HEALTH Standards for Sewage Management Systems: Provide for the Continued Use and Installation of All On-Site Sewage Management System; Authorize the Department of Human Resources to Adopt State-Wide Regulations for On-Site Sewage Management Systems; Repeal the Definition of Prior Approved System ; Authorize the Department to Require Prior Examination and Approval of Such Systems Before Use in Georgia; Provide for a Reduction in Trench Length Under Certain Circumstances; and for Other Purposes

Standards for Sewage Management Systems: Provide for the Continued Use and Installation of All On-Site Sewage Management System; Authorize the Department of Human Resources to Adopt State-Wide Regulations for On-Site Sewage Management Systems; Repeal the Definition of Prior Approved System; Authorize the Department to Require Prior Examination and Approval of Such Systems Before Use in Georgia; Provide for a Reduction in Trench Length Under Certain Circumstances; and for Other Purpose

HEALTH Standards for Sewage Management Systems: Provide for the Continued Use and Installation of All On-Site Sewage Management System; Authorize the Department of Human Resources to Adopt State-Wide Regulations for On-Site Sewage Management Systems; Repeal the Definition of Prior Approved System ; Authorize the Department to Require Prior Examination and Approval of Such Systems Before Use in Georgia; Provide for a Reduction in Trench Length Under Certain Circumstances; and for Other Purposes

Standards for Sewage Management Systems: Provide for the Continued Use and Installation of All On-Site Sewage Management System; Authorize the Department of Human Resources to Adopt State-Wide Regulations for On-Site Sewage Management Systems; Repeal the Definition of Prior Approved System; Authorize the Department to Require Prior Examination and Approval of Such Systems Before Use in Georgia; Provide for a Reduction in Trench Length Under Certain Circumstances; and for Other Purpose

PVCROV : an experimental platform for multi-robot control systems

As the field of multi-robot control systems grows, the demand for flexible, robust and precise multi-robot testbeds increases. Up to this point, the testbeds that do exist for testing multi-robot controllers are often expensive, hard to deploy, and typically constrained to a single plane of motion. These constraints limit the capacity to conduct research which is why team Autonomously Controlled Electromechanical Systems (ACES) has created the PVCROV system. PVCROV is a low cost, underwater platform for testing multi-robot control systems. By utilizing an underwater environment, ACES created a testbed that is not constrained to a single plane of motion. Additionally, the advantage of an underwater testbed is the ability to simulate weightlessness, as if in a space environment. Both of these features make this testbed extremely valuable to multi-robot research as they open the door for conducting experiments that previously could not be performed. ACES final product consisted of four PVCROV\u27s tethered to a surface buoy with wireless command and control via an \u27onshore\u27 control computer. Each system was designed, simulated, manufactured and tested based on requirements developed from a customer needs survey performed with the targeted research team. Although complete functionality was not achieved, a new team of students has started a new iteration of the development process which will bring the system up to full functionality. With graduate student experimenters already involved, ACES has created a testbed that will provide great value to the robotics research program at SCU

The influence of competition and business strategy on organizations' use of high-performance work systems

Articles on high-performance work systems (HPWS) often imply that competition will influence organizations’ adoption of a HPWS, yet there are few studies that empirically test this relationship (for exception see Sanz-Valle, Sabater-Sanchez, & Aragon-Sanchez, 1999; Takeuchi, 2009). This dissertation seeks to develop a better understanding of the influence that competition has on organizations’ use of a HPWS. It does so by developing theory on competition and the expected effect that it has on organizations’ use of a HPWS. This dissertation empirically tests this relationship. The expectation was that organizations’ use of a HPWS would increase as competition increased. Statistical evidence was found to support this hypothesis. Next this dissertation takes a closer look at the effect of competition on organizations’ use of a HPWS by investigating the extent to which the constructs of market commonality and resource similarity moderate the effect of competition on HPWSs. Market commonality, the extent to which competitors markets overlap, and resource similarity, the extent to which competitors have the same resources as each other, have both been theorized to effect organizational action in a theory of competition known as the Red Queen effect. This dissertation theorizes that market commonality and resource similarity would amplify organizations’ use of a HPWS. There was no statistical support for these relationships. After investigating competition, an antecedent from the external environment, on organizations’ use of a HPWS, this dissertation shifts to investigate the influence of business strategy, an antecedent from the internal environment. There are a variety of business strategies that have been identified in the strategy literature. The business strategies used in this dissertation included the cost-reduction strategy, where organizations focus on reducing costs throughout their value chain, and two differentiation strategies, innovation and quality management. This dissertation tested the direct effect of each of these strategies and then the moderation effect of these strategies on the competition – HPWS relationship. The expected relationship was that the presence of a cost-reduction strategy would decrease the use of a HPWS. The innovation and quality management differentiation strategies were expected to increase organizations’ use of a HPWS. Similarly, the presence of a cost-reduction strategy was expected to diminish the effect of competition on organizations’ use of a HPWS. Alternately, the innovation and quality management strategies were expected to amplify the competition – HPWS relationship. When tested, these hypotheses were not supported. Of most interest was the quality management strategy. When quality management was high, organizations reduced their use of a HPWS. This was contrary to what was expected and should be studied further in future studies. Theses hypotheses were tested using a sample collected from alumni from two different Midwestern universities and an HR association

