Using engineering cementitious composites as an adhesive for near-surface mounted FRP bars strengthening concrete/masonry structures

Internationally, the cost of maintenance and rehabilitation of infrastructure is growing, and has reached roughly 50% of total construction expenditure in many countries. The near-surface mounted (NSM) FRP method has attracted increasing attention worldwide as one of the most promising techniques for structural strengthening and as an effective alternative to the externally bonded FRP method. In the NSM FRP method, grooves are cut into the concrete cover of a concrete member for the embedding of FRP bars using an adhesive. Compared to the externally bonded FRP method, the NSM FRP method has a number of advantages including a reduced risk of de-bonding failure and better protection of the FRP reinforcement. However, the brittle nature of cement paste as the groove filling material leads to a preference to use epoxy adhesives as they have better tensile and ductile properties. The proposed project aims to use engineered cementitious composites (ECC) as groove filling material as it has higher tensile strength and excellent ductility. A series of laboratory testing will be conducted to study the bond-slip behaviour for NSM FRP bars using ECC and the testing results can also be used for the calibration of the theoretical model which will be developed as part of the project

An Assessment of Priority Community Needs and Issues in Summit County

Utah State University Extension conducted a needs assessment in Summit County to identify the most pressing social issues related to home and community. Key informant interviews with county stakeholders and survey data from county residents revealed that mental health and youth development are high-priority issues in Summit County

Directed evolution of Vibrio fischeri LuxR for improved response to butanoyl-homoserine lactone

LuxR is the 3-oxohexanoyl-homoserine lactone (3OC6HSL) dependent transcriptional activator of the prototypical acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) quorum sensing system of Vibrio fischeri. Wild-type LuxR exhibits no response to butanoyl-HSL (C4HSL) in quantitative bioassays at concentrations of up to 1 µM; a previously described LuxR variant (LuxR-G2E) exhibits a broadened response to diverse AHLs, including pentanoyl-HSL (C5HSL), but not to C4HSL. Here, two rounds of directed evolution of LuxR-G2E generated variants of LuxR that responded to C4HSL at concentrations as low as 10 nM. One variant, LuxR-G4E, had only one change, I45F, relative to the parent LuxR-G2E, which itself differs from wild-type at three residues. Dissection of the four mutations within LuxR-G4E demonstrated that at least three of these changes were simultaneously required to achieve any measurable C4HSL response. The four changes improved both sensitivity and specificity towards C4HSL relative to any of the other 14 possible combinations of those residues. These data confirm that LuxR is evolutionarily pliable and suggest that LuxR is not intrinsically asymmetric in its response to quorum sensing signals with different acyl-side chain lengths

Measuring Patient-Perceived Quality of Care in U.S. Hospitals Using Twitter

BACKGROUND Patients use Twitter to share feedback about their experience receiving health care. Identifying and analyzing the content of posts sent to each hospital may provide a novel real-time measure of quality, supplementing traditional, survey-based approaches. OBJECTIVE To assess the use of Twitter as a supplemental data stream for measuring patient-perceived quality of care in U.S. hospitals and compare patient sentiments about hospitals on Twitter to established quality measures. DESIGN Tweets directed to U.S. hospitals over a 1-year period were classified as having to do with patient experience using a machine learning approach. Additionally, sentiment was calculated for patient experience tweets using natural language processing. KEY RESULTS Roughly half of the hospitals in the U.S. have a presence on Twitter. Of the tweets directed toward these hospitals, ~9% were related to patient experience. Analyses revealed that specific hospital characteristics were associated with lower sentiment. Finally, hospital sentiment was moderately correlated with a commonly used measure of quality. CONCLUSIONS Tweets describing patient experiences in hospitals cover a wide range of patient care aspects and can be identified using automated approaches. These tweets represent a reliable predictor of treatment quality and may be valuable to patients, researchers, policy makers and hospital administrators

Estimating CO2-EOR Potential and Co-sequestration Capacity in Ohio's Depleted Oil Fields

AbstractThe goal of this project is to develop process understanding and evaluate technical and economic feasibility of CO2 utilization and storage in Ohio. Our focus will be on depleted oil fields in the Clinton sandstone in eastern Ohio at depths ranging from 3400 to 5000ft and the Knox dolomite in North-Central Ohio at depths ranging from 3000 to 8000ft. These fields appear to be promising candidates for CO2-assisted EOR because of poor primary recovery efficiency that leaves behind ∼80-90% original oil in place. However, a systematic assessment of enhanced recovery and co-sequestration potential in these under-pressured low- permeability depleted oil fields does not appear to have been undertaken – which is the focus of this research project. This paper describes ongoing activities in the areas of source-sink matching, production history assessment, reservoir characterization and fluid property characterization, as well as plans for reservoir simulation

Emergency Department Use Among Vermont Homeless Families

Background: Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS) houses homeless individuals and families from the Burlington area. COTS believes that a high proportion of their residents use the Fletcher Allen Health Care Emergency Department (FAHCED) for their health care more frequently compared to the general population. There are many other primary care services offered in the Burlington area, such as Safe Harbor Clinic, Community Health Center, and private offices, which are more appropriate for non-emergent health concerns and are readily accessible to the homeless population. By surveying the population of homeless families in Burlington and conducting a focus group with the COTS staff, we hoped to discover the reasons for ED usage, potential barriers to primary health care, and any possible changes that could ameliorate the health care of this populationhttps://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1053/thumbnail.jp

COSMOS: Python library for massively parallel workflows

Summary: Efficient workflows to shepherd clinically generated genomic data through the multiple stages of a next-generation sequencing pipeline are of critical importance in translational biomedical science. Here we present COSMOS, a Python library for workflow management that allows formal description of pipelines and partitioning of jobs. In addition, it includes a user interface for tracking the progress of jobs, abstraction of the queuing system and fine-grained control over the workflow. Workflows can be created on traditional computing clusters as well as cloud-based services. Availability and implementation: Source code is available for academic non-commercial research purposes. Links to code and documentation are provided at http://lpm.hms.harvard.edu and http://wall-lab.stanford.edu. Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Measuring patient-perceived quality of care in US hospitals using Twitter

ABSTRACT Background Patients routinely use Twitter to share feedback about their experience receiving healthcare. Identifying and analysing the content of posts sent to hospitals may provide a novel real-time measure of quality, supplementing traditional, survey-based approaches. Objective To assess the use of Twitter as a supplemental data stream for measuring patientperceived quality of care in US hospitals and compare patient sentiments about hospitals with established quality measures. Design 404 065 tweets directed to 2349 US hospitals over a 1-year period were classified as having to do with patient experience using a machine learning approach. Sentiment was calculated for these tweets using natural language processing. 11 602 tweets were manually categorised into patient experience topics. Finally, hospitals with ≥50 patient experience tweets were surveyed to understand how they use Twitter to interact with patients. Key results Roughly half of the hospitals in the US have a presence on Twitter. Of the tweets directed toward these hospitals, 34 725 (9.4%) were related to patient experience and covered diverse topics. Analyses limited to hospitals with ≥50 patient experience tweets revealed that they were more active on Twitter, more likely to be below the national median of Medicare patients ( p<0.001) and above the national median for nurse/patient ratio ( p=0.006), and to be a nonprofit hospital ( p<0.001). After adjusting for hospital characteristics, we found that Twitter sentiment was not associated with Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) ratings (but having a Twitter account was), although there was a weak association with 30-day hospital readmission rates ( p=0.003). Conclusions Tweets describing patient experiences in hospitals cover a wide range of patient care aspects and can be identified using automated approaches. These tweets represen