Water Quality in Uganda

Drinking water quality monitoring is critical in the effort to improve health outcomes in developing countries. Poor waste management, rapid industrialization, agricultural activity, and soil erosion are examples of anthropogenic and natural processes that affect the concentrations of heavy metals, anions, nutrients, and bacterial concentrations in water. The purpose of this study was to investigate the concentrations of these contaminants in water from shallow wells, boreholes, rivers, and lakes in the southwestern region of Uganda. The water samples were analyzed in the field and in the laboratory at USD and at the U.S. Geological Survey in Boulder, Colorado to determine the concentrations of various anions and cations that may have long-term health impacts. Data presented here depict single sampling events at the various locations and provide a snapshot of the various water quality issues facing a developing country like Uganda

Software/Hardware Co-Design to Improve Productivity, Portability, and Performance of Loop-Task Parallel Applications

Computer architects are increasingly turning to programmable accelerators tailored for narrower classes of applications in order to achieve high performance and energy efficiency. A continuing challenge with accelerators is enabling the programmer to easily extract maximum performance without intimate knowledge of the underlying microarchitecture. It is important to consider productivity and portability, in addition to performance, as first-class metrics when developing and evaluating modern computing platforms. Software-centric approaches to achieving 3P computing platforms are compelling, but sacrifice efficiency and flexibility by hiding parallel abstractions from hardware and limiting the scope of the application domain. This thesis proposes a new software/hardware co-design approach to achieving 3P platforms, called the loop-task accelerator (LTA) platform, that provides high productivity and portability without sacrificing performance or efficiency across a wide range of applications. The LTA platform addresses the weaknesses of existing approaches that are identified through detailed experimentation with and analysis of modern application development. Discussion of an early attempt at a hardware-centric approach to achieving 3P platforms provides insight into area-efficient accelerator designs and highlights the need for innovations in both software and hardware. The LTA platform focuses on exploiting loop-task parallelism by exposing loop-tasks as a common parallel abstraction at the programming API, runtime, ISA, and microarchitectural levels. The LTA programming API uses the parallel_for construct to express loop-tasks that can be exploited both across cores and within a core, the LTA runtime distributes loop-tasks across cores, and a new xpfor instruction explicitly encodes loop-tasks as functions applied to a range of loop iterations. This thesis introduces a novel task-coupling taxonomy that captures how tasks can be coupled in both space and time. The LTA engine template can be configured at design time with variable spatial and temporal task coupling to accelerate the execution of both regular and irregular loop-tasks within a core. The LTA platform is evaluated with respect to the 3P’s using a vertically integrated research methodology. Compared to an in-order multi-core baseline, the LTA platform yields average improvements of 5.5× in raw performance, 2.5× in performance per area, and 1.2× in energy efficiency, while offering high productivity and portability

Trends in Avoidable Death over 20 Years in Korea

To evaluate the achievement of health care services in Korea independent of other socioeconomic factors, we observed the time trend of avoidable death between 1983 and 2004. A list of avoidable causes of death was constructed based on the European Community Atlas of "Avoidable Death". We calculated sex- and age-standardized mortality rates of Korean aged 1-64 yr using data of the Korea National Statistical Office. The avoidable mortality rate (per 100,000 persons) decreased from 225 to 84 in men and from 122 to 41 in women. Accordingly, the proportion of avoidable deaths among all classifiable deaths was reduced by 8.1% in men and 6.4% in women. However, mortality rates from some preventable causes such as ischemic heart disease and malignant neoplasms of lung, breast, cervix, and colorectum have been on the rise. Mortality preventable by appropriate medical care showed the greatest reduction (by 77.8%), while the mortality preventable by primary prevention showed the least reduction (by 50.0%). These findings suggest that health care service has significantly contributed to the improvement of health in Korea. However, more effective intervention programs would be needed given the less reduction in mortality avoidable by primary or secondary prevention than expected and unexpectedly increasing mortality from several preventable causes

An Analysis of the Effects of State Financial Aid Policy on the Timing of Postsecondary Enrollment: A Focus on Income and Race Differences.

