Watchkeeper

The SAFE Port Act of 2006 designated the Coast Guard as the lead federal agency tasked with building Interagency Operations Centers in critical U.S. ports. A critical component of the IOC initiative is an Information Management System (IMS) to provide improved means for information sharing, and coordination among federal, state, local, and public sector stakeholders related to maritime safety and security in critical U.S. ports. The Coast Guard WatchKeeper project is a proposed IMS being designed to address the information sharing and information management challenges faced by these agencies. The WatchKeeper development program has faced challenges in delivering capability. Initial capability was to be delivered in 2009. This did not happen. Up to today, WatchKeeper has not delivered any new capabilities. Several development practices may provide advantages to the development process-ensuring value adding capabilities, minimizing project risk, and ensuring Coast Guard leadership can understand how WatchKeeper capabilities support Coast Guard core business process. This thesis describes these development practices, and proposes an architectural consideration to provide focus to future WatchKeeper products. This thesis concludes with considerations for further developing WatchKeeper, and recommendations for moving forward with development.http://archive.org/details/watchkeeper109455405US Coast Guard (USCG) authorApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Sovereignty, Identity, and Indigenous Knowledge in Higher Education

On March 19, 2021 MESAS held its Inaugural Indigenous Knowledge Symposium. The theme for the symposium was Identity, Sovereignty, and Indigenous Knowledge in Higher Education. The goal of the event was to bring together campus staff, faculty, and students to learn more about the importance of Indigenous Knowledge across various academic disciplines. The four speakers presented on how identity, sovereignty and indigenous knowledge have shaped their own work in earth science, education, language, and mental health.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/indigenousknowledge/1000/thumbnail.jp

2014 Field Excavations at the Little Creek Community Nacogdoches County

In the summer of 2014 (June 2-July 3), SFA Archaeological Field School (ANT 440) was led by Dr. Leslie G. Cecil and had 13 students and three volunteers. The site selected was the Little Creek Community (41NA378) that was decimated by the floods of 1974. The site is approximately six acres it is under the Nacogdoches Banita Creek Park and Dog Park in Nacogdoches, TX. in area of which only 51 meters2 were excavated. Brian Bray approved the selection of the site and gave approval for excavations. The location of the community was based on the ethnographic map created by Abercrombie (2013) and Cecil conducted a ground penetrating radar survey before field school began. Due to the high frequency of potential artifacts everywhere, two locations were selected for clearing excavations: 1) the AME Church and 2) the Davis house. Excavations and artifacts found indicated the occupational date of the site (1900s1970s), the edge of the Church, and the area at the Davis house where they burned trash. Artifacts are curated at the SFA Anthropology and Archaeology laboratory. Future research at the site would be recommended should the City of Nacogdoches build any other structures there

2014 Field Excavations at the Little Creek Community Nacogdoches County

In the summer of 2014 (June 2-July 3), SFA Archaeological Field School (ANT 440) was led by Dr. Leslie G. Cecil and had 13 students and three volunteers. The site selected was the Little Creek Community (41NA378) that was decimated by the floods of 1974. The site is approximately six acres it is under the Nacogdoches Banita Creek Park and Dog Park in Nacogdoches, TX. in area of which only 51 meters2 were excavated. Brian Bray approved the selection of the site and gave approval for excavations. The location of the community was based on the ethnographic map created by Abercrombie (2013) and Cecil conducted a ground penetrating radar survey before field school began. Due to the high frequency of potential artifacts everywhere, two locations were selected for clearing excavations: 1) the AME Church and 2) the Davis house. Excavations and artifacts found indicated the occupational date of the site (1900s1970s), the edge of the Church, and the area at the Davis house where they burned trash. Artifacts are curated at the SFA Anthropology and Archaeology laboratory. Future research at the site would be recommended should the City of Nacogdoches build any other structures there

Same-visit HIV testing in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract Background The Ministry of Health (hereafter, Ministry) of Trinidad and Tobago is responsible for delivery of all health services in the country. The Ministry takes responsibility for direct delivery of care in the public sector and has initiated a process whereby those seeking HIV test results could obtain confidential reports during a single-visit to a testing location. The Ministry requested technical assistance with this process from the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC). The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played an important role in this process through its partnership with CAREC. Methods Under the technical guidance of CAREC and CDC, the Ministry organized a technical working group which included representatives from key national HIV program services and technical assistance partners. This working group reviewed internationally-recognized best practices for HIV rapid testing and proposed a program that could be integrated into the national HIV programs of Trinidad and Tobago. The working group wrote a consensus protocol, defined certification criteria, prepared training materials and oversaw implementation of "same-visit" HIV testing at two pilot sites. Results A Ministry-of-Health-supported program of "same-visit" HIV testing has been established in Trinidad and Tobago. This program provides confidential testing that is independent of laboratory confirmation. The program allows clients who want to know their HIV status to obtain this information during a single-visit to a testing location. Testers who are certified to provide testing on behalf of the Ministry are also counselors. Non-laboratory personnel have been trained to provide HIV testing in non-laboratory locations. The program includes procedures to assure uniform quality of testing across multiple testing sites. Several procedural and training documents were developed during implementation of this program. This report contains links to those documents. Conclusions The Ministry of Health has implemented a program of "same-visit" HIV testing in Trinidad and Tobago. This program provides clients confidential HIV test reports during a single visit to a testing location. The program is staffed by non-laboratory personnel who are trained to provide both testing and counseling in decentralized (non-laboratory) settings. This approach may serve as a model for other small countries.</p

SuRVoS: Super-Region Volume Segmentation workbench

Segmentation of biological volumes is a crucial step needed to fully analyse their scientific content. Not having access to convenient tools with which to segment or annotate the data means many biological volumes remain under-utilised. Automatic segmentation of biological volumes is still a very challenging research field, and current methods usually require a large amount of manually-produced training data to deliver a high-quality segmentation. However, the complex appearance of cellular features and the high variance from one sample to another, along with the time-consuming work of manually labelling complete volumes, makes the required training data very scarce or non-existent. Thus, fully automatic approaches are often infeasible for many practical applications. With the aim of unifying the segmentation power of automatic approaches with the user expertise and ability to manually annotate biological samples, we present a new workbench named SuRVoS (Super-Region Volume Segmentation). Within this software, a volume to be segmented is first partitioned into hierarchical segmentation layers (named Super-Regions) and is then interactively segmented with the user's knowledge input in the form of training annotations. SuRVoS first learns from and then extends user inputs to the rest of the volume, while using Super-Regions for quicker and easier segmentation than when using a voxel grid. These benefits are especially noticeable on noisy, low-dose, biological datasets

Setting Research Priorities to Reduce Global Mortality from Childhood Pneumonia by 2015

Igor Rudan and colleagues report the results of their consensus building exercise that identified health research priorities to help reduce child mortality from pneumonia

Internet Daters’ Body Type Preferences: Race–Ethnic and Gender Differences

Employing a United States sample of 5,810 Yahoo heterosexual internet dating profiles, this study finds race–ethnicity and gender influence body type preferences for dates, with men and whites significantly more likely than women and non-whites to have such preferences. White males are more likely than non-white men to prefer to date thin and toned women, while African-American and Latino men are significantly more likely than white men to prefer female dates with thick or large bodies. Compatible with previous research showing non-whites have greater body satisfaction and are less influenced by mainstream media than whites, our findings suggest Latinos and African Americans negotiate dominant white idealizations of thin female bodies with their own cultures’ greater acceptance of larger body types