Guidelines for Sustainable Practices in the Rural Built Environment

This poster provides information about sustainable changes people can make to better improve their health, community and built environment. From what is shown, this can be done through community gardens, pedestrian access and building certifications. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change will have direct and significant health impacts (1), which the Lancet Countdown identifies as disproportionately affecting at-risk populations.(2) The challenges of geographic isolation and lack of population density in rural and remote areas limits adequate access to basic healthcare services, such as primary care, emergency care, and mental health services. Additionally, the health deficit experienced by these populations is at a greater risk from the health impacts of climate change. This study examines climate resilient and sustainable design’s potential for addressing the health impacts of climate change on remote and rural populations

Guidelines for Sustainable Practices in the Rural Built Environment

This poster provides information about sustainable changes people can make to better improve their health, community and built environment. From what is shown, this can be done through community gardens, pedestrian access and building certifications. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change will have direct and significant health impacts (1), which the Lancet Countdown identifies as disproportionately affecting at-risk populations.(2) The challenges of geographic isolation and lack of population density in rural and remote areas limits adequate access to basic healthcare services, such as primary care, emergency care, and mental health services. Additionally, the health deficit experienced by these populations is at a greater risk from the health impacts of climate change. This study examines climate resilient and sustainable design’s potential for addressing the health impacts of climate change on remote and rural populations

2-Player Nash and Nonsymmetric Bargaining Games: Algorithms and Structural Properties

The solution to a Nash or a nonsymmetric bargaining game is obtained by maximizing a concave function over a convex set, i.e., it is the solution to a convex program. We show that each 2-player game whose convex program has linear constraints, admits a rational solution and such a solution can be found in polynomial time using only an LP solver. If in addition, the game is succinct, i.e., the coefficients in its convex program are ``small'', then its solution can be found in strongly polynomial time. We also give a non-succinct linear game whose solution can be found in strongly polynomial time

Influential Article Review - Evaluation of the Quality of Health Services: Comparative Analysis of the Groups of Patients

This paper examines healthcare. We present insights from a highly influential paper. Here are the highlights from this paper: The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of healthcare service quality (HEALTHQUAL) measurement items. First, the proposed measurement items for HEALTHQUAL were tested using data collected from a hospital in South Korea with more than 500 beds. The data set included 365 patients and 232 public respondents. ANOVA and t-tests were used to perform a comparative analysis of HEALTHQUAL measurement items among three patient treatment groups (inpatients, outpatients, and family members of patients in the emergency room) and between the patient and general public groups. The results indicated significant differences among measurement items of HEALTHQUAL depending on the type of patient treatment, while there were no significant differences among measurement items of HEALTHQUAL between patients and the public. For our overseas readers, we then present the insights from this paper in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German

Patient Knowledge And Perception Regarding Antibiotic Misuse In Primary Care

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention’s 2019 Antibiotic Resistant Threats Report shows that antibiotic-resistant bacteria and fungi cause more than 2.8 million infections and 35,000 deaths in the United States each year. This equates to at least one infection every 11 seconds and one death resulting from antibiotic resistance every 15 minutes. The CDC states that there were almost twice as many deaths each year from antibiotic resistance compared to statistics reported in 2013 (CDC, 2019a). Proper antibiotic use is the responsibility of the provider and the patient. Patient knowledge should consist of how to prevent antibiotic misuse, certain disease processes that require antibiotics, and the significance of taking antibiotics as prescribed. Therefore, determining if the patient has a thorough knowledge of these particular factors could help prevent one of the major threats faced worldwide today, which is antibiotic resistance. The purpose of this study was to determine if the patient has knowledge of risk factors associated with antibiotic misuse. The researchers conducted a quantitative, descriptive study using a convenience sampling of 500 patients from eight clinics located in Mississippi. This study consisted of a voluntary questionnaire given to patients within these clinics. Prior to conducting the study, consent was obtained from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the Mississippi University for Women. For data collection, the researchers used a data collection questionnaire, which included demographics such as age, gender, insurance provider, and education level. After data collection, the data was subjected to analyses using descriptive statistics including knowledge, misuse, and perception regarding antibiotics. The results of this study showed this sample of respondents were quite knowledgeable about antibiotic use and thus are expected to be more likely to use antibiotics appropriately. However, those at greater risk for misuse (those less knowledgeable) are less likely to perceive that their health care provider is knowledgeable regarding antibiotic use

Metabolic Depression in Cunner (Tautogolabrus adspersus) Is Influenced by Ontogeny, and Enhances Thermal Tolerance

