Preschool Parents’ Preferred Method to Communicate with Their Child’s Teacher

This ex-post facto research was conducted to identify preschool parents’ preferred method to utilize when communicating with their child’s teacher. It also was conducted to determine if the preferred method differed based on socioeconomic status. The researcher tracked the primary ways families chose to communicate most frequently by recording how many times emails, phone calls, handwritten notes, and texting through applications such as Remind, ClassDojo, and Facebook Messenger were sent by parents. Data analyzed through a Friedman Test, a Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test, and a Mann-Whitney U Test revealed parents significantly communicated more through texting applications. The findings did not differ based on socioeconomic status of the families

A review paper on preserving privacy in mobile environments

Technology is improving day-by-day and so is the usage of mobile devices. Every activity that would involve manual and paper transactions can now be completed in seconds using your fingertips. On one hand, life has become fairly convenient with the help of mobile devices, whereas on the other hand security of the data and the transactions occurring in the process have been under continuous threat. This paper, re-evaluates the different policies and procedures used for preserving the privacy of sensitive data and device location.. Policy languages have been very vital in the mobile environments as they can be extended/used significantly for sending/receiving any data. In the mobile environment users always go to service providers to access various services. Hence, communications between the service providers and mobile handsets needs to be secured. Also, the data access control needs to be in place. A section of this paper will review the communication paths and channels and their related access criteria. This paper is a contribution to the mobile domain, showing the possible attacks related to privacy and the various mechanisms used to preserve the end-user privacy. In addition, it also gives acomparison of the different privacy preserving methods in mobile environments to provide guidance to the readers. Finally, the paper summarises future research challenges in the area of privacy preservation. This paper examines the ‘where’ problem and in particular, examines tradeoffs between enforcing location security at a device vs. enforcing location security at an edge location server. This paper also sketches an implementation of location security solution at both the device and the edge location server and presents detailed experiments using real mobility and user profile data sets collected from multiple data sources (taxicabs, Smartphones)

Effects of Blast Chilling on Fresh Pork Quality in Cuts from the Psoas Major, Semimembranosus, and Triceps Brachii

Carcasses (n=40) with defined fat free lean and carcass weight were selected 45 minutes postmortem. Carcasses were split and sides subjected to conventional chill (CC) or blast chilling (BC) regimens. The Psoas Major (PM) from BC sides had increased purge loss, but was juicier, more tender and less chewy than the PM from CC sides. The Semimembranosus (SM) from BC sides had higher 30 hour pH, darker color scores, and had a lower Hunter a value than the SM from CC sides. No treatment effect was found in the Triceps Brachii

Degradation of Filamin in Aged Pork Loins Classified by High and Low Star Probe Values

Filamin is necessary to maintain the integrity of muscle structure. Postmortem degradation of filamin results in loss of organizational structure at the Z-disk and improves meat tenderness. Intact and degraded filamin was successfully identified in aged pork loin. The removal of amino acids to form this degradation product is likely the first cleavage of intact filamin observed in postmortem muscle. A significant decrease in abundance of intact filamin in low star probe (SP) value samples demonstrates that degradation of filamin varies when aging period and pH are similar. Filamin degradation was significantly different in SP groups, suggesting that filamin proteolysis and formation of degradation products may have an impact on the SP values of aged pork loin

Global Emergence of Trimethoprim/Sulfamethoxazole Resistance in Stenotrophomonas maltophilia Mediated by Acquisition of sul Genes

The first sul2 genes have been found in S. maltophilia from several different countries

The Effect of Rapid Chilling of Pork Carcasses during the Early Postmortem Period on Fresh Pork Quality

