Developing a Probabilistic Heavy-Rainfall Guidance Forecast Model for Great Lakes Cities

A method for predicting the probability of exceeding specific warm-season (April-October) 0-24 hour precipitation thresholds is developed based upon daily maximums of meteorological parameters. North American Regional Reanalysis and Daily Unified Precipitation data from 2002-2017 were used to gather meteorological data for the Milwaukee and Chicago County Warning Areas. Individual artificial neural networks and multiple logistic regressions were conducted for daily rainfall thresholds above 0.5\u27\u27, 1\u27\u27, 1.5\u27\u27 and 2\u27\u27 to determine the probability of threshold exceedances for each County Warning Area. The most important parameters were 1000-500 hPa specific humidity, vertical velocities at various levels, high cloud cover, precipitable water percentile relative to climatology, and surface convergence. Critical Success Indices were universally higher than the average 2017 warm-season WPC threat scores across all thresholds, showing potential promise in operational forecasting use. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to determine degradation of model results when using NWP model forecasts, with mixed results between the two cases studied. Future work includes using additional years of reanalysis and rainfall data to increase heavy-rainfall case counts and boost model skill, as well as to include additional case studies to further analyze model degradation when using NWP model forecasts

The Manly-Man Can, An Original, Full-length Screenplay Exploring the Societal Influences of Masculinity

Logline: A group of four high school freshmen are pitted against each other to see who can become the manliest man, with the prize being a date with the most alluring senior girl in school, and maybe more. Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis taught us to never back down from a fight. George Clooney showed us how to be a charmer. Kids at school urged us to never cry. Mom said it was OK to show emotion, but dad sometimes seemed unsure. Mixed messages can lead to insecurities and anxieties. After taking HPR 324 Images of Masculinity in Film, we realized that there are countless influences on how a man should behave, from family members to the mass media, including, and perhaps especially, popular films. These various influences force boys and men of all ages to make social comparisons over standards that are neither always true nor healthy. They can make living in own’s skin a tough place sometimes. As we are men, we speak from personal experience. Therefore, we have created an original, feature-length screenplay focusing on a crucial time in young men’s lives. As boys in high school try and understand themselves, they don’t know how to be men yet (or even what that means). They try to sort through all the images of masculinity available to them. How do they sift through these numerous ideas of masculinity to figure out how to be the best men they can be, learn how to behave, and what’s important? Douglas Kellner, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, writes, “Radio, television, film and other products of media culture provide materials of which we forge out very identities, our sense of selfhood, our notion of what it means to be male or female…” The media have shaped the mindset of males for years, including the way society thinks men should act. This has created male myths that have become the social norm. Gary Oliver, author of Raising Sons and Loving It!, has identified several of these myths about the “alpha male” that we will explore and challenge in our screenplay. One myth is that a man is big, brave, and strong. Strength and size are valued in society, but not being at one’s physical peak does not make one less of a man. There are different types of strength, such as the mental strength to persevere through adversity. The next myth is that a man isn’t weak, and shouldn’t cry. We can’t imagine a man not crying at a parent’s funeral, or a man not breaking down after a tragedy, or simply feeling sad. This idea that crying shows weakness prohibits growth and could make dealing with life that much harder. Another myth that Oliver points out is that a man’s man is an expert on sex. James Bond exemplifies this, and we are lead to believe that men like Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper are the epitome of a man’s sexuality. Comparing ourselves to men like that is detrimental to how we view our own self-image. The last myth is that a real man’s value is determined by what he does and how much he earns. This places an unhealthy focus on material value, rather than other meaningful aspects of being a person. These pressures create an image of a man—a muscle-bound stoic, who focuses only on money and sex with no emotions—that is out of reach and is neither feasible nor desirable. These images remain extremely prevalent in society. Our project reveals and exposes these influences. The characters experience the pressures of these myths and learn valuable lessons, as they gain the courage to defy these pre-conceived notions of masculinity

Algebraic properties of generalized Rijndael-like ciphers

We provide conditions under which the set of Rijndael functions considered as permutations of the state space and based on operations of the finite field \GF (p^k) ($p\geq 2$ a prime number) is not closed under functional composition. These conditions justify using a sequential multiple encryption to strengthen the AES (Rijndael block cipher with specific block sizes) in case AES became practically insecure. In Sparr and Wernsdorf (2008), R. Sparr and R. Wernsdorf provided conditions under which the group generated by the Rijndael-like round functions based on operations of the finite field \GF (2^k) is equal to the alternating group on the state space. In this paper we provide conditions under which the group generated by the Rijndael-like round functions based on operations of the finite field \GF (p^k) ($p\geq 2$) is equal to the symmetric group or the alternating group on the state space.Comment: 22 pages; Prelim0

