Representing disease courses: An application of the Neurological Disease Ontology to Multiple Sclerosis Typology

The Neurological Disease Ontology (ND) is being developed to provide a comprehensive framework for the representation of neurological diseases (Diehl et al., 2013). ND utilizes the model established by the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) for the representation of entities in medicine and disease (Scheuermann et al., 2009). The goal of ND is to include information for each disease concerning its molecular, genetic, and environmental origins, the processes involved in its etiology and realization, as well as its clinical presentation including signs and symptoms

Vanishing density of states in weakly disordered Weyl semimetals

The Brillouin zone of the clean Weyl semimetal contains points at which the density of states (DoS) vanishes. Previous work suggested that below a certain critical concentration of impurities this features is preserved including in the presence of disorder. This result got criticized for its neglect of rare disorder fluctuations which might bind quantum states and hence generate a finite DoS. We here show that in spite of their existence these states are so fragile that their contribution effectively vanishes when averaged over continuous disorder distributions. This means that the integrity of the nodal points remains protected for weak disorder.Comment: 4 page

Play Time Theater: A Non-Profit Children\u27s Theatre Company

I grew up participating in the theatrical performing arts since the age of three. Since then, I have been in, on average, at least one production a year for eighteen years. I attribute much of my success to the life lessons I learned growing as up a “theatre kid.” Theatre is a great creative outlet for individuals to grow into their best selves in a diverse atmosphere where each person’s uniqueness is celebrated. From my experience, and the experience of others around me, I have found that theatre helps individuals build self-esteem, confidence, and happiness. Although there are so many advantages to participating in theatre, it is underappreciated by society. This is represented by many school programs cutting the budgets of arts education. In the state of Rhode Island, theatre programs are currently scarce and expensive. For my project, I explored the entrepreneurial effort of starting my own children’s theatre company called “Play Time Theater.” This project has two main components: theory and application. The theory component is a comprehensive business overview that brings together and explains the various dimension of running a business. These dimensions include marketing, business law, human resources, and entrepreneurship. As a company, Play Time Theater offers creative writing and acting classes that teach the fundamentals of theatre education as well as basic creative writing and story-telling techniques. The company’s goal is to create a safe and inclusive atmosphere where children can grow. The application component is executing my theatre class in the local community. For this project, I taught my acting class at a local YMCA. It is important to apply the theory component of the project to be able to observe how the business actually operates. This project was extremely beneficial as it provided me the opportunity to apply the knowledge learned in my general business administration major in an actual business setting. The experience has furnished me insights I would not have learned in a classroom setting and I feel it has better prepared me for my future

Ontologies for the study of neurological disease

We have begun work on two separate but related ontologies for the study of neurological diseases. The first, the Neurological Disease Ontology (ND), is intended to provide a set of controlled, logically connected classes to describe the range of neurological diseases and their associated signs and symptoms, assessments, diagnoses, and interventions that are encountered in the course of clinical practice. ND is built as an extension of the Ontology for General Medical Sciences — a high-level candidate OBO Foundry ontology that provides a set of general classes that can be used to describe general aspects of medical science. ND is being built with classes utilizing both textual and axiomatized definitions that describe and formalize the relations between instances of other classes within the ontology itself as well as to external ontologies such as the Gene Ontology, Cell Ontology, Protein Ontology, and Chemical Entities of Biological Interest. In addition, references to similar or associated terms in external ontologies, vocabularies and terminologies are included when possible. Initial work on ND is focused on the areas of Alzheimer’s and other diseases associated with dementia, multiple sclerosis, and stroke and cerebrovascular disease. Extensions to additional groups of neurological diseases are planned. The second ontology, the Neuro-Psychological Testing Ontology (NPT), is intended to provide a set of classes for the annotation of neuropsychological testing data. The intention of this ontology is to allow for the integration of results from a variety of neuropsychological tests that assay similar measures of cognitive functioning. Neuro-psychological testing is an important component in developing the clinical picture used in the diagnosis of patients with a range of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and following stroke or traumatic brain injury. NPT is being developed as an extension to the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations

Causes for variable hydrothermal vent fluid compositions in intraoceanic arcs : insights from fluid compositions and mineral precipitates of the South Kermadec Arc

