Honors Recital Presentation

The purpose of this project was rooted in the belief that the reception of a piece of music can be altered or enhanced when the audience is given a compelling historical or cultural background of each composition. With sometimes hundreds of years between the audience members and the composers, to deliver an emotionally stirring and relevant performance to a modern audience is an incredible feat. In the spirit of making my senior violin recital more accessible and entertaining to my own audience, I devoted my Honors project to gathering information on the philosophies, personalities, successes and tragedies of each of the composers on my recital program. I presented my findings in a series of readings before each performance. My hope was that these presentations served to bridge the gap between these great musical thinkers and my audience members. Gathering information on their philosophies, personalities, successes and tragedies, it was my hope that these readings would help the audience feel more of the emotion that I feel when I play

Relationships between characteristics of beef producers, their production operations and their use of management practices and the number of contacts they had with extension

The major purpose of this survey study was to determine the relationship between characteristics of beef producers, their production operation, their use of recommended beef production practices and the number of contacts they had with the Agricultural Extension Service. Another purpose of the study was to determine the relationships between beef producers\u27 participation in the Tennessee Beef Cattle Improvement Program and the number of Extension contacts, and the use of recommended practices the TBCIP producers had with Extension. Data were obtained through personal interviews with 1047 beef producers located in 58 Tennessee counties. The 1977 Beef Cow-Calf Producer Survey was used to collect data from the beef producers. Extension agents used the nth number technique on their beef mailing list to identify producers to be surveyed and interviews were conducted in 1977. Producers interviewed had 15 or more beef females (12-15 months of age or older) in their herd the previous year to the survey. Information was obtained about their general production characteristics, their use of recommended beef production practices and the number of contacts they had with Extension Agents over a 12-month period. Data were coded and punched on computer cards and computations were made by The University of Tennessee Computing Center. The analysis of variance F test and chi square were used to determine probability levels and the strength of the relationship between dependent and independent variables. F values and chi square values which achieved the .05 probability level were accepted as significant. Major findings included the following: 1. Almost 50 percent of the beef producers in Tennessee were part-time operators and about 50 percent receive their major source of income from the farm. 2. The average age of beef producers was 51 years of age, had 48 breeding cows in the herd, fanned 130 acres of pasture, weaned 44 calves and used two herd bulls. 3. The majority of beef producers were following 13 of the 24 recommended beef production practices studied. 4. The average number of contacts producers had per year with Extension agents was 16.7. Beef producers averaged attending 2.8 Extension meetings, 1.1 Beef Extension meetings, 4.0 visits to the Extension office, 5.5 telephone calls to Extension, and 3.5 farm visits by Extension agents. 5. The number of farm visits producers received from Extension agents related to the farm status (part-time versus full-time) and the producers\u27 major source of income (farm versus non-farm). 6. There was a significant relationship between the use of 13 recommended beef production practices by beef producers and the total number of contacts producers had per year with Extension agents. 7. There was a significant relationship between the producers\u27 use of 15 recommended beef production practices and their participation in the Tennessee Beef Cattle Improvement Program. 8. There was a significant relationship between participation in the TBCIP and the number of beef Extension meetings attended, the number of office visits, the number of telephone calls and the number of farm visits. Also there was a significant relationship between the total number of contacts beef producers had with Extension agents and their participation in the Tennessee Beef Cattle Improvement Program

Multi-physics ensemble snow modelling in the western Himalaya

Combining multiple data sources with multi-physics simulation frameworks offers new potential to extend snow model inter-comparison efforts to the Himalaya. As such, this study evaluates the sensitivity of simulated regional snow cover and runoff dynamics to different snowpack process representations. The evaluation is based on a spatially distributed version of the Factorial Snowpack Model (FSM) set up for the Astore catchment in the upper Indus basin. The FSM multi-physics model was driven by climate fields from the High Asia Refined Analysis (HAR) dynamical downscaling product. Ensemble performance was evaluated primarily using MODIS remote sensing of snow-covered area, albedo and land surface temperature. In line with previous snow model inter-comparisons, no single FSM configuration performs best in all of the years simulated. However, the results demonstrate that performance variation in this case is at least partly related to inaccuracies in the sequencing of inter-annual variation in HAR climate inputs, not just FSM model limitations. Ensemble spread is dominated by interactions between parameterisations of albedo, snowpack hydrology and atmospheric stability effects on turbulent heat fluxes. The resulting ensemble structure is similar in different years, which leads to systematic divergence in ablation and mass balance at high elevations. While ensemble spread and errors are notably lower when viewed as anomalies, FSM configurations show important differences in their absolute sensitivity to climate variation. Comparison with observations suggests that a subset of the ensemble should be retained for climate change projections, namely those members including prognostic albedo and liquid water retention, refreezing and drainage processes

