SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OF ARMY MATERIEL REPORTING FOR THE MIDDLE TIER OF ACQUISITION PATHWAY

The Acquisition Modernization Integration (AMI) team within the ASA(ALT) office is critical in the Army decision-making process. The AMI creates reports that include actionable knowledge rendered to Army strategic leaders. These reports include vital data on critical Army programs integrated into the modernization efforts. Part of this necessary data are the First Unit Issued (FUI) and the First Unit Equipped (FUE) dates. These reported dates directly affect Army units’ training, deployment, and logistics support timelines as they become part of the data-driven analytics on reports provided to decision-makers. Because of the initiatives to improve efficiency in the acquisition process, realignment, and creation of new organizations, the AMI needs a system that facilitates accurate and consistent FUI and FUE dates reporting. This research used several systems engineering (SE) concepts and methods such as stakeholders’ analysis, functional analysis, mapping of functions to systems’ parameters, modeling-based systems engineering, and analysis of alternatives. The application of these SE tools resulted in identifying a system/process that will accurately and consistently facilitate FUI and FUE date reporting to meet the AMI’s needs. This system/process provides a reporting capability for current and future acquisition programs and could be implemented across the DOD and all other government agencies and departments.Major, United States ArmyCaptain, United States ArmyCaptain, United States ArmyCaptain, United States ArmyCaptain, United States ArmyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Counselor Education Faculty Positions: Requirements and Preferences in CESNET Announcements 2005-2009

Counselor Education faculty positions announced on CESNET from 2005 through 2009 (N = 424) were analyzed to ascertain current trends in required and preferred qualifications. Typical qualifications mentioned in announcements include education and experience in clinical settings, teaching, and research. After a doctoral degree, the most common qualification included was experience in clinical settings, indicated by either years of experience or licensure eligibility. Half of the openings did not specify one specialty; school counseling was mentioned most often. Teaching and research requirements frequently referred to potential and commitment . Implications for faculty advisors and graduate students are included

Analysis of the Listeria monocytogenes Population Structure among Isolates from 1931 to 2015 in Australia

Listeriosis remains among the most important bacterial illnesses, with a high associated mortality rate. Efforts to control listeriosis require detailed knowledge of the epidemiology of the disease itself, and its etiological bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes. In this study we provide an in-depth analysis of the epidemiology of 224 L. monocytogenes isolates from Australian clinical and non-clinical sources. Non-human sources included meat, dairy, seafood, fruit, and vegetables, along with animal and environmental isolates. Serotyping, Multi-Locus Sequence Typing, and analysis of inlA gene sequence were performed. Serogroups IIA, IIB, and IVB comprised 94% of all isolates, with IVB over-represented among clinical isolates. Serogroup IIA was the most common among dairy and meat isolates. Lineage I isolates were most common among clinical isolates, and 52% of clinical isolates belonged to ST1. Overall 39 STs were identified in this study, with ST1 and ST3 containing the largest numbers of L. monocytogenes isolates. These STs comprised 40% of the total isolates (n = 90), and both harbored isolates from clinical and non-clinical sources. ST204 was the third most common ST. The high prevalence of this group among L. monocytogenes populations has not been reported outside Australia. Twenty-seven percent of the STs in this study contained exclusively clinical isolates. Analysis of the virulence protein InlA among isolates in this study identified a truncated form of the protein among isolates from ST121 and ST325. The ST325 group contained a previously unreported novel mutation leading to production of a 93 amino acid protein. This study provides insights in the population structure of L. monocytogenes isolated in Australia, which will contribute to public health knowledge relating to this important human pathogen

Educational Attainment in the Mountain West, 2021

This fact sheet examines data on educational attainment rates for five states in the Mountain West: Arizona, Colorado,Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The original report from the Lumina Foundation explores education attainment data for those aged 25 to 64 years in all U.S. states

Conformal holonomy, symmetric spaces, and skew symmetric torsion

We consider the question: can the isotropy representation of an irreducible pseudo-Riemannian symmetric space be realized as a conformal holonomy group? Using recent results of Cap, Gover and Hammerl, we study the representations of SO(2,1), PSU(2,1) and PSp(2,1) as isotropy groups of irreducible symmetric spaces of signature (3,2), (4,4) and (6,8), respectively, describing the geometry induced by a conformal holonomy reduction to the corresponding subgroups. In the case of SO(2,1) we show that conformal manifolds with such a holonomy reduction are always locally conformally flat and hence this group cannot be a conformal holonomy group. This result completes the classification of irreducible conformal holonomy groups in Lorentzian signature. In the case of PSU(2,1), we show that conformal manifolds of signature (3,3) with this holonomy reduction carry, on an open dense subset, a canonical nearly para-Kaehler metric with positive Einstein constant. For PSp(2,1) we also show that there is an open dense subset endowed with a canonical Einstein metric in the conformal class. As a result, after restricting to an open dense subset the conformal holonomy must be a proper subgroup of PSU(2,1) or of PSp(2,1), respectively. Finally, using a recent result of Graham and Willse we prove the following general non-existence result: for a real-analytic, odd-dimensional conformal manifold, the conformal holonomy group can never be given by the isotropy representation of an irreducible pseudo-Riemannian symmetric space unless the isotropy is SO(p+1,q+1).Comment: 39 pages, comments welcome. In version 2 the statement of Theorem 2 is corrected, see also Remark 4 on page 24. In version 3, the technical Lemma 6 in the appendix is changed, typos are corrected and acknowledgements adde

