Hot Spot Analysis of Potential Sanitary Sewer Exfiltration in Crystal Creek Watershed

Crystal Creek in Davenport Iowa drains suburban and park areas before draining into Duck Creek, a tributary of the Mississippi River. Contact recreation is a designated use for all the streams. As a pilot project with the city of Davenport, Augustana College’s Upper Mississippi Center assessed this stream in the summer of 2021 to determine if relatively inexpensive monitoring tools could be used to assess possible sewage contamination in that stream. Running through multiple residential areas, sewer lines follow the studied region of the creek, leading to the hotspot focus that was conducted by student researchers. Fecal coliform, optical brighteners, conductivity, pH, dissolved oxygen, biological oxygen demand (BOD, phosphorous, nitrate, and ammonia were assessed in Crystal Creek. The study was conducted in a two-step process. First, on June 21, 2021, seven sites were identified for preliminary screening. Second, based on these results, 27 sites were identified for detailed sampling and analysis on 7/22/21. Water samples in this study were collected within the same six hours on days where there had not been precipitation for at least three days prior. Samples were tested on-site for dissolved oxygen, pH, and Conductivity. Water samples were collected at 14 of these sites and tested for BOD, ammonia, E. coli, fecal coliforms, and Optical brighteners. Any combination of decreased pH, increased ammonia or phosphate, decreased dissolved oxygen, increased BOD, conductivity, E. coli or coliforms, were considered potential contamination sites. Optical brighteners were dropped from the analysis due to high background fluorescence in all samples. One site, downstream of a place where the sanitary sewer line crosses the creek, showed a combination of reduced pH, increased ammonia, BOD, fecal coliforms, and to a lesser extent, reduced dissolved oxygen. A second upstream site showed a combination of high fecal coliforms and E.coli, increased BOD, a small dip in pH, and a small peak in ammonia. This is a reach where the sanitary sewer runs parallel to but near the creek. We recommended that the city use a combination of smoke and/or dye injection tests to confirm exfiltration in the identified reaches Furthermore, understanding the origin of these pollutants will allow local management to make necessary repairs to applicable sewage systems to better protect public health and recreational uses of such waters

Advancing Bridge Technology, Task 10: Statistical Analysis and Modeling of US Concrete Highway Bridge Deck Performance -- Internal Final Report

Concrete highway bridge deck repairs represent the highest expense associated with bridge maintenance cost. In order to optimize such activities and use the available monies effectively, a solid understanding of the parameters that affect the performance of concrete bridge decks is critical. The National Bridge Inventory (NBI), perhaps the single-most comprehensive source of bridge information, gathers data on more than 600,000 bridges in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Focusing on concrete highway bridge deck performance, this research developed a nationwide database based on NBI data and other critical parameters that were computed by the authors, referred to as the Nationwide Concrete Highway Bridge Deck Performance Inventory (NCBDPI) database. Additionally, two performance parameters were computed from the available concrete bridge deck condition ratings (CR): Time-in-condition rating (TICR) and deterioration rate (DR). Following the aggregation of all these parameters in the NCBDPI database, filtering, and processing were performed. In addition to a basic prescriptive analysis, two types of advanced analysis were applied to the new dataset. First, binary logistic regression was applied to a subset of the data consisting of the highest and lowest DR. Second, a Bayesian survival analysis was performed on the TICR considering censored data. Through the analyses it was possible to show which parameters influence deck performance and create tools that can help agencies and bridge owners make better decisions regarding concrete bridge deck preservation

Unraveling the electrochemical and spectroscopic properties of neutral and negatively charged perylene tetraethylesters

A detailed investigation of the energy levels of perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic tetraethylester as a representative compound for the whole family of perylene esters was performed. It was revealed via electrochemical measurements that one oxidation and two reductions take place. The bandgaps determined via the electrochemical approach are in good agreement with the optical bandgap obtained from the absorption spectra via a Tauc plot. In addition, absorption spectra in dependence of the electrochemical potential were the basis for extensive quantum-chemical calculations of the neutral, monoanionic, and dianionic molecules. For this purpose, calculations based on density functional theory were compared with post-Hartree–Fock methods and the CAM-B3LYP functional proved to be the most reliable choice for the calculation of absorption spectra. Furthermore, spectral features found experimentally could be reproduced with vibronic calculations and allowed to understand their origins. In particular, the two lowest energy absorption bands of the anion are not caused by absorption of two distinct electronic states, which might have been expected from vertical excitation calculations, but both states exhibit a strong vibronic progression resulting in contributions to both bands

