Stakeholder Perceptions of Community Garden Features

The presentation discusses the study currently being conducted on stakeholder perceptions and attitudes towards greenspaces. This is completed through the identification of different uses and features to maximize use of the space and stakeholder engagement in the community garden. To better understand stakeholder opinions, we utilized a creative qualitative research method combining photovoice and interviews/focus groups. We conducted eight in-depth semi-structured interviews and four focus groups. Multiple interviewees agreed that the Dayton View Triangle lacks access to a green space. Most believed that a garden would offer social cohesion. Understandably, most participants were concerned about who would manage the garden after it is constructed, however, they believed that a garden club run by a number of passionate residents could offer a solution. Photovoice was an integral method to this project; pictureboards were posted in areas where stakeholder groups would interact with them. They were prompted to place stickers on features they wanted to be prioritized. This method emphasized multigenerational design that accounts for diverse stakeholder uses, and highlights the memories, experiences, and expectations that attract stakeholders to community gardens. The findings also outlined the importance of co-creating the design of a community garden to ensure long-term sustainability. Previous research shows that community gardens are a popular tool to address neighborhood revitalization, local food, and social cohesion; critical gaps exist in the body of literature. This long-term project aims to address three such gaps in research. First, very few studies have focused on community gardens in minority and lower socioeconomic neighborhoods. Our research is located in the Dayton View Triangle neighborhood, which is 67% African American with a median household income of 35k. Second, previous research largely explores stakeholder perceptions toward established community gardens rather than their perceptions during the planning and design of a community garden. Third, very few studies have examined community-based governance/organizational structures that can ensure long-term sustainability. The research currently being conducted is aimed to help to understand the desired features and necessary mechanisms that need t be established to build a sense of community, social cohesion, and attachment around a community garden.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/roesch_symposium_content/1052/thumbnail.jp

Heavy metal concentration and transport from existing copper slag emplacements along the Windang Peninsula, through the unconfined sandy aquifer to Lake Illawarra

Up until recently, copper slag was widely considered to be chemically inert, and was thought to pose no significant environmental risks when deposited. Since the late 20th century there have been many reports claiming that copper slag can pose a risk to groundwater systems once it has degraded in its depositional environment over time. Wollongong City Council is interested in examining the possible environmental impacts of a copper slag emplacement located on the Windang peninsula, a narrow strip of estuarine sand on the south coast of NSW. In the past, high concentrations of zinc, iron, cadmium and copper have been observed in the emplacement groundwater. The concerns were the possibility of dissolved metals in the groundwater increasing over time due to increased metal leaching from weathering, and also the transport of these dissolved metals through the Windang unconfined sandy aquifer to nearby Lake Illawarra. Dissolved metal concentrations in groundwater were analysed in this study from a number of new and existing bores within the slag emplacement, and results were compared with existing data gathered in past reports. Weathered and unweathered slag samples were also inspected visually using reflected light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to determine structural differences in the outer perimeter of the slag granules. The slag samples also underwent elemental analysis using EDS to determine the distribution and abundance of various elements throughout the slag granules, and help determine which metals leach out fastest. The groundwater analysis yielded results similar to background levels for most samples, with the exception of zinc in groundwater from BH9 only, which on all four sampling rounds exceeding the ANZECC (2000) guidelines. When compared to past results from equivalent bores, the concentration of most metals in the groundwater decreased on average over time. The only metals which increased over time contained concentrations equal to or lower than background levels in all samples, suggesting the slag is not a major source of these metals. XRF and EDS results consistently displayed significant depletion of zinc from the weathered zones of slag. As the main source of zinc in groundwater is the weathered outer rim of the slag granule, it suggests that any new zinc being leached into the groundwater must be originating from the weathering of the unweathered, inner zone of the slag granule. With the production of this weathering rind around the perimeter of partly weathered slag granules, it is hypothesised that the rate of weathering of the unweathered inner section of the slag granule is greatly decreased due to the reduced exposure to air and moisture as a result of the “shielding” effect of this weathering rind. The reduced supply of zinc from slag into groundwater through leaching, and the dispersion of existing dissolved zinc throughout the aquifer, provides a possible explanation for the reduced zinc concentrations in the Windang aquifer over time. With the likely continuation of this trend, as long as the emplacement site is not agitated or disturbed, no action is necessary regarding metal immobilisation within the groundwater

Performance Analysis of Selection Combining Over Correlated Nakagami-m Fading Channels with Constant Correlation Model for Desired Signal and Cochannel Interference

