Inspector District Management Process Flow Study, Harford County Department of Inspections, Licenses, and Permits

Final project for INFM736: Information Management Capstone (Fall 2018). University of Maryland, College Park.The Department of Inspections, Licenses, and Permits (ILP) in Harford County, Maryland works to create streamlined and efficient processes for inspections, licenses, and permits for the construction in the county. The inspections vary depending on the geo-location of the building, the type of construction, and its size. The ILP inspectors are certified experts, each specializing in a specific type of construction. Currently, assigning inspections to ILP inspectors is done manually, based on the location of the inspection request and the type of skill required. However, an increasing number of inspection requests, rapid development in the county, and the complexity of resources to be managed, the manual process of assigning inspections is becoming cumbersome and inefficient. Without a system to prioritize inspections, inspectors spend time traveling to different sites and allocating time toward inspections that may not be as important. This project’s objective is to redesign the process flow for administrators and ILP inspectors to help manage the inspections with minimal overhead. The project approach is to first study the existing process to understand the roles and responsibilities of each individual and the system, and how they collaborate. Based on that knowledge, a new process flow will be designed to optimize the process of inspection management.Harford Count

Predicting Escherichia coli's chemotactic drift under exponential gradient

Bacterial species are known to show chemotaxis, i.e., the directed motions in the presence of certain chemicals, whereas the motion is random in the absence of those chemicals. The bacteria modulate their run time to induce chemotactic drift towards the attractant chemicals and away from the repellent chemicals. However, the existing theoretical knowledge does not exhibit a proper match with experimental validation, and hence there is a need for developing alternate models and validating experimentally. In this paper a more robust theoretical model is proposed to investigate chemotactic drift of peritrichous Escherichia coli under an exponential nutrient gradient. An exponential gradient is used to understand the steady state behavior of drift because of the logarithmic functionality of the chemosensory receptors. Our theoretical estimations are validated through the experimentation and simulation results. Thus, the developed model successfully delineates the run time, run trajectory, and drift velocity as measured from the experiments

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Moving interfaces as agents of conformational change in rod-like macromolecules

Application of force to individual rod-like macromolecules can cause structural transformations. We address the occurrence of such transformations in a class of molecules called coiled-coils, and in DNA. These transitions are characterized by a distinctive force-extension curve, and by the existence of two or more metastable structural states. We propose that the structural transition occurs via the motion of a folded/unfolded interface or phase boundary along the length of the molecule. The interface separates these two metastable states and its mechanics are governed by the Abeyaratne-Knowles theory of phase transitions. The mobility of the phase boundary is determined using a kinetic relation and the second law of thermodynamics. We replicate, using relevant parameters, several different boundary conditions and solution conditions used in single molecule experiments. We derive an expression for the thermodynamic driving force across the interface and also show that the process is reversible in the chosen regime. We use a finite difference computational scheme that is capable of tracking moving phase boundaries. We show how a variety of experimentally observed force-extension behaviors can be reproduced within a common theoretical framework. By choosing an appropriate kinetic relation for the unfolding conditions and the macromolecule under consideration, we have been able to model unfolding processes in a number of molecules. Connections are made with several existing theories, experiments and simulation studies, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the phase transitions-based approach in a biological setup. Finally, we study the consequences of molecular unfolding on the networks of rod-like macromolecules. We focus on the evolution of the angular distribution of fibers under the application of varying force. We present a method that is capable of tracking the motion and properties of individual fibers while they are undergoing unfolding. We discuss a modification to the affine deformation assumption and also show that experimental results for evolution of network order parameter can be recreated using a simple excluded volume formulation, thereby demonstrating the effective coupling of constitutive laws for individual molecules and empirical constraints on the entire volume under consideration

Moving interfaces as agents of conformational change in rod-like macromolecules

Application of force to individual rod-like macromolecules can cause structural transformations. We address the occurrence of such transformations in a class of molecules called coiled-coils, and in DNA. These transitions are characterized by a distinctive force-extension curve, and by the existence of two or more metastable structural states. We propose that the structural transition occurs via the motion of a folded/unfolded interface or phase boundary along the length of the molecule. The interface separates these two metastable states and its mechanics are governed by the Abeyaratne-Knowles theory of phase transitions. The mobility of the phase boundary is determined using a kinetic relation and the second law of thermodynamics. We replicate, using relevant parameters, several different boundary conditions and solution conditions used in single molecule experiments. We derive an expression for the thermodynamic driving force across the interface and also show that the process is reversible in the chosen regime. We use a finite difference computational scheme that is capable of tracking moving phase boundaries. We show how a variety of experimentally observed force-extension behaviors can be reproduced within a common theoretical framework. By choosing an appropriate kinetic relation for the unfolding conditions and the macromolecule under consideration, we have been able to model unfolding processes in a number of molecules. Connections are made with several existing theories, experiments and simulation studies, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the phase transitions-based approach in a biological setup. Finally, we study the consequences of molecular unfolding on the networks of rod-like macromolecules. We focus on the evolution of the angular distribution of fibers under the application of varying force. We present a method that is capable of tracking the motion and properties of individual fibers while they are undergoing unfolding. We discuss a modification to the affine deformation assumption and also show that experimental results for evolution of network order parameter can be recreated using a simple excluded volume formulation, thereby demonstrating the effective coupling of constitutive laws for individual molecules and empirical constraints on the entire volume under consideration

Moving interfaces in rod-like macromolecules

We present a model that describes mechanical unfolding behavior in rod-like macromolecules. We propose that the unfolding occurs via the motion of a folded/unfolded interface along the molecule. We predict the speed of this interface as a function of the pulling velocity such that the resulting force-extension curve replicates the overstretching transition typical of coiled coils and DNA. We model the molecules as one-dimensional continua capable of existing in two metastable states under an applied tension. The interface separates these two metastable states and represents a jump in stretch, which is related to the applied force by the worm-like chain relation. The Abeyaratne-Knowles theory of phase transitions in continua governs the mechanics of the interface

Analytical and Numerical Solutions for Shapes of Quiescent 2D

We describe an analytic method for the computation of equilibrium shapes for two-dimensional vesicles characterized by a Helfrich elastic energy. We derive boundary value problems and solve them analytically in terms of elliptic functions and elliptic integrals. We derive solutions by prescribing length and area, or displacements and angle boundary conditions. The solutions are compared to solutions obtained by a boundary integral equation-based numerical scheme. Our method enables the identification of different configurations of deformable vesicles and accurate calculation of their shape, bending moments, tension, and the pressure jump across the vesicle membrane. Furthermore, we perform numerical experiments that indicate that all these configurations are stable minima.