Evaluation of health effects of air pollution in the Chestnut Ridge area : preliminary analysis

This project involves several tasks designed to take advantage of (1) a very extensive air pollution monitoring system that is operating ..n the Chestnut Ridge.region of Western Pennsylvania and (2) -the very well developed analytic dispersion models that have been previously fine-tuned to this particular area.. The major task in this project is to establish, through several distinct epidemiolopic approaches, health data to be used to test hypotheses about relations of air pollution exposures to morbidity and mortality rates in this region. Because the air quality monitoring network involves no expense to this contract this project affords a very cost-effective 6pportunity-for state-of-the-art techniques to be used in both costly areas of air pollution and health -effects data col1 ection. . The closely spaced network of monitors, plus the dispersion modeling capabilities,.allow for the investigation- of health impacts of. various pollutant gradients in neighboring geographic areas, thus minimizing -the confounding effects of social, ethnic, and economic factors. The pollutants that are monitored in this network include total gaseous sulfur, sulfates, total suspended particulates, NOx, NO, ozone/oxidants, and coefficient of haze. In addition to enabling the simulation of exposure profiles between monitors, the air quality2 modeling, along with extensive source and background inventories, will allow for upgrading the quality of the monitored data. as well as simulating the exposure levels for about 25 additional air pollutants. Another important goal of this project is to collect and test the many available models for associating.health effects with air pollution, to determine their predictive validity and their usefulness in the choice and siting of future energy facilities

Stress corrosion cracking in Al-Zn-Mg-Cu aluminum alloys in saline environments

Copyright 2013 ASM International. This paper was published in Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A, 44A(3), 1230 - 1253, and is made available as an electronic reprint with the permission of ASM International. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic or multiple reproduction, distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means, duplications of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of this paper are prohibited.Stress corrosion cracking of Al-Zn-Mg-Cu (AA7xxx) aluminum alloys exposed to saline environments at temperatures ranging from 293 K to 353 K (20 °C to 80 °C) has been reviewed with particular attention to the influences of alloy composition and temper, and bulk and local environmental conditions. Stress corrosion crack (SCC) growth rates at room temperature for peak- and over-aged tempers in saline environments are minimized for Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloys containing less than ~8 wt pct Zn when Zn/Mg ratios are ranging from 2 to 3, excess magnesium levels are less than 1 wt pct, and copper content is either less than ~0.2 wt pct or ranging from 1.3 to 2 wt pct. A minimum chloride ion concentration of ~0.01 M is required for crack growth rates to exceed those in distilled water, which insures that the local solution pH in crack-tip regions can be maintained at less than 4. Crack growth rates in saline solution without other additions gradually increase with bulk chloride ion concentrations up to around 0.6 M NaCl, whereas in solutions with sufficiently low dichromate (or chromate), inhibitor additions are insensitive to the bulk chloride concentration and are typically at least double those observed without the additions. DCB specimens, fatigue pre-cracked in air before immersion in a saline environment, show an initial period with no detectible crack growth, followed by crack growth at the distilled water rate, and then transition to a higher crack growth rate typical of region 2 crack growth in the saline environment. Time spent in each stage depends on the type of pre-crack (“pop-in” vs fatigue), applied stress intensity factor, alloy chemistry, bulk environment, and, if applied, the external polarization. Apparent activation energies (E a) for SCC growth in Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloys exposed to 0.6 M NaCl over the temperatures ranging from 293 K to 353 K (20 °C to 80 °C) for under-, peak-, and over-aged low-copper-containing alloys (~0.8 wt pct), they are typically ranging from 20 to 40 kJ/mol for under- and peak-aged alloys, and based on limited data, around 85 kJ/mol for over-aged tempers. This means that crack propagation in saline environments is most likely to occur by a hydrogen-related process for low-copper-containing Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloys in under-, peak- and over-aged tempers, and for high-copper alloys in under- and peak-aged tempers. For over-aged high-copper-containing alloys, cracking is most probably under anodic dissolution control. Future stress corrosion studies should focus on understanding the factors that control crack initiation, and insuring that the next generation of higher performance Al-Zn-Mg-Cu alloys has similar longer crack initiation times and crack propagation rates to those of the incumbent alloys in an over-aged condition where crack rates are less than 1 mm/month at a high stress intensity factor

Advancing PROMIS’s methodology: results of the Third Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS ® ) Psychometric Summit

In 2002, the NIH launched the ‘Roadmap for Medical Research’. The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) is one of the Roadmap’s key aspects. To create the next generation of patient-reported outcome measures, PROMIS utilizes item response theory (IRT) and computerized adaptive testing. In 2009, the NIH funded the second wave of PROMIS studies (PROMIS II). PROMIS II studies continue PROMIS’s agenda, but also include new features, including longitudinal analyses and more sociodemographically diverse samples. PROMIS II also includes increased emphasis on pediatric populations and evaluation of PROMIS item banks for clinical research and population science. These aspects bring new psychometric challenges. To address this, investigators associated with PROMIS gathered at the Third Psychometric Summit in September 2010 to identify, describe and discuss pressing psychometric issues and new developments in the field, as well as make analytic recommendations for PROMIS. The summit addressed five general themes: linking, differential item functioning, dimensionality, IRT models for longitudinal applications and new IRT software. In this article, we review the discussions and presentations that occurred at the Third PROMIS Psychometric Summit

Cleavage modification did not alter blastomere fates during bryozoan evolution

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.The study was funded by the core budget of the Sars Centre and by The European Research Council Community’s Framework Program Horizon 2020 (2014–2020) ERC grant agreement 648861 to A