A very efficient technique that reduces fading and channel interference influence is selection diversity based on the signal to interference ratio (SIR). In this pa¬per, system performances of selection combiner (SC) over correlated Nakagami-m channels with constant correlation model are analyzed. Closed-form expressions are obtained for the output SIR probability density function (PDF) and cumulative distribution function (CDF) which is main contribution of this paper. Outage probability and the average error probability for coherent, noncoherent modulation are derived. Numerical results presented in this paper point out the effects of fading severity and cor¬relation on the system performances. The main contribu¬tion of this analysis for multibranch signal combiner is that it has been done for general case of correlated co-channel interference (CCI)

The role of kinesitherapy at the rehabilitation of paralysis of n. Facialis

In the case of paralysis of n. facialis, most emphasis is placed on early detection, proper diagnosis of the damage and as soon as possible starting rehabilitation. Clinically, damages of n. facialis is manifested by rigidity on one side of the face. The patient is unable to raise his forehead while trying to close the eye, eye apple is stepping up to, and reflected the white of the eye, the eye does not close, the oral angle is lowered, and the mouth is drawn aside. Nasal groove is deleted, the eye constantly tears and corneal reflex is lost. The success of rehabilitation depends on the causes, extent of functional damage to the facial nerve and time of starting with a treatment. Besides drug therapy in the rehabilitation of paralysis of the facial nerve, an important place has physical therapy, but kinesitherapy is the most important part of all procedures to restore the lost function of the facial nerve. The scheme for the treatment is prepared according to the results of MMT. Main complications of neuritis n. facialis are contractures and synkinesis

Frosting Weights for Better Continual Training

Training a neural network model can be a lifelong learning process and is a computationally intensive one. A severe adverse effect that may occur in deep neural network models is that they can suffer from catastrophic forgetting during retraining on new data. To avoid such disruptions in the continuous learning, one appealing property is the additive nature of ensemble models. In this paper, we propose two generic ensemble approaches, gradient boosting and meta-learning, to solve the catastrophic forgetting problem in tuning pre-trained neural network models

Low PTH Levels in Adolescents With Anorexia Nervosa

Introduction: Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) experience medical complications including impaired bone metabolism, increased fracture rate, kidney stones and chronic renal failure. However, the mechanisms of such complications are not fully understood. Healthy adolescents have been shown to have higher PTH levels when compared with pre-pubertal children and adults. Given the importance of central measures of calcium and vitamin D metabolism in bone and kidney health, 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) and parathyroid hormone (PTH) have been extensively investigated in patients with AN, however none of the previous studies accounted for age-specific reference ranges for PTH. The aim of this study was to investigate central measures of calcium and vitamin D metabolism in adolescents with newly diagnosed AN using age-specific reference ranges and to determine whether any significant abnormalities required further study. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of 61 adolescents (mean age = aged 15.2 ± 1.56 years) with newly diagnosed AN, referred to a tertiary center over a period of 2 years. Demographic, auxiological, and nutrient (vitamin D and calcium) intake data was obtained. Central measures of calcium and vitamin D metabolism in blood and urine were investigated. PTH results were compared with age-specific reference ranges from the Canadian Laboratory Initiative on Pediatric Reference Intervals (CALIPER). Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis were performed. Results: Low PTH levels were observed in 35% of the cohort. Overall, serum calcium, phosphate and 25OHD were within the reference range. Using loess curves, PTH had a significant negative and non-linear correlation with 25OHD with an inflection point at a 25OHD level of 100 nmol/l, above which the association was no longer present. Correlation analysis did not show a significant association between PTH and total or corrected serum calcium, urine calcium/creatinine (Ca/Cr) ratio, total dietary calcium intake, magnesium or Tanner staging. Conclusion: PTH levels were reduced in approximately a third of adolescents with AN. This observation has not been reported given the universal usage of reference ranges that covers all ages. This finding may unmask a potential role for reduced PTH levels in the pathogenesis of kidney stones and bone phenotype in patients with AN

Continuous Probabilistic Nearest-Neighbor Queries for Uncertain Trajectories

This work addresses the problem of processing continuous nearest neighbor (NN) queries for moving objects trajectories when the exact position of a given object at a particular time instant is not known, but is bounded by an uncertainty region. As has already been observed in the literature, the answers to continuous NN-queries in spatio-temporal settings are time parameterized in the sense that the objects in the answer vary over time. Incorporating uncertainty in the model yields additional attributes that affect the semantics of the answer to this type of queries. In this work, we formalize the impact of uncertainty on the answers to the continuous probabilistic NN-queries, provide a compact structure for their representation and efficient algorithms for constructing that structure. We also identify syntactic constructs for several qualitative variants of continuous probabilistic NN-queries for uncertain trajectories and present efficient algorithms for their processing. 1