WATER ACCESS AND MAINTENANCE IN KARONGA, MALAWI

This report is a case study of how Mwangalala community accesses water and how that access is maintained. Mwangalala community is located in the northern tip of Karonga district in Malawi, Africa. The case study evaluates how close the community is to meeting target 10 of the Millennium Development Goals, sustainable access to safe drinking water, and evaluates the current water system through Human Centered Design’s criteria of desirability, feasibility, and viability. It also makes recommendations to improve water security in Mwangalala community. Data was collected through two years of immersive observation, interviews with 30 families, and observing two wells on three separate occasions. The 30 interviews provided a sample size of over 10% of the community’s population. Participants were initially self-selected and then invited to participate in the research. I walked along community pathways and accepted invitations to join casual conversations in family compounds. After conversing I asked the family members if they would be willing to participate in my research by talking with me about water. Data collected from the interviews and the observations of two wells were compared and analyzed for common themes. Shallow wells or open wells represented the primary water source for 93% of interview participants. Boreholes were also present in the community, but produced unpalatable water due to high concentrations of dissolved iron and were not used as primary water sources. During observations 75% of community members who used the shallow well, primarily used for consumptive uses like cooking or dinking, were females. Boreholes were primarily used for non-consumptive uses such as watering crops or bathing and 77% of the users were male. Shallow wells could remain in disrepair for two months because the repairman was a volunteer, who was not compensated for the skilled labor required to repair the wells. Community members thought the maintenance fee went towards his salary, so did not compensate the repairman when he performed work. This miscommunication provided no incentive for the repairman to make well repairs a priority, and left community members frustrated with untimely repairs. Shallow wells with functional pumps failed to provide water when the water table levels drop during dry season, forcing community members to seek secondary or tertiary water sources. Open wells, converted from shallow wells after community members did not pay for repairs to the pump, represented 44% of the wells originally installed with Mark V hand pumps. These wells whose pumps were not repaired were located in fields and one beside a church. The functional wells were all located on school grounds or in family compounds, where responsibility for the well’s maintenance is clearly defined. Mwangalala community fails to meet Millennium Development goals because the wells used by the community do not provide sustainable access to safe drinking water. Open wells, used by half the participants in the study, lack a top covering to prevent contamination from debris and wildlife. Shallow well repair times are unsustainable, taking longer than two weeks to be repaired, primarily because the repair persons are expected to provide skilled labor to repair the wells without compensation. Improving water security for Mwangalala can be achieved by improving repair times on shallow wells and making water from boreholes palatable. There are no incentives for a volunteer repair person to fix wells in a timely manner. Repair times can be improved by reducing the number of wells a repair person is responsible for and compensating the person for the skilled labor provided. Water security would be further improved by removing iron particulates from borehole water, thus rendering it palatable. This is possible through point of use filtration utilizing ceramic candles; this would make pumped water available year-round

Development of welding techniques and filler metals for high strength aluminum alloys Annual summary report, 27 Jun. 1964 - 27 Jun. 1965

Welding techniques and filler metals for high strength aluminum alloy

Remembrance and Wellness Five Years After 9/11

It has been five years. For some people time has barely passed. Tuesday, September 11, 2001 feels like yesterday. To others these last five years seem an eternity. Many people have slipped back into their everyday lives. The horrific images, unimaginable sadness, security threats and unanswered questions have given way to a world that on the surface feels predictable and safe. But there are abrupt reminders that the world is not safe or predictable; everything familiar to us can change in an instant

Staphylococcal Toxins and Protein A Differentially Induce Cytotoxicity and Release of Tumor Necrosis Factor–α From Human Keratinocytes

