Adjustable Short Throw Shifter (ASTS)

Every manual transmission vehicle has a shift lever for changing gears. The problem is that the shifting linkage is setup up for one kind of driving. Numerous vehicles have multiple settings for the suspension to adapt to varying driving scenarios (i.e. cruising, sport, track). No vehicle currently has an adjustable short throw shifter (ASTS) that can accommodate drag racing, drifting, sports car racing, rallying, off-roading, or casual driving. The design of the ASTS solves this problem by moving the central axis of rotation of the shifter up two inches, permitting the adjustment of the shifting throw between 20 and 40%. The swivel joint, at the central axis of rotation, is increased in size for the threaded sleeve to be press fit on the inside. Adjustments to the amount of throw are made from inside the vehicle because the threaded rod travels up and down the sleeve. For safety reasons the new shifter is also required to meet the same safety standards as the stock model shifter in the test vehicle, a 2005 Ford Mustang GT. The shifter must withstand a load of 50 lbs. with less than 0.5-inch deflection. Testing demonstrated it would support a 100 lbs. load with less than 0.5-inch deflection. The final design met all the requirements and performed with a throw reduction of 20-50% and providing an adjustability of throw within a tenth of an inch, thus allowing for max versatility and personalization from the customer

The Experimental Effects of Acute Exercise Intensity on Retrieval-Induced Forgetting

Accumulating research has shown that acute exercise can enhance memory function. Although counterintuitive, acute exercise may also facilitate aspects of forgetting. Specifically, retrieving a subset of items from memory can facilitate the retention of retrieved items (retrieval practice; RP) and inhibit the subsequent retrieval of non-retrieved items (retrieval-induced forgetting; RIF). Given that acute exercise has been shown to enhance cognition-related inhibition, acute exercise may facilitate RIF. A sample of 225 young adults completed either a control (N=75), moderate-intensity acute exercise (N=75), or vigorous-intensity acute exercise session (N=75). Both acute exercise sessions lasted 20 minutes. Participants then completed a standard retrieval-induced forgetting protocol. Significant main effects for RP and RIF were observed, but no main effects for group, or RP by group or RIF by group interactions. In conclusion, large RP and RIF effects were observed but these effects did not vary as a function of exposure to acute exercise

Baryon Spectrum Analysis using Dirac\u27s Covariant Constraint Dynamics

We determine the energy spectrum of the baryons by treating each of them as a three-body system with the interacting forces coming from a set of two-body potentials that depend on both the distance between the quarks and the spin and orbital angular momentum coupling terms. We first review constraint dynamics for a relativistic two-body system in order to assemble the necessary two body framework for the three-body problem. We review the different types of covariant two-body interactions involved in constraint dynamics, including vector and scalar, and solve the problem of energy eigenstates using constraint dynamics. We use the Two Body Dirac equations of constraint dynamics derived by Crater and Van Alstine, matched with the quasipotential formalism of Todorov as the underlying two-body formalism. We then use the three-body constraint formalism of Sazdjian to integrate the three two-body equations into a single relativistically covariant three body equation for the bound state energies. The results are analyzed and compared to experiment using a best fit method and several different algorithms, including a gradient approach, and Monte Carlo method

The International Military Tribunals: An Overview and Assessment

As World War II drew to a close in Europe, the victorious Allies faced the question of what to do with the political and military leaders of defeated Germany. The war had been like none other; they needed a drastically new approach to the final treatment of those in charge of the Axis powers. While war crimes could be punished under the Geneva and Hague Conventions, no international agreements assigned personal responsibility to those who ordered the crimes. While Axis leaders could have been simply executed, the Allies chose to plan a cooperative international trial. The resulting International Military Tribunal (IMT)--commonly known as the Nuremberg trial--was a carefully planned, well-funded and adequately staffed experiment in international law that is often cited today. before the Nuremberg trial ended, a similar effort began in the Far East for Japanese leaders, but it had less support and has been the subject of far less historical analysis. Why is the Nuremberg trial often considered a watershed event while its Tokyo counterpart is at best a legal footnote? After more than a half-century of criticism, it is obvious that a major war crimes trial for national leaders, though preferable to summary execution, was more suited to the situation in Germany that in Japan. The Allies developed the London Charter that governed the IMT to try German leaders for more than just conventional war crimes, and the Nuremberg trial was tied to those circumstances. While many Japanese leaders were guilty of war crimes, the situation might have been more effectively dealt with by separate courts-martial. In other words, the complexities of the Asian situation revealed the IMT framework\u27s limitations. Both Allied goals and the geopolitical context help explain the Japanese trial\u27s relative lack of importance. At Nuremberg, the Allies were still attempting to establish a framework for international judicial cooperation and to discredit Nazism in Germany. The Tokyo trial liked the same sense of urgency and purpose. Nuremberg had already set the legal precedent, time\u27s progression had revealed a Western-Soviet rift, and the US-dominated occupation of Japan found other ways to meet democratization goals

