Learn by Doing: A Model for Incorporating High-Impact Experiential Learning Into an Undergraduate Public Health Curriculum

Many accredited schools and programs of public health integrate experiential learning into the capstone experience for undergraduate public health majors; thus, the experiential learning capstone must be both cumulative and integrative. A goal of experiential learning is to foster the application of concepts and skills learned in the classroom to real-world public health situations. Students may benefit from earlier opportunities to engage in high-impact experiential learning activities. Therefore, the University of Iowa College of Public Health developed an experiential learning requirement that is separate from the capstone course. Our students' experiential learning activities do not need to be cumulative across the entire curriculum, but they should be integrative. Public health undergraduate students at the University of Iowa must successfully complete at least one of the following experiences in public health: research, internship, service learning, or global learning. This article will provide a model for the creation of an experiential learning program for undergraduate public health students that is separate from the culminating, capstone experience

The pursuit of isotopic and molecular fire tracers in the polar atmosphere and cryosphere

We present an overview of recent multidisciplinary, multi-institutional efforts to identify and date major sources of combustion aerosol in the current and paleoatmospheres. The work was stimulated, in part, by an atmospheric particle \u27sample of opportunity\u27 collected at Summit, Greenland in August 1994, that bore the 14C imprint of biomass burning. During the summer field seasons of 1995 and 1996, we collected air filter, surface snow and snowpit samples to investigate chemical and isotopic evidence of combustion particles that had been transported from distant fires. Among the chemical tracers employed for source identification are organic acids, potassium and ammonium ions, and elemental and organic components of carbonaceous particles. Ion chromatography, performed by members of the Climate Change Research Center (University of New Hampshire), has been especially valuable in indicating periods at Summit that were likely to have been affected by the long range transport of biomass burning aerosol. Univariate and multivariate patterns of the ion concentrations in the snow and ice pinpointed surface and snowpit samples for the direct analysis of particulate (soot) carbon and carbon isotopes. The research at NIST is focusing on graphitic and polycyclic aromatic carbon, which serve as almost certain indicators of fire, and measurements of carbon isotopes, especially 14C, to distinguish fossil and biomass combustion sources. Complementing the chemical and isotopic record, are direct \u27visual\u27 (satellite imagery) records and less direct backtrajectory records, to indicate geographic source regions and transport paths. In this paper we illustrate the unique way in which the synthesis of the chemical, isotopic, satellite and trajectory data enhances our ability to develop the recent history of the formation and transport of soot deposited in the polar snow and ice

Transient study of the oxygen reduction reaction on reduced Pt and Pt alloys microelectrodes: evidence for the reduction of pre-adsorbed oxygen species linked to dissolved oxygen

Using chronoamperometry at preconditioned oxide-free Pt microdisc electrodes in aqueous media, we investigated the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on the millisecond timescale and obtained results consistent with the reduction of oxygen species which adsorb on the electrode before the ORR is electrochemically driven. Furthermore these adsorbed species are clearly linked to oxygen in solution. At long times, the amperometric response is solely controlled by the diffusion of dissolved oxygen towards the microelectrode. However, at short times, typically below 50 ms, the reduction of pre-adsorbed oxygen produces a large extra current whose magnitude depends on the oxygen concentration in solution, deliberate electrode poisoning and the rest time before the potential step. Using sampled current voltammetry we show that this extra current affects the entire potential range of the ORR. Using microdisc electrodes made with Pt alloys we find that the amperometric response is sufficiently sensitive to distinguish oxygen coverage differences between Pt, Pt0.9Rh0.1 and Pt0.9Ir0.1 microdiscs. These unexpected and, to our knowledge, never previously reported results provide new insight into the oxygen reduction reaction on Pt. The existence over a wide potential range of irreversibly adsorbed oxygen species arising from dissolved oxygen and different from Pt oxide is particularly relevant to the development of oxygen reduction catalysts for low temperature fuel cells

A critical evaluation of interlaboratory data on total, elemental, and isotopic carbon in the carbonaceous particle reference material, NIST SRM 1649a

Because of increased interest in the marine and atmospheric sciences in elemental carbon (EC), or black carbon (BC) or soot carbon (SC), and because of the difficulties in analyzing or even defining this pervasive component of particulate carbon, it has become quite important to have appropriate reference materials for intercomparison and quality control. The NIST "urban dust" Standard Reference Material? SRM 1649a is useful in this respect, in part because it comprises a considerable array of inorganic and organic species, and because it exhibits a large degree of (14C) isotopic heterogeneity, with biomass carbon source contributions ranging from about 2 % (essentially fossil aliphatic fraction) to about 32 % (polar fraction). A primary purpose of this report is to provide documentation for the new isotopic and chemical particulate carbon data for the most recent (31 Jan. 2001) SRM 1649a Certificate of Analysis. Supporting this is a critical review of underlying international intercomparison data and methodologies, provided by 18 teams of analytical experts from 11 institutions. Key results of the intercomparison are: (1) a new, Certified Value for total carbon (TC) in SRM 1649a; (2) 14C Reference Values for total carbon and a number of organic species, including for the first time 8 individual PAHs; and (3) elemental carbon (EC) Information Values derived from 13 analytical methods applied to this component. Results for elemental carbon, which comprised a special focus of the intercomparison, were quite diverse, reflecting the confounding of methodological-matrix artifacts, and methods that tended to probe more or less refractory regions of this universal, but ill-defined product of incomplete combustion. Availability of both chemical and 14C speciation data for SRM 1649a holds great promise for improved analytical insight through comparative analysis (e.g., fossil/ biomass partition in EC compared to PAH), and through application of the principle of isotopic mass balance.Carrie, L. A., Benner, B. A., Kessler, J. D., Klinedinst, D. B., Klouda, G. A., Marolf, J. V., . . . Schmid, H. (2002). A Critical Evaluation of Interlaboratory Data on Total, Elemental, and Isotopic Carbon in the Carbonaceous Particle Reference Material, NIST SRM 1649a. Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 107(3), 279-298

Isotopic characterization of aerosol organic carbon components over the eastern United States

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 117 (2012): D13303, doi:10.1029/2011JD017153.Carbon isotopic signatures (δ13C, Δ14C) of aerosol particulate matter total organic carbon (TOC) and operationally defined organic carbon (OC) components were measured in samples from two background sites in the eastern U.S. TOC and water-soluble OC (WSOC) δ13C values (−27 to −24‰) indicated predominantly terrestrial C3 plant and fossil derived sources. Total solvent extracts (TSE) and their aliphatic, aromatic, and polar OC components were depleted in δ13C (−30 to −26‰) relative to TOC and WSOC. Δ14C signatures of aerosol TOC and TSE (−476 to +25‰) suggest variable fossil contributions (~5–50%) to these components. Aliphatic OC while comprising a small portion of the TOC (<1%), was dominated by fossil-derived carbon (86 ± 3%), indicating its potential utility as a tracer for fossil aerosol OC inputs. In contrast, aromatic OC contributions (<1.5%) contained approximately equal portions contemporary (52 ± 8%) and fossil (48 ± 8%) OC. The quantitatively significant polar OC fraction (6–25% of TOC) had fossil contributions (30 ± 12%) similar to TOC (26 ± 7%) and TSE (28 ± 9%). Thus, much of both of the fossil and contemporary OC is deduced to be oxidized, polar material. Aerosol WSOC consistently showed low fossil content (<8%) relative to the TOC (5–50%) indicating that the majority of fossil OC in aerosol particulates is insoluble. Therefore, on the basis of solubility and polarity, aerosols are predicted to partition differently once deposited to watersheds, and these chemically distinct components are predicted to contribute in quantitatively and qualitatively different ways to watershed carbon biogeochemistry and cycling.ASW was partially supported by a Graduate Fellowship from the Hudson River Foundation during the course of this study. Additional funding for this work came from a NOSAMS student internship award, a fellowship award from Sun Trust Bank administered through the VIMS Foundation, a student research grant from VIMS, and the following NSF awards: DEB Ecosystems grant DEB-0234533, Chemical Oceanography grant OCE-0327423, and Integrated Carbon Cycle Research Program grant EAR-0403949 to JEB; and Chemical Oceanography grant OCE-0727575 to RMD and JEB.2013-01-0