It has been proposed that toxins and other bacterial protein products of Staphylococcus aureus can act as triggers or persistence factors in several inflammatory skin diseases. In this study, we examined the S. aureus isolates from the skin of patients with atopic dermatitis and psoriasis. We found that the bacterial isolates from these patients exihibited either characteristics superantigenic toxins or thermolabile toxins believed to be staphylococal α-toxin. All of these staphylococcal strains also secreted extracellular staphylococcal protein A. We found significant differences in the action of these toxins on human keratinocytes and keratinocyte cell lines. The superantigenic toxins toxic shock syndrome toxin–1, staphylococcal enterotoxins A and B, and exfoliative toxin–A. as well as staphylococcal protein A, did not induce significant cytotoxic damage in the keratinocyte cell line HaCaT, whereas the staphylococcal α-toxin produced profound cytotoxicity. Keratinocyte cytotoxity induced by staphylococcal α-toxin was time and concentration dependent and demonstrated the morphologic and functional characteristics of necrosis, not apoptosis. Addition of α-toxin to keratinocytes simultaneously induced cell lysis and tumor necrosis factor–α release into the medium within 30 min; apparently, it was constitutive tumor necrosis factor–α. On the other hand, superantigenic toxins and, in particular, protein A showed stimulation of tumor necrosis factor-α secretion in keratinocytes and release of this cytokine after 6–12h of incubation. Thus, staphylococcal protein A, α-toxin, and superantigenic toxins found in S. aureus isolates from patients with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis can produce direct pro-inflammatory effects on kerationcytes through the release of tumor necrosis factor–α. We propose that these effects may be relevant to the induction and persistence of lesions in these two disease

Controlling Thermal Conductivity of Alloys via Atomic Ordering

Many random substitutional solid solutions (alloys) will display a tendency to atomically order given the appropriate kinetic and thermodynamic conditions. Such order-disorder transitions will result in major crystallographic reconfigurations, where the atomic basis, symmetry, and periodicity of the alloy change dramatically. Consequently, phonon behavior in these alloys will vary greatly depending on the type and degree of ordering achieved. To investigate these phenomena, the role of the order-disorder transition on phononic transport properties of Lennard-Jones type binary alloys is explored via nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. Particular attention is paid to regimes in which the alloy is only partially ordered. It is shown that by varying the degree of ordering, the thermal conductivity of a binary alloy of fixed composition can be tuned across an order of magnitude at 10% of the melt temperature, and by a factor of three at 40% of the melt temperature

Two Stellar Components in the Halo of the Milky Way

The halo of the Milky Way provides unique elemental abundance and kinematic information on the first objects to form in the Universe, which can be used to tightly constrain models of galaxy formation and evolution. Although the halo was once considered a single component, evidence for its dichotomy has slowly emerged in recent years from inspection of small samples of halo objects. Here we show that the halo is indeed clearly divisible into two broadly overlapping structural components -- an inner and an outer halo -- that exhibit different spatial density profiles, stellar orbits and stellar metallicities (abundances of elements heavier than helium). The inner halo has a modest net prograde rotation, whereas the outer halo exhibits a net retrograde rotation and a peak metallicity one-third that of the inner halo. These properties indicate that the individual halo components probably formed in fundamentally different ways, through successive dissipational (inner) and dissipationless (outer) mergers and tidal disruption of proto-Galactic clumps.Comment: Two stand-alone files in manuscript, concatenated together. The first is for the main paper, the second for supplementary information. The version is consistent with the version published in Natur

MMTV-PyMT and derived Met-1 mouse mammary tumor cells as models for studying the role of the androgen receptor in triple-negative breast cancer progression

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a faster rate of metastasis compared to other breast cancer subtypes and no effective targeted therapies are currently FDA-approved. Recent data indicate that the androgen receptor (AR) promotes tumor survival and may serve as a potential therapeutic target in TNBC. Studies of AR in disease progression and the systemic effects of anti-androgens have been hindered by the lack of an AR-positive (AR+) immunocompetent preclinical model. In this study we identified the transgenic MMTV-PyMT (mouse mammary tumor virus-polyoma middle tumor antigen) mouse mammary gland carcinoma model of breast cancer and Met-1 cells derived from this model as tools to study the role of AR in breast cancer progression. AR protein expression was examined in late-stage primary tumors and lung metastases from MMTV-PyMT mice as well as in Met-1 cells by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Sensitivity of Met-1 cells to the AR agonist dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and anti-androgen therapy was examined using cell viability, migration/invasion, and anchorage-independent growth assays. Late-stage primary tumors and lung metastases from MMTV-PyMT mice and Met-1 cells expressed abundant nuclear AR protein, while negative for estrogen and progesterone receptors. Met-1 sensitivity to DHT and AR antagonists demonstrated a reliance on AR for survival, and AR antagonists inhibited invasion and anchorage-independent growth. These data suggest that the MMTV-PyMT model and Met-1 cells may serve as valuable tools for mechanistic studies of the role of AR in disease progression and how anti-androgens affect the tumor microenvironment