The driving force behind the recent increase in financial aid for college education is the rapid growth of state merit-based grant programs that provide scholarships to students who meet predefined standards of academic preparation at the state level, and this trend represents one of the most pronounced policy shifts away from a long tradition of need-based aid. Despite the existing literature on the role of financial aid policies in college-choice decisions for students from different backgrounds, researchers have paid limited attention to exploring socioeconomic and race/ethnic differences as well as the role of financial aid associated with the timing of student enrollment. Given that high school graduates enroll in college at different time points and financial aid is an important predictor of whether and where a student enrolls as well as when a student enrolls in college, this study explores the effects that state financial aid policies have on the occurrence as well as the timing of postsecondary enrollment for high school graduates (or equivalent diploma holders). Utilizing event history modeling on a nationally representative sample from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88/2000) in addition to state-level policy variables, this study examined how state aid policies differentially affect students’ postsecondary enrollment depending on their family income and race/ethnicity between the years 1992 through 2000. The findings demonstrate that there is a clear and consistent gap in college enrollment for students who are from different income and race/ethnic groups, and that state financial aid significantly affects students’ enrollment probabilities. The results also indicate that the effects of state financial aid vary by income and racial/ethnic backgrounds. The series of simulations conducted revealed that low-income students had enrollment propensities that were more responsive to changes in state aid policy for every racial group, but high increases in the provision of state financial aid do not appear to benefit all race/ethnic groups equally in terms of college participation. The study findings have important implications for state aid policy as well as future research on the role of public financial aid policies in college choice of students from different income and racial/ethnic backgrounds.Ph.D.Higher EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86310/1/jiyunkim_1.pd

Multidirectional Instability Accompanying an Inferior Labral Cyst

Paralabral cyst of the shoulder joint can be observed in 2% to 4% of the general population, particularly in men during the third and fourth decade. On average, these cysts measure 10 mm to 20 mm in diameter and are located preferentially on the postero-superior aspect of the glenoid. The MRI has increased the frequency of the diagnosis of paralabral cysts of the shoulder joint. Paralabral cysts of the shoulder joint usually develop in the proximity of the labrum. The relationship between shoulder instability and labral tears is well known, however, the association of shoulder instability with a paralabral cyst is rare. Shoulder instability may cause labral injury or labral injury may cause shoulder instability, and then injured tear develops paralabral cyst. In our patient, the inferior paralabral cyst may be associated with inferior labral tears and instability MRI

Markedly enhanced intratumoral spread and antitumor effect of oncolytic adenovirus expressing decorin

With the aim of improving viral distribution and tumor penetration, we have engineered decorin expressing replication-incompetent (dl-LacZ-DCNG) and -competent (Ad-[DELTA]E1B-DCNG) adenoviruses. In both tumor spheroids and established solid tumors in vivo, administration of dl-LacZ-DCNG resulted in greater transduction efficiency and viral spread throughout the tumor mass. Ad-[DELTA]E1B-DCNG also enhanced viral distribution and tumor spread, leading to an increased anti-tumor effect and survival advantage. Upon histological analysis, Ad-[DELTA]E1B-DCNG also elicited greater percentage of apoptotic cells and extensive necrosis compared to those from untreated or control virus-treated tumors. Furthermore, Ad-[DELTA]E1B-DCNG substantially decreased extracellular matrix components within the tumor tissue, while normal tissue adjacent to the tumor was not affected. Finally, intratumoral administration of Ad-[DELTA]E1B-DCNG did not enhance but inhibited the formation of pulmonary metastases of B16BL6 melanoma cells in mice. Taken together, these data demonstrate the utility of decorin as a dispersion agent and suggest its utility and potential in improving the efficacy of replicating adenovirus-mediated cancer gene therapy

Input of terrestrial organic matter linked to deglaciation increased mercury transport to the Svalbard fjords

Deglaciation has accelerated the transport of minerals as well as modern and ancient organic matter from land to fjord sediments in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, in the European Arctic Ocean. Consequently, such sediments may contain significant levels of total mercury (THg) bound to terrestrial organic matter. The present study compared THg contents in surface sediments from three fjord settings in Spitsbergen: Hornsund in the southern Spitsbergen, which has high annual volume of loss glacier and receives sediment from multiple tidewater glaciers, Dicksonfjorden in the central Spitsbergen, which receives sediment from glacifluvial rivers, and Wijdefjorden in the northern Spitsbergen, which receive sediments from a mixture of tidewater glaciers and glacifluvial rivers. Our results showed that the THg (52 +/- 15 ng g(-1)) bound to organic matter (OM) was the highest in the Hornsund surface sediments, where the glacier loss (0.44 km(3) yr(-1)) and organic carbon accumulation rates (9.3 similar to 49.4 g m(-2) yr(-1)) were elevated compared to other fjords. Furthermore, the delta C-13 (-27 similar to -24 parts per thousand) and delta S-34 values (-10 similar to 15 parts per thousand) of OM indicated that most of OM were originated from terrestrial sources. Thus, the temperature-driven glacial melting could release more OM originating from the meltwater or terrestrial materials, which are available for THg binding in the European Arctic fjord ecosystems.11Ysciescopu