The objective was to investigate the effects of blast chilling on pork quality in cuts from the Longissimus thoracic et lumborum (LM), Psoas major (PM), Semimembranosus (SM; both superficial [SMS] and deep [SMD] portions) and the Triceps brachii (TB). Forty carcasses (10 carcasses per replication) were split and sides were assigned to either blast chill (BC, –32°C for 90 min, followed by spray chill at 2°C for 22.5 h) or conventional chill (CC, spray chilled at 2°C for 24 h) regimens. The LM from BC sides had lower (P \u3c 0.05) temperature at 2 h postmortem (CC 21.8°C, BC 9.7°C), 4 h (CC 13.3°C, 3.8°C BC), 22 h (CC 4.2°C, BC 1.4°C), and 30 h (CC 0.4°C, BC –0.2°C). The LM pH in BC sides was higher at 4 h (CC 6.09, BC 6.34), 22 h (CC 5.81, BC 5.89), and 30 h (CC 5.68, BC 5.74) postmortem. The BC resulted in higher (P \u3c 0.05) 30 h postmortem pH in the SM compared to the CC regime (CC 5.68, BC 5.74). The BC sides had increased (P \u3c 0.05) purge in the PM (CC 0.48%, BC 0.74%) and increased (P \u3c 0.05) cook loss in chops from the LM (CC 22.37%, BC 24.24%). The PM from BC sides were more juicy (CC 7.50, BC 8.30), less chewy (CC 2.80, BC 2.10), and more tender (CC 7.90, BC 8.60). Chops from the LM of BC sides had greater Warner-Bratzler shear force (CC 2.00, BC 2.30). Color was affected in the SM with BC sides showing darker color score (CC 3.00, BC 3.20) and redder Hunter a value (CC 16.35, BC 16.02). Chilling treatment did not affect sarcomere length in the LM. Treatment did not affect postmortem proteolysis in any cut. The response to chilling regimen is different across different muscles which may be caused by location, rate of chilling, and fiber type

Predicting aged pork quality using a portable Raman device

The utility of Raman spectroscopic signatures of fresh pork loin (1 d & 15 d postmortem) in predicting fresh pork tenderness and slice shear force (SSF) was determined. Partial least square models showed that sensory tenderness and SSF are weakly correlated (R2 = 0.2). Raman spectral data were collected in 6 s using a portable Raman spectrometer (RS). A PLS regression model was developed to predict quantitatively the tenderness scores and SSF values from Raman spectral data, with very limited success. It was discovered that the prediction accuracies for day 15 post mortem samples are significantly greater than that for day 1 postmortem samples. Classification models were developed to predict tenderness at two ends of sensory quality as “poor” vs. “good”. The accuracies of classification into different quality categories (1st to 4th percentile) are also greater for the day 15 postmortem samples for sensory tenderness (93.5% vs 76.3%) and SSF (92.8% vs 76.1%). RS has the potential to become a rapid on-line screening tool for the pork producers to quickly select meats with superior quality and/or cull poor quality to meet market demand/expectations

Long-term dementia prevalence in Parkinson Disease: Glass half-full?

Introduction: Dementia occurs in up to 80% of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients long-term, but studies reporting such high rates were published years ago and had relatively small sample sizes and other limitations. Objective: To determine long-term, cumulative dementia prevalence rates in PD using data from two large, ongoing, prospective observational studies. Design: Analyses of data from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) and a longstanding PD research clinical core at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). Setting: PPMI is a multi-site international study, and Penn is a single site study at a tertiary movement disorders center. Participants: PPMI enrolls de novo, untreated PD participants at baseline, and Penn enrolls a convenience cohort from a large clinical center. Methods: For PPMI a cognitive battery and MDS-UPDRS Part I are administered annually, and the site investigator assigns a cognitive diagnosis annually. At Penn a comprehensive cognitive battery is administered either annually or biennially, and a cognitive diagnosis is made by expert consensus. Main Outcomes: Kaplan-Meier (KM) survival curves were fit for time from PD diagnosis to stable dementia diagnosis for each cohort, using assigned cognitive diagnosis of dementia as the primary endpoint (for both PPMI and Penn), and MoCA score <21 and MDS-UPDRS Part I cognition score ≥3 as secondary endpoints (for PPMI). In addition, cumulative dementia prevalence by PD disease duration was tabulated for each study and endpoint. Results: For the PPMI cohort, 417 PD participants were seen at baseline; estimated cumulative probability of dementia at year 10 disease duration were: 7% (site investigator diagnosis), 9% (MoCA) or 7.4% (MDS-UPDRS Part I cognition). For the Penn cohort, 389 PD participants were followed over time, with 184 participants (47% of cohort) eventually diagnosed with dementia. The KM curve for the Penn cohort had median time to dementia diagnosis =15 years (95% CI: 13-15) disease duration; the estimated cumulative probability of dementia was 27% at year 10, 50% at year 15, and 74% at year 20. Conclusions and Relevance: Results from two large, prospective studies suggest that dementia in Parkinson disease occurs less frequently, or later in the disease course, than often-cited previous research studies have reported