Solenoid-operated swing-check valve

Modification of spring-loaded swing-check valve for solenoid operation provides low-vacuum swing-check valve which can be operated remotely

Building the Future: Rejecting, Rethinking, Redoing, Rejuvenating

Objectives: Traditional library work is spiraling downward. Health sciences librarians are taking on new roles such as embedded librarians or research data informationists. Simultaneously, institutionally mandated budget cuts force the question, How do we maintain mission-critical work within our budget? Survival means rejecting old service models, rethinking our roles, redoing our professional identity, and rejuvenating ourselves and our libraries. Methods: The Library Fellows Program at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Medical School is one response to the challenges we are facing. The fellows program, designed to foster the next generation of medical librarians, provides a two-year experience for newly graduated library science students, emphasizing hands-on learning and research into topics of information management and medical librarianship. This innovative curriculum incorporates training, professional development, mentorship, and research with the library as the learning laboratory. Curriculum components focus on medical librarianship foundations as well as rotations within core library functional areas. This paper serves as a project description and evaluation. It discusses organizational changes that necessitated and facilitated the structural changes surrounding this program and the resulting effect on staff and operations. The midpoint success of the program is determined and reported, with recommendations and future considerations. Results/Conclusions: In early 2013, management at Lamar Soutter Library (LSL) planned organizational changes necessary to meet strategic initiatives and continue supporting the medical school\u27s mission in the face of severe budget constraints. The final plan resulted in discontinuation of many traditional library activities, elimination of staff that supported those activities, and, ultimately, the development of the FELLOWS PROGRAM. In September 2013, three task forces were created to develop an implementation plan. A search committee was formed to begin the process of hiring three fellows. The Curriculum Task Force was charged with structuring the two-year fellowship program. The curriculum developed includes rotations through library departments, in-depth reference experience, expert searching training, structured projects, and performing research. The Reference Services Task Force was charged with developing a new reference model to replace the current triage and pager model. The Research Task Force was charged with laying the groundwork for creating a research environment in the library. With outside consultation, LSL developed a detailed evaluation plan. The program is in its eighth month. Modifications and refinements are being made as the first cohort experiences the program. The program has led to a redefinition of librarianship and a new professional identity based on a culture of achievement, research, and reflection

An Integrated Decision-Support Information System on the Impact of Extreme Natural Hazards on Critical Infrastructure

In this paper, we introduce an Integrated Decision-Support Tool (IDST v2.0) which was developed as part of the INFRARISK project (https://www.infrarisk-fp7.eu/). The IDST is an online tool which demonstrates the implementation of a risk-based stress testing methodology for analyzing the potential impact of natural hazards on transport infrastructure networks. The IDST is enabled with a set of software workflow processes that allow the definition of multiple cascading natural hazards, geospatial coverage and impact on important large infrastructure, including those which are critical to transport networks in Europe. Stress tests on these infrastructure are consequently performed together with the automated generation of useful case study reports for practitioners. An exemplar stress test study using the IDST is provided in this paper. In this study, risks and consequences of an earthquake-triggered landslide scenario in Northern Italy is described. Further, it provides a step-by-step account of the developed stress testing overarching methodology which is applied to the impact on a road network of the region of interest

Opening and entering critical spaces: exploring how high school students and their English teacher navigate the critical literacy classroom

This research study focused on how students engaged in Critical Literacy practices and the ways their teacher attempted to foster such practices. The study included one experienced critical educator (Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002) from an ethnically diverse school in the southeastern United States. This early/middle college high school setting included one tenth grade English class and one eleventh grade English class taught by a fourth year English teacher. A total of 22 students were invited to participate in the study and 21 returned parental consent and student assent forms. The study drew on multiple data sources, including: audio/videotaped observations, fieldnotes, teacher and student interviews, informal conversations, and student work samples. Data analysis focused on what the teacher did to foster student Critical Literacy practices, how the students engaged in those literacy practices, and the degree to which the practices aligned with specific Critical Literacy components (Lewison et al., 2002; Vasquez, Tate, & Harste, 2013). Findings suggested that the teacher used: (a) open-ended questions and model texts, drew on personal experiences and popular culture texts, and positioned students as co-learners in order to foster critical conversations (Leland, Harste, Ociepka, Lewison, & Vasquez, 1999; Schieble, 2012); and (b) in order to foster critical text production (Janks, 2010; Morrell, 2003) familiarized the students with rhetorical appeals, and used critical conversations in conjunction with multimodal text sets to model how one might take up a critical perspective. While fostering such practices, the teacher drew on his personal Critical Pedagogy as well as teaching practices related to a New Literacy Studies perspective. Findings associated with the students suggested they engaged in critical conversations and critical text production by drawing on: (a) personal experience; and (b) new (digital/online) media texts (Janks, 2010). These student literacy practices aligned variably with specific Critical Literacy components. While most students, at one time or another, drew on personal experiences and/or new media texts to engage in critical conversations and/or critical text production, at times other times, certain students did not do either

