An explanatory case study on cloud computing applications in the built environment

Fragmentation of practices is one of the key issues in the built environment. However, with advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), particularly cloud computing, the fragmentation of working practices can be potentially overcome. The technology could enhance communication and information flowin various stages along a project life cycle.Due to the increasing demands and the newly developed cloud computing applications, it is critical to review and identify the appropriate cloud computing applications in the built environment. A total of forty two cloud computing applications consisting of general cloud applications, Building Information Modelling (BIM), and project management cloud applications were selected and critically reviewed. A decision-making model was also developed to assist parties in selecting a suitable application. The explanatory case study has discovered numerous possible cloud computing applications in various disciplines, for example, Google Apps, Autodesk BIM 360, and Viewpoint are the applications with the most features. The findings contribute to creating a certain awareness and an insight to reduce the fragmented working practices in the built environment

PIV as a Complement to LDA in the Study of an Unsteady Oscillating Turbulent Flow

Chong Y. Wong, Graham J. Nathan, Richard M Kels

Clinical and Immunomodulating Effects of Ketamine in Horses with Experimental Endotoxemia

Background:  Ketamine has immunomodulating effects both in vitro and in vivo during experimental endotoxemia in humans, rodents, and dogs. Hypothesis:  Subanesthetic doses of ketamine will attenuate the clinical and immunologic responses to experimental endotoxemia in horses. Animals:  Nineteen healthy mares of various breeds. Methods:  Experimental study. Horses were randomized into 2 groups: ketamine-treated horses (KET; n = 9) and saline-treated horses (SAL; n = 10). Both groups received 30 ng/kg of lipopolysaccharide (LPS, Escherichia coli, O55:B5) 1 hour after the start of a continuous rate infusion (CRI) of racemic ketamine (KET) or physiologic saline (SAL). Clinical and hematological responses were documented and plasma concentrations of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and thromboxane B2 (TXB2) were quantified. Results:  All horses safely completed the study. The KET group exhibited transient excitation during the ketamine loading infusion (P \u3c .05) and 1 hour after discontinuation of administration (P \u3c .05). Neutrophilic leukocytosis was greater in the KET group 8 and 24 hours after administration of LPS (P \u3c .05). Minor perturbations of plasma biochemistry results were considered clinically insignificant. Plasma TNF-α and TXB2 production peaked 1.5 and 1 hours, respectively, after administration of LPS in both groups, but a significant difference between treatment groups was not demonstrated. Conclusions and Clinical Importance:  A subanesthetic ketamine CRI is well tolerated by horses. A significant effect on the clinical or immunologic response to LPS administration, as assessed by clinical observation, hematological parameters, and TNF-α and TXB2production, was not identified in healthy horses with the subanesthetic dose of racemic ketamine utilized in this study

Recruiting Volunteers for New Horizons\u27 Apprenticeship Program for Homeless Young Adults

Introduction New Horizons is a Seattle-based organization focused on meeting the basic needs of homeless young adults ages 18-25 through food, shelter, clothing, health clinics, and social work appointments. To help their clients achieve a sustainable lifestyle, New Horizons addresses the most challenging obstacles including job and house hunting through an innovative apprenticeship program through their café, Street Bean Coffee Roasters. Clients can learn skills transferable to other careers, including barista basics, work experience, and networking. Our project is to help New Horizons find volunteers or employees for their apprenticeship program. In finding volunteers or employees for the café, we are providing professional training and networking opportunities for the apprentices so when the apprenticeship program is completed, the participants have job experience for their resume and connections to assist in their job search. In addition to recruiting staff for the café, we are also building a connection between New Horizons and Seattle Pacific University’s (SPU) volunteer groups in hopes of providing more volunteer opportunities and creating a quarterly volunteer event. Background Homelessness is a local and national crisis, disproportionately affecting Black, Native American, Hispanic, and LGBTQ populations (Huffman et al., 2021). According to the National Conference of State Legislators (NSCL, 2022), an estimated 4.2 million youth and young adults experience homelessness each year. Of these, about 700,000 are unaccompanied minors, meaning they are not part of a family or accompanied by a parent or guardian. In Seattle, the homeless population has risen exponentially. According to New Horizons (2018), “The number of unstably housed persons in King County has steadily risen by roughly 20% each year for the past three years”; over 1,500 youth in King County are affected by homelessness. The barriers the homeless youth encounter can be divided into four groups: domestic, health, bureaucratic, and social support (Huffman et al., 2021). Issues identified within these categories include maintaining personal hygiene, inability to find and receive proper medical treatment, education and employment gaps, criminal records, and limited support from potential employers. These issues are multifactorial, overlapping and intersecting on multiple planes, “mutually reinforcing the structures undergirding work and home” (Huffman et al., 2021), creating the ‘scaffolded city’ phenomenon the homeless population lives within. A survey conducted to analyze the needs insecurity among Florida college students identified extensive support programs as essential to the inclusion of students traditionally excluded by higher education via remediation, transfer, vocational training, and contract education (Nix et al., 2021). New Horizons confronts most of these challenges by providing an abundance of holistic resources for the homeless youths of Seattle. Although there is a lot known about the social inequities that the homeless youth population face, there is not much information regarding sustainable resources to transition off the streets and become included in the socioeconomic world. A quasi-experimental longitudinal study aimed to assess the feasibility of improving socioeconomic inclusion outcomes by supporting identity capital in youths who struggled to shake the identity of homelessness (Thulien et al., 2021). Identity capital includes fostering hope, focusing on personal strengths, and improving self-esteem. Most notably, many participants expressed gratitude for the normalization of strategies and skills they learned, framing them as something one needs (Thulien et al., 2021). These findings suggest that targeting identity capital is feasible and may be a promising approach to incorporate into a more complex intervention that includes housing, education, and employment resources to help youth transition out of homelessness. New Horizons offers an apprenticeship program through Street Bean Coffee that gives a chance to gain work experience and skills, but also provides networking opportunities and higher chances of long-term employment. Activities with Rationale To support the community of New Horizons our group has developed flyers with QR codes and other deliverables to help find adequate staffing, volunteers, and providing supplies. The QR codes itself has direct links to their amazon wish list, donation needs, volunteer page, street bean coffee roaster barista position. With these codes people can access their website to not just look for a job position but it provides awareness to a community in need of support. We also were able to connect New Horizons with SPU’s volunteer programs Latreia an Urban Involvement. Our group provided resources and points of contact to the coordinator of these SPU volunteer programs in hopes the relationship between New Horizons and SPU would strengthen. This connection allows for there to be volunteer events to better assist and help serve the community. Outcomes We had short term goals of providing for the population of New Horizons through creation of resources so that they can utilize them to cater to their needs and New Horizons will receive student volunteers from Latreia before March 9th 2022. Our long-term goals were to have the homeless youth population located around New Horizons gain more knowledge regarding resources that are available to them, such as job opportunities via Street Bean Coffee Roasters within 3 months and have New Horizons obtain a consistent flow of volunteers and resources via collaboration with SPU\u27s Urban Involvement, quarterly. These short term goals were both met while the long term goals are still in progress. Evaluation The utilization of mixed methods, both qualitative and quantitative data, proves to help evaluate the success of our interventions more efficiently (Abilgaard et al., 2016). The qualitative data analyzed was whether the barista position was filled and whether SPU’s volunteer programs formed a connection with New Horizons. After the initiation of our interventions, there was the removal of the job application on New Horizons website, the barista position filled, and Latreia partnering with New Horizons where a group of SPU volunteers painting their garage to be used as a blank canvas for young adults to do graffiti artwork. These outcomes display evidence of an effective relationship between SPU’s volunteering programs and New Horizons and our goals being met. The quantitative data analyzed was the number of people that attended the Latreia event and how many people scanned the flyer QR codes. Ten volunteers attended the event compared to their average range of 10-15 people that regularly attend their events. Data collected from the QR code tracking website suggested that 34 people scanned the QR code for the barista position, 28 people scanned the QR code for New Horizon’s Amazon wish list, and 27 people scanned the QR code for the volunteering page. These evaluations proved that the SPU community interacted with the flyers and were successful in bringing attention to New Horizons’ needs. Conclusion To help New Horizons and the community they serve we were able to help them form long term relationships that will continue on when we leave. By creating this relationship with SPU volunteer programs and access to a new barista, New Horizons can better serve the population of homeless youth through job training and acts of service. With the aid of our interventions bringing awareness to New Horizons by various means, we were able to engage with their culture to help change their world. Limitations of Research There are limitations to our project and research. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a limited amount of recent national and local research and statistics available to analyze and collect around homelessness (NSCL, 2022). Due to social distancing and isolation precautions, surveys and data collection cannot be completed or are very limited (NSCL, 2022). The small sample size or cross-sectional instead of longitudinal methods can limit a study. Diversity in age groups and selected sample size may not represent the total population (Thulien et al., 2021). Different geographic locations or urban vs rural areas may affect the availability of resources, programs, or tactics utilized based on the prevalence of the homeless population. In Nix et al. (2021), the inadequacy of faculty and staff training was evident in varied faculty and staff awareness of basic need opportunities. For future interview-based studies such as Huffman et al. (2021), training young adults who have experience being homeless to conduct the interviews may mediate socioeconomic differences between interviewers and interviewees, allowing for more fully open reflection, trust, and nuanced interpretation. Shared experiences between the interviewers and interviewees may also demonstrate effectiveness of apprenticeship programs for homeless youths while providing a supportive role model who has transitioned from their homeless identity into a successfully employed individual with professional networking connections. References Abildgaard, J., Saksvik, P., & Nielsen, K. (2016). How to measure the intervention process: An assessment of qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collection in the process evaluation of organizational interventions. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, Article 1380. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01380 Huffman, T., Leier, C., Generous. M., Hinrichs, M., & Brenneman, L. (2021). Climbing the ‘scaffolded city’: Tactics used by homeless young adults to navigate employment barriers. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 49(2), 148-167. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2020.1839119 National Conference of State Legislatures. (2022). Youth homelessness overview. National Conference of State Legislatures. https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/homeless-and-runaway-youth.aspx New Horizons. (2018). About: Youth homelessness. New Horizons. https://nhmin.org/youth-homelessness-seattle/ Nix, A., Bertrand Jones, T., Daniels, H., Hu, P., & Hu, S. (2021). “There’s so much that we’re doing”: How Florida college system institutions address basic needs insecurity among students. Community College Review, 1, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/00915521211047674 Thulien, N., Wang, A., Mathewson, C., Wang, R., & Hwang, S. (2021). Tackling exclusion: A pilot mixed method quasi-experimental identity capital intervention for young people exiting homelessness. PLoS ONE, 16(8), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.025628