Social media guidelines and best practices - Recommendations from the council of residency directors (cord) social media taskforce

Social media has become a staple of everyday life among over one billion people worldwide. A social networking presence has become a hallmark of vibrant and transparent communications. It has quickly become the preferred method of communication and information sharing. It offers the ability for various entities, especially residency programs, to create an attractive internet presence and “brand� the program. Social media, while having significant potential for communication and knowledge transfer, carries with it legal, ethical, personal, and professional risks. Implementation of a social networking presence must be deliberate, transparent, and optimize potential benefits while minimizing risks. This is especially true with residency programs. The power of social media as a communication, education, and recruiting tool is undeniable. Yet the pitfalls of misuse can be disastrous, including violations in patient confidentiality, violations of privacy, and recruiting misconduct. These guidelines were developed to provide emergency medicine residency programs leadership with guidance and best practices in the appropriate use and regulation of social media, but are applicable to all residency programs that wish to establish a social media presence

Quantifying the Detrimental Impacts of Land-Use and Management Change on European Forest Bird Populations

The ecological impacts of changing forest management practices in Europe are poorly understood despite European forests being highly managed. Furthermore, the effects of potential drivers of forest biodiversity decline are rarely considered in concert, thus limiting effective conservation or sustainable forest management. We present a trait-based framework that we use to assess the detrimental impact of multiple land-use and management changes in forests on bird populations across Europe. Major changes to forest habitats occurring in recent decades, and their impact on resource availability for birds were identified. Risk associated with these changes for 52 species of forest birds, defined as the proportion of each species' key resources detrimentally affected through changes in abundance and/or availability, was quantified and compared to their pan-European population growth rates between 1980 and 2009. Relationships between risk and population growth were found to be significantly negative, indicating that resource loss in European forests is an important driver of decline for both resident and migrant birds. Our results demonstrate that coarse quantification of resource use and ecological change can be valuable in understanding causes of biodiversity decline, and thus in informing conservation strategy and policy. Such an approach has good potential to be extended for predictive use in assessing the impact of possible future changes to forest management and to develop more precise indicators of forest health

The Case for the Dual Halo of the Milky Way

Carollo et al. have recently resolved the stellar population of the Milky Way halo into at least two distinct components, an inner halo and an outer halo. This result has been criticized by Schoenrich et al., who claim that the retrograde signature associated with the outer halo is due to the adoption of faulty distances. We refute this claim, and demonstrate that the Schoenrich et al. photometric distances are themselves flawed because they adopted an incorrect main-sequence absolute magnitude relationship from the work of Ivezi\'c et al. When compared to the recommended relation from Ivezi\'c et al., which is tied to a Milky Way globular cluster distance scale and accounts for age and metallicity effects, the relation adopted by Schoenrich et al. yields up to 18% shorter distances for stars near the main-sequence turnoff (TO). Use of the correct relationship yields agreement between the distances assigned by Carollo et al. and Ivezi\'{c} et al. for low-metallicity dwarfs to within 6-10%. Schoenrich et al. also point out that intermediate-gravity stars (3.5 <= log g <= 4.0) with colors redder than the TO region are likely misclassified, with which we concur. We implement a new procedure to reassign luminosity classifications for the TO stars that require it. New derivations of the rotational behavior demonstrate that the retrograde signature and high velocity dispersion of the outer-halo population remains. We summarize additional lines of evidence for a dual halo, including a test of the retrograde signature based on proper motions alone, and conclude that the preponderance of evidence strongly rejects the single-halo interpretation.Comment: 46 pages, 2 tables, 15 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa