Adoption Process for the Model Aquatic Health Code: An Example

In 2014 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published the first edition of the Model Aquatic Health Code (MAHC). This document represented the inaugural introduction of a federal policy guideline with a direct focus in the area of aquatic venue operation and maintenance with the sole purpose of improving the nature of public health in the field. The Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) began the review and adoption process soon after the policy’s release. The ISDH process is proposed as one method for others to consider. The background and history of the MAHC are presented in this manuscript along with an overview of the adoption process to date that has been employed by the State of Indiana. In addition, information is provided on the Diffusion of Innovations Theory (DIT) as a possible method for assessing the long-term adoption of the MAHC on a national level

Groundwater hydrodynamics of an Eastern Africa coastal aquifer, including La Niña 2016–17 drought

In 2016–17 much of East Africa was affected by a severe drought which has been attributed to Indian Ocean Dipole and El Niño Southern Oscillation conditions. Extreme events such as this have immediate and knock-on effects on water availability for household, agricultural and industrial use. Groundwater resources can provide a buffer in times of drought, but may themselves be stressed by reduced recharge and increased usage, posing significant challenges to groundwater resource management. In the context of East Africa, groundwater management is also hampered by a lack of information on aquifer characteristics. With the aim of addressing this knowledge gap, this study shows the hydrogeological behaviour before and during La Niña 2016/17 drought in southern coastal Kenya on a groundwater system which sits within a geological structure which is representative of an important portion of the East African coast. Diverse hydrochemical and isotopic campaigns, as well as groundwater head variation measurements, were carried out to study the groundwater hydrodynamics and thus characterize the aquifer system under climatic conditions before and during the La Niña event. This information is complemented with an estimation of changes in local recharge since 2012 using local data sets. The main consequence of the drought was a 69% reduction of recharge compared to an average climatic year. There was reduced recharge during the first rainy season (April–June) and no recharge during the second wet season (October–December). There was a concurrent increase in seawater intrusion even during the wet season.Postprint (published version

Periódico digital bajo suscripción utilizando 3d FLIPBOOK delcms wordpress para la venta digital del diario la Industria de Trujillo, 2022

Hoy en día, las casas editoras apuestan por ofrecer sus servicios y vender su producto mediante sitios y plataformas web, utilizando la tecnología como un medio para generar ingresos económicos a través de internet. El presente informe de tesis tiene como objetivo desarrollar un periódico digital bajo suscripción, con la finalidad de implementar la venta digital del diario La Industria de Trujillo brindándole una alternativa para generar ingresos en una plataforma digital. Se revisaron los diarios digitales de las tres principales casas editoras nacionales para tomar como referencia lo mejor de cada una de ellas, además para el desarrollo de nuestro periódico digital, se identificaron los requisitos funcionales y no funcionales de la aplicación web, para satisfacer las necesidades y expectativas del lector. Se realizó el prototipado de las interfaces con la herramienta Balsamiq Mockups, tomando como referencias las interfaces de los diarios digitales Gestión, El Comercio y La República. Durante la implementación se utilizó WordPress y sus respectivos plugins que permitieron concretar los requisitos de la aplicación. Después de haber realizado la encuesta y revisado las opiniones de los empleados y lectores potenciales, permitió validar el Periódico digital con una aprobación del 77.12% (promedio de los 5 indicadores de la variable independiente) y la implementación de la venta digital con una aprobación de 64.25% (promedio de los 2 indicadores de la variable dependiente). Demostrando el desarrollo de un periódico digital bajo suscripción utilizando 3D Flipbook del CMS WordPress permite implementar la venta digital del diario La Industria de Trujillo, 2022Nowadays, publishers are betting on offering their services and selling their products through websites and web platforms, using technology as a means to generate economic income through the Internet. This thesis report aims to develop a digital newspaper under subscription, in order to implement digital sales for the newspaper La Industria de Trujillo, providing an alternative to generate revenue on a digital platform. We reviewed the 3 main publishing houses at national level to obtain the different strengths and weaknesses of each digital newspaper, in addition to the development of our digital newspaper, we identified the functional and non-functional requirements of the web system, what it should do to meet the expectations and needs of the reader. We made the prototyping of the interfaces with the tool Balsamiq Mockups, taking as references the different interfaces of the pages of the newspapers Gestión, El Comercio and La República. And during the implementation we used Wordpress and its respective plugins that helped to realize what was requested. After conducting the survey and reviewing the opinions of employees and potential readers, the digital newspaper was validated with an approval of 77.12% (average of the 5 indicators of the independent variable) and the implementation of digital sales with an approval of 64.25% (average of the 2 indicators of the dependent variable). Demonstrating the development of a digital newspaper under subscription using 3D Flipbook of WordPress CMS allows to implement the digital sale of the newspaper La Industria de Trujillo, 2022Tesi

Myocardial aging as a T-cell–mediated phenomenon

In recent years, the myocardium has been rediscovered under the lenses of immunology, and lymphocytes have been implicated in the pathogenesis of cardiomyopathies with different etiologies. Aging is an important risk factor for heart diseases, and it also has impact on the immune system. Thus, we sought to determine whether immunological activity would influence myocardial structure and function in elderly mice. Morphological, functional, and molecular analyses revealed that the age-related myocardial impairment occurs in parallel with shifts in the composition of tissue-resident leukocytes and with an accumulation of activated CD4+ Foxp3- (forkhead box P3) IFN-γ+ T cells in the heart-draining lymph nodes. A comprehensive characterization of different aged immune-deficient mouse strains revealed that T cells significantly contribute to age-related myocardial inflammation and functional decline. Upon adoptive cell transfer, the T cells isolated from the mediastinal lymph node (med-LN) of aged animals exhibited increased cardiotropism, compared with cells purified from young donors or from other irrelevant sites. Nevertheless, these cells caused rather mild effects on cardiac functionality, indicating that myocardial aging might stem from a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic (immunological) factors. Taken together, the data herein presented indicate that heart-directed immune responses may spontaneously arise in the elderly, even in the absence of a clear tissue damage or concomitant infection. These observations might shed new light on the emerging role of T cells in myocardial diseases, which primarily affect the elderly population.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

They Be Taggin, Don\u27t They?: The Acquisition of Invariant Be

Does African-American English (AAE) have a separate grammar from Standard American English (SAE)? AAE has a number of distinctive features, several of which have been discussed extensively in the sociolinguistic literature: the variable use of third-person singular -s; the absence of plura -s; the variable use of copula; and others. (See Labov, 1966, 1969a, b, and Fasold, 1972 for discussion.) Perhaps the most distinctive feature of AAE is habitual or invariant be

How does water-reliant industry affect groundwater systems in coastal Kenya?

The industrialization process taking place in Africa has led to an overall increase in groundwater abstraction in most countries in the continent. However, the lack of hydrogeological data, as in many developing countries, makes it difficult to properly manage groundwater systems. This study presents a real case study in which a combination of different hydrogeological tools together with different sources of information allow the assessment of how increased competition for water may be affecting groundwater systems by analysing the sustainability of new abstraction regimes under different real climatic condition (before, during and after La Niña 2016). The area where this approach has been applied is Kwale County (in Coastal Kenya) in a hydrogeological context representative of an important part of the east coast of the continent, where new mining and agriculture activities co-exist with tourism and local communities. The results show that the lack of aquifer systems data can be overcome, at least partly, by integrating different sources of information. Most of the time, water-reliant users collect specific hydrogeological information that can contribute to defining the overall hydrogeological system, since their own main purpose is to exploit the aquifer with the maximum productivity. Therefore, local community water usage, together with different stakeholder's knowledge and good corporate water management act as a catalyst for providing critical data, and allows the generation of credible models for future groundwater management and resource allocation. Furthermore, complementary but simple information sources such as in situ interviews, Google Earth, Trip Advisor and easy-to use analytical methods that can be applied in the African context as in many developing countries, and enables groundwater abstraction to be estimated and the sustainability of the aquifer system to be defined, allowing potential future risks to be assessed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Spatio-temporal dynamics and aetiology of proliferative leg skin lesions in wild British finches

Proliferative leg skin lesions have been described in wild finches in Europe although there have been no large-scale studies of their aetiology or epizootiology to date. Firstly, disease surveillance, utilising public reporting of observations of live wild finches was conducted in Great Britain (GB) and showed proliferative leg skin lesions in chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs) to be widespread. Seasonal variation was observed, with a peak during the winter months. Secondly, pathological investigations were performed on a sample of 39 chaffinches, four bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrhula), one greenfinch (Chloris chloris) and one goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) with proliferative leg skin lesions and detected Cnemidocoptes sp. mites in 91% (41/45) of affected finches and from all species examined. Fringilla coelebs papillomavirus (FcPV1) PCR was positive in 74% (23/31) of birds tested: a 394 base pair sequence was derived from 20 of these birds, from all examined species, with 100% identity to reference genomes. Both mites and FcPV1 DNA were detected in 71% (20/28) of birds tested for both pathogens. Histopathological examination of lesions did not discriminate the relative importance of mite or FcPV1 infection as their cause. Development of techniques to localise FcPV1 within lesions is required to elucidate the pathological significance of FcPV1 DNA detection.We thank the members of the public and BTO Garden BirdWatch participants who reported garden bird morbidity and mortality incidents and our colleagues, Katie Beckmann, Shaheed Macgregor, Ricardo Castro Cesar de Sa, Lydia Franklinos and Tim Hopkins from the Zoological Society of London; Kirsi Peck from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; BTO staff members in the Garden BirdWatch team; the staff at Abbey Veterinary Services and the Animal & Plant Health Agency (Daniel Hicks, Richard Irvine, Alejandro Núñez and Scott Reid) for their assistance with this investigation. This work was financially supported by the following organisations; Birdcare Standards Association, British Trust for Ornithology, British Veterinary Association Animal Welfare Foundation, CJ Wildbird Foods, Cranswick Pet Products, UK Department for the Environment Food & Rural Affairs and Welsh Government through the Animal & Plant Health Agency’s Diseases of Wildlife Scheme Scanning Surveillance Programme (Project ED1600), Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Gardman Ltd, Institute of Zoology, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare. RAJW was supported by the Moncloa of Excellence PICATA programme and Crafoord Foundation Sweden (grant number 20160971). Molecular and sequencing costs were funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, (Ref: CGL2013-41642-P/BOS)

The XMM-Newton wide angle survey (XWAS): the X-ray spectrum of type-1 AGN

Aims. We discuss the broad band X-ray properties of one of the largest samples of X-ray selected type-1 AGN to date (487 objects in total), drawn from the XMM-Newton Wide Angle Survey (XWAS). The objects presented in this work cover 2−10 keV (rest-frame) luminosities from ∼1042−1045 erg s−1 and are detected up to redshift ∼4. We constrain the overall properties of the broad band continuum, soft excess and X-ray absorption, along with their dependence on the X-ray luminosity and redshift.We discuss the implications for models of AGN emission. Methods. We fitted the observed 0.2−12 keV broad band spectra with various models to search for X-ray absorption and soft excess. The F-test was used with a significance threshold of 99% to statistically accept the detection of additional spectral components. Results. We constrained the mean spectral index of the broad band X-ray continuum to (Γ) = 1.96 ± 0.02 with intrinsic dispersion σ(Γ) = 0.27+0.01 −0.02. The continuum becomes harder at faint fluxes and at higher redshifts and hard (2−10 keV) luminosities. The dependence of Γ with flux is likely due to undetected absorption rather than to spectral variation. We found a strong dependence of the detection efficiency of objects on the spectral shape. We expect this effect to have an impact on the measured mean continuum shapes of sources at different redshifts and luminosities. We detected excess absorption in >∼3% of our objects, with rest-frame column densities ∼a few ×1022 cm−2. The apparent mismatch between the optical classification and X-ray properties of these objects is a challenge for the standard orientation-based AGN unification model. We found that the fraction of objects with detected soft excess is ∼36%. Using a thermal model, we constrained the soft excess mean rest-frame temperature and intrinsic dispersion to kT ∼ 100 eV and σkT ∼ 34 eV. The origin of the soft excess as thermal emission from the accretion disk or Compton scattered disk emission is ruled out on the basis of the temperatures detected and the lack of correlation of the soft excess temperature with the hard X-ray luminosity over more than 2 orders of magnitude in luminosity. Furthermore, the high luminosities of the soft excess rule out an origin in the host galaxy.We acknowledge Chris Done, Bozena Czerny, Gordon Stewart, Pilar Esquej and Ken Pounds for useful comments. We acknowledge the anonymous referee for a careful reading of the manuscript and for comments that improved the paper. S.M., M.W. and J.A.T. acknowledge support from the UK STFC research council. F.J.C. acknowledges financial support for this work from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia under project ESP2006-13608-C02-01. A.C. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia fellowship and also from the MIUR and The Italian Space Agency (ASI) grants PRIN-MUR 2006-02-5203 and No. I/088/06/0. M.K. acknowledges support from the NASA grant NNX08AX50G and NNX07AG02G

The valence-fluctuating ground state of plutonium

A central issue in material science is to obtain understanding of the electronic correlations that control complex materials. Such electronic correlations frequently arise because of the competition of localized and itinerant electronic degrees of freedom. Although the respective limits of well-localized or entirely itinerant ground states are well understood, the intermediate regime that controls the functional properties of complex materials continues to challenge theoretical understanding. We have used neutron spectroscopy to investigate plutonium, which is a prototypical material at the brink between bonding and nonbonding configurations. Our study reveals that the ground state of plutonium is governed by valence fluctuations, that is, a quantum mechanical superposition of localized and itinerant electronic configurations as recently predicted by dynamical mean field theory. Our results not only resolve the long-standing controversy between experiment and theory on plutonium’s magnetism but also suggest an improved understanding of the effects of such electronic dichotomy in complex materials.JRC.E.6-Actinide researc