An interprofessional, intercultural, immersive short-term study abroad program: public health and service systems in rome

The purpose of this paper is to describe a short-term study abroad program that exposes engineering and nursing undergraduate students from the United States and Italy to an intercultural and interprofessional immersion experience. Faculty from Purdue University and Sapienza Università di Roma collaborated to design a technical program that demonstrates the complementary nature of engineering and public health in the service sector, with Rome as an integral component of the program. Specifically, the intersection of topics including systems, reliability, process flow, maintenance management, and public health are covered through online lectures, in-class activities and case study discussions, field experiences, and assessments. Herein, administrative issues such as student recruitment, selection, and preparation are elucidated. Additionally, the pedagogical approach used to ensure constructive alignment among the program goals, the intended learning outcomes, and the teaching and learning activities is described. Finally, examples of learning outcomes resulting from this alignment are provided

Conceptual mechanization studies for a horizon definition spacecraft electrical power subsystem

Solar cell-battery electrical power subsystem for horizon definition spacecraf

Pattern Formation in Interface Depinning and Other Models: Erratically Moving Spatial Structures

We study erratically moving spatial structures that are found in a driven interface in a random medium at the depinning threshold. We introduce a bond-disordered variant of the Sneppen model and study the effect of extremal dynamics on the morphology of the interface. We find evidence for the formation of a structure which moves along with the growth site. The time average of the structure, which is defined with respect to the active spot of growth, defines an activity-centered pattern. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations show that the pattern has a tail which decays slowly, as a power law. To understand this sort of pattern formation, we write down an approximate integral equation involving the local interface dynamics and long-ranged jumps of the growth spot. We clarify the nature of the approximation by considering a model for which the integral equation is exactly derivable from an extended master equation. Improvements to the equation are considered by adding a second coupled equation which provides a self-consistent description. The pattern, which defines a one-point correlation function, is shown to have a strong effect on ordinary space-fixed two-point correlation functions. Finally we present evidence that this sort of pattern formation is not confined to the interface problem, but is generic to situations in which the activity at succesive time steps is correlated, as for instance in several other extremal models. We present numerical results for activity-centered patterns in the Bak-Sneppen model of evolution and the Zaitsev model of low-temperature creep.Comment: RevTeX, 18 pages, 19 eps-figures, To appear in Phys. Rev.

Global Analysis of Genetic, Epigenetic and Transcriptional Polymorphisms in Arabidopsis thaliana Using Whole Genome Tiling Arrays

Whole genome tiling arrays provide a high resolution platform for profiling of genetic, epigenetic, and gene expression polymorphisms. In this study we surveyed natural genomic variation in cytosine methylation among Arabidopsis thaliana wild accessions Columbia (Col) and Vancouver (Van) by comparing hybridization intensity difference between genomic DNA digested with either methylation-sensitive (HpaII) or -insensitive (MspI) restriction enzyme. Single Feature Polymorphisms (SFPs) were assayed on a full set of 1,683,620 unique features of Arabidopsis Tiling Array 1.0F (Affymetrix), while constitutive and polymorphic CG methylation were assayed on a subset of 54,519 features, which contain a 5′CCGG3′ restriction site. 138,552 SFPs (1% FDR) were identified across enzyme treatments, which preferentially accumulated in pericentromeric regions. Our study also demonstrates that at least 8% of all analyzed CCGG sites were constitutively methylated across the two strains, while about 10% of all analyzed CCGG sites were differentially methylated between the two strains. Within euchromatin arms, both constitutive and polymorphic CG methylation accumulated in central regions of genes but under-represented toward the 5′ and 3′ ends of the coding sequences. Nevertheless, polymorphic methylation occurred much more frequently in gene ends than constitutive methylation. Inheritance of methylation polymorphisms in reciprocal F1 hybrids was predominantly additive, with F1 plants generally showing levels of methylation intermediate between the parents. By comparing gene expression profiles, using matched tissue samples, we found that magnitude of methylation polymorphism immediately upstream or downstream of the gene was inversely correlated with the degree of expression variation for that gene. In contrast, methylation polymorphism within genic region showed weak positive correlation with expression variation. Our results demonstrated extensive genetic and epigenetic polymorphisms between Arabidopsis accessions and suggested a possible relationship between natural CG methylation variation and gene expression variation

A deletion polymorphism in the human COL1A2 gene. Genetic evidence for a non-African population whose descendants spread to all continents

This is the published version, also available here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41465791