Hope for Haiti: Enriching Relationships With Design Thinking

Hope for Haiti is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for the Haitian people, mainly children. Their activities and services are all funded by key donors and philanthropic partners and investors. The organization aims is to create sustainable communities that catalyze generational and transformative change by focusing on five core areas within the Greater South of Haiti. These core areas are education, economy, health care & nutrition, infrastructure, and clean water. Our project aims to empower the Haitian people and attract key donors to support Hope for Haiti. We achieved this by applying the design thinking process

Study On Acoustic Characteristics Of Internal Leakage Of Micro-start Spring Safety Valve

To investigate the noise radiation in the leakage of the safety valve. The acoustic fluid-solid coupling simulation analysis of the leakage process of the safety valve is used to study the flow field when the safety valve is leaking. The sound source characteristics of different inlet pressures and different leakage holes when the internal leakage of the safety valve occurs are analyzed, and the noise source is analyzed in combination with the flow field simulation. The results show that when the internal leakage of the safety valve occurs, the noise is mainly dominated by the quadrupole sound source caused by the jet, accompanied by the dipole sound source. At the same time, the noise sound pressure level is positively correlated with the working medium pressure of the safety valve and is quadratically correlated with the inner leakage hole

Design Thinking for Better Community in the City of Bridgeport

Founded in 1821, the city of Bridgeport is not only the largest city in Connecticut, but one of the most diverse communities as well, with over 20 countries represented in a city of over 150,000 citizens. The goal for this project was to focus on revitalization, waste management and bringing the waterfront scene back to life. As Design Management student, we explored this problem through the lens of design thinking. Using the design thinking process, while considering profitability, sustainability and social responsibility, we developed a series of proposals which activate the existing key resources in order to bring more attention which will benefit the city

Left versus right approach for middle and lower esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: A propensity score-matched study

BackgroundDespite superior short-term outcomes, there is considerable debate about the oncological efficacy of the left approach esophagectomy for middle and lower squamous esophageal carcinoma (ESCC). A propensity score-matched retrospective study was conducted to evaluate the left approach’s short- and long-term effects.MethodsWe recorded data from patients with ESCC who underwent curative resection via the left or right approach between January 2010 and December 2015. Propensity score matching (PSM) was performed, and maximally selected rank statistics (MSRS) were utilized to determine the appropriate number of lymph nodes to resect during esophagectomy.ResultsOne hundred and forty-eight ESCC patients underwent esophagectomy via the right approach, and 108 underwent the left approach esophagectomy. After PSM, the left approach esophagectomy showed statistically significant superiority in operative time and time to oral intake, and there was a trend toward a shorter length of hospital stay. Fewer cervical, upper thoracic, and recurrent laryngeal nerve lymph nodes were harvested via the left approach than the right approach; the total number of lymph nodes harvested via the left and right approaches was similar. Similar long-term survival outcomes were achieved. MSRS suggested that at least 25 lymph nodes are needed to be resected during esophagectomy to improve survival in N0 patients.ConclusionsThe left approach esophagectomy might facilitate postoperative recovery in patients with middle and lower ESCC. With adequate lymphadenectomy, the left approach esophagectomy might achieve similar long-term outcomes for middle and lower ESCC patients

MetroCrops

MetroCrops is an urban high density indoor farm located in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The owner of MetroCrops, Steve Domyan, developed specific technology using a combination of LED lights and nutrients to grow high quality salad greens that can be harvested quickly, easily, and cleanly. These greens are capable of staying fresh for up to three weeks and deliver more nutrients than your average salad greens. The problems that MetroCrops faced was, how to go about promoting their innovative product, how to better utilize the wasted space in their facility, and how to make the company more sustainable. These problems became our challenge and the basis of our research

2023 roadmap for potassium-ion batteries

The heavy reliance of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has caused rising concerns on the sustainability of lithium and transition metal and the ethic issue around mining practice. Developing alternative energy storage technologies beyond lithium has become a prominent slice of global energy research portfolio. The alternative technologies play a vital role in shaping the future landscape of energy storage, from electrified mobility to the efficient utilization of renewable energies and further to large-scale stationary energy storage. Potassium-ion batteries (PIBs) are a promising alternative given its chemical and economic benefits, making a strong competitor to LIBs and sodium-ion batteries for different applications. However, many are unknown regarding potassium storage processes in materials and how it differs from lithium and sodium and understanding of solid–liquid interfacial chemistry is massively insufficient in PIBs. Therefore, there remain outstanding issues to advance the commercial prospects of the PIB technology. This Roadmap highlights the up-to-date scientific and technological advances and the insights into solving challenging issues to accelerate the development of PIBs. We hope this Roadmap aids the wider PIB research community and provides a cross-referencing to other beyond lithium energy storage technologies in the fast-pacing research landscape

MIBiG 3.0 : a community-driven effort to annotate experimentally validated biosynthetic gene clusters

With an ever-increasing amount of (meta)genomic data being deposited in sequence databases, (meta)genome mining for natural product biosynthetic pathways occupies a critical role in the discovery of novel pharmaceutical drugs, crop protection agents and biomaterials. The genes that encode these pathways are often organised into biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). In 2015, we defined the Minimum Information about a Biosynthetic Gene cluster (MIBiG): a standardised data format that describes the minimally required information to uniquely characterise a BGC. We simultaneously constructed an accompanying online database of BGCs, which has since been widely used by the community as a reference dataset for BGCs and was expanded to 2021 entries in 2019 (MIBiG 2.0). Here, we describe MIBiG 3.0, a database update comprising large-scale validation and re-annotation of existing entries and 661 new entries. Particular attention was paid to the annotation of compound structures and biological activities, as well as protein domain selectivities. Together, these new features keep the database up-to-date, and will provide new opportunities for the scientific community to use its freely available data, e.g. for the training of new machine learning models to predict sequence-structure-function relationships for diverse natural products. MIBiG 3.0 is accessible online at https://mibig.secondarymetabolites.org/