Incidence of Acute Kidney Injury among Patients Treated with Piperacillin-Tazobactam or Meropenem in Combination with Vancomycin

Acute kidney injury (AKI) increases during empirical antimicrobial therapy with the combination of piperacillin-tazobactam (TZP) and vancomycin (VAN) compared to the number of incidences with monotherapy or the combination of cefepime and VAN. Limited data regarding the impact of meropenem (MEM) combined with VAN exist. This study examined the AKI incidence among patients treated with MEM plus VAN (MEM+VAN) or TZP+VAN. Data were collected from the University of Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science Enterprise Data Trust from September 2007 through October 2015. Adults without previous renal disease who received MEM+VAN or TZP+VAN for at least 2 days were included. AKI was assessed using risk, injury, failure, loss, and end-stage (RIFLE) criteria. Inverse probability of treatment weighting was utilized to control for differences between groups. In total, 10,236 patients met inclusion criteria, with 9,898 receiving TZP+VAN and 338 receiving MEM+VAN. AKI occurred in 15.4% of MEM+VAN patients and in 27.4% of TZP+VAN patients (P \u3c 0.001). TZP+VAN was associated with increased AKI compared to the level with MEM+VAN (odds ratio [OR], 2.53; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.82 to 3.52), after controlling for confounders. Use of MEM+VAN should be considered an appropriate alternative therapy to TZP+VAN if nephrotoxicity is a major concern. The results of this study demonstrate that judicial use of TZP+VAN for empirical coverage of infection is needed

Testing the transferability of a coarse-grained model to intrinsically disordered proteins

The intermediate-resolution coarse-grained protein model PLUM [T. Bereau and M. Deserno, J. Chem. Phys., 2009, 130, 235106] is used to simulate small systems of intrinsically disordered proteins involved in biomineralisation. With minor adjustments to reduce bias toward stable secondary structure, the model generates conformational ensembles conforming to structural predictions from atomistic simulation. Without additional structural information as input, the model distinguishes regions of the chain by predicted degree of disorder, manifestation of structure, and involvement in chain dimerisation. The model is also able to distinguish dimerisation behaviour between one intrinsically disordered peptide and a closely related mutant. We contrast this against the poor ability of PLUM to model the S1 quartz-binding peptide

Risk and promotive effects in the explanation of persistent serious delinquency in boys

Risk and promotive effects were investigated as predictors of persistent serious delinquency in male participants of the Pittsburgh Youth Study (R. Loeber, D. P. Farrington, M. Stouthamer-Loeber, & W. B. van Kammen, 1998), living in different neighborhoods. Participants were studied over ages 13–19 years for the oldest sample and 7–13 years for the youngest sample. Risk and promotive effects were studied in 6 domains: child behavior, child attitudes, school and leisure activities, peer behaviors, family functioning, and demographics. Regression models improved when promotive effects were included with risk effects in predicting persistent serious delinquency. Disadvantaged neighborhoods, compared with better neighborhoods, had a higher prevalence of risk effects and a lower prevalence of promotive effects. However, predictive relations between risk and promotive effects and persistent serious delinquency were linear and similar across neighborhood socioeconomic status. Although advances have been made in the study of predictors of serious delinquency (Hawkins et al., 1998; Lipsey & Derzon, 1998), little is known about predictors of persistent serious offend-ing, which from a societal point of view is of particular concern. Most youth commit some delinquent acts in childhood or adoles

The impact of UK soft drinks industry levy on manufacturers’ domestic turnover

In March 2016, the UK government announced the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) which came into effect in April 2018. In common with the reaction to sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes in other countries, the SDIL announcement was met with strong industry opposition, with claims that it would harm their profits. The SDIL was designed to incentivise reformulation of SSBs by providing a 2-year delay between the announcement and the enforcement of the levy, and adopting a two-tiered rate based on the sugar content of the drinks. Using interrupted time series analysis, this paper examines how the domestic turnover of UK soft drinks manufacturers changed after the announcement and the implementation of the SDIL. Our results show some evidence of a short-term negative impact of the SDIL announcement on the domestic turnover of the UK soft drinks manufacturers. This effect, however, did not continue post-implementation. These findings suggest that manufacturers were, to a large extent, able to mitigate the effects of levy before it came into effect