Smartphone-Based pH Sensor for Home Monitoring of Pulmonary Exacerbations in Cystic Fibrosis.

Currently, Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients lack the ability to track their lung health at home, relying instead on doctor checkups leading to delayed treatment and lung damage. By leveraging the ubiquity of the smartphone to lower costs and increase portability, a smartphone-based peripheral pH measurement device was designed to attach directly to the headphone port to harvest power and communicate with a smartphone application. This platform was tested using prepared pH buffers and sputum samples from CF patients. The system matches within ~0.03 pH of a benchtop pH meter while fully powering itself and communicating with a Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone paired with either a glass or Iridium Oxide (IrOx) electrode. The IrOx electrodes were found to have 25% higher sensitivity than the glass probes at the expense of larger drift and matrix sensitivity that can be addressed with proper calibration. The smartphone-based platform has been demonstrated as a portable replacement for laboratory pH meters, and supports both highly robust glass probes and the sensitive and miniature IrOx electrodes with calibration. This tool can enable more frequent pH sputum tracking for CF patients to help detect the onset of pulmonary exacerbation to provide timely and appropriate treatment before serious damage occurs

Atlantic menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus, Purse Seine Fishery, 1972-84, with a brief discussion of age and size composition of the Landings

This report summarizes (I) annual purse seine landings of Atlantic menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus, for 1972-84, (2) estimated numbers of fish caught by fishing area. (3) estimates of nominal fishing effort and catch-per-unit-effort, (4) mean fish length and weight, and (5) major changes in the fishery. During the 1970s stock size and recruitment increased and the age composition broadened. reversing trends witnessed during the fishery's decline in the 1960s. Landings steadily improved and by 1980 the total coast wide landings exceeded 400,000 metric tons. Nevertheless, the character of the fishery changed considerably. Eleven reduction plants processed fish at seven ports in 1972, but in 1984 only eight plants operated at live ports. Beginning in the mid-1960s the center of fishing aclivity shifted from the Middle Atlantic area to the Chesapeake Bay area, which has continued to dominate the fishery in landings and effort through the 1970s and 1980s. During this period the average size and age of fish in the catches declined. (PDF file contains 30 pages.

Attitudes of Students in a Wildlife Damage Management Class Towards Nuisance Wildlife Control

Students majoring in wildlife management at the University of Georgia have the option of enrolling in our Wildlife Damage Management course. Students participate in a variety of field activities associated with the laboratory portion of the class while also attending twice-weekly lectures on wildlife damage topics. Each spring at the beginning of the semester, students participate in a short survey to assess their opinions on various topics related to wildlife damage management. The same students participate in the same survey at the end of the semester. We have been collecting pre-and post-course data since 1994. Significantly more students agreed with a variety of coyote (Canis latrans) control activities in the post-class survey except when asked about paying farmers and ranchers for livestock losses. They disagreed with this practice and did not change their view. Students generally agreed with the practice of using poison to control selected species except eagles but there were fewer significant attitude shifts pre-and post-class. As expected, students scored high on knowledge questions related to coyotes. The statement that producers had the right to protect property saw a significant change in attitude (\u3e percentage agreed post-class)

The Effect of On-Line Videos on Learner Outcomes in a Mechanics of Materials Course

The Mechanics of Materials course is one of the core engineering courses included in the curriculum of mechanical, civil, mining, petroleum, marine, aeronautical, and several other engineering disciplines. As a core course, the Mechanics of Materials course typically has large enrollment. Initiatives aimed at improving the effectiveness of the engineering core courses can have a major impact on engineering education by virtue of the large number of students affected. Computers afford opportunities for creative instructional activities that are not possible in the traditional lecture-and-textbook class format. The study described in this paper examines the effectiveness of asynchronous online video that has been used in various ways in a Mechanics of Materials course over the past four years. The content delivered via the Internet included concept videos, problem-solving videos, and videos of demonstrations and laboratory activities. In this study, four differing approaches to present the Mechanics of Materials course to approximately 1000 students in 17 course sections over a four-year period were compared. The first approach involved traditional, face-to-face lectures. The second approach completely replaced the face-to-face lectures with videos recorded by the instructor outside of the classroom, but covering the same topics as the classroom lectures, and then posted to a class web site. The instructor was available in his office during class time to answer questions. The third approach combined face-to-face lectures with videos. The fourth approach was an inverted format where students watched videos at home and worked on homework during class. Using common final exam scores as a quantitative measure of effectiveness, results showed that overall student performance was maintained as class sizes and instructor workloads increased. Additionally, there was some indication that the inverted approach was better suited for higher-ability students

Chromospherically Active Stars. XXI. The Giant, Single-lined Binaries HD 89546 And HD 113816