Identification and quantification of microplastics in wastewater using focal plane array-based reflectance micro-FT-IR imaging

Microplastics (<5 mm) have been documented in environmental samples on a global scale. While these pollutants may enter aquatic environments via wastewater treatment facilities, the abundance of microplastics in these matrices has not been investigated. Although efficient methods for the analysis of microplastics in sediment samples and marine organisms have been published, no methods have been developed for detecting these pollutants within organic-rich wastewater samples. In addition, there is no standardized method for analyzing microplastics isolated from environmental samples. In many cases, part of the identification protocol relies on visual selection before analysis, which is open to bias. In order to address this, a new method for the analysis of microplastics in wastewater was developed. A pretreatment step using 30% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) was employed to remove biogenic material, and focal plane array (FPA)-based reflectance micro-Fourier-transform (FT-IR) imaging was shown to successfully image and identify different microplastic types (polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon-6, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene). Microplastic-spiked wastewater samples were used to validate the methodology, resulting in a robust protocol which was nonselective and reproducible (the overall success identification rate was 98.33%). The use of FPA-based micro-FT-IR spectroscopy also provides a considerable reduction in analysis time compared with previous methods, since samples that could take several days to be mapped using a single-element detector can now be imaged in less than 9 h (circular filter with a diameter of 47 mm). This method for identifying and quantifying microplastics in wastewater is likely to provide an essential tool for further research into the pathways by which microplastics enter the environment.This work is funded by a NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) CASE studentship (NE/K007521/1) with contribution from industrial partner Fera Science Ltd., United Kingdom. The authors would like to thank Peter Vale, from Severn Trent Water Ltd, for providing access to and additionally Ashley Howkins (Brunel University London) for providing travel and assistance with the sampling of the Severn Trent wastewater treatment plant in Derbyshire, UK. We are grateful to Emma Bradley and Chris Sinclair for providing helpful suggestions for our research

A presynaptic phosphosignaling hub for lasting homeostatic plasticity

Stable function of networks requires that synapses adapt their strength to levels of neuronal activity, and failure to do so results in cognitive disorders. How such homeostatic regulation may be implemented in mammalian synapses remains poorly understood. Here we show that the phosphorylation status of several positions of the active-zone (AZ) protein RIM1 are relevant for synaptic glutamate release. Position RIMS1045 is necessary and sufficient for expression of silencing-induced homeostatic plasticity and is kept phosphorylated by serine arginine protein kinase 2 (SRPK2). SRPK2-induced upscaling of synaptic release leads to additional RIM1 nanoclusters and docked vesicles at the AZ and is not observed in the absence of RIM1 and occluded by RIMS1045E. Our data suggest that SRPK2 and RIM1 represent a presynaptic phosphosignaling hub that is involved in the homeostatic balance of synaptic coupling of neuronal networks

Dark Matter Assimilation into the Baryon Asymmetry

Pure singlets are typically disfavored as dark matter candidates, since they generically have a thermal relic abundance larger than the observed value. In this paper, we propose a new dark matter mechanism called "assimilation", which takes advantage of the baryon asymmetry of the universe to generate the correct relic abundance of singlet dark matter. Through assimilation, dark matter itself is efficiently destroyed, but dark matter number is stored in new quasi-stable heavy states which carry the baryon asymmetry. The subsequent annihilation and late-time decay of these heavy states yields (symmetric) dark matter as well as (asymmetric) standard model baryons. We study in detail the case of pure bino dark matter by augmenting the minimal supersymmetric standard model with vector-like chiral multiplets. In the parameter range where this mechanism is effective, the LHC can discover long-lived charged particles which were responsible for assimilating dark matter.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables; v2, references added, switched to JCAP format; v3, references added, version published in JCA

Crystal structure of rhodopsin bound to arrestin by femtosecond X-ray laser.

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) signal primarily through G proteins or arrestins. Arrestin binding to GPCRs blocks G protein interaction and redirects signalling to numerous G-protein-independent pathways. Here we report the crystal structure of a constitutively active form of human rhodopsin bound to a pre-activated form of the mouse visual arrestin, determined by serial femtosecond X-ray laser crystallography. Together with extensive biochemical and mutagenesis data, the structure reveals an overall architecture of the rhodopsin-arrestin assembly in which rhodopsin uses distinct structural elements, including transmembrane helix 7 and helix 8, to recruit arrestin. Correspondingly, arrestin adopts the pre-activated conformation, with a ∼20° rotation between the amino and carboxy domains, which opens up a cleft in arrestin to accommodate a short helix formed by the second intracellular loop of rhodopsin. This structure provides a basis for understanding GPCR-mediated arrestin-biased signalling and demonstrates the power of X-ray lasers for advancing the frontiers of structural biology