To examine the effect of ontogeny on metabolic depression in the cunner (Tautogolabrus adspersus), and to understand how ontogeny and the ability to metabolically depress influence this species' upper thermal tolerance: 1) the metabolic rate of 9°C-acclimated cunner of three size classes [0.2–0.5 g, young of the year (YOY); 3–6 g, small; and 80–120 g, large (adult)] was measured during a 2°C per day decrease in temperature; and 2) the metabolic response of the same three size classes of cunner to an acute thermal challenge [2°C h−1 from 10°C until Critical Thermal Maximum, CTMax] was examined, and compared to that of the Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). The onset-temperature for metabolic depression in cunner increased with body size, i.e. from 5°C in YOY cunner to 7°C in adults. In contrast, the extent of metabolic depression was ∼80% (Q10 = ∼15) for YOY fish, ∼65% (Q10 = ∼8) for small fish and ∼55% (Q10 = ∼5) for adults, and this resulted in the metabolic scaling exponent (b) gradually increasing from 0.84 to 0.92 between 9°C to 1°C. All size classes of cunner had significantly (approximately 60%) lower routine metabolic rates at 10°C than Atlantic cod. However, there was no species' difference in the temperature-induced maximum metabolic rate, and this resulted in factorial metabolic scope values that were more than two-fold greater for cunner, and CTMax values that were 6–9°C higher (∼21 vs. 28°C). These results: 1) show that ontogeny influences the temperature of initiation and the extent of metabolic depression in cunner, but not O2 consumption when in a hypometabolic state; and 2) suggest that the evolution of cold-induced metabolic depression in this northern wrasse species has not resulted in a trade-off with upper thermal tolerance, but instead, an enhancement of this species' metabolic plasticity

The Grizzly, August 29, 2002

Three Professors Up for Tenure • New Meningitis Vaccine Law in PA • Phi Kappa Sigma: Leaders Commended for Talents • Best Buddies Gives Laptops to the Handicapped • Research Presented by 54 Students and Alumni • Opinions: Zack\u27s Closes the Equivalency Door on Snacks and Juices; New Hours for the Fitness Center Spell Big Problems for Students • Addresses and Phone Numbers to Places in Collegeville • SEPTA Bus Schedule for Collegeville • Ursinus Art & Lecture Series • Fall Sports Ready to Begin Playhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1516/thumbnail.jp

Hamilton decompositions of regular expanders: applications

In a recent paper, we showed that every sufficiently large regular digraph G on n vertices whose degree is linear in n and which is a robust outexpander has a decomposition into edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. The main consequence of this theorem is that every regular tournament on n vertices can be decomposed into (n-1)/2 edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles, whenever n is sufficiently large. This verified a conjecture of Kelly from 1968. In this paper, we derive a number of further consequences of our result on robust outexpanders, the main ones are the following: (i) an undirected analogue of our result on robust outexpanders; (ii) best possible bounds on the size of an optimal packing of edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in a graph of minimum degree d for a large range of values for d. (iii) a similar result for digraphs of given minimum semidegree; (iv) an approximate version of a conjecture of Nash-Williams on Hamilton decompositions of dense regular graphs; (v) the observation that dense quasi-random graphs are robust outexpanders; (vi) a verification of the `very dense' case of a conjecture of Frieze and Krivelevich on packing edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in random graphs; (vii) a proof of a conjecture of Erdos on the size of an optimal packing of edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles in a random tournament.Comment: final version, to appear in J. Combinatorial Theory

The unpredictable nature of internal tides on continental shelves

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 42 (2012): 1981–2000, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-028.1.Packets of nonlinear internal waves (NLIWs) in a small area of the Mid-Atlantic Bight were 10 times more energetic during a local neap tide than during the preceding spring tide. This counterintuitive result cannot be explained if the waves are generated near the shelf break by the local barotropic tide since changes in shelfbreak stratification explain only a small fraction of the variability in barotropic to baroclinic conversion. Instead, this study suggests that the occurrence of strong NLIWs was caused by the shoaling of distantly generated internal tides with amplitudes that are uncorrelated with the local spring-neap cycle. An extensive set of moored observations show that NLIWs are correlated with the internal tide but uncorrelated with barotropic tide. Using harmonic analysis of a 40-day record, this study associates steady-phase motions at the shelf break with waves generated by the local barotropic tide and variable-phase motions with the shoaling of distantly generated internal tides. The dual sources of internal tide energy (local or remote) mean that shelf internal tides and NLIWs will be predictable with a local model only if the locally generated internal tides are significantly stronger than shoaling internal tides. Since the depth-integrated internal tide energy in the open ocean can greatly exceed that on the shelf, it is likely that shoaling internal tides control the energetics on shelves that are directly exposed to the open ocean.This research was supported by ONR Grants N00014-05-1-0271, N00014-08-1-0991, N00014-04- 1-0146, and N00014-11-1-0194.2013-05-0