Access to EMS Services and Training, Knowledge, and Perceptions Related to First Aid and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) Skills Among College Students

This study included two purposes. The first purpose of this study was to compare undergraduate students\u27 knowledge and perceptions related to first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) according to their level of first aid and CPR training. The second purpose of this study was to compare the students\u27 perceptions of access to emergency medical services (EMS) by the geographic location of their hometown. A quantitative survey was distributed to students enrolled in three HLTH 101: Health and Environment classes in Spring, 2013. The survey included questions related to the participants\u27 demographic characteristics, perceptions of the time needed for EMS services to arrive in their hometown, first aid and CPR knowledge, and perceptions related to first aid and CPR. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach\u27s alpha reliability, one way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Chi-square were used to analyze the data. Participants who were currently certified in first aid agreed significantly more that CPR and first aid training are worth of their time than participants who have been trained and participants who have never been trained. Participants who were currently certified in first aid reported significantly less concerns than those who have never been trained in first aid with respect to their perceptions of access to first aid and CPR training classes. Participants who are currently certified in CPR agreed significantly more that training in first aid and CPR is worth their time than participants who have been certified and have never been trained. Participants who were currently trained in CPR showed significantly more willingness to perform first aid and CPR to family member, someone they know, and even strangers, compared to those who have been certified and never been trained in CPR. Also, those currently certified in CPR reported significantly less concerns than those who have never been trained in CPR with respect to their perceptions of access to first aid and CPR training classes. Participants who lived in the urban area reported significantly shorter time for EMS services to arrive than those who lived in a rural area. Further research related to individuals\u27 knowledge and perceptions related to first aid and CPR is recommended. Additionally, it is recommended that all persons, especially those who live in rural areas, receive and retain certification related to first aid and CPR

Comparative analysis of environmental performance of an office building using BREEAM and GBL

With rapid economic growth and urban expansion in China, the Chinese building sector is now facing the huge challenge of balancing its energy demand and pollution. In order to minimize the environmental impact, the Ministry of Housing Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) has set an ambitious energy reduction target requiring that 30% of all new constructions to be green by 2020. This paper presents comparative analysis of two environmental rating systems: the latest version of Chinese Green Building Label (GBL 2014) released by the MOHURD in order to promote the market transformation of green buildings and Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM 2014), the widely recognised environmental assessment methodology in the global construction industry. To compare the two environment assessment standards, a public office building currently under construction in Fujian (China) has been used as a case-study to rate its environmental credentials using both BREEAM and GBL. Results have shown that although both standards use a similar methodology, they require different levels of input data and may result in different ratings for the same building

Study on non-buckling steel plate shear walls with corrugated core panel

[EN] In this paper, a non-buckling steel plate shear wall with corrugated core panel was introduced, which keeps itself from premature buckling by fully taking advantage of extra-large flexural stiffness of corrugated core panel and enables to yield before buckling. Most importantly, the optimal corrugation configuration of corrugated core panel was obtained by parametric investigation into detailed dimensions of single wave such as thickness, depth of corrugation, angle of corrugation and so on, which was hereafter validated by numerical simulation. Non-dimensional parameters such as height-to-thickness ratio, width-to-thickness ratio and aspect ratio have also been taken into consideration, all of which turn out to be the most decisive factors of guaranteeing the “non-buckling”. The parametric analysis proves that as long as the former two factors are below the critical values recommended in this paper, unexpected buckling is not going to happen. On the other hand, theoretical approaches to calculate the yielding strength and initial stiffness were derived, as well as a theoretical design method for boundary elements. Meanwhile, a simplified model was concluded. Formulas to determine the cross-section of cross braces and boundary elements were given based on the principle of equivalent yielding strength and initial stiffness. Finally, four specimens were resorted to testify above theory and parametric study. Two specimens with larger height-to-thickness ratio that exceeds the recommended limit exhibit inevitable buckling, while the others with smaller height-to-thickness ratio show ideal energy-absorbing capability and no evident buckling is observed even under an inter-story drift of 2%.Jin, H.; Li, G.; Sun, F. (2018). Study on non-buckling steel plate shear walls with corrugated core panel. En Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Steel-Concrete Composite Structures. ASCCS 2018. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 639-946. https://doi.org/10.4995/ASCCS2018.2018.7009OCS63994

What Influences the Diffusion of Foreign Language Programs in U.S. K-12 Public Schools

