Development of a new Thomson parabola spectrometer for analysis of laser accelerated ions

This thesis details my work on developing a new Thomson parabola spectrometer for use at the SCARLET Laser Facility at The Ohio State University. The SCARLET laser facility is a 300 TW laser reaching peak intensities exceeding 10 21 W/cm 2 . The laser is used to study laser-matter interactions and plasma phenomena. The laser-matter interactions accelerate multiple types of particles and to understand the interactions it is necessary to have diagnostic tools to characterize the accelerated particles. In order to measure the charged particles a common device is a Thomson parabola spectrometer. A Thomson parabola spectrometer uses parallel electric and magnetic fields that are perpendicular to the incoming particles. This causes deflection of the particles based on their charge-to-mass ratio and energy. Therefore, the Thomson parabola spectrometer allows us to determine what particles are present and what their energy range is. I designed a new spectrometer to replace the existing Thomson parabola spectrometer which had problems during operation that reduced performance. Using a MATLAB code, I first modeled the performance of the new design to determine physical dimensions and field strengths that would allow for 1 MeV resolution of protons up to a maximum energy of 40 MeV. This resulted in a 5 cm long magnetic field with a field strength of 0.12 T and 10 cm electrodes with a voltage difference of 6 kV. These physical dimensions were used to create a SolidWorks model. As of this writing, the newly designed Thomson parabola spectrometer has been built and is currently being installed for use on future experiments.No embargoAcademic Major: Engineering Physic

The Health Impact of Dietary Choices on Ni-Vanuatu

This study sought to determine the link between market integration based dietary choices and health among residents of Vanuatu. Surveys were collected among a cross section of the populations found on multiple islands among the archipelago. The participants came from distinct communities with various levels of development. They recalled the food they ate within a 24-hour period, which the surveyors recorded along with some photos that will be used to assess average servings. These surveys informed a list of commonly consumed foods which was enriched with nutritional minutiae collected from the USDA FoodData central database. A paper published in August of 2021 included a statistical analysis to quantify life-span impact of dietary choices (Stylianou et. al). The food from Vanuatu was then applied to the formula from Stylianou et. al. The results of this analysis confirmed our original hypothesis, that locally grown, traditional foods are beneficial, while imported, Western food is harmful to overall health. We have yet to analyze the overall health impact of differing levels of market integration however. This step will involve the analysis of different island populations within the archipelago. Higher access to ultra-processed foods is linked to all-cause mortality for much of the world’s adult population. To present this decline in health within a population as it is integrated into the market economy is our task.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_2022/1029/thumbnail.jp

Project-based, collaborative, algorithmic robotics for high school students: Programming self-driving race cars at MIT

We describe the pedagogy behind the MIT Beaver Works Summer Institute Robotics Program, a new high-school STEM program in robotics. The program utilizes state-of-the-art sensors and embedded computers for mobile robotics. These components are carried on an exciting 1/10-scale race-car platform. The program has three salient, distinguishing features: (i) it focuses on robotics software systems: the students design and build robotics software towards real-world applications, without being distracted by hardware issues; (ii) it champions project-based learning: the students learn through weekly project assignments and a final course challenge; (iii) the learning is implemented in a collaborative fashion: the students learn the basics of collaboration and technical communication in lectures, and they work in teams to design and implement their software systems. The program was offered as a four-week residential program at MIT in the summer of 2016. In this paper, we provide the details of this new program, its teaching objectives, and its results. We also briefly discuss future directions and opportunities

Discovery of restless legs syndrome plasmatic biomarkers by proteomic analysis

Objectives: Restless legs syndrome (RLS) can lead to severe clinical consequences, thus negatively impacts on patients’ overall health and quality of life. Nevertheless, the pathophysiology of RLS is still unclear, resulting in underestimate, incorrect, or ignored diagnosis and in limited management and treatment. The aim of this study was to compare the plasma proteome of RLS patients and healthy controls, in the search of diagnostic biomarkers related to the disease severity. Materials and Methods: Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis coupled with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry was employed to analyze plasma samples of 34 patients with primary RLS, divided into two subgroups according to the disease severity: MMS group (mild-moderate symptoms) and HS group (severe and very severe symptoms), and 17 age- and sex-matched control subjects. Sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, and the level of depression were also evaluated. Results: We identified eight upregulated spots, corresponding to five unique proteins, in both RLS group vs. controls (alpha-1B-glycoprotein, alpha-1-acid glycoprotein 1, haptoglobin, complement C4-A, and immunoglobulin kappa constant); five increased spots, consistent with three unique proteins, only in HS-RLS (kininogen-1, immunoglobulin heavy constant alpha 1, and immunoglobulin lambda constant 2); one downregulated spot in both patient's groups (complement C3) and another one only in HS-RLS (alpha-1-antitrypsin). Conclusions: The significantly different plasma proteins detected in RLS were mainly associated with inflammation, immune response, and cardiovascular disorders. Particularly, the gradual increasing in immunoglobulins could be indicative of the disease severity and evolution. Accordingly, these proteins may represent a valid set of useful biomarkers for RLS diagnosis, progression and treatment

