Building open lab hardware to tackle antimicrobial resistance

Microbiological imaging can be lengthy and labour-intensive without expensive lab-automation. Using Open Source hardware and software, Dr Al Edwards’ Biomedical Technology Lab designed a robot to take high-resolution images of experiments capturing changes in colour and fluorescence due to bacterial growth. This affordable solution has increased the Lab’s capability to image and screen samples with higher throughput, accuracy, and more kinetic data. The system is fully customisable to suit any imaging experiment and costs only £600 to build from Open Source resources

The Effect On Wage Of Attending A US News And World Report Best College

A great deal of attention is paid to the annual release of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings. According to national surveys of college freshman, enhanced earning potential is a major motivator in their choosing to attend college and in their selecting which college to attend. Thus you would expect the U.S. News and World Report rankings to be highly correlated with those institutions whose students earn a wage premium. This paper uses the data set High School and Beyond to test the effect on wage of attending a college identified by U.S. News and World Report as a “best college.” I find no statistically significant relationship between attending a U.S. News and World Report “best college” and wage earned

An Analysis of Personality on Legal Substance and Behavioral Addictions

This dissertation examined the relationship between personality traits and addiction to legal substances and behaviors. Speranza et al. (2012) found that people who were addicted to illegal substances had similar personality traits, such as impulsivity and sensation-seeking. In addition, substance addiction has also been found to have a relationship with negative affect (Davis, Cohen, Davids, & Rabindranath, 2015). This study applied these findings to addictions of legal substances and behaviors. Caffeine and Internet addiction were specifically analyzed due to their common excessive use in this modern world (Marsh, Snell, Allen, & Wakefield, 2001; Karim & Chaudhri, 2012). Participants were selected from students at Marshall University. They were administered the Personality Inventory for DSM 5 (PID-5)—Adults and a 25 item questionnaire regarding criteria for two addictions written by the author. Based on research by Fossati, Krueger, Markon, Borroni, and Maffei (2013), the personality domains of negative affectivity and disinhibition on the PID-5 mirror the specific traits of impulsivity and sensation-seeking. The hypotheses were that the personality traits identified by Speranza, et.al. (2012) would positively correlate with individuals who meet criteria for caffeine and Internet addictions

Hospital Cost Shifts As A Result Of Changes In Auto Insurance Regimes

This paper seeks to determine if moving from a no-fault auto insurance system to a tort system will necessarily result in hospitals being faced with more unpaid bills. The answer is found to depend upon legal regulation of the medical insurance industry, the percent of drivers operating without auto insurance, the proportion of drivers who are without medical insurance and the percent of drivers who purchase Med Pay

Consumer Valuation Of Higher Education And Adjusted Rates Of Return

This paper regards higher education as a bundle of services. This approach yields a rate of return which is between 0.5% and 4.1% higher than previously calculated. This paper makes use of data which shows how much students actually paid to attend college, a value which is often very different than the stated tuition. When students purchase the college bundle they are buying labor market skills, intellectual stimulation, a peer-group, socializing opportunities and a network of contacts. I identify which elements of the education bundle consumers wish to purchase. If a consumer purchases a good which enhances his income that purchase can be regarded as an investment. Otherwise it is regarded as a consumption good. Using a standard wage equation, which includes the elements of the education bundle consumers are willing to purchase, I confirm there are both consumption and investment aspects to the purchase of higher education. This implies previous rate of return calculations underestimated the investment return on a college education

Restricted Opportunities, Personal Choices, Ineffective Policies: What Explains Food Insecurity in Oregon?

This study examines the extent to which household demographics, local economic and social conditions, and federal food security programs explain the likelihood of household food insecurity in Oregon. Between 1999 and 2001, Oregon had the highest average rate of hunger in the nation and ranked in the top five states with respect to food insecurity. Statistical analyses using a multivariate logit model reveal that food insecurity is influenced by much more than demographics and individual choices. County-level factors such as residential location (urban versus rural) and housing costs significantly affect the likelihood that families will be food insecure.food insecurity, food stamps, hunger, rural residence, Food Security and Poverty,

Item-writing Rules: Collective Wisdom

In student assessment, teachers place the greatest weight on tests they have constructed themselves and have an equally great interest in the quality of those tests. To increase the validity of teacher-made tests, many item-writing rules-of-thumb are available in the literature, but few rules have been tested experimentally. In light of the paucity of empirical studies, the validity of any given guideline might best be established by relying on experts. This study analyzed twenty classroom assessment textbooks to identify a consensus list of item-writing rules. Forty rules for which there was agreement among textbook authors are presented. The rules address four different validity concerns-potentially confusing wording or ambiguous requirements, the problem of guessing, test-taking efficiency, and controlling for testwiseness