MELODIES, MEMORIES, AND MEANING: THE USE OF MUSIC THERAPY FOR PERSONS WITH DEMENTIA

Dementia is a growing public health issue, as there are 24.3 million people currently diagnosed worldwide. Being that there is no cure, non-pharmacological interventions are important to optimize quality of life for this population. Music therapy is a nonpharmacological intervention with fine usability for dementia patients. This thesis will examine the positive effects of music therapy on the behavioral symptoms, mood management, self-esteem, language skills, cognition, and reminiscence for the individual with dementia based on existing literature and will provide practice recommendations for the clinical use of music therapy and research. A short literature review will focus on the field of visual art therapy, for the purpose of examining the effect and usability of the fine arts as non-pharmacological interventions

Spectral Signature Databases and their Application/Misapplication to Modeling and Exploitation of Multispectral/hyperspectral Data

Spectral signature databases abound in the field of remote sensing. Scientists use these databases to assist in their analysis everyday. Many decisions are made about hyperspectral data and the observations made with this data based on the assumption that these databases contain “ground truth” representations of the signatures for materials sensed. For the most part, this is true if the team collecting the signatures that populate these databases follow sound practices when collecting this data. The data does, however, represent a very specific picture of the “truth”. Signatures found in databases represent a specific collection configuration or geometry. The source of illumination, whether it is artificial or natural, is in a very specific location as is the sensor used to collect radiance for the derivation of the reflectance signatures. A signature found in the database is useful for only a very specific scenario, one that matches the geometry used during ground truth collection. There are other very significant factors regarding illumination field and scattering properties of the material and reference standards that influence the computed reflectance signature. This work will illustrate some of the dramatic variation that can exist in the reflectance signatures derived for the same material using different techniques. Difference upward of 30% may exist for the same material. These observations are presented so that scientists who look to these databases in the future will consider very carefully the metadata that is presented with the signatures that they use to make sure they are applicable to the phenomenology and collection scenario that they have under study. These observations should also point out that signatures presented without detailed metadata could be very hazardous to use if the outcome of the analysis being performed relies upon the absolute reflectance spectra being known

Concentric Contra-Rotating Dual Shaft Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

A typical vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) consists of two or more airfoils all attached to a single central axis. The wind turbine style most commonly found in renewable energy is the horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) that have a high energy production efficiency in exchange for requiring large amounts of land and air space. Alternatively, a VAWT can function in low speeds and in smaller less typical locations. As a result, novel VAWT designs are researched to improve their energy efficiency. An example of a novel VAWT is the concentric counter-rotating VAWT investigated theoretically using the 2D computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software Ansys Fluent. A mesh sensitivity analysis is conducted to optimize resource usage during the simulations. Three mesh sizes were chosen for both geometries and tested at three different rotational velocities. The power generation of the double rotor system was shown to be greater than the single in all cases except for at 600 rpms where the single set produced 2.43 kW and the double rotor produced only 2.12 kW. Further investigation is necessary to improve upon the functioning CFD model to further improve the simulation accuracy. However, the interactions between energized air and shed low pressure vortices show a positive aerodynamic interaction between the two rotors and demonstrate the potential for the concentric counter-rotating VAWT to produce energy more efficiently. Class: IRES Projecthttps://commons.und.edu/es-showcase/1011/thumbnail.jp

Working Out the Kinks: Creating Solutions to Assist Health Care Workers to Take Vital Signs Through Effective Cable Management

EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) is a service-learning design program run through Purdue University. It strives to teach students design skills through providing solutions for individuals, communities, and organizations in the surrounding area while mirroring engineering industry standards. BME (Bio-medical Engineering) is a team within EPICS that strives to serve community partners through biomedical applications. Members of a health care team often spend valuable time organizing cables associated with machines used to take patients’ vital signs. Due to time constraints and the fast-paced work environment, these cables may be mismanaged and damaged. The BME team is working on a solution to ensure that relevant cords will be easily managed, damage will be minimized, and most importantly, health care professionals’ time will be saved

Banner News

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/banner_news/1030/thumbnail.jp