Facilitating healthy dietary habits:An experiment with a low income population

First published online: October 2020This paper tests an intervention aimed at facilitating (cognitively) the adoption of healthy dietary habits. We provide easy-to-understand information about the risks of developing diabetes or heart diseases and give easy-to-follow dietary recommendations to minimize these risks. We implement two variations, one consisting of generic information, the other consisting of information tailored to the individual, the latter resembling newly developed online health assessment tools. On top of the information treatment, we implement a second experimental variation encouraging people to spend more time thinking about their decisions. We find evidence that the information intervention leads to healthier choices in the short run, but mostly in the generic treatment. Surprisingly, we find that people are on average pessimistic about their health, and therefore receive good news on average when the information is tailored to them. We find no evidence that increasing the time available to make choices leads to healthier choices, and find no evidence of long-term changes in habits. These results do not support a bounded rationality explanation for poor dietary choices. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Inferring Ecological Processes from Taxonomic, Phylogenetic and Functional Trait β-Diversity

Understanding the influences of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering on the structure of ecological communities is a major challenge in ecology. Insight may be gained by combining phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic data to characterize spatial turnover in community structure (β-diversity). We develop a framework that allows rigorous inference of the strengths of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering by combining these three types of β-diversity. Our framework provides model-generated expectations for patterns of taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional β-diversity across biologically relevant combinations of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering. After developing the framework we compared the model-generated expectations to the commonly used “intuitive” expectation that the variance explained by the environment or by space will, respectively, increase monotonically with the strength of environmental filtering or dispersal limitation. The model-generated expectations strongly departed from these intuitive expectations: the variance explained by the environment or by space was often a unimodal function of the strength of environmental filtering or dispersal limitation, respectively. Therefore, although it is commonly done in the literature, one cannot assume that the strength of an underlying process is a monotonic function of explained variance. To infer the strength of underlying processes, one must instead compare explained variances to model-generated expectations. Our framework provides these expectations. We show that by combining the three types of β-diversity with model-generated expectations our framework is able to provide rigorous inferences of the relative and absolute strengths of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering. Phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic β-diversity can therefore be used simultaneously to infer processes by comparing their empirical patterns to the expectations generated by frameworks similar to the one developed here

Simulated Effects of Recruitment Variability, Exploitation, and Reduced Habitat Area on the Muskellunge Population in Shoepack Lake, Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota

The genetically unique population of muskellunge Esox masquinongy inhabiting Shoepack Lake in Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota, is potentially at risk for loss of genetic variability and long-term viability. Shoepack Lake has been subject to dramatic surface area changes from the construction of an outlet dam by beavers Castor canadensis and its subsequent failure. We simulated the long-term dynamics of this population in response to recruitment variation, increased exploitation, and reduced habitat area. We then estimated the effective population size of the simulated population and evaluated potential threats to long-term viability, based on which we recommend management actions to help preserve the long-term viability of the population. Simulations based on the population size and habitat area at the beginning of a companion study resulted in an effective population size that was generally above the threshold level for risk of loss of genetic variability, except when fishing mortality was increased. Simulations based on the reduced habitat area after the beaver dam failure and our assumption of a proportional reduction in population size resulted in an effective population size that was generally below the threshold level for risk of loss of genetic variability. Our results identified two potential threats to the long-term viability of the Shoepack Lake muskellunge population, reduction in habitat area and exploitation. Increased exploitation can be prevented through traditional fishery management approaches such as the adoption of no-kill, barbless hook, and limited entry regulations. Maintenance of the greatest possible habitat area and prevention of future habitat area reductions will require maintenance of the outlet dam built by beavers. Our study should enhance the long-term viability of the Shoepack Lake muskellunge population and illustrates a useful approach for other unique populations

Musculoskeletal pain is associated with restless legs syndrome in young adults

Background - In recent years, there is considerable evidence of a relationship between the sensorimotor disorder restless legs syndrome (RLS) and pain disorders, including migraine and fibromyalgia. An association between multi-site pain and RLS has been reported in adult women. In the current study, we explored the association between musculoskeletal (MSK) pain and RLS in a large cohort of young adults. Methods - Twenty two year olds (n = 1072), followed since birth of part of the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study, provided data on MSK pain (duration, severity, frequency, number of pain sites). RLS was considered present when 4 diagnostic criteria recommended by the International Restless Legs Syndrome Study Group were met (urge to move, dysaesthesia, relief by movement, worsening symptoms during the evening/night) and participants had these symptoms at least 5 times per month. Associations between MSK pain and RLS were analyzed by multivariable logistic regression with bias-corrected bootstrapped confidence intervals, with final models adjusted for sex, psychological distress and sleep quality. Results - The prevalence of RLS was 3.0 % and MSK pain was reported by 37.4 % of the participants. In multivariable logistic regression models, strong associations were found between RLS-diagnosis and long duration (three months or more) of MSK pain (odds ratio 3.6, 95 % confidence interval 1.4–9.2) and reporting three or more pain sites (4.9, 1.6–14.6). Conclusions - Different dimensions of MSK pain were associated with RLS in young adults, suggestive of shared pathophysiological mechanisms. Overlap between these conditions requires more clinical and research attention