Sustainability Action Tracker

The Center for Sustainability at Santa Clara University is actively looking for ways to involve students in sustainable actions and accountability. With our help, they would like to create a site where students and faculty may track their sustainable behavior. This site will provide users with all the information they need to live a sustainable life, and include milestones in the form of progress bars and badges. The Center for Sustainability will be able to collect the data from this site to evaluate the progress of our university as well as the success of the site. Our motivation for this project is the urgency around raising awareness about the critical state of the environment. This project is necessary for the University to track their progress with their mission of creating a ’more just and sustainable world’

Scalable Microfabrication Procedures for Adhesive-Integrated Flexible and Stretchable Electronic Sensors.

New classes of ultrathin flexible and stretchable devices have changed the way modern electronics are designed to interact with their target systems. Though more and more novel technologies surface and steer the way we think about future electronics, there exists an unmet need in regards to optimizing the fabrication procedures for these devices so that large-scale industrial translation is realistic. This article presents an unconventional approach for facile microfabrication and processing of adhesive-peeled (AP) flexible sensors. By assembling AP sensors on a weakly-adhering substrate in an inverted fashion, we demonstrate a procedure with 50% reduced end-to-end processing time that achieves greater levels of fabrication yield. The methodology is used to demonstrate the fabrication of electrical and mechanical flexible and stretchable AP sensors that are peeled-off their carrier substrates by consumer adhesives. In using this approach, we outline the manner by which adhesion is maintained and buckling is reduced for gold film processing on polydimethylsiloxane substrates. In addition, we demonstrate the compatibility of our methodology with large-scale post-processing using a roll-to-roll approach

Global variations in diabetes mellitus based on fasting glucose and haemogloblin A1c

Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) are both used to diagnose diabetes, but may identify different people as having diabetes. We used data from 117 population-based studies and quantified, in different world regions, the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes, and whether those who were previously undiagnosed and detected as having diabetes in survey screening had elevated FPG, HbA1c, or both. We developed prediction equations for estimating the probability that a person without previously diagnosed diabetes, and at a specific level of FPG, had elevated HbA1c, and vice versa. The age-standardised proportion of diabetes that was previously undiagnosed, and detected in survey screening, ranged from 30% in the high-income western region to 66% in south Asia. Among those with screen-detected diabetes with either test, the agestandardised proportion who had elevated levels of both FPG and HbA1c was 29-39% across regions; the remainder had discordant elevation of FPG or HbA1c. In most low- and middle-income regions, isolated elevated HbA1c more common than isolated elevated FPG. In these regions, the use of FPG alone may delay diabetes diagnosis and underestimate diabetes prevalence. Our prediction equations help allocate finite resources for measuring HbA1c to reduce the global gap in diabetes diagnosis and surveillance.peer-reviewe

Methods for Voice and Swallow Assessment through Laryngeal High-Density Surface Electromyography

Voice and swallow are complex functions made possible through the coordination ofmultiple muscles of the throat. Unfortunately, these tasks are adversely impacted by aging, neurologic disorders, nerve injuries, cancer, and stroke—yet lack the tools for objective and non-invasive assessment. For instance, traditional surface electromyography (sEMG) of the throat suffers from drawbacks of “cross-talk” contamination, skin-electrode impedance, and diminished target-muscle specificity, which lead to performance variability and limited clinical utility. This dissertation explores the use of high-density surface electromyography (HDsEMG) coupled with novel implementation of array signal processing techniques to overcome limitations of traditional sEMG when studying the neck. During phonation in healthy subjects, results yielded power spectrum density energy maps with the capacity to visually distinguish active regions associated with the underlying cricothyroid and anterior strap musculature. Low-pitch and high-pitch differentiation was accomplished using multivariate log likelihood ratio testing with an average Receiver Operating Characteristic area under the curve of 0.97, which exceeds that of traditional sEMG by 0.20. During swallowing in healthy subjects, HDsEMG energy maps confirmed lateral symmetry and dominant activity in the suprahyoid region. Additional studies conducted on human subjects utilizing various swallow textures and complexities demonstrated average EMG duration that increased proportionally with increasing texture complexity. Multivariate analysis improved automated detection of onsets and offsets of swallows and was able to classify one of five distinct textures with an average probability error of 0.16. Preliminary results for validation against the “gold-standard”, needle EMG, demonstrate HDsEMG’s ability to detect specific localized activity similar to the needle electrode underneath. Lastly, we demonstrate the feasibility of using flexible electronic sensor arrays, in lieu of standard needle and clunky electrodes arrays, to provide greater subject comfort, mobility, and adhesion to the curvature of the neck

Noninvasive multichannel urodynamic system: Obtaining cutaneous electrical signals from the human urinary bladder

Abstract We developed a high‐resolution and noninvasive multichannel urodynamic system combined with a novel signal‐processing algorithm tailored to extract electromyographic (EMG) activity from the urinary bladder. We utilized a flexible noninvasive biopotential recording system to collect an array of EMG signals from the urinary bladder of human subjects. This study also presents the use of an existing artifact rejection methodology to autonomously extract an EMG signal from an environment prone to motion artifacts

Mercados y tianguis en el siglo XXI. Repensando sus problemáticas

Los capítulos que conforman esta obra se acercan a los mercados y tianguis principalmente desde las ciencias sociales, económicas y biológicas. Sin embargo, a diferencia de estudios realizados en décadas pasadas, han encontrado nuevas problemáticas, como, por ejemplo, la relación clientelar de locatarios y tianguistas con agrupaciones mayores y partidos políticos. También se describe la disputa del mercado entre personas locales y turistas, es decir, los problemas que emergen de la museificación de estos espacios. Además, el tema de los supermercados, espacios que han ganado terreno, actualmente no deben disociarse de las lógicas comerciales de consumo.En el mundo globalizado en que vivimos, los mercados y tianguis se enfrentan a procesos de adaptación social, cultural, política y económica. Existen prácticas que continúan mientras que, a la par, aparecen nuevas formas de relacionarse con estos espacios. Por ello, los compiladores del libro, así como las y los especialistas que escriben en él, invitamos a la comunidad lectora a que utilice este libro como un referente que puede ayudarle a descubrir su propio lente para mirar a los mercados y tianguis y, al mismo tiempo, le sirva para reflexionar sobre el papel del consumo en nuestras vidas cotidianas.Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Méxic

Global variation in diabetes diagnosis and prevalence based on fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1c

: Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) are both used to diagnose diabetes, but these measurements can identify different people as having diabetes. We used data from 117 population-based studies and quantified, in different world regions, the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes, and whether those who were previously undiagnosed and detected as having diabetes in survey screening, had elevated FPG, HbA1c or both. We developed prediction equations for estimating the probability that a person without previously diagnosed diabetes, and at a specific level of FPG, had elevated HbA1c, and vice versa. The age-standardized proportion of diabetes that was previously undiagnosed and detected in survey screening ranged from 30% in the high-income western region to 66% in south Asia. Among those with screen-detected diabetes with either test, the age-standardized proportion who had elevated levels of both FPG and HbA1c was 29-39% across regions; the remainder had discordant elevation of FPG or HbA1c. In most low- and middle-income regions, isolated elevated HbA1c was more common than isolated elevated FPG. In these regions, the use of FPG alone may delay diabetes diagnosis and underestimate diabetes prevalence. Our prediction equations help allocate finite resources for measuring HbA1c to reduce the global shortfall in diabetes diagnosis and surveillance

Diminishing benefits of urban living for children and adolescents’ growth and development

Optimal growth and development in childhood and adolescence is crucial for lifelong health and well-being1–6. Here we used data from 2,325 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight from 71 million participants, to report the height and body-mass index (BMI) of children and adolescents aged 5–19 years on the basis of rural and urban place of residence in 200 countries and territories from 1990 to 2020. In 1990, children and adolescents residing in cities were taller than their rural counterparts in all but a few high-income countries. By 2020, the urban height advantage became smaller in most countries, and in many high-income western countries it reversed into a small urban-based disadvantage. The exception was for boys in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in some countries in Oceania, south Asia and the region of central Asia, Middle East and north Africa. In these countries, successive cohorts of boys from rural places either did not gain height or possibly became shorter, and hence fell further behind their urban peers. The difference between the age-standardized mean BMI of children in urban and rural areas was <1.1 kg m–2 in the vast majority of countries. Within this small range, BMI increased slightly more in cities than in rural areas, except in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and some countries in central and eastern Europe. Our results show that in much of the world, the growth and developmental advantages of living in cities have diminished in the twenty-first century, whereas in much of sub-Saharan Africa they have amplified