Advanced Placement American History in 3-D

The purpose of this project is to create an online collection of visual works that will enable high school teachers to supplement their instruction of AP American history as well as local history in Spartanburg, SC. We are grateful for this grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation and believe that this project will be a credit to their generosity. It is a commonly acknowledge fact in pedagogy today that visual stimulation enhances learning and makes it more enjoyable. Art can introduce social studies, literature, civics, and even science and math in an immediate, tangible way. In AP American History, students can develop a deeper understanding of history and our shared human through visual works of art. As more and more teachers are now utilizing visual technology in the classroom, there is exponentially greater demand for visual illustrations of historical themes. Yet, the supply of such material has not kept up with the demand. Teachers often complain that they must scavenge the Internet for works of art, political cartoons, or other media in order to prepare for class. The advantage of this project is to collect this kind of material in a single website complete with lesson plans and an historical narrative. We therefore hope that our project will not only prove to be of great benefit to AP American history teachers, but a model for the development of similar sites for other academic fields

Revegetating salt-affected land with shrubs

The establishment of salt-tolerant shrubs such as saltbush and bluebush on salt-affected land reduces the risk of soil erosion, and can also fit into farm programmes as a profitable enterprise. Salt-tolerant shrubs can be used as forage for sheep in summer and autumn, when the availability of annual pastures is low or annual pastures are just beginning to emerge. This article describes three methods for establishing shrubs on salt-affected land and what affects shrub establishment

Simulating movement devices used in hospital evacuation

In hospitals, the evacuation of those with severe movement impairments can be highly problematic for the patients, for the staff and for other evacuees. It is critical to understand the performance of horizontal and vertical evacuation procedures, including the means by which people with reduced mobility can be assisted during stair descent. Microsimulation modelling provides a useful tool to assess evacuation strategies, given the challenges of preparing and transporting patients in need of on-going care and the unfeasibility of real evacuation drills. However, current simulation models typically focus on the movement of individual agents, not the staff-patient interactions and sizable equipment required to carry out assisted evacuation. To address this, the buildingEXODUS evacuation model has been enhanced to represent moving objects in addition to moving individual agents. This paper describes the modelling theory behind this development, where dedicated data has been applied to enable the explicit specification of evacuation devices, operated by agents (for instance, representing the vertical travel speeds achieved—with averages ranging between 0.6 m/s and 0.84 m/s—when employing different movement devices). Algorithms are presented that calculate the movement of devices along corridors, through doorways and in stairway descent, including a method of geometric decomposition of the available hospital evacuation routes. This new functionality addresses the key evacuation components of repeated patient collection and has numerous applications, both in simulating hospital evacuation and in representing evacuation of other premises that include people with reduced mobility. Examination of the performance of this functionality found it predicated performance within 6% of expectation. Once further testing is completed, the resultant tool can be used to significantly enhance planning and diagnostic capabilities related to the evacuation of hospital and other healthcare facilities

The influence of vibration transducer mounting on the practical measurement of railway vibration

When assessing ground-borne vibration related to railways, careful consideration needs to be given to the mounting and coupling of the transducers. This paper presents the results of research investigating some of these fundamental issues. Different couplant materials and four of the most commonly used transducer-to-ground coupling techniques (spikes, buried, slabs, and the transducer directly plastered to the ground), were compared and analysed within the frequency range 5 Hz to 500 Hz. The data demonstrate that transducer vertical alignment has limited influence at small angles. “Blu-tack” showed to be an adequate couplant. Above 50 Hz coupling systems can influence the reading by up to 20 dB. Using the train as a source of vibration yields a high degree of non-linearity on the coupling systems performance

Issues and limitations on measuring building’s transfer function

In the planning stages for new buildings or transit systems, the effects of railway induced ground-borne vibration need to be considered. The propagation of vibration from the ground to a receiving room is a complex problem. It is common practise, within vibration assessment, for the buildings vibration response to be acquired empirically by ether measuring the response of the building in question via an impact method, measuring the response on an equivalent type of building, or using pre existing published data (from the 70s and 80s) to derive a ground to building transfer functions. This paper compares, as a method of evaluating a building transfer function, impact method with actual rail pass-bys and recently collected response with published generalised response curves. The results presented suggests that, when using the impact method excitation process (point source), the distance of impact location to the building foundation is critical, drastically affecting the resulting transfer function. In addition when using train pass-bys as the excitation process, train length is shown to have an influence on the transfer function assessed. The pre-published data are also shown to have limitations for more recent types of construction

Procedures for estimating environmental impact from railway induced vibration: a review

Railway induced ground-borne vibration is among the most common and widespread sources of perceptible environmental vibration. It can give rise to discomfort and disturbance, adversely impacting on human activity and the operation of sensitive equipment. The rising demand for building new railway lines or upgrading existing lines in order to meet increasing transit flows has furthered the need for adequate vibration assessment tools during the planning and design stages. In recent years many studies in the fields of rail and ground dynamics have encouraged many prediction techniques giving rise to a wide variety of procedures for estimating vibration on buildings. Each method shows potential for application at different levels of complexity and applicability to varying circumstances. From the perspective of railway environmental impact assessment, this paper reviews some relevant prediction techniques, assessing their degree of suitability for practical engineering application by weighting their methodology (i.e. considerations and requirements) against practicality and precision. The review suggests that not all procedures are practicable (e.g. the attainment of representative parameters needed to run the procedures) whilst others predicate on assumptions which revealed to be too relaxed resulting in insufficient accuracy; however, a combination of methods may provide the necessary balance

Impact of harness attachment point on kinetics and kinematics during sled towing.