The Other Epidemic: Fatal Police Shootings in the Time of COVID -19

This report examines whether circumstances surrounding the public health crisis — unprecedented societal isolation combined with relaxed police department routine enforcement — has led to a change in the frequency with which the police fatally shoot people in the U.S. Using data from The Washington Post's "Fatal Force" database, this report provides national and state-level data on fatal shootings by police since 2015, including during COVID-19. Our analysis reveals that the police have continued to fatally shoot people at the same rate during the first six months of 2020 as they did over the same period from 2015 to 2019. The report also demonstrates that Black, Native American/Indigenous, and Latinx people are still more likely than white people to be shot and killed by police. The report puts forth a set of recommendations designed to reduce police departments' role, presence, responsibilities, and funding, including dramatically transforming use-of-force laws, and instead reinvest into community-based services that are better suited to respond to actual community needs. These measures can lead to a reduction in police interactions, and in turn, help put an end to racist police violence

A locally time-invariant metric for climate model ensemble predictions of extreme risk

Adaptation-relevant predictions of climate change are often derived by combining climate model simulations in a multi-model ensemble. Model evaluation methods used in performance-based ensemble weighting schemes have limitations in the context of high-impact extreme events. We introduce a locally time-invariant method for evaluating climate model simulations with a focus on assessing the simulation of extremes. We explore the behaviour of the proposed method in predicting extreme heat days in Nairobi and provide comparative results for eight additional cities

Impact of nitrogen application timing and source on nitrate leaching and crop yield

Nutrient reduction strategies were developed and are being implemented across Midwest to reduce nutrient loading to local and downstream waters. State-wide strategies developed in response to the 2008 Gulf Hypoxia Action Plan. In order to reduce nitrate-nitrogen leaching through subsurface drainage systems, the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy suggests implementation of in-field management practices including nitrogen application timing, source of nitrogen fertilizer, nitrogen application rate, and use of a nitrification inhibitor. The objectives of this study were to document the effects of nitrogen application timing (fall versus spring) and source (aqua-ammonia, urea, and poly-coated urea) on nitrate-nitrogen leaching and crop yield. Field experiments were conducted at the Agricultural Drainage and Water Quality Research and Demonstration site located near Gilmore City in Pocahontas County, Iowa, from 2011 to 2015. Treatments included in this study consisted of 32 experimental plots with both phases of a corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.) rotation to simulate a typical cropping system for Iowa conditions. This study showed limited impact of nitrogen application timing on nitrate-nitrogen concentrations. However, five-year average annual flow-weighted nitrate-nitrogen concentration for the soybean phase with fall applied nitrogen to the previous corn crop had significantly lower nitrate levels when compared to the spring application treatment. The use of poly-coated urea as a source of nitrogen fertilizer showed some potential to reduce nitrate-nitrogen concentrations in subsurface drainage

Characterization of the chicken inward rectifier K(+ )channel IRK1/Kir2.1 gene

BACKGROUND: Inward rectifier potassium channels (IRK) contribute to the normal function of skeletal and cardiac muscle cells. The chick inward rectifier K(+ )channel cIRK1/Kir2.1 is expressed in skeletal muscle, heart, brain, but not in liver; a distribution similar but not identical to that of mouse Kir2.1. We set out to explore regulatory domains of the cIRK1 promoter that enhance or inhibit expression of the gene in different cell types. RESULTS: We cloned and characterized the 5'-flanking region of cIRK1. cIRK1 contains two exons with splice sites in the 5'-untranslated region, a structure similar to mouse and human orthologs. cIRK1 has multiple transcription initiation sites, a feature also seen in mouse. However, while the chicken and mouse promoter regions share many regulatory motifs, cIRK1 possesses a GC-richer promoter and a putative TATA box, which appears to positively regulate gene expression. We report here the identification of several candidate cell/tissue specific cIRK1 regulatory domains by comparing promoter activities in expressing (Qm7) and non-expressing (DF1) cells using in vitro transcription assays. CONCLUSION: While multiple transcription initiation sites and the combinatorial function of several domains in activating cIRK1 expression are similar to those seen in mKir2.1, the cIRK1 promoter differs by the presence of a putative TATA box. In addition, several domains that regulate the gene's expression differentially in muscle (Qm7) and fibroblast cells (DF1) were identified. These results provide fundamental data to analyze cIRK1 transcriptional mechanisms. The control elements identified here may provide clues to the tissue-specific expression of this K(+ )channel