Machining Fixture Design for Multi-Feature Weldment

Current fixture for machining an OEM weldment is lacking robustness and ease of use. An improved machining fixture for use in a horizontal machining center is desired

Newberg Car Camping Initiative

The Newberg housing market is experiencing the effects of a rapidly growing population on a relatively static housing stock. As competition for a limited supply of housing increases, low- and moderate-income households face the choice of absorbing rising housing costs or being priced out of their homes. This pressure has shown to result in increased rates of housing instability and houselessness in comparable communities across the state. Concerns around housing affordability prompted the Newberg City Council to adopt a 5-Year Housing Work Program in 2020. The 5-Year Housing Work Program consists of 49 housing-related directives intended to address a variety of housing needs in the community, including the needs of the unhoused community in Newberg. One particular item included in the 5-Year Housing Work Program pertains to “car camping,” or living unsheltered in a vehicle. This item originated with faith-based organizations inquiring about using their parking lots as spaces for unhoused individuals, groups, and/or families to car camp overnight

Machining Fixture Redesign

Current fixture for machining an OEM part is lacking robustness and ease of use. Our team has been chosen to develop an improved machining fixture for use in a horizontal machining center. Our client is Quality Manufacturing in Urbandale, Iowa. QMC serves OEM manufacturers with high tolerance parts that range in a variety of sizes. Fixture lacks repeatability and ease of use for operators

Improving care for people with dementia: development and initial feasibility study for evaluation of life story work in dementia care

Background: Improving dementia care quality is an urgent priority nationally and internationally. Life story work (LSW) is an intervention that aims to improve individual outcomes and care for people with dementia and their carers. LSW gathers information and artefacts about the person, their history and interests, and produces a tangible output: the ‘life story’. Objective: To establish whether or not full evaluation of LSW was feasible. Design: Mixed-methods feasibility study. Methods: In-depth interviews and focus groups explored experiences of LSW and best practice with people with dementia, family members and dementia care staff. A systematic review explored best practice and theories of change for LSW. These stages helped to identify the outcomes and resources to explore in the feasibility study. A representative sample survey of health and social care dementia care providers in England established LSW practice in different settings. A survey of a self-selected sample of family members of people with dementia explored how LSW is experienced. Two small outcome studies (stepped-wedge study in six care homes and pre-test post-test study in inpatient specialist dementia care wards) explored the feasibility of full evaluation of LSW in these settings. Settings: Survey: generalist and specialist care homes; NHS dementia care settings; and community dementia services. Feasibility study: care homes and NHS inpatient dementia care wards. Participants: NHS and social care services, people with dementia, family carers, care home staff and NHS staff. Interventions: LSW. Main outcome measures: Spread of LSW and good practice, quality of life (QoL) for the person with dementia and carers, relationships between people with dementia and family carers, staff attitudes about dementia, staff burnout, resource use and costs. Review methods: Narrative review and synthesis, following Centre for Review and Dissemination guidelines. Results: Good practice in LSW is identifiable, as are theories of change about how it might affect given outcomes. Indicators of best practice were produced. LSW is spreading but practice and use vary between care settings and are not always in line with identified good practice. Two different models of LSW are evident; these are likely to be appropriate at different stages of the dementia journey. The feasibility study showed some positive changes in staff attitudes towards dementia and, for some people with dementia, improvements in QoL. These may be attributable to LSW but these potential benefits require full evaluation. The feasibility work established the likely costs of LSW and highlighted the challenges of future evaluation in care homes and inpatient dementia care settings. Limitations: There was insufficient evidence in the literature to allow estimation of outcome size. We did not carry out planned Markov chain modelling to inform decisions about carrying out future evaluation because of the dearth of outcome data in the literature; low levels of data return for people with dementia in the hospital settings; lack of detected effect for most people with dementia; and questions about implementation in the research settings. Conclusions: LSW is used across different health and social care settings in England, but in different ways, not all of which reflect ‘good practice’. This large, complex study identified a wide range of challenges for future research, but also the possibility that LSW may help to improve care staff attitudes towards dementia and QoL for some people with dementia. Future work: Full evaluation of LSW as an intervention to improve staff attitudes and care is feasible with researchers based in or very close to care settings to ensure high-quality data collection. Funding: The National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme. Keywords

Effect of HER2 Expression on NUPL2 Protein in Cervical Cancer Cells

Recurring cervical cancer patients frequently present overexpressed Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER2) protein, which promotes the growth of the cancer. Some HER2-expressing cells and cervical cancer patients have enhanced gene expression of Nucleoporin-like 2 (NUPL2). As part of the nuclear pore complex, the NUPL2 protein serves to selectively export substances from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. In this experiment, HER2 was expressed in cervical cancer cells to examine its effect on NUPL2 protein expression and localization. Interestingly, there was no difference in NUPL2 protein levels between HER2-expressing and non-expressing cells. Importantly, consistent instances of NUPL2 protein localization specific to the nucleus occurred in a large sampling of HER2-expressing cells. This is significant because it suggests a mechanism as to how HER2 promotes excessive cell growth, via changes in NUPL2 localization, potentially impacting its function and ability to selectively export substances that modulate cell growth

Effects of Patient Aggression on Pediatric Healthcare Workers

Healthcare workers are injured at high rates, even those who work in pediatric settings. The source of these injuries may be overexertion, slips/trips/falls, or needle sticks, but one source of injuries that has not been studied as extensively is patient aggression. Our study looked at possible effects of experiencing “patient behavioral events” (or PBEs), which are defined as physical aggression toward an employee, whether or not there was an intention to harm. Surveys of employees at three children’s hospitals across the U.S. showed that increased frequency of PBEs is associated with decreased well-being and worse job/organization attitudes. One key finding from this study is that the same negative effects were shown when the frequency of witnessing or hearing about PBEs was higher, which suggests that one need not be the target of the aggression to experience negative effects. If this causal path holds in future research, it would mean that PBEs have ripple effects in the unit, beyond just the person who is targeted by the patient aggression. Ongoing data analyses will examine whether there are any mitigating factors that might reduce the harm caused by PBEs

Optimal Conservation of Migratory Species

Background. Migratory animals comprise a significant portion of biodiversity worldwide with annual investment for their conservation exceeding several billion dollars. Designing effective conservation plans presents enormous challenges. Migratory species are influenced by multiple events across land and sea-regions that are often separated by thousands of kilometres and span international borders. To date, conservation strategies for migratory species fail to take into account how migratory animals are spatially connected between different periods of the annual cycle (i.e. migratory connectivity) bringing into question the utility and efficiency of current conservation efforts. Methodology/Principal Findings. Here, we report the first framework for determining an optimal conservation strategy for a migratory species. Employing a decision theoretic approach using dynamic optimization, we address the problem of how to allocate resources for habitat conservation for a Neotropical-Nearctic migratory bird, the American redstart Setophaga ruticilla, whose winter habitat is under threat. Our first conservation strategy used the acquisition of winter habitat based on land cost, relative bird density, and the rate of habitat loss to maximize the abundance of birds on the wintering grounds. Our second strategy maximized bird abundance across the entire range of the species by adding the constraint of maintaining a minimum percentage of birds within each breeding region in North America using information on migratory connectivity as estimated from stable-hydrogen isotopes in feathers. We show that failure to take into account migratory connectivity may doom some regional populations to extinction, whereas including information on migratory connectivity results in the protection of the species across its entire range. Conclusions/Significance. We demonstrate that conservation strategies for migratory animals depend critically upon two factors: knowledge of migratory connectivity and the correct statement of the conservation problem. Our framework can be used to identify efficient conservation strategies for migratory taxa worldwide, including insects, birds, mammals, and marine organisms

Gentrification drives patterns of alpha and beta diversity in cities.

While there is increasing recognition that social processes in cities like gentrification have ecological consequences, we lack nuanced understanding of the ways gentrification affects urban biodiversity. We analyzed a large camera trap dataset of mammals (>500 g) to evaluate how gentrification impacts species richness and community composition across 23 US cities. After controlling for the negative effect of impervious cover, gentrified parts of cities had the highest mammal species richness. Change in community composition was associated with gentrification in a few cities, which were mostly located along the West Coast. At the species level, roughly half (11 of 21 mammals) had higher occupancy in gentrified parts of a city, especially when impervious cover was low. Our results indicate that the impacts of gentrification extend to nonhuman animals, which provides further evidence that some aspects of nature in cities, such as wildlife, are chronically inaccessible to marginalized human populations

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data