Some factors influencing the proportion of periplasmic hepatitis B virus pre-S2 antigen in the recombinant yeast Hansenula polymorpha.

A central composite design (CCD) was used to evaluate, for the purpose of future process optimization, the influence of pH, yeast extract and ammonium chloride concentrations on the proportion of periplasmic hepatitis B pre-S2 antigen in the recombinant yeast Hansenula polymorpha. Each factor was tested at five levels, and a second order polynomial model for the proportion of periplasmic antigen was fitted to the treatment combinations. pH showed the greatest effect: the proportion of periplasmic antigen was greatly increased at the higher pH levels. At the higher pH levels used, the proportion of periplasmic antigen was enhanced by a high concentration of ammonium chloride. Additional experiments have confirmed both the validity of the selected model and the optimal conditions found. A significant correlation was found between the proportion of periplasmic antigen and the total yield of antigen. These results indicated that it should be possible to modulate the distribution of the pre-S2 antigen between the periplasm and the cytoplasm of the yeast

MCVD: A New Environmental Justice Tool for Chicago Communities

The UIC School of Public Health (UIC-SPH) Emergency Management and Resiliency Planning (EMRP) program, in collaboration with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and content experts, is presenting a series of Midwest Comprehensive Visualization Dashboard(s) (MCVD) focusing on environmental justice (EJ) issues in this region. In this current MCVD, after a six-month interaction with community groups and policymakers, we developed representations of data that community members can understand and findings to substantiate their EJ claims. Policymakers benefit from these interfaces since they make visible the EJ issues (e.g., rail yards in the SW section of Chicago) requiring an equitable resolution. This proximity to the hazards dashboard (PHD) places individual community members at the center of a cognitive frame. The PHD interface allows end-users to enter an address and identify the surrounding places of interest. It provides an answer to a common question raised during our meetings: "which polluters are near my home?" (or the school of my children)

Midwest Comprehensive Visualization Dashboards: Prioritizing COVID-19 vaccinations

Considering the potential for widespread adoption of social vulnerability indices (SVI) to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations, there is a need to carefully assess them, particularly for correspondence with outcomes (such as loss of life) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The UIC SPH PHGIS team developed a Midwest Comprehensive Visualization Dashboard (MCVD) for prioritizing COVID-19 vaccinations that shows bivariate maps displaying COVID-19 mortality in relation to social vulnerability percentiles for counties in the North Central Region of the United States known as Midwest. The information provided in the MCVD is vital for the multidimensional needs of an effective vaccination strategy which will account for population vulnerability as well as the realized the losses within each community.<br

MCVD: Environmental Justice and Neighborhood Schools in Chicago, Illinois. Part 1

The UIC School of Public Health (UIC-SPH) Emergency Management and Resiliency Planning (EMRP) program will be presenting a series of Midwest Comprehensive Visualization Dashboards (MCVD) focusing on environmental health and justice issues in this region. The primary objective of the current dashboard (MCVD:EJ.1) is to create visualizations that lead to operational insights supporting data-driven decisions with a focus on environmental justice issues. It is the first in a series of dashboards aiming to identify the distribution of environmental hazards in Chicago neighborhoods

Characteristics and Treatment of the Dental Waste Water Stream

Dental amalgam consists of approximately equal parts mixture of metallic mercury and an alloy powder consisting of silver, tin, copper and zinc. Amalgam has been used extensively as a tooth filling material, accounting for 75% of posterior restorations. The waste material from dental offices generated during restorative dental procedures contains amalgam. The uncontrolled discharge of this waste into the sewer system from a large number of dental units (i.e. dental clinics), will increase the mercury load to treatment facilities and could eventually contribute higher potential mercury exposure as well. The main objective of this project was to characterize the properties of the dental waste (DW) stream.published or submitted for publicatio

A Data Driven Approach for Prioritizing COVID-19 Vaccinations in the Midwestern United States Untitled Item

Considering the potential for widespread adoption of social vulnerability indices (SVI) to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations, there is a need to carefully assess them, particularly for correspondence with outcomes (such as loss of life) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health Public Health GIS (PHGIS) team developed a methodology for assessing and deriving vulnerability indices based on the premise that these indices are, in the final analysis, classifiers. Application of this methodology to several Midwestern states with a commonly used SVI indicates that using only the SVI rankings is likely to assign a high priority to locations with the lowest mortality rates and low priority to locations with the highest mortality