We have obtained spectroscopy and photometry of the chromospherically active, single-lined spectroscopic binaries HD 89546 and HD 113816. HD 89546 has a circular orbit with a period of 21.3596 days. Its primary has a spectral type of G9 III and is somewhat metal-poor with [Fe/H]~-0.5. HD 113816 has an orbit with a period of 23.6546 and a low eccentricity of 0.022. Its mass function is extremely small, 0.0007 Msolar, consistent with a very low inclination. The primary is a slightly metal-poor K2 III. A decade or more of photometric monitoring with an automatic telescope demonstrates that both systems display brightness variations due to rotational modulation of the visibility of photospheric star spots, as well as light-curve changes resulting from the redistribution of star spots by differential rotation and long-term changes in the filling factor of the spots. We determined rotation periods for each season when the observations were numerous enough. Our mean rotation periods of 21.3 and 24.1 days for HD 89546 and HD 113816, respectively, confirm that the giants in each system are synchronously rotating. The orbital elements and properties of the giant components of these two systems, including levels of surface magnetic activity, are quite similar. However, the two rotational inclinations are rather different, 57° for HD 89546 and 13° for HD 113816. Thus the latter giant is seen nearly pole on. We analyzed the light curves for similarities and differences that result from viewing these two systems from quite different inclinations

Spread Supersymmetry

In the multiverse the scale of SUSY breaking, \tilde{m} = F_X/M_*, may scan and environmental constraints on the dark matter density may exclude a large range of \tilde{m} from the reheating temperature after inflation down to values that yield a LSP mass of order a TeV. After selection effects, the distribution for \tilde{m} may prefer larger values. A single environmental constraint from dark matter can then lead to multi-component dark matter, including both axions and the LSP, giving a TeV-scale LSP lighter than the corresponding value for single-component LSP dark matter. If SUSY breaking is mediated to the SM sector at order X^* X, only squarks, sleptons and one Higgs doublet acquire masses of order \tilde{m}. The gravitino mass is lighter by a factor of M_*/M_Pl and the gaugino masses are suppressed by a further loop factor. This Spread SUSY spectrum has two versions; the Higgsino masses are generated in one from supergravity giving a wino LSP and in the other radiatively giving a Higgsino LSP. The environmental restriction on dark matter fixes the LSP mass to the TeV domain, so that the squark and slepton masses are order 10^3 TeV and 10^6 TeV in these two schemes. We study the spectrum, dark matter and collider signals of these two versions of Spread SUSY. The Higgs is SM-like and lighter than 145 GeV; monochromatic photons in cosmic rays arise from dark matter annihilations in the halo; exotic short charged tracks occur at the LHC, at least for the wino LSP; and there are the eventual possibilities of direct detection of dark matter and detailed exploration of the TeV-scale states at a future linear collider. Gauge coupling unification is as in minimal SUSY theories. If SUSY breaking is mediated at order X, a much less hierarchical spectrum results---similar to that of the MSSM, but with the superpartner masses 1--2 orders of magnitude larger than in natural theories.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Some basement rocks from Bear Mountain to the Housatonic Highlands

Guidebook for field trips in western Massachusetts, northern Connecticut and adjacent areas of New York: 67th annual meeting October 10, 11, and 12, 1975: Trip A-1; C-

Complex -Glycans Influence the Spatial Arrangement of Voltage Gated Potassium Channels in Membranes of Neuronal-Derived Cells

The intrinsic electrical properties of a neuron depend on expression of voltage gated potassium (Kv) channel isoforms, as well as their distribution and density in the plasma membrane. Recently, we showed that N-glycosylation site occupancy of Kv3.1b modulated its placement in the cell body and neurites of a neuronal-derived cell line, B35 neuroblastoma cells. To extrapolate this mechanism to other N-glycosylated Kv channels, we evaluated the impact of N-glycosylation occupancy of Kv3.1a and Kv1.1 channels. Western blots revealed that wild type Kv3.1a and Kv1.1 α-subunits had complex and oligomannose N-glycans, respectively, and that abolishment of the N-glycosylation site(s) generated Kv proteins without N-glycans. Total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy images revealed that N-glycans of Kv3.1a contributed to its placement in the cell membrane while N-glycans had no effect on the distribution of Kv1.1. Based on particle analysis of EGFP-Kv proteins in the adhered membrane, glycosylated forms of Kv3.1a, Kv1.1, and Kv3.1b had differences in the number, size or density of Kv protein clusters in the cell membrane of neurites and cell body of B35 cells. Differences were also observed between the unglycosylated forms of the Kv proteins. Cell dissociation assays revealed that cell-cell adhesion was increased by the presence of complex N-glycans of Kv3.1a, like Kv3.1b, whereas cell adhesion was similar in the oligomannose and unglycosylated Kv1.1 subunit containing B35 cells. Our findings provide direct evidence that N-glycans of Kv3.1 splice variants contribute to the placement of these glycoproteins in the plasma membrane of neuronal-derived cells while those of Kv1.1 were absent. Further when the cell membrane distribution of the Kv channel was modified by N-glycans then the cell-cell adhesion properties were altered. Our study demonstrates that N-glycosylation of Kv3.1a, like Kv3.1b, provides a mechanism for the distribution of these proteins to the cell body and outgrowths and thereby can generate different voltage-dependent conductances in these membranes