Water Resource Inventory Area 9 Stormwater Retrofit Project: Estimating cost-effective stormwater infrastructure solutions to meet flow and water quality targets

Stormwater from a disturbed landscape is one of the biggest threats to water quality and ecological health of Puget Sound, both fresh and marine waters. We developed a cost estimate for implementing stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) and Low Impact Development techniques in existing and future developed areas within the Water Resource Inventory Area (WRIA) 9 to meet flow and water quality targets. This project couples the Hydrologic Simulation Program-FORTRAN (HSPF) watershed hydrology model with a relatively new stormwater BMP modeling and planning tool developed by the U.S. EPA, SUSTAIN (System for Urban Stormwater Treatment and Analysis INtegration), to assess BMP strategies. The study area covers 278 square miles of the Green/Duwamish watershed and portions of the Central Puget Sound watershed that comprise WRIA 9, excluding the areas upstream of the Howard Hanson Dam and the city of Seattle. 100-acre hypothetical catchments representing the land use land cover of the study area were modeled with SUSTAIN. The BMP solutions and associated 30-year life cycle cost-effectiveness were scaled to the future land use land cover (2040) of the study area taking into account mitigation required with projected new development and redevelopment. Statistical models were used to extrapolate improvements in hydrologic indicators of the study area to improvements in Benthic Index of Biological Integrity (B-IBI) scores. Study area costs assume construction of the modeled BMP units occur over the 30-year period, with annual O&M and I&E costs increasing with installation of additional BMPs

‘Freedom in her Mind’: Women’s Prison Zines and Feminist Writing in the 1970s

This paper examines the under-researched and undervalued area of American women’s prison zines. It discusses three publications created at the California Institute for Women, Frontera, during the 1970s, placing them in the wider contexts of prison reform and the women’s movement. Through close analysis, it demonstrates the influences of, and connections to, the feminist print culture at the time and how groups such as the Santa Cruz Women’s Prison Project enabled their publication and influenced their ideology. Examining women’s prison zines can contribute to conversations about women’s liberation by offering new perspectives on what I call ‘collective autobiography’, and giving voice to an obscured and forgotten community of women

Urine Dipstick for Diagnosing Urinary Tract Infection

The sensitivity and specificity of the urine dipstick varies somewhat with the setting and population, as does its recommended interpretation. In low-risk patients with a low pretest probability of UTI, the urine dipstick alone is useful to exclude infection if both nitrites and leukocyte esterase are negative. [Strength of recommendations: C, all recommendations based on meta-analyses of cohort studies not addressing patient-oriented outcomes

Using pH and Cell Growth to Measure the Urease Activity of Sporosarcina pasteurii in Stuart’s Urea Broth with Bromothymol Blue

Honorable Mention Winner Sporosarcina pasteurii can perform microbially-induced calcite precipitation (MICP)—when bacteria hydrolyze urea and precipitate calcium carbonate crystals. This has potential applications in biocementation, though there are many barriers to implementation. One way to overcome these barriers is to measure cell growth and urease activity of S. pasteurii. Because urea hydrolysis increases the surrounding pH, urease activity could be measured using Stuart’s Urea Broth with the pH indicator bromothymol blue. Additionally, a standard curve was generated to quantify pH change, and cell growth of S. pasteurii was measured before and after urea hydrolysis. It was found that that higher concentrations of bacteria resulted in higher pH values and a faster pH increase, indicating higher urease activity. It was also found that cell growth declines during urea hydrolysis, and the growth media seems to influence this decline. These findings suggest that higher cell concentrations should be used in MICP applications to produce the highest urease activity and that the cell growth of S. pasteurii may not increase with urease activity