Resisted sprint training is performed in a horizontal direction, and involves similar muscles, velocities and ranges of motion (ROM) to those of normal sprinting. Generally, sleds are attached to the athletes via a lead (3m) and harness; the most common attachment points are the shoulder or waist. At present, it is not known how the different harness point's impact on the kinematics and kinetics associated with sled towing (ST). The aim of the current investigation was to examine the kinetics and kinematics of shoulder and waist harness attachment points in relation to the acceleration phase of ST. Fourteen trained males completed normal and ST trials, loaded at 10% reduction of sprint velocity. Sagittal plane kinematics from the trunk, hip, knee and ankle were measured, together with stance phase kinetics (third foot-strike). Kinetic and kinematic parameters were compared between harness attachments using one-way repeated measures analysis of variance. The results indicated that various kinetic differences were present between the normal and ST conditions. Significantly greater net horizontal mean force, net horizontal impulses, propulsive mean force and propulsive impulses were measured (p>0.05). Interestingly, the waist harness also led to greater net horizontal impulse when compared to the shoulder attachment (p = 0.000). In kinematic terms, ST conditions significantly increased peak flexion in hip, knee and ankle joints compared to the normal trials (p<0.05). Results highlighted that the shoulder harness had a greater impact on trunk and knee joint kinematics when compared to the waist harness (p<0.05). In summary, waist harnesses appear to be the most suitable attachment point for the acceleration phase of sprinting. Sled towing with these attachments resulted in fewer kinematic alterations and greater net horizontal impulse when compared to the shoulder harness. Future research is necessary, in order to explore the long-term adaptations of these acute changes

Interventions for sustained healthcare professional behaviour change: a protocol for an overview of reviews

BackgroundFailure to successfully implement and sustain change over the long term continues to be a major problem in health and social care. Translating evidence into routine clinical practice is notoriously complex, and it is recognised that to implement new evidence-based interventions and sustain them over time, professional behaviour needs to change accordingly. A number of theories and frameworks have been developed to support behaviour change among health and social care professionals, and models of sustainability are emerging, but few have translated into valid and reliable interventions. The long-term success of healthcare professional behavioural change interventions is variable, and the characteristics of successful interventions unclear. Previous reviews have synthesised the evidence for behaviour change, but none have focused on sustainability. In addition, multiple overlapping reviews have reported inconsistent results, which do not aid translation of evidence into practice. Overviews of reviews can provide accessible succinct summaries of evidence and address barriers to evidence-based practice. We aim to compile an overview of reviews, identifying, appraising and synthesising evidence relating to sustained social and healthcare professional behaviour change.MethodsWe will conduct a systematic review of Cochrane reviews (an Overview). We plan to systematically search the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. We will include all systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials comparing a healthcare professional targeted behaviour change intervention to a standard care or no intervention control group. Two reviewers will independently assess the eligibility of the reviews and the methodological quality of included reviews using the ROBIS tool. The quality of evidence within each comparison in each review will be judged based on the GRADE criteria. Disagreements will be resolved through discussion. Effects of interventions will be systematically tabulated and the quality of evidence used to determine implications for clinical practice and make recommendations for future research.DiscussionThis overview will bring together the best available evidence relating to the sustainability of health professional behaviour change, thus supporting policy makers with decision-making in this field

Evaluation of polygenic risk scores for breast and ovarian cancer risk prediction in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers

Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified 94 common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with breast cancer (BC) risk and 18 associated with ovarian cancer (OC) risk. Several of these are also associated with risk of BC or OC for women who carry a pathogenic mutation in the high-risk BC and OC genes BRCA1 or BRCA2. The combined effects of these variants on BC or OC risk for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers have not yet been assessed while their clinical management could benefit from improved personalized risk estimates. Methods: We constructed polygenic risk scores (PRS) using BC and OC susceptibility SNPs identified through population-based GWAS: for BC (overall, estrogen receptor [ER]-positive, and ER-negative) and for OC. Using data from 15 252 female BRCA1 and 8211 BRCA2 carriers, the association of each PRS with BC or OC risk was evaluated using a weighted cohort approach, with time to diagnosis as the outcome and estimation of the hazard ratios (HRs) per standard deviation increase in the PRS. Results: The PRS for ER-negative BC displayed the strongest association with BC risk in BRCA1 carriers (HR = 1.27, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.23 to 1.31, P = 8.2 x 10(53)). In BRCA2 carriers, the strongest association with BC risk was seen for the overall BC PRS (HR = 1.22, 95% CI = 1.17 to 1.28, P = 7.2 x 10(-20)). The OC PRS was strongly associated with OC risk for both BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers. These translate to differences in absolute risks (more than 10% in each case) between the top and bottom deciles of the PRS distribution; for example, the OC risk was 6% by age 80 years for BRCA2 carriers at the 10th percentile of the OC PRS compared with 19% risk for those at the 90th percentile of PRS. Conclusions: BC and OC PRS are predictive of cancer risk in BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers. Incorporation of the PRS into risk prediction models has promise to better inform decisions on cancer risk management