveries from the CFES device