A Closer Look at Water Quality, Illegal Dumping and Community Engagement in the Coney Island Creek

According to data science and policy blog I Quant NY, the Coney Island Creek is one of the dirtiest waterways in the city. It’s filthier than the Newtown Creek or the Gowanus Canal, which are both designated as federal superfund sites. The creek is a sanctuary for residents who want it to be cleaner and want to be in the know when it comes to dangerous levels of bacteria in the water. What my reporting partner and I, Kyle Mackie, found was that the community has largely been kept in the dark. The DEP has been investigating both small and large instances of illegal hook ups and dumping to storm water drains for years and it wasn’t until January of this year that they informed the public. And that was only after advocates demanded more information. Last year, the Beach Haven apartment complex was caught dumping 200,000 gallons of raw, untreated sewage into the creek every single day for an undetermined amount of time. Needless to say, the levels of fecal coliform in the creek are high – so high, in fact, that the water has been deemed “not suitable for swimming” on most days. Yet fishermen continue to eat the fish they catch there. According to a spokeswoman from the DEP, it’s really hard to track down the places – usually homes of businesses – that have illegal hookups draining sewage into the creek. For example, one Coney Island Creek outfall has been under investigation since 2014 and only ten addresses were found to have illegal hookups. Illegal sewage dumping has been a problem that has plagued Coney Island Creek for decades. Back when President Trump’s father owned Beach Haven, he was fined $2000 for dumping into the creek and ordered to put up a fence between his property and the street to prevent further dumping into the creek. http://mollyemmanugent.com/coney-island-cree

“Transfer Talk” in Talk about Writing in Progress: Two Propositions about Transfer of Learning

This article tracks the emergence of the concept of “transfer talk”—a concept distinct from transfer of learning—and teases out the implications of transfer talk for theories of transfer of learning. The concept of transfer talk was developed through a systematic examination of 30 writing center transcripts and is defined as “the talk through which individuals make visible their prior learning (in this case, about writing) or try to access the prior learning of someone else.” In addition to including a taxonomy of transfer talk and analysis of which types occur most often in this set of conferences, this article advances two propositions about the nature of transfer of learning: (1) transfer of learning may have an important social, even collaborative, component and (2) although meta-awareness about writing has long been recognized as valuable for transfer of learning, more automatized knowledge may play an important role as well

Serum testosterone levels of HbSS (sickle cell disease) male subjects in Lagos, Nigeria

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Infertility is a major problem in sickle cell disease patients, especially in males. In addition to low serum testosterone, other abnormalities involving the accessory sex organs, such as the seminal vesicles and the prostate gland, as well as marked decrease in ejaculate volume may be observed in male HbSS patients. Hence, the need to study the role of sex hormones as a cause of infertility in male HbSS patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An unmatched case-control study was performed using seventy-five consenting subjects from Lagos University Teaching Hospital. These included 47 patients with haemoglobin phenotype SS from the Sickle cell clinic and 28 volunteered medical students and members of staff with haemoglobin phenotype AA. Demographic data were obtained using a self-administered questionnaire. A total of 5 mls of blood was collected from each subject between 9.00 am & 11.am, and assayed for serum testosterone concentration.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The concentrations of serum testosterone in HbSS patients ranged from 0.2 to 4.3 ng/ml with a mean of 1.28 ± 0.72 ng/ml whilst the values in HbAA controls ranged from 1.2 to 6.9 ng/ml with a mean of 2.63 ± 1.04 ng/ml. Seven (25.0%) of the 28 controls had serum testosterone concentration lower than the quoted reference (normal) range whereas 44 (93.6%) of the 47 HbSS subjects had serum testosterone concentration lower than the reference range.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Overall, subjects with HbSS have significantly lower mean serum testosterone than HbAA controls.</p

DES13S2cmm : the first superluminous supernova from the Dark Energy Survey

We present DES13S2cmm, the first spectroscopically-confirmed superluminous supernova (SLSN) from the Dark Energy Survey (DES).We briefly discuss the data and search algorithm used to find this event in the first year of DES operations, and outline the spectroscopic data obtained from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope to confirm its redshift (z = 0.663 ± 0.001 based on the host-galaxy emission lines) and likely spectral type (Type I). Using this redshift, we find M peak U = −21.05+0.10 −0.09 for the peak, rest-frame U-band absolute magnitude, and find DES13S2cmm to be located in a faint, low-metallicity (subsolar), low stellar-mass host galaxy (log (M/M ) = 9.3 ± 0.3), consistent with what is seen for other SLSNe-I. We compare the bolometric light curve of DES13S2cmm to 14 similarly well-observed SLSNe-I in the literature and find that it possesses one of the slowest declining tails (beyond +30 d rest-frame past peak), and is the faintest at peak. Moreover, we find the bolometric light curves of all SLSNe-I studied herein possess a dispersion of only 0.2–0.3 mag between +25 and +30 d after peak (rest frame) depending on redshift range studied; this could be important for ‘standardizing’ such supernovae, as is done with the more common Type Ia. We fit the bolometric light curve of DES13S2cmm with two competing models for SLSNe-I – the radioactive decay of 56Ni, and a magnetar – and find that while the magnetar is formally a better fit, neither model provides a compelling match to the data. Although we are unable to conclusively differentiate between these two physical models for this particular SLSN-I, further DES observations of more SLSNe-I should break this degeneracy, especially if the light curves of SLSNe-I can be observed beyond 100 d in the rest frame of the supernova

Metronidazole to Prevent Preterm Delivery in Pregnant Women with Asymptomatic Bacterial Vaginosis

Preterm birth is a common cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality. An extensive body of evidence indicates that infection is associated with preterm delivery and with low birth weight of the infant. 1 Chorioamnionitis is strongly correlated with preterm delivery 2 , 3 and the failure of tocolytic-drug therapy. 4 Evidence of infection, manifested by the presence of organisms or inflammatory cytokines in the amniotic fluid or chorioamniotic membranes, 3 – 5 commonly accompanies preterm labor and preterm premature rupture of membranes, particularly at the earliest gestational ages. Most microorganisms found in the amniotic fluid and placenta are thought to come from the vagina, especially among . .