Distributed Queries for Quality Control Checks in Clinical Trials

Operational Quality Control (QC) checks are standard practice in clinical trials and ensure ongoing compliance with the study protocol, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and Good Clinical Practice (GCP). We present a method for defining QC checks as distributed queries over case report forms (CRF) and clinical imaging data- sources. Our distributed query system can integrate time-sensitive information in order to populate QC checks that can facilitate discrepancy resolution workflow in clinical trials

Heterogeneity in susceptibility dictates the order of epidemiological models

The fundamental models of epidemiology describe the progression of an infectious disease through a population using compartmentalized differential equations, but do not incorporate population-level heterogeneity in infection susceptibility. We show that variation strongly influences the rate of infection, while the infection process simultaneously sculpts the susceptibility distribution. These joint dynamics influence the force of infection and are, in turn, influenced by the shape of the initial variability. Intriguingly, we find that certain susceptibility distributions (the exponential and the gamma) are unchanged through the course of the outbreak, and lead naturally to power-law behavior in the force of infection; other distributions often tend towards these "eigen-distributions" through the process of contagion. The power-law behavior fundamentally alters predictions of the long-term infection rate, and suggests that first-order epidemic models that are parameterized in the exponential-like phase may systematically and significantly over-estimate the final severity of the outbreak

TRANSFORMING ECOLOGICALLY DEFICIENT ROADSIDE GREENSPACE INTO QUALITY POLLINATOR HABITAT

This paper discusses preeminent ecological issues attributable to human development which negatively affect pollinator population sizes and diversity, and suggests design solutions to mitigate them. Under particular scrutiny is the perpetuation of monoculture landscapes. The problems with this ubiquitous practice include increased pesticide and herbicide use, lack of habitat and forage for pollinators, and reduced soil quality. In an effort to attenuate these threats, this thesis proposes two redesigns of University of Maryland campus lawn spaces into designed native plant communities. In these designs, native plants have been arranged in ways that reduce maintenance and provide ecological benefits by considering the unique roles each of them fill in their natural environment. Other strategies, such as defining borders around the habitat and placing smaller plants near the edges, were also implemented in order to positively influence the public’s view of these more naturalized designed systems and encourage adoption

Lightweight distributed XML-based integration of translational data

A distributed XQuery engine sends sub queries to separate XML data sources, and then combines the results into a single XML composite result. The system is lightweight in that it is very simple to add a new data source. An illustrative example is given for integrating data from an electronic data capture (EDC) system and a separate specimen management system

Études in Homotopical Thinking: F₁-geometry, Concurrent Computing, and Motivic Measures

This thesis weaves together three papers, each of which provides a use of homotopical intuition in a different field of mathematics. The first applies it to the study of various models of F₁-geometry, focusing mainly on the Bost-Connes algebra. The second endeavors to compare two homotopical models for concurrent computing before introducing a new one as well. Finally, the last paper provides a construction for obtaining derived motivic measures from an abstract six functors formalism and, in particular, applies this idea to obtain a lift of the Gillet-Soulé motivic measure

A Partnership Approach for Electronic Data Capture in Small-Scale Clinical Trials

The data collection process for clinical trials can be a tedious and error-prone process, and even a barrier to initiating small-scale studies. Electronic Data Capture (EDC) software can meet the need for faster and more reliable collection of data, but these informatics solutions can also be difficult to for researchers to set up. Establishing a full-featured commercial Clinical Trials Management System (CTMS) ecosystem is not realistic due to current institutional resource constraints. As an alternative solution, our Biomedical Informatics core (BMI) provided the technical expertise to pilot each EDC system in partnership with research teams and performed a qualitative evaluation using criteria we had established with prior research.1 When we began our pilot process, we assumed that each system’s EDC functionality would be the most important aspect and we produced a whitepaper focused on functionality.2 However, as we worked with various study teams it became clear they were willing to work around limitations since any web-based EDC software was a step up from paper forms. In our evaluation we found that the design of the Catalyst Web Tools3 made it difficult to use for clinical trials. OpenClinica4 has the most advanced functionality, for example in site management and complex CRF design, but what documentation is available is written in less user-friendly technical language. REDCap5 had a very clear advantage due to its ease of use extensive tutorials, and online training materials. In early 2010, BMI decided on REDCap as the preferred EDC software to support for small-scale studies. Since then usage has steadily increased. As of August 2010 there were 98 active REDCap users and 16 production studies at the University of Washington, Seattle Children’s, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Bastyr University, with collaborators from many other institutions. Post-evaluation, in addition to maintaining our installation of REDCap we are concentrating on future work in two areas: partnerships with investigators to enhance the local usage of REDCap, and informatics research to solve problems in data integration and interoperability. BMI members have contributed to the Ontology of Clinical Research.7 Additionally through our i2b2 Cross-Institutional Clinical Translational Research (CICTR) project we have identified use cases for moving data between REDCap and i2b2.8 Lastly, in keeping with our “bottom up” philosophy we are applying lightweight data integration techniques to query across REDCap and other systems, such as freezer inventory