Vertical structure and diabatic processes of the Madden-Julian oscillation

The “Vertical Structure of Diabatic Processes of the Madden-Julian Oscillation” global-model evaluation project developed a novel experimental framework, which produces a complete characterization of models’ abilities to simulate the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO). The three components of the project comprise 2-day and 20-day hindcasts and 20-year simulations; each obtained heating, moistening and momentum tendencies from the models’ sub-grid parameterizations. Thirty-five centers provided output for at least one component; nine centers provided data for all three. The models vary greatly in MJO fidelity in climate and hindcast experiments, yet fidelity in one was not correlated with fidelity in the other. In 20-year simulations, strong MJO models demonstrated heating, vertical-velocity and zonal-wind profiles that tilted westward with height, as in reanalysis data. The 20-day hindcasts showed no correspondence between the shape of the heating profile and hindcast skill. Low-to-mid-level moistening at moderate rain rates was a consistent feature of high-skill models and absent from low-skill models, suggesting a role for boundary-layer and congestus clouds in the MJO transition, which was confirmed by timestep data from the 2-day hindcasts. These hindcasts revealed a poor simulation of the MJO transition phase, even at short leads, with large mid-tropospheric dry biases and discrepancies in radiative-heating profiles

SEXAFS and NISXW studies of adsorbates on transition metal surfaces

The synchrotron radiation based techniques of Surface Extended X Ray Absorption Fine Structure (SEXAFS) and Normal Incidence Standing X Ray Waves (NISXW) have been applied to Four adsorption systems. These involved atomic and molecular chemisorption on the low index planes of single crystal C'u and Ni surfaces. For the Cu(lll)(\/3 X v3) R30 system the NISXW technique has found a layer spacing of 1.81 ± 0.05A, this was consistent with an earlier result found by SEXAFS. For the Ni(100)c(2 X 2)Hg system the combined use of NISXW and SEXAFS was attempted. The SEXAFS study, however, was unsuccessful due to the difficulties of obtaining SEXAFS from core states of high angular momentum. These difficulties were attributed to delayed onset of photoemission from the mercury Mr edge and strong variations of the pure atomic X ray absorption coefficient in the EXAFS energy range. NISXW studies were more successful and yielded an adsorbate - substrate layer spacing of 0.60 ± 0.1A. This layer spacing is consistent with adsorption into the two fold bridge site at the Ni(100) surface rather than the more highly co-ordinated four fold site which might have been expected for a metallic bond. There are, however, some ambiguities in this assignment due to the lack of corroboration of this result by SEXAFS. For the remaining two systems the combined use of SEXAFS and NISXW was successful. The C'u( 111) C'H3S system was typical of most molecular chemisorption systems in that it possessed no long range order. For this system both the NISXW and SEXAFS techniques gave results indicative of reconstructive chemisorption. A corroborative interpretation of results for both techniques invlolved the adsorption of the CH3S group's sulphur atom into distorted three fold hollow sites at the Cu(lll) surface.Intra-inolecular scattering was also observed in this system. This scattering was between the carbon and sulphur atoms in the mercaptide (C'H3S) group, and SEXAFS analysis found a C-S bondlength of 1.88.4. This appears to be the first recorded case of intra- molecular^scattering in SEXAFS data. Simple chemisorption is also ruled out for the (v7 A v 7) R19.I -S on Cu(lll) surface. SEXAFS data for this system, like that for mercaptide, was dominated by a single shell and analysis of the polarization dependence of the SEXAFS amplitude for this shell gave an adsorbate-substrate bond angle, [3, of 67 ± 5°. This value is well outside the range expected for simple non reconstructive chemisorption of S into the high or low symmetry adsorption sites of the C'u( 111) surface. The NISXW data for this system was suggestive of a mixture of at least two distinct adsorbate- substrate layer spacings. One of which was well outside the range of values expected for simple chemisorption. The data from both experimental techniques can only be explained in terms of reconstructive chemisorption which forms a surface sulphide involving a mixed layer of C'u and S. This sulphide is believed to be of distorted tetrahedral co-ordination. This model can explain the two distinct adsorbate-substrate for S as well as the observed polarization dependence of the Cu-S bondlength