A techno-economical and automotive emissions impact study of global biodiesel usage in diesel engines

In recent years, biodiesel has arrived at the forefront, as a mainstream alternative energy, due to its advantages properties such as renewability, compatibility with existing automotive infrastructures and diesel engines, cleaner emissions. Many studies have been conducted to improve the maturity of biodiesel production technology, and fuel application. However, the global-scale economical and emissions impacts of first generation biodiesel is still not being adequately addressed. This requires immediate attention as the current economical setback for biodiesel is affected by low crude oil price. In this study, the correlations between the biodiesel production feasibility, crude oil price, and feedstock availability are defined. By using a data-driven predictive model, insights can be drawn for the worldwide profitability, potential level of diesel replacement using biodiesel, and environmental impact. The model allows prediction to be done on potential biodiesel production at a country-region level, at different crude oil prices and fuel blending ratios. It was also predicted that up to 9% of total global diesel consumption could be replaced by profitable biodiesel, if crude oil price rises up to USD 135 per barrel and factoring in refinery cost of USD 0.05 per litre. Countries near the equatorial belt with abundance palm oil feedstock such as Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia could potentially augment their gross domestic products by 10.36%, 7.67% and 5.57%, respectively. If all non-domestic usage feedstock is converted into biodiesel for automotive usage, there will be conclusive reduction of engine-out emissions such as unburnt hydrocarbons and particulate matter. Ultimately, this model proves that there is high potential for mass adoption of biodiesel to supplant fossil diesel globally, allowing the generation of income, improving energy security and produces cleaner automotive emissions

Benefits and limitations of implementing Chronic Care Model (CCM) in primary care programs: a systematic review

Background: Chronic Care Model (CCM) has been developed to improve patients' health care by restructuring health systems in a multidimensional manner. This systematic review aims to summarize and analyse programs specifically designed and conducted for the fulfilment of multiple CCM components. We have focused on programs targeting diabetes mellitus, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Method and results: This review was based on a comprehensive literature search of articles in the PubMed database that reported clinical outcomes. We included a total of 25 eligible articles. Evidence of improvement in medical outcomes and the compliance of patients with medical treatment were reported in 18 and 14 studies, respectively. Two studies demonstrated a reduction of the medical burden in terms of health service utilization, and another two studies reported the effectiveness of the programs in reducing the risk of heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases. However, CCMs were still restricted by limited academic robustness and social constraints when they were implemented in primary care. Higher professional recognition, tighter system collaborations and increased financial support may be necessary to overcome the limitations of, and barriers to CCM implementation. Conclusion: This review has identified the benefits of implementing CCM, and recommended suggestions for the future development of CCM

A possible method for non-Hermitian and non-PTPT-symmetric Hamiltonian systems

A possible method to investigate non-Hermitian Hamiltonians is suggested through finding a Hermitian operator $\eta_+$ and defining the annihilation and creation operators to be $\eta_+$-pseudo-Hermitian adjoint to each other. The operator $\eta_+$ represents the $\eta_+$-pseudo-Hermiticity of Hamiltonians. As an example, a non-Hermitian and non-$PT$-symmetric Hamiltonian with imaginary linear coordinate and linear momentum terms is constructed and analyzed in detail. The operator $\eta_+$ is found, based on which, a real spectrum and a positive-definite inner product, together with the probability explanation of wave functions, the orthogonality of eigenstates, and the unitarity of time evolution, are obtained for the non-Hermitian and non-$PT$-symmetric Hamiltonian. Moreover, this Hamiltonian turns out to be coupled when it is extended to the canonical noncommutative space with noncommutative spatial coordinate operators and noncommutative momentum operators as well. Our method is applicable to the coupled Hamiltonian. Then the first and second order noncommutative corrections of energy levels are calculated, and in particular the reality of energy spectra, the positive-definiteness of inner products, and the related properties (the probability explanation of wave functions, the orthogonality of eigenstates, and the unitarity of time evolution) are found not to be altered by the noncommutativity.Comment: 15 pages, no figures; v2: clarifications added; v3: 16 pages, 1 figure, clarifications made clearer; v4: 19 pages, the main context is completely rewritten; v5: 25 pages, title slightly changed, clarifications added, the final version to appear in PLOS ON

The Impact of Strategic White Matter Hyperintensity Lesion Location on Language

Objective: The impact of white matter hyperintensities (WMH) on language possibly depends on lesion location through disturbance of strategic white matter tracts. We examined the impact of WMH location on language in elderly Asians. Design: Cross-sectional. Setting: Population-based. Participants: Eight-hundred nineteen residents of Singapore, ages (≥65 years). Measurements: Clinical, cognitive and 3T magnetic resonance imaging assessments were performed on all participants. Language was assessed using the Modified Boston Naming Test (MBNT) and Verbal Fluency (VF). Hypothesis-free region-of-interest-based (ROI) analyses based on major white matter tracts were used to determine the association between WMH location and language. Conditional dependencies between the regional WMH volumes and language were examined using Bayesian-network analysis. Results: ROI-based analyses showed that WMH located within the anterior thalamic radiation (mean difference: −0.12, 95% confidence interval [CI]: −0.22; −0.02, p = 0.019) and uncinate fasciculus (mean difference: −0.09, 95% CI: −0.18; −0.01, p = 0.022) in the left hemisphere were significantly associated with worse VF but did not survive multiple testing. Conversely, WMH volume in the left cingulum of cingulate gyrus was significantly associated with MBNT performance (mean difference: −0.09, 95% CI: −0.17; −0.02, p = 0.016). Bayesian-network analyses confirmed the left cingulum of cingulate gyrus as a direct determinant of MBNT performance. Conclusion: Our findings identify the left cingulum of cingulate gyrus as a strategic white matter tract for MBNT, suggesting that language – is sensitive to subcortical ischemic damage. Future studies on the role of sporadic ischemic lesions and vascular cognitive impairment should not only focus on total WMH volume but should also take WMH lesion location into account when addressing language

Site-specific incorporation of phosphotyrosine using an expanded genetic code.

Access to phosphoproteins with stoichiometric and site-specific phosphorylation status is key to understanding the role of protein phosphorylation. Here we report an efficient method to generate pure, active phosphotyrosine-containing proteins by genetically encoding a stable phosphotyrosine analog that is convertible to native phosphotyrosine. We demonstrate its general compatibility with proteins of various sizes, phosphotyrosine sites and functions, and reveal a possible role of tyrosine phosphorylation in negative regulation of ubiquitination