This work presents investigations of high-T hydrothermal vent fluids, associated mineral precipitates and volcanic rocks from three submarine volcanos in the South Kermadec intraoceanic arc (Brothers Caldera, Haungaroa Volcano, Macauley Caldera). Mineralogical investigations, vent fluid compositions and fluid inclusion studies are discussed. Reaction path models simulate the influence of host rock compositions and the integrated fluid flux on the formation of massive sulfides. Further models demonstrate how addition of magmatic SO2 to hydrothermal systems generates arc typical magmatic-hydrothermal fluids and influences their REE composition. Vent fluid compositions, as well as salinities and formation temperatures in mineral precipitates from seawater-dominated hydrothermal fluids, point to boiling processes of rising solutions. The investigations demonstrate how magma degassing and boiling are key processes responsible for the chemical diversity of arc hydrothermal fluids

Vanishing density of states in weakly disordered Weyl semimetals

The Brillouin zone of the clean Weyl semimetal contains points at which the density of states (DOS) vanishes. Previous work suggested that below a certain critical concentration of impurities this feature is preserved including in the presence of disorder. This result got criticized for its neglect of rare disorder fluctuations which might bind quantum states and hence generate a finite DOS. We here show that in spite of their existence these states are so fragile that their contribution effectively vanishes when averaged over continuous disorder distributions. This means that the integrity of the nodal points remains protected for weak disorder

Enhanced olivine weathering in permeable sandy sediments from the North Sea – a laboratory study using flow-through reactors

The Earth’s climate is increasingly warming due to ongoing anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In order to mitigate the human-made climate change and to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting the warming below 2°C, active carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere is of great importance in addition to massive CO2 emission reductions. A possible CDR method is rock weathering and the associated dissolution of minerals in the ocean, which leads to marine alkalinity enhancement and, thus, an enhanced flux of CO2 from the atmosphere into the ocean. In the framework of the project RETAKE, a consortium of the German Marine Research Alliance (DAM) research mission CDRmare, we investigate the potential, feasibility and side effects of olivine dissolution in high-energy coastal environments where strong currents and advection of seawater through permeable sediments have been proposed to accelerate weathering of silicate rocks. Here, we present data from laboratory experiments with flow-through reactors that are filled with permeable sandy sediments from the North Sea amended with different amounts and grain sizes of olivine. Permeable sediments are generally characterized by advective pore-water flow. Under advective conditions, higher weathering rates than those found in diffusion-controlled depositional settings are expected since the reaction products are rapidly removed and the formation of authigenic mineral coatings on olivine grains is prevented. The flow-through experiments are conducted under oxic conditions whereby air-saturated natural seawater is continuously pumped through the reactors. In addition to the permanent measurement of oxygen, pH and temperature, the circulating water is regularly sampled and alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon, major cation and trace metal (e.g., nickel) concentrations are analyzed. Preliminary results indicate an increase in alkalinity up to 3.2 mM in the reactor with the largest amount of olivine while the alkalinity in the control reactor (without olivine addition) is close to background seawater concentrations of 2.3 mM. Similarly, highest dissolved nickel concentrations were found in the reactor with highest olivine contents added. In order to detect and characterize secondary minerals that possibly formed, the sediment/olivine mixtures are sampled after completion of the experiments and analyzed with respect to the mineralogical and chemical composition

A Fracture Multiscale Model for Peridynamic enrichment within the Partition of Unity Method

Partition of unity methods (PUM) are of domain decomposition type and provide the opportunity for multiscale and multiphysics numerical modeling. Different physical models can exist within a PUM scheme for handling problems with zones of linear elasticity and zones where fractures occur. Here, the peridynamic (PD) model is used in regions of fracture and smooth PUM is used in the surrounding linear elastic media. The method is a so-called global-local enrichment strategy. The elastic fields of the undamaged media provide appropriate boundary data for the localized PD simulations. The first steps for a combined PD/PUM simulator are presented. In part I of this series, we show that the local PD approximation can be utilized to enrich the global PUM approximation to capture the true material response with high accuracy efficiently. Test problems are provided demonstrating the validity and potential of this numerical approach