Laying the Foundation for Excellence

The California Polytechnic School, now known as California Polytechnic State University, was originally founded in 1901 as a college to give a practical education in the fields of engineering and agriculture for working people of California. Over time, the school grew in popularity, and eventually became a university. Over the course of time, Cal Poly not only became a name brought up when mentioning exceptional schools for engineering and agriculture; but one that was now brought up when mentioning nationally renowned architecture schools. In 2015, Cal Poly was named the number two architecture program in the nation by the Architectural Record. But Cal Poly had not always been known for this, so what led them to become nationally recognized? The answer lies in their “Learn by Doing” philosophy, a passionate leader in the faculty, and the usage of an incredibly unique location on the Cal Poly campus: the Architectural Design Village. Suzanne Stephens, “America’s Top Architecture Schools 2015,” Architectural Record, 2015, accessed January 28, 2016 , http://www.architecturalrecord.com/topics/146-america-s-best-architecture-school

Malaria intervention scale-up in Africa : effectiveness predictions for health programme planning tools, based on dynamic transmission modelling

Scale-up of malaria prevention and treatment needs to continue to further important gains made in the past decade, but national strategies and budget allocations are not always evidence-based. Statistical models were developed summarizing dynamically simulated relations between increases in coverage and intervention impact, to inform a malaria module in the Spectrum health programme planning tool.; The dynamic Plasmodium falciparum transmission model OpenMalaria was used to simulate health effects of scale-up of insecticide-treated net (ITN) usage, indoor residual spraying (IRS), management of uncomplicated malaria cases (CM) and seasonal malaria chemoprophylaxis (SMC) over a 10-year horizon, over a range of settings with stable endemic malaria. Generalized linear regression models (GLMs) were used to summarize determinants of impact across a range of sub-Sahara African settings.; Selected (best) GLMs explained 94-97 % of variation in simulated post-intervention parasite infection prevalence, 86-97 % of variation in case incidence (three age groups, three 3-year horizons), and 74-95 % of variation in malaria mortality. For any given effective population coverage, CM and ITNs were predicted to avert most prevalent infections, cases and deaths, with lower impacts for IRS, and impacts of SMC limited to young children reached. Proportional impacts were larger at lower endemicity, and (except for SMC) largest in low-endemic settings with little seasonality. Incremental health impacts for a given coverage increase started to diminish noticeably at above ~40 % coverage, while in high-endemic settings, CM and ITNs acted in synergy by lowering endemicity. Vector control and CM, by reducing endemicity and acquired immunity, entail a partial rebound in malaria mortality among people above 5 years of age from around 5-7 years following scale-up. SMC does not reduce endemicity, but slightly shifts malaria to older ages by reducing immunity in child cohorts reached.; Health improvements following malaria intervention scale-up vary with endemicity, seasonality, age and time. Statistical models can emulate epidemiological dynamics and inform strategic planning and target setting for malaria control

Detection limits of organic compounds achievable with intense, short-pulse lasers

Many organic molecules have strong absorption bands which can be accessed by ultraviolet short pulse lasers to produce efficient ionization. This resonant multiphoton ionization scheme has already been exploited as an ionization source in time-of-flight mass spectrometers used for environmental trace analysis. In the present work we quantify the ultimate potential of this technique by measuring absolute ion yields produced from the interaction of 267 nm femtosecond laser pulses with the organic molecules indole and toluene, and gases Xe, N2 and O2. Using multiphoton ionization cross sections extracted from these results, we show that the laser pulse parameters required for real-time detection of aromatic molecules at concentrations of one part per trillion in air and a limit of detection of a few attomoles are achievable with presently available commercial laser systems. The potential applications for the analysis of human breath, blood and tissue samples are discussed

Influence of landscape attributes on Virginia opossum density

TheVirginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), North America\u27s only marsupial, has a range extending from southern Ontario, Canada, to the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, and from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific. Despite the Virginia opossum\u27s taxonomic uniqueness in relation to other mammals in North America and rapidly expanding distribution, its ecology remains relatively understudied. Our poor understanding of the ecology of this important mesopredator is especially pronounced in the rural southeastern United States. Our goal was to estimate effects of habitat on opossum density within an extensive multiyear spatial capture‐recapture study. Additionally, we compared the results of this spatial capture‐recapture analysis with a simple relative abundance index. Opossum densities in the relatively underdeveloped regions of the southeastern United States were lower compared to the more human‐dominated landscapes of the Northeast and Midwest. In the southeastern United States, Virginia opossums occurred at a higher density in bottomland swamp and riparian hardwood forest compared to upland pine (Pinus spp.) plantations and isolated wetlands. These results reinforce the notion that the Virginia opossum is commonly associated with land cover types adjacent to permanent water (bottomland swamps, riparian hardwood). The relatively low density of opossums at isolated wetland sites suggests that the large spatial scale of selection demonstrated by opossums gives the species access to preferable cover types within the same landscape

Repeated ethanol exposure increases anxiety-like behaviour in zebrafish during withdrawal

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are quickly becoming an important model organism in behavioural neuroscience and drug addiction research. Conditioned place preference studies show that drugs of abuse produce responses in zebrafish that are similar to mammalian animal models. Repeated administration of ethanol in zebrafish results in withdrawal-induced behavioural responses that vary with dose and exposure duration, requiring additional investigation. Here, we examine the effects of ethanol withdrawal on anxiety-like behaviours in adult zebrafish after a 21-day ethanol dosing schedule at either 0.4% or 0.8%. Anxiety-like behaviour was measured with the novel object approach test; this test involves placing a fish in a circular arena with a novel object in the centre and observing the amount of exploration of the object. We found increased anxiety-like behaviour during ethanol withdrawal. This study adds to the growing body of literature that validates the zebrafish as a model organism in the field of behavioural neuroscience and addiction

Arctic system on trajectory to new state

The Arctic system is moving toward a new state that falls outside the envelope of glacial-interglacial fluctuations that prevailed during recent Earth history. This future Arctic is likely to have dramatically less permanent ice than exists at present. At the present rate of change, a summer ice-free Arctic Ocean within a century is a real possibility, a state not witnessed for at least a million years. The change appears to be driven largely by feedback-enhanced global climate warming, and there seem to be few, if any processes or feedbacks within the Arctic system that are capable of altering the trajectory toward this “super interglacial” state

Ricci flow and black holes

Gradient flow in a potential energy (or Euclidean action) landscape provides a natural set of paths connecting different saddle points. We apply this method to General Relativity, where gradient flow is Ricci flow, and focus on the example of 4-dimensional Euclidean gravity with boundary S^1 x S^2, representing the canonical ensemble for gravity in a box. At high temperature the action has three saddle points: hot flat space and a large and small black hole. Adding a time direction, these also give static 5-dimensional Kaluza-Klein solutions, whose potential energy equals the 4-dimensional action. The small black hole has a Gross-Perry-Yaffe-type negative mode, and is therefore unstable under Ricci flow. We numerically simulate the two flows seeded by this mode, finding that they lead to the large black hole and to hot flat space respectively, in the latter case via a topology-changing singularity. In the context of string theory these flows are world-sheet renormalization group trajectories. We also use them to construct a novel free energy diagram for the canonical ensemble.Comment: 31 pages, 14 color figures. v2: Discussion of the metric on the space of metrics corrected and expanded, references adde