Investigations of Peripheral 4-Jet Sonic and Supersonic Propulsive Deceleration Jets on a Mars Science Laboratory Aeroshell

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90686/1/AIAA-2011-1036-531.pd

Investigation of the Interactions of Reaction Control Systems with Mars Science Laboratory Aeroshell

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/83545/1/AIAA-2010-1558-704.pd

A decentralised, multidisciplinary model of care facilitates treatment of hepatitis C in regional Australia

Objectives: Direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy for hepatitis C virus (HCV) has excellent cure rates and minimal side effects. Despite the high burden of disease, strategies to ultimately eradicate HCV are being developed. However, the delivery of care in regional settings is challenging and the efficacy of decentralised models of care is incompletely defined. Methods: A prospective cohort study of patients whose treatment was initiated or supervised by Cairns Hospital, a tertiary hospital which provides services to a culturally diverse population across a 380,748 km2 area in regional Australia. Patients` demographics, clinical features, DAA regimens and outcomes were recorded and correlated with their ensuing clinical course. Results: Over 22 months, 734 patients were prescribed DAA therapy for HCV. No patients were prescribed interferon. Sofosbuvir/ledipasvir (n=371, 50.5%) and sofosbuvir/daclatasvir (n=287, 39.1%) were the most commonly prescribed regimens. No patients ceased treatment due to adverse effects. There were 612/734 (83.4%) patients with complete results, with 575 (94%) cured. At the end of the study period, there were 50 (6.8%) patients lost to follow-up and 72 (9.8%) awaiting SVR12 testing. The presence of cirrhosis (n=147/612, 24.1%) did not impact significantly on SVR12 rates, this being achieved in 136/147 (92.5%) cirrhotic patients versus 440/465 (94.6%) in non-cirrhotic patients (p=0.34). Treatment-experienced patients (95/612, 18.3%) were more likely to be non-responders than treatment-naive patients (10/95 (10.5%) versus 26/517 (5%), p=0.04). Strategies to facilitate treatment included a dedicated clinical nurse consultant, education to primary health care providers, specialist outreach clinics to regional communities and shared care with general practitioners. SVR12 rates were similar amongst gastroenterologists (283/306, 92.5%), general practitioners (152/161, 94.4%), sexual health physicians (104/106, 98.1%) and other prescribers (37/39, 94.9%). Conclusions: This study confirms that decentralised, multidisciplinary models of care can provide HCV treatment in regional and remote settings with excellent outcomes

Adventures in Paragraph Writing: The Development and Refinement of Scalable and Effective Writing Exercises for Large-enrollment Engineering Courses

Adventures in paragraph writing: the development and refinement of scalable and effective writing exercises for large enrollment engineering courses. The ability to communicate effectively is a highly desirable attribute for today’s graduating engineers. Additionally, the inclusion of communication components in technical courses has been shown to enhance learning of technical content and can be leveraged to satisfy non-technical learning outcomes. However, the incorporation of such components in undergraduate engineering curricula remains challenging due to resource limitations, credit hour crunches, and other issues. This paper presents the design considerations and preliminary results from our ongoing work to create an effective, transferrable, low-overhead approach to paragraph writing exercises suitable for inclusion in any large engineering course. Key considerations in the development of these exercises include: identification of the motivations and learning outcomes for each exercise; development and tailoring of writing prompts (questions) appropriate for these outcomes; and the development and implementation of an assessment and feedback strategy,including resource-efficient grading rubrics and techniques.Results are reported from the application of the paragraph writing exercise in a large civil engineering undergraduate fluid mechanics course (120 students; approximately 15 assignments). A primary focus of this first application centered on two key components that must be refined in order for the exercise to be effective and transferrable: (1) the selection of writing prompts, and (2) assessment and feedback. Analysis of student paragraphs highlights the importance of the writing prompts in the success of the exercise, indicating that specific word choice, question focus, and supplemental instruction greatly affected the level of writing students submitted. Some writing prompts were selected to address and enhance technical content in the course, while other writing prompts were developed to broaden student awareness of engineering in societal, environmental, and global contexts. In addition to developing productive writing prompts, the assessment and feedback strategies were evaluated using student surveys and feedback. While minimal marking and holistic rubric assessment methods proved effective from a grading resource standpoint, students were frustrated by the lack of feedback associated with these techniques and uncomfortable with the holistic grading rubric. Data from student surveys point to the importance of giving meaningful feedback to students, and providing them with opportunities to revise their written submissions. Student surveys also highlighted an unforeseen obstacle to the exercise: student resistance to writing in technical courses. We provide several suggestions for overcoming student resistance, as well as improved assessment and feedback strategies that better meet student needs while still not over-burdening instructors and teaching assistants

Concert recording 2018-05-21

[Track 1]. Sonate Pathetique, op. 1. movement 1 / Ludwig van Beethoven arranged for solo tenor pan by Shelly Irvine & Ron Kerns -- [Track 2]. Beads of glass / Gordon Stout -- [Track 3]. Stillness for alto flute and marimba / Robert Paterson -- [Track 4]. Pulsor for snare drum and audio / Francisco Perez -- [Track 5]. How to be a deep thinker in Los Angeles / Jennifer Jolley -- [Track 6]. Sculpture in wood / Rudiger Pawasser -- [Track 7]. Karakurenai / Andy Akiho -- [Track 8]. Northern lights / Eric Ewazen -- [Track 9]. Moon chasers / Mark Ford

Scoring Federal Legislation for Equity: Definition, Framework, and Potential Application

Federal legislation is fundamental to building a nation in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential. Since our nation's founding, in many ways, federal legislation has created and exacerbated racial inequities, leaving one-third of the population experiencing material poverty and preventing our democracy from realizing the promise of equity. To ensure the federal government serves us all, we must accurately understand and assess whether every policy advances or impedes equity. The Equity Scoring Initiative (ESI) exists to establish the foundation for a new legislative scoring regime. By scoring for equity, we can begin to create an accountable, responsive democracy

Asynchronized Concurrency: The Secret to Scaling Concurrent Search Data Structures

We introduce "asynchronized concurrency (ASCY),'' a paradigm consisting of four complementary programming patterns. ASCY calls for the design of concurrent search data structures (CSDSs) to resemble that of their sequential counterparts. We argue that ASCY leads to implementations which are portably scalable: they scale across different types of hardware platforms, including single and multi-socket ones, for various classes of workloads, such as read-only and read-write, and according to different performance metrics, including throughput, latency, and energy. We substantiate our thesis through the most exhaustive evaluation of CSDSs to date, involving 6 platforms, 22 state-of-the-art CSDS algorithms, 10 re-engineered state-of-the-art CSDS algorithms following the ASCY patterns, and 2 new CSDS algorithms designed with ASCY in mind. We observe up to 30% improvements in throughput in the re-engineered algorithms, while our new algorithms out-perform the state-of-the-art alternatives