Getting Started With Collaborative Teamwork for Inclusion

The article illustrates the collaborative team process for inclusion as it grew within two schools attempting to improve their efforts to welcome students with disabilities into general education classrooms. Team members learned specialized skills needed for successful collaboration, in the context of bringing about specific changes they deemed critical to the desired outcomes of their own projects

The Beneficial Impact of Sorting Heavy Cattle at Re-Implant

This research examined a simple sorting strategy to reduce the prevalence of heavyweight carcass discounts. Cattle that were identified and sorted off at re-implant had a reduced prevalence of heavyweight carcasses versus unsorted cattle. Re-implant sorting was profitable at pen average in-weights of 800 pounds or less.cattle, fed cattle marketing, cattle sorting, formula marketing, Farm Management, Livestock Production/Industries, Marketing, Q11, Q16, M31,

The shock process and light element production in supernovae envelopes

Detailed hydrodynamic modeling of the passage of supernova shocks through the hydrogen envelopes of blue and red progenitor stars was carried out to explore the sensitivity to model conditions of light element production (specifically Li-7 and B-11) which was noted by Dearborn, Schramm, Steigman and Truran (1989) (DSST). It is found that, for stellar models with M is less than or approximately 100 M solar mass, current state of the art supernova shocks do not produce significant light element yields by hydrodynamic processes alone. The dependence of this conclusion on stellar models and on shock strengths is explored. Preliminary implications for Galactic evolution of lithium are discussed, and it is suspected that intermediate mass red giant stars may be the most consistent production site for lithium

Anatomic Fat Depots and Coronary Plaque Among Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected and Uninfected Men in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study.

Methods.  In a cross-sectional substudy of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, noncontrast cardiac computed tomography (CT) scanning for coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring was performed on all men, and, for men with normal renal function, coronary CT angiography (CTA) was performed. Associations between fat depots (visceral adipose tissue [VAT], abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue [aSAT], and thigh subcutaneous adipose tissue [tSAT]) with coronary plaque presence and extent were assessed with logistic and linear regression adjusted for age, race, cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, body mass index (BMI), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) parameters. Results.  Among HIV-infected men (n = 597) but not HIV-uninfected men (n = 343), having greater VAT was positively associated with noncalcified plaque presence (odds ratio [OR] = 1.04, P < .05), with a significant interaction (P < .05) by HIV serostatus. Human immunodeficiency virus-infected men had lower median aSAT and tSAT and greater median VAT among men with BMI <25 and 25-29.9 kg/m(2). Among HIV-infected men, VAT was positively associated with presence of coronary plaque on CTA after adjustment for CVD risk factors (OR = 1.04, P < .05), but not after additional adjustment for BMI. There was an inverse association between aSAT and extent of total plaque among HIV-infected men, but not among HIV-uninfected men. Lower tSAT was associated with greater CAC and total plaque score extent regardless of HIV serostatus. Conclusions.  The presence of greater amounts of VAT and lower SAT may contribute to increased risk for coronary artery disease among HIV-infected persons

A methodology for groundwater resource management at village level: a case study at Dassui Commune, Burkina Faso

Collection of groundwater level and abstraction data are essential components of successful groundwater resource management, at local and regional scales. This paper describes the collection and use of data collected by villagers relating to an irrigated market gardening project in a remote community in Burkina Faso. It identifies important insights that can be gained into the behaviour of a groundwater system from these data and how this can result in improvements to project outcomes. It is shown that village-level data collection can be highly effective and inform future options to ensure that water resources are used sustainably. Data analysis also indicated that irrigation efficiency was low leading to the need to investigate alternative, improved methods

Investigating the connection between complexity of isolated trajectories and Lagrangian coherent structures

© The Author(s), 2011. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The definitive version was published in Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics 18 (2011): 977-987, doi:10.5194/npg-18-977-2011.It is argued that the complexity of fluid particle trajectories provides the basis for a new method, referred to as the Complexity Method (CM), for estimation of Lagrangian coherent structures in aperiodic flows that are measured over finite time intervals. The basic principles of the CM are explained and the CM is tested in a variety of examples, both idealized and realistic, and in different reference frames. Two measures of complexity are explored in detail: the correlation dimension of trajectory, and a new measure – the ergodicity defect. Both measures yield structures that strongly resemble Lagrangian coherent structures in all of the examples considered. Since the CM uses properties of individual trajectories, and not separation rates between closely spaced trajectories, it may have advantages for the analysis of ocean float and drifter data sets in which trajectories are typically widely and non-uniformly spaced.Work supported by grants NSF-CMG- 82469600, NSF-CMG-0825547 and ONR-N00014-11-1-0087

Communications Biophysics

Contains reports on two research projects

CT virtual intravascular endoscopy in the follow-up of endoluminal fenestrated stent grafts

Purpose: To investigate the potential value of CT virtual intravascular endoscopy in the follow-up of patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms treated with endoluminal fenestrated stent grafts.Methods and Materials: Eight patients with abdominal aortic aneurysms unsuitable for open surgery or conventional endovascular repair undergoing fenestrated stent grafts were included in the study. Both pre-and post-fenestration multislice CT data were collected in these patients and used for generation of virtual intravascular endoscopy images of aortic ostium and endovascular stents. Virtual endoscopy images were compared with conventional axial CT and multiplanar images with the aim of identifying the appearances of the endoluminal stents. The length of endoluminal stents that protruded into the aortic lumen was measured on virtual endoscopy images.Results: Variable fenestrations were deployed in 27 aortic branches with scallop fenestration implanted in 5 aortic ostia, large fenestration in 7 aortic ostia and small fenestration in 15 renal ostia, respectively. All of the fenestrated branches remained patent. Virtual endoscopy was superior to conventional 2D images in the visualization of configuration of endovascular stents. Most of the stents (68%) were found to be circular visualized on virtual endoscopy images, while the remaining stents were irregular in terms of endoluminal appearances. 95% of these stents were shown to protrude into the lumen with length less than 7.0 mm. There is no significant difference of the diameters of aortic ostia between pre-and post- fenestration (p>0.05).Conclusion: Our preliminary study shows that virtual intravascular endoscopy could be a valuable technique to follow-up patients treated with endoluminal fenestrated stent grafts