Flow noise

Imperial Users onl

Macro Work for the Clinical Student: My GIS at Ristona Refugee Camp

Global Independent Study, Summer 2018 -- Chalkida, Greece -- Partner Agencie(s): Cross-Cultural Solutionshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/145751/1/Hall_Poster.pd

Linking Budgeting with Computational Thinking Pedagogy: Program Theory, Performance, and Budgeting

The pedagogy involved with preparing and delivering an analytically based course must contend with a number of important limitations or challenges. The challenges/limitations include needing a context for the use of the analytics being taught; others include where best to embed analytic courses in degree curriculum, determining content and delivery along with a number of additional limitations. A context can be created for these courses by establishing a base of usefulness of the course content and how it relates to other courses and to professional applications. However, one useful approach for a budgeting course is to put the analytics in a context of production and performance. These two significant elements of any problem-solving organization finance and budgeting process are significant features of teaching a course in budgeting. The article presented here is an illustration of a context-based approach along with features of pedagogy based in computational thinking which can be used to operationalize course elements while overcoming other salient limitations for analytic courses. The exemplar of a budgeting course is posed as an example.

Response: Commentary: Probing Genomic Aspects of the Multi-Host Pathogen Clostridium perfringens Reveals Significant Pangenome Diversity, and a Diverse Array of Virulence Factors

Official Student Newspaper Issue is 20 pages long

Early-life antibiotic usage and impact on the gut microbiota, including emergence of antimicrobial resistant Enterococcus

The early-life microbiota is an ‘immature’ and highly dynamic microbial ecosystem, which is central to infant health. Both perinatal and postnatal factors can impact the gut microbiota, with antibiotics proposed to cause short and longer-term disturbances. Antibiotics not only impact microbial community composition but also contribute to the overall antibiotic resistance profile, i.e. the ‘resistome’, and they may also enhance carriage of multi-drug-resistant bacteria. Given high antibiotic prescription practices in pregnant women and newborns this also contributes to the global threat of antimicrobial resistance. This review summarises the current literature on antibiotic usage and how this may impact the developing gut microbiota during early-life, including the influence of horizontal gene transfer on contributions to pathogenicity and resistance of gut bacteria. We also focus on Enterococcus spp. given their high levels in infants and their link with opportunistic infections that are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality during early-life. Finally, a perspective on the importance to antibiotic stewardship, and harnessing the microbiota itself for anti-infection therapies for reducing antibiotic usage are also covered

Improving causality in microbiome research:can human genetic epidemiology help?

Evidence supports associations between human gut microbiome variation and multiple health outcomes and diseases. Despite compelling results from in vivo and in vitro models, few findings have been translated into an understanding of modifiable causal relationships. Furthermore, epidemiological studies have been unconvincing in their ability to offer causal evidence due to their observational nature, where confounding by lifestyle and behavioural factors, reverse causation and bias are important limitations. Whilst randomized controlled trials have made steps towards understanding the causal role played by the gut microbiome in disease, they are expensive and time-consuming. This evidence that has not been translated between model systems impedes opportunities for harnessing the gut microbiome for improving population health. Therefore, there is a need for alternative approaches to interrogate causality in the context of gut microbiome research. The integration of human genetics within population health sciences have proved successful in facilitating improved causal inference (e.g., with Mendelian randomization [MR] studies) and characterising inherited disease susceptibility. MR is an established method that employs human genetic variation as natural “proxies” for clinically relevant (and ideally modifiable) traits to improve causality in observational associations between those traits and health outcomes. Here, we focus and discuss the utility of MR within the context of human gut microbiome research, review studies that have used this method and consider the strengths, limitations and challenges facing this research. Specifically, we highlight the requirements for careful examination and interpretation of derived causal estimates and host (i.e., human) genetic effects themselves, triangulation across multiple study designs and inter-disciplinary collaborations. Meeting these requirements will help support or challenge causality of the role played by the gut microbiome on human health to develop new, targeted therapies to alleviate disease symptoms to ultimately improve lives and promote good health

Draft genome sequence of Bifidobacterium breve DSM 32583, isolated from human milk

Here, we describe the draft genome sequence of Bifidobacterium breve DSM 32583 isolated from human milk obtained from a healthy mother. Potentially, this B. breve strain could serve as a probiotic.</p

Towards a methodology to mitigate the operation of implicit gender bias in theatre production: Three contemporary stagings of Julius Caesar

This thesis proposes a method for mitigating the operation of implicit gender bias in theatrical storytelling, but which can be applied to television and film productions as well. A modified version of the linguistic methodology, Feminist Post-Structural Discourse Analysis (FPDA), is initially used to analyse three case study productions of Julius Caesar in chapters one to three. Understanding the role of social narratives (stereotyping) which link gender with personality and behaviour, offers an insight into the subliminal adoption and transmission of these narratives from within production choices - even where choices might explicitly appear to challenge these narratives. The case studies examined demonstrate how casting, performance, and production choices can operate independent of a common text, meaning that the performance of the same character in the same scene can be influenced by and transmit vastly different gender biases. Chapter one interrogates the casting process, revealing that gender is divisible from character. In chapter two I demonstrate that an actor's nonverbal tactics are analogous with leadership styles and, using FPDA, argue for a more varied repertoire of nonverbal behaviours to mitigate the influence of gender bias in performance choices. Entry points for bias in the audience's journey are considered in chapter three, where a template of common pitfalls and creative solutions is offered. These findings are then developed into the interactive online toolkit, Conscious Creativity. This site offers active strategies for dismantling bias at each stage of the production process using research into the effectiveness of unconscious bias training. The development process is discussed in chapter four. Limitations are acknowledged alongside the steps taken during this study to mitigate the personal bias of the researcher. In line with FPDA this is a small scale study with a transformative agenda. The potential impact of Conscious Creativity is explored in the conclusion

On-farm water conservation goals

Presented at Irrigation district sustainability - strategies to meet the challenges: USCID irrigation district specialty conference held on June 3-6, 2009 in Reno, Nevada.Includes bibliographical references.The Imperial Irrigation District of Southern California (IID) is embarking on an ambitious program to conserve 303,000 acre-feet per year for transfer to other Colorado River water users in California. Conservation will be achieved through a combination of system and on-farm improvements. On-farm conservation of approximately 200,000 acre-feet of water per year will be achieved through a voluntary program in which participants have the option to choose which conservation measures to implement on individual fields based on incentive offerings. In 2007, IID completed the Efficiency Conservation Definite Plan (Definite Plan), which identifies likely components of the on-farm program, including expected on-farm conservation measure implementation by participants for varying incentive offerings. Expected increases in irrigation performance, reductions in farm deliveries, and corresponding implementation costs were estimated for each field for each season and compatible conservation measure. Estimation of delivery changes was accomplished by modeling performance increases as a function of the crop, soil, and irrigation method at the field; the conservation measure selected; and the historical irrigation performance of the field. The model was developed, in part, based on simulations of surface irrigation performance across a range of inflow rates and cutoff times for historical irrigation events monitored by IID. This paper provides a brief background and overview of the on-farm component of the Efficiency Conservation Definite Plan, describes the evaluation of management-based conservation measures such as irrigation scheduling, and compares conservation estimates for management-based conservation measures to other conservation measures evaluated as part of the Definite Plan