Elliptic Reciprocity

The paper introduces the notions of an elliptic pair, an elliptic cycle and an elliptic list over a square free positive integer d. These concepts are related to the notions of amicable pairs of primes and aliquot cycles that were introduced by Silverman and Stange. Settling a matter left open by Silverman and Stange it is shown that for d=3 there are elliptic cycles of length 6. For d not equal to 3 the question of the existence of proper elliptic lists of length n over d is reduced to the the theory of prime producing quadratic polynomials. For d=163 a proper elliptic list of length 40 is exhibited. It is shown that for each d there is an upper bound on the length of a proper elliptic list over d. The final section of the paper contains heuristic arguments supporting conjectured asymptotics for the number of elliptic pairs below integer X. Finally, for d congruent to 3 modulo 8 the existence of infinitely many anomalous prime numbers is derived from Bunyakowski's Conjecture for quadratic polynomials.Comment: 17 pages, including one figure and two table

Microsphere-based scaffolds encapsulating chondroitin sulfate or decellularized cartilage

Extracellular matrix materials such as decellularized cartilage (DCC) and chondroitin sulfate (CS) may be attractive chondrogenic materials for cartilage regeneration. The goal of the current study was to investigate the effects of encapsulation of DCC and CS in homogeneous microsphere-based scaffolds, and to test the hypothesis that encapsulation of these extracellular matrix materials would induce chondrogenesis of rat bone marrow stromal cells. Four different types of homogeneous scaffolds were fabricated from microspheres of poly(D,L-lactic-co-glycolic acid): Blank (poly(D,L-lactic-co-glycolic acid) only; negative control), transforming growth factor-β3 encapsulated (positive control), DCC encapsulated, and CS encapsulated. These scaffolds were then seeded with rat bone marrow stromal cells and cultured for 6 weeks. The DCC and CS encapsulation altered the morphological features of the microspheres, resulting in higher porosities in these groups. Moreover, the mechanical properties of the scaffolds were impacted due to differences in the degree of sintering, with the CS group exhibiting the highest compressive modulus. Biochemical evidence suggested a mitogenic effect of DCC and CS encapsulation on rat bone marrow stromal cells with the matrix synthesis boosted primarily by the inherently present extracellular matrix components. An important finding was that the cell seeded CS and DCC groups at week 6 had up to an order of magnitude higher glycosaminoglycan contents than their acellular counterparts. Gene expression results indicated a suppressive effect of DCC and CS encapsulation on rat bone marrow stromal cell chondrogenesis with differences in gene expression patterns existing between the DCC and CS groups. Overall, DCC and CS were easily included in microsphere-based scaffolds; however, there is a requirement to further refine their concentrations to achieve the differentiation profiles we seek in vitro

Wintersongs: A Holiday Concert

The Utah State University Department of Music presents Wintersongs: a holiday concert featuring the USU Chamber Singers, University Chorale, and the USU Women\u27s Choir.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/music_programs/1111/thumbnail.jp

Deletion of Mgr2p Affects the Gating Behavior of the TIM23 Complex

The TIM23 complex is a hub for translocation of preproteins into or across the mitochondrial inner membrane. This dual sorting mechanism is currently being investigated, and in yeast appears to be regulated by a recently discovered subunit, the Mgr2 protein. Deletion of Mgr2p has been found to delay protein translocation into the matrix and accumulation in the inner membrane. This result and other findings suggested that Mgr2p controls the lateral release of inner membrane proteins harboring a stop-transfer signal that follows an N-terminal amino acid signal. However, the mechanism of lateral release is unknown. Here, we used patch clamp electrophysiology to investigate the role of Mgr2p on the channel activity of TIM23. Deletion of Mgr2p decreased normal channel frequency and increased occurrence of a residual TIM23 activity. The residual channel lacked gating transitions but remained sensitive to synthetic import signal peptides. Similarly, a G145L mutation in Tim23p displaced Mgr2p from the import complex leading to gating impairment. These results suggest that Mgr2p regulates the gating behavior of the TIM23 channel.Peer reviewe

G-TRACE: rapid Gal4-based cell lineage analysis in Drosophila.

We combined Gal4-UAS and the FLP recombinase-FRT and fluorescent reporters to generate cell clones that provide spatial, temporal and genetic information about the origins of individual cells in Drosophila melanogaster. We named this combination the Gal4 technique for real-time and clonal expression (G-TRACE). The approach should allow for screening and the identification of real-time and lineage-traced expression patterns on a genomic scale