Shoot yield drives phosphorus use efficiency in Brassica oleracea and correlates with root architecture traits

The environmental and financial costs of using inorganic phosphate fertilizers to maintain crop yield and quality are high. Breeding crops that acquire and use phosphorus (P) more efficiently could reduce these costs. The variation in shoot P concentration (shoot-P) and various measures of P use efficiency (PUE) were quantified among 355 Brassica oleracea L. accessions, 74 current commercial cultivars, and 90 doubled haploid (DH) mapping lines from a reference genetic mapping population. Accessions were grown at two or more external P concentrations in glasshouse experiments; commercial and DH accessions were also grown in replicated field experiments. Within the substantial species-wide diversity observed for shoot-P and various measures of PUE in B. oleracea, current commercial cultivars have greater PUE than would be expected by chance. This may be a consequence of breeding for increased yield, which is a significant component of most measures of PUE, or early establishment. Root development and architecture correlate with PUE; in particular, lateral root number, length, and growth rate. Significant quantitative trait loci associated with shoot-P and PUE occur on chromosomes C3 and C7. These data provide information to initiate breeding programmes to improve PUE in B. oleracea

BCL-2 family genetic profiling reveals microenvironment-specific determinants of chemotherapeutic response

The Bcl-2 family encompasses a diverse set of apoptotic regulators that are dynamically activated in response to various cell-intrinsic and -extrinsic stimuli. An extensive variety of cell culture experiments have identified effects of growth factors, cytokines, and drugs on Bcl-2 family functions, but in vivo studies have tended to focus on the role of one or two particular members in development and organ homeostasis. Thus, the ability of physiologically relevant contexts to modulate canonical dependencies that are likely to be more complex has yet to be investigated systematically. In this study, we report findings derived from a pool-based shRNA assay that systematically and comprehensively interrogated the functional dependence of leukemia and lymphoma cells upon various Bcl-2 family members across many diverse in vitro and in vivo settings. This approach permitted us to report the first in vivo loss of function screen for modifiers of the response to a front-line chemotherapeutic agent. Notably, our results reveal an unexpected role for the extrinsic death pathway as a tissue-specific modifier of therapeutic response. In particular, our findings show that particular tissue sites of tumor dissemination play critical roles in demarcating the nature and extent of cancer cell vulnerabilities and mechanisms of chemoresistance. Cancer Res; 71(17); 5850–8. ©2011 AACR.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH RO1 CA128803)National Cancer Institute (U.S.) (Integrated Cancer Biology Program grant NCI 1-U54-CA112967)David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT (Ludwig Fellowship)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Biology (training grant

Assessment of the potential for ferrocyanide propagating reaction accidents

This report contains safety criteria for the storage of ferrocyanide bearing waste sludges in Hanford underground waste storage tanks. In addition, the tank wastes are categorized with this criteria into SAFE, CONDITIONALLY SAFE, and UNSAFE categories based on available historical records and sample information. Fourteen (14) tanks are classified as CONDITIONALLY SAFE, while four (4) C-Farm tanks are categorized as SAFE. This report therefore provides a technical basis to resolve the ferrocyanide safety issue for these four tanks and supports their removal from the Watch List. The 14 CONDITIONALLY SAFE tanks will be re-evaluated in a future revision to this report as representative sample data becomes available. It is anticipated that the 14 tanks will be re-categorized as SAFE at that time

Cytosolic chaperones influence the fate of a toxin dislocated from the endoplasmic reticulum

The plant cytotoxin ricin enters target mammalian cells by receptor-mediated endocytosis and undergoes retrograde transport to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Here, its catalytic A chain (RTA) is reductively separated from the cell-binding B chain, and free RTA enters the cytosol where it inactivates ribosomes. Cytosolic entry requires unfolding of RTA and dislocation across the ER membrane such that it arrives in the cytosol in a vulnerable, nonnative conformation. Clearly, for such a dislocated toxin to become active, it must avoid degradation and fold to a catalytic conformation. Here, we show that, in vitro, Hsc70 prevents aggregation of heat-treated RTA, and that RTA catalytic activity is recovered after chaperone treatment. A combination of pharmacological inhibition and cochaperone expression reveals that, in vivo, cytosolic RTA is scrutinized sequentially by the Hsc70 and Hsp90 cytosolic chaperone machineries, and that its eventual fate is determined by the balance of activities of cochaperones that regulate Hsc70 and Hsp90 functions. Cytotoxic activity follows Hsc70-mediated escape of RTA from an otherwise destructive pathway facilitated by Hsp90. We demonstrate a role for cytosolic chaperones, proteins typically associated with folding nascent proteins, assembling multimolecular protein complexes and degrading cytosolic and stalled, cotranslocational clients, in a toxin triage, in which both toxin folding and degradation are initiated from chaperone-bound states