Functional analysis of Girardia tigrina transcriptome seeds pipeline for anthelmintic target discovery

Background Neglected diseases caused by helminth infections impose a massive hindrance to progress in the developing world. While basic research on parasitic flatworms (platyhelminths) continues to expand, researchers have yet to broadly adopt a free-living model to complement the study of these important parasites. Methods We report the high-coverage sequencing (RNA-Seq) and assembly of the transcriptome of the planarian Girardia tigrina across a set of dynamic conditions. The assembly was annotated and extensive orthology analysis was used to seed a pipeline for the rational prioritization and validation of putative anthelmintic targets. A small number of targets conserved between parasitic and free-living flatworms were comparatively interrogated. Results 240 million paired-end reads were assembled de novo to produce a strictly filtered predicted proteome consisting of over 22,000 proteins. Gene Ontology annotations were extended to 16,467 proteins. 2,693 sequences were identified in orthology groups spanning flukes, tapeworms and planaria, with 441 highlighted as belonging to druggable protein families. Chemical inhibitors were used on three targets in pharmacological screens using both planaria and schistosomula, revealing distinct motility phenotypes that were shown to correlate with planarian RNAi phenotypes. Conclusions This work provides the first comprehensive and annotated sequence resource for the model planarian G. tigrina, alongside a prioritized list of candidate drug targets conserved among parasitic and free-living flatworms. As proof of principle, we show that a simple RNAi and pharmacology pipeline in the more convenient planarian model system can inform parasite biology and serve as an efficient screening tool for the identification of lucrative anthelmintic targets

Novel RNAi-Mediated Approach to G Protein-Coupled Receptor Deorphanization: Proof of Principle and Characterization of a Planarian 5-HT Receptor

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) represent the largest known superfamily of membrane proteins extending throughout the Metazoa. There exists ample motivation to elucidate the functional properties of GPCRs given their role in signal transduction and their prominence as drug targets. In many target organisms, these efforts are hampered by the unreliable nature of heterologous receptor expression platforms. We validate and describe an alternative loss-of-function approach for ascertaining the ligand and G protein coupling properties of GPCRs in their native cell membrane environment. Our efforts are focused on the phylum Platyhelminthes, given the heavy health burden exacted by pathogenic flatworms, as well as the role of free-living flatworms as model organisms for the study of developmental biology. RNA interference (RNAi) was used in conjunction with a biochemical endpoint assay to monitor cAMP modulation in response to the translational suppression of individual receptors. As proof of principle, this approach was used to confirm the neuropeptide GYIRFamide as the cognate ligand for the planarian neuropeptide receptor GtNPR-1, while revealing its endogenous coupling to Gαi/o. The method was then extended to deorphanize a novel Gαs-coupled planarian serotonin receptor, DtSER-1. A bioinformatics protocol guided the selection of receptor candidates mediating 5-HT-evoked responses. These results provide functional data on a neurotransmitter central to flatworm biology, while establishing the great potential of an RNAi-based deorphanization protocol. Future work can help optimize and adapt this protocol for higher-throughput platforms as well as other phyla

Safe Driving Attitudes and Behaviors Among Vermont Student Drivers

Distracted driving contributes to approximately 10% of all driver fatalities and 17% of injuries in the US. Vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teens in the US. Drivers aged 16-19 are 3 times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than those \u3e 20 years. Increased teen risk is related to attachment to technology, limited driving experience, and an illusion of invincibility. Previous National Highway Traffic Safety Administration assessment of distracted driving attitudes and behaviors does not include significant data on teenage drivers. The goal of this project is to assess safe driving attitudes and behaviors among Vermont Student Drivers.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1284/thumbnail.jp