As the United States becomes ever more pluralistic and globalization makes the world more closely connected, it has never been more necessary to build an educational system that helps students grow into competent world citizens who can communicate effectively in languages other than English. Despite the growth of foreign language education in the United States during the past decades, an increasing number of research articles on foreign language programs have shown that foreign language learning in U.S. K-12 public schools is still lagging behind compared to the other nations and the desired state that U.S. policymakers, educators, parents, major research organizations, business leaders, and the general public would like it to be. Among different states and different foreign languages, there are huge gaps. In addition, very little is known about the patterns by which foreign language programs diffuse and how the current patterns are formed, which can inform our understanding of the state of U.S. foreign language education and provide information for policymakers and stakeholders for schools. Building on existing research, this dissertation explores these two research questions: What factors influence the diffusion of foreign language programs in U.S. K-12 public schools, and to what extent do these factors help form the current state of foreign language enrollments in U.S. K-12 public schools? In this study, the term foreign language refers to any language other than English, though some foreign languages that are taught in U.S. schools are not foreign to the U.S. or to all students therein. Based on a review of literature on human capital theory, social and cultural capital, resource dependence, and institutional theory, this dissertation relied on various data sources to construct a state-level panel dataset for the school years of 2004 to 2005, 2007 to 2008, and 2014 to 2015, focusing on foreign language enrollments in all 50 states for U.S. K-12 public schools, and regression with random-effects using Stata, to address the stated research questions. Analysis results demonstrated that parents’ education, state policies, race, state political conservatism, and region factors have significant effects on the current state and diffusion patterns of foreign language programs in U.S. K-12 public schools. The results indicate that both parents’ education and state policies have strongly positive effects on foreign language education, even though the effects are not significant or exclusively positive on all the seven selected foreign languages which are Spanish, French, German, Latin, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. The influential power of race and state political conservatism is comparatively smaller and varies depending on different foreign language programs. In terms of percentages of foreign language enrollments, region factors also matter and showed significant effects. Further research is needed to identify factors that could help shape the within-state (such as district-level or regional level) disparities of foreign language enrollments. The research can also extend to private schools and college-level foreign language education, include a wider range of foreign languages and more forms of foreign language instruction, and explore diffusion patterns of foreign language programs in different grade levels and taking language proficiency levels into consideration

Biochemical Issues in Estimation of Cytosolic Free NAD/NADH Ratio

Cytosolic free NAD/NADH ratio is fundamentally important in maintaining cellular redox homeostasis but current techniques cannot distinguish between protein-bound and free NAD/NADH. Williamson et al reported a method to estimate this ratio by cytosolic lactate/pyruvate (L/P) based on the principle of chemical equilibrium. Numerous studies used L/P ratio to estimate the cytosolic free NAD/NADH ratio by assuming that the conversion in cells was at near-equilibrium but not verifying how near it was. In addition, it seems accepted that cytosolic free NAD/NADH ratio was a dependent variable responding to the change of L/P ratio. In this study, we show (1) that the change of lactate/glucose (percentage of glucose that converts to lactate by cells) and L/P ratio could measure the status of conversion between pyruvate + NADH and lactate + NAD that tends to or gets away from equilibrium; (2) that cytosolic free NAD/NADH could be accurately estimated by L/P only when the conversion is at or very close to equilibrium otherwise a calculation error by one order of magnitude could be introduced; (3) that cytosolic free NAD/NADH is stable and L/P is highly labile, that the highly labile L/P is crucial to maintain the homeostasis of NAD/NADH; (4) that cytosolic free NAD/NADH is dependent on oxygen levels. Our study resolved the key issues regarding accurate estimation of cytosolic free NAD/NADH ratio and the relationship between NAD/NADH and L/P

Alchemical and structural distribution based representation for improved QML

We introduce a representation of any atom in any chemical environment for the generation of efficient quantum machine learning (QML) models of common electronic ground-state properties. The representation is based on scaled distribution functions explicitly accounting for elemental and structural degrees of freedom. Resulting QML models afford very favorable learning curves for properties of out-of-sample systems including organic molecules, non-covalently bonded protein side-chains, (H$_2$O)$_{40}$-clusters, as well as diverse crystals. The elemental components help to lower the learning curves, and, through interpolation across the periodic table, even enable "alchemical extrapolation" to covalent bonding between elements not part of training, as evinced for single, double, and triple bonds among main-group elements