GlnK Facilitates the Dynamic Regulation of Bacterial Nitrogen Assimilation

Ammonium assimilation in Escherichia coli is regulated by two paralogous proteins (GlnB and GlnK), which orchestrate interactions with regulators of gene expression, transport proteins, and metabolic pathways. Yet how they conjointly modulate the activity of glutamine synthetase, the key enzyme for nitrogen assimilation, is poorly understood. We combine experiments and theory to study the dynamic roles of GlnB and GlnK during nitrogen starvation and upshift. We measure time-resolved in vivo concentrations of metabolites, total and posttranslationally modified proteins, and develop a concise biochemical model of GlnB and GlnK that incorporates competition for active and allosteric sites, as well as functional sequestration of GlnK. The model predicts the responses of glutamine synthetase, GlnB, and GlnK under time-varying external ammonium level in the wild-type and two genetic knock-outs. Our results show that GlnK is tightly regulated under nitrogen-rich conditions, yet it is expressed during ammonium run-out and starvation. This suggests a role for GlnK as a buffer of nitrogen shock after starvation, and provides a further functional link between nitrogen and carbon metabolisms

The tumor suppressor CYLD regulates the p53 DNA damage response

The tumour suppressor CYLD is a deubiquitinase previously shown to inhibit NF-κB, MAP kinase and Wnt signalling. However, the tumour suppressing mechanisms of CYLD remain poorly understood. Here we show that loss of CYLD catalytic activity causes impaired DNA damage-induced p53 stabilization and activation in epithelial cells and sensitizes mice to chemical carcinogen-induced intestinal and skin tumorigenesis. Mechanistically, CYLD interacts with and deubiquitinates p53 facilitating its stabilization in response to genotoxic stress. Ubiquitin chain-restriction analysis provides evidence that CYLD removes K48 ubiquitin chains from p53 indirectly by cleaving K63 linkages, suggesting that p53 is decorated with complex K48/K63 chains. Moreover, CYLD deficiency also diminishes CEP-1/p53-dependent DNA damage-induced germ cell apoptosis in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Collectively, our results identify CYLD as a deubiquitinase facilitating DNA damage-induced p53 activation and suggest that regulation of p53 responses to genotoxic stress contributes to the tumour suppressor function of CYLD

Feasibility of a mobile and web-based intervention to support self-management in outpatients with cancer pain

Purpose: Cancer pain is a prevalent and distressing symptom. To enhance self-management in outpatients, a multi-component intervention was developed, integrating patient self-management and professional care through healthcare technology. This article describes feasibility of the intervention in everyday practice. Method: Patients with moderate to severe cancer pain (n = 11) and registered nurses specialized in pain and palliative care (n = 3) participated in a four-week study. The intervention involved daily monitoring, graphical feedback, education, and advice by means of a mobile application for patients and a web application for nurses. Learnability, usability and desirability were measured in patients with a 20-item questionnaire (1–5 scale), higher scores indicating better feasibility. Patients' adherence was based on completion rates from server logs. Single semi-structured interviews with patients and a focus group interview with nurses provided insight into experiences. Results: Questionnaire findings confirmed learnability (4.8), usability (4.8) and desirability (4.6) of the application for patients. Average completion rates were 76.8% for pain monitoring, 50.4% for medication monitoring and 100% for education sessions. Interviews revealed that patients were pleased with the simplicity of the mobile application and appreciated different components. Nurses agreed upon the added value and were mostly positive about the possibilities of the web application. Patients and nurses provided ideas for improvements relating to the content and technical performance of the intervention. Conclusions: Study results demonstrate feasibility of the intervention in everyday practice. Provided that content-related and technical adjustments are made, the intervention enables patients with cancer pain to practice self-management and nurses to remotely support these patients

IST-2000-30148 I-METRA: D3.2 Implementation of relevant algorithms

This deliverable provides a high level description of the software developed within the I-METRA project following the selection reported in D3.1 "Design, Analysis and Selection of Suitable Algorithms".Preprin

IST-2000-30148 I-METRA: D3.1 Design, analysis and selection of suitable algorithms

This deliverable contains a description of the space-time coding algorithms to be simulated within the I-METRA project. Different families of algorithms have been selected and described in this document with the objective of evaluating their performance. One of the main objectives of the I-METRA project is to impact into the current standardisation efforts related to the introduction of Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) configurations into the High Speed Downlink and Uplink Packet Access concepts of UMTS (HSDPA and HSUPA). This required a review of the current specifications for these systems and the analysis of the impact of the potential incorporation of the selected MIMO schemes.Preprin