Understanding the Role of Soils in Decision Making: Urban Agriculture and Septic Systems

Rural and urban dwellers frequently face decisions relating to human health. Among these are issues pertaining to water quality, and the availability of safe and nutritious food. Rural septic systems treat household wastewater which could contaminate surface and near surface waters if left untreated. In urban areas and food deserts the quality of the locally sourced food may be of concern. Many of these issues can be resolved with access to current soils information and interpretations, and an understanding of how the soil functions in the user?s area of interest. From planting a community garden to replacing a failing septic system, decisions can be made with the help of experts in their respective fields. Agencies like the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and local professionals can assist stakeholders in making the best-informed decisions when it comes to mitigating potentially harmful water and producing safe food

Supporting Instructors (through a Pandemic) with Informal Meet-ups

In this poster, we will discuss an impactful program to support instructors holistically during (and beyond) the pandemic. Informal meet-ups for instructors help build supportive relationships with their peers, while also helping them adopt impactful instructional strategies to meet their immediate needs.https://encompass.eku.edu/pedagogicon_postergallery/1018/thumbnail.jp

I See Myself in that Career : Exploring Methods to Attract the Next Generation Transportation Workforce

Predicting a workforce crisis for the past twenty years, the transportation field has launched a wide variety of initiatives to increase the future talent pipeline that would choose transportation as a field of choice for study and future careers. This project follows on the premise that increasing awareness of career opportunities is essential to attracting new entrants at an early age, and that awareness building should be dynamic. This includes providing views of who works in the transportation field, what their experiences are, and what they value about their work. This paper hypothesizes that first-person glimpses into transportation careers are just as essential for job seekers as knowing job specs, qualifications, pay scales and opportunities for advancement. In-depth career profiles of workers were developed and showcase individuals, from diverse backgrounds and interests, engaged in work critical to the future of our transportation systems and infrastructure as an inducement to consider future education and training work needed to enter such a field. A number of other initiatives have created occupation and career profiles in public and private agencies. As with other awareness building and talent pipeline development initiatives such efforts need to be made accessible to a wider more diverse audience and metrics for tracking their effectiveness should be developed and implemented. Coordinating and testing these efforts are part of a future stage of program

Student Presentations

Four students presented their semester-long research findings pertaining to both the art and science of fashion. Hannah Doster and Marissa Cardullo investigated the influences of art on fashion. Hannah and Marissa researched surrealism in the 1930s and art movements from the 1960s, respectively. Alaina Cardillo and Allyson Conway researched the science behind fashion with topics including UV protection in apparel and 3D printing

Concert recording 2015-04-05a

[Track 01]. Sonata no. 6 in B♭ major. Largo ; Allegro / Antonio Vivaldi -- [Track 02]. Sonata for bassoon and cello K. 292. Andante ; Allegro / Wolfgang A. Mozart -- [Track 03]. Concerto in F major for bassoon. Allegro / Antonio Vivaldi ; arranged by Alan Hawkins -- [Track 04]. Sonate for bassoon and piano. Leicht bewegt ; Langsam ; Marsch ; Beschlub / Paul Hindemith -- [Track 05]. Solo de concert. Allegretto non tropo ; Shcerzando / Gabriel Pierne

Finding and Combining Indicable Subgroups of Big Mapping Class Groups

We explicitly construct new subgroups of the mapping class groups of an uncountable collection of infinite-type surfaces, including, but not limited to, right-angled Artin groups, free groups, Baumslag-Solitar groups, mapping class groups of other surfaces, and a large collection of wreath products. For each such subgroup $H$ and surface $S$, we show that there are countably many non-conjugate embeddings of $H$ into $\text{Map}(S)$; in certain cases, there are uncountably many such embeddings. The images of each of these embeddings cannot lie in the isometry group of $S$ for any hyperbolic metric and are not contained in the closure of the compactly supported subgroup of $\text{Map}(S)$. In this sense, our construction is new and does not rely on previously known techniques for constructing subgroups of mapping class groups. Notably, our embeddings of $\text{Map}(S')$ into $\text{Map}(S)$ are not induced by embeddings of $S'$ into $S$. Our main tool for all of these constructions is the utilization of special homeomorphisms of $S$ called shift maps, and more generally, multipush maps.Comment: 31 pages, 19 figures. Results have been improved to show countably many non-conjugate embeddings of each subgroup we construc

Dark Chocolate- Lowering Hypertension and Costs

The goal of this quality improvement project was to promote better blood pressure control for residents in a long-term care facility (LTC) who have primary hypertension and potentially reduce the costs associated with their care. Data has shown that nationally, persons with hypertension as a comorbidity pay nearly $2,000 more in healthcare costs compared to their non-hypertensive counterparts (Kirkland, 2018). Chart audits revealed that 63% of residents on a single wing had a diagnosis of primary hypertension and had incidences of high blood pressure recordings. A survey of staff at the LTC faculty showed that 13 out of 15 staff members claimed that residents with a diagnosis of hypertension require more care while one staff member disagreed, and one staff member said they did not know. Despite interventions such as antihypertensive medications, daily physical therapy and modified diets, uncontrolled hypertension was still prevalent with these LTC residents. Research has shown that dark chocolate is a non-pharmacological intervention that could augment medications to help control high blood pressure. Average blood pressures were determined for residents who consented to participate in this project. Dark chocolate was administered once daily to 9 participants over the course of 3 weeks. After implementing the daily chocolate intake, another audit was completed to compare the average blood pressures and evaluate whether any blood pressure changes occurred. Hypertension is very costly for long-term care facilities due to frequent hospitalizations and complication-related readmission, which are paid for by the facility (Kirkland, 2018). Thus, engaging in non-pharmacological interventions such as dark chocolate may potentially reduce costs to the LTC facility if shown to be effective

Affordable Housing in Indiana (2022): Policy considerations and recommendations

The Indiana General Assembly passed House Bill 1306 in 2022. When it was signed into law in March 2022, Indiana Public Law 99 established a task force to review housing related issues and housing shortages in Indiana. This task force must issue a report to the general assembly and governor no later than November 1, 2022. In August 2022, researchers from the Center for Research on Inclusion and Social Policy produced a policy brief containing recommendations for local and state officials to address homelessness, much of which concerned housing issues in Indianapolis. This brief expands on the previous report by examining housing availability and affordability in Indiana, while also comparing Indiana to four other similar states. Using this information, the research team provides policy suggestions to address housing shortages in Indiana

Epidermal Threads Reveal the Origin of Hagfish Slime

When attacked, hagfishes produce a soft, fibrous defensive slime within a fraction of a second by ejecting mucus and threads into seawater. The rapid setup and remarkable expansion of the slime make it a highly effective and unique form of defense. How this biomaterial evolved is unknown, although circumstantial evidence points to the epidermis as the origin of the thread- and mucus-producing cells in the slime glands. Here, we describe large intracellular threads within a putatively homologous cell type from hagfish epidermis. These epidermal threads averaged ~2 mm in length and ~0.5 μm in diameter. The entire hagfish body is covered by a dense layer of epidermal thread cells, with each square millimeter of skin storing a total of ~96 cm threads. Experimentally induced damage to a hagfish’s skin caused the release of threads, which together with mucus, formed an adhesive epidermal slime that is more fibrous and less dilute than the defensive slime. Transcriptome analysis further suggests that epidermal threads are ancestral to the slime threads, with duplication and diversification of thread genes occurring in parallel with the evolution of slime glands. Our results support an epidermal origin of hagfish slime, which may have been driven by selection for stronger and more voluminous slime