‘We asked for life!’: women’s prison zines in 1970s America

This dissertation discusses the previously unexamined and little-acknowledged genre of women’s prison zines in America. Beginning in the 1930s, these works of art and literature gave insight into the invisibilised world of women’s prisons and challenged preconceived ideas and stereotypes about female incarceration. The genre reached a peak in the 1970s—the decade on which I focus. Establishing the genre and its core characteristics for the first time, I define women’s prison zines as a form of “collective outsider writing” and place them into key theoretical and academic contexts that otherwise exclude them. Chapter One defines women’s prison zines as a distinctive and compelling subgenre of American protest literature, with a complex protest aesthetic aimed at wider social change beyond penal reform. Chapter Two goes one step further to place zines within the feminist protest writing tradition. The zines offer a concentrated perspective on women’s rights through collaboration with external feminist organisations and discussion of gendered concerns. Finally, Chapter Three argues that women’s prison zines develop the tradition of feminist collective autobiography, as they offer a powerful, collective narrative voice that establishes solidarity and kinship in an otherwise confined and alienating space. I argue that women’s prison zines sit at the intersection of these three genres—protest literature, feminist writing and collective autobiography—and that they fuse together elements of all three traditions to form a key example of what I term “collective outsider writing.

Changes in colony morphology and antibiotic resistance in response to in vitro exposure of Klebsiella pneumoniae to the antibiotic cephalothin

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a gram-negative nosocomial pathogen and causative agent of many hospital acquired infections. K. pneumoniae infections have become increasingly of interest due to the rise of hypervirulent variants and multidrug resistant strains. Modeling how antibiotic resistance evolves in K. pneumoniae will allow us to better understand exactly how the bacterium acquires resistance to various antibiotics. A previous experiment in our lab exposed a strain of K. pneumoniae to low but increasing concentrations of the antibiotic cephalothin. As a result, the strain evolved to be mucoid with elongated cellular morphology and resistant to multiple antibiotics. This study aimed to repeat the same experimental approach with multiple cultures, to determine if different genomic mutations could result in the same endpoint of antibiotic resistance. Five cultures of K. pneumoniae 43816 were exposed to increasing amounts of the antibiotic cephalothin over a 14-day period. After the 14 day experiment, cultures were assayed for changes in antibiotic susceptibility, colony, and cellular-level morphology. Preliminary results indicate evolved resistance to cephalothin and tetracycline, but not kanamycin. Further, alterations in the colony morphology have been noted with a mix of small and large colony phenotypes. This variation of colony morphology in the adapted population may indicate different genetic mutations that correspond to these large and small colony variants. Current work is determining the relationship between colony morphology and antibiotic resistance

Longitudinal Assessment of Critical Thinking Skills Across a Dental Curriculum

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153614/1/jddjde018088.pd

Age estimation of barramundi (Lates calcarifer) over multiple seasons from the southern Gulf of Carpentaria using FT-NIR spectroscopy

The age of whole otoliths from barramundi (Lates calcarifer) obtained from the southern Gulf of Carpentaria were estimated using Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) spectroscopy. Otoliths from 1716 barramundi collected in 2006, 2009 and 2012–2015 were used in this study. Partial least-squares regression models (PLS-R) and multiple linear regression models (MLR) were developed from the diffuse reflectance spectra and the age was obtained from traditional sectioned otoliths. Calibration models were built up over consecutive years (2012–2015) by using a subset of the samples and used to predict the age of the remaining samples and samples from the following year. Results suggest that when seasonal (temporal) variability is incorporated into the calibration model, FT-NIR has the ability to predict barramundi age (validation R2 ranged from 0.73 to 0.78; RMSEP ranged from 6.92 to 7.64 months). The predicted age class was within 1 year of the reference age in over 96% of the samples. These models were also able to predict the age of otoliths from 2006 and 2009, which were retrieved from long-term storage (validation R2 ranged from 0.77 to 0.84; RMSEP ranged from 8.66 to 10.88 months). The results from this study have shown the potential for barramundi from the southern Gulf of Carpentaria to be aged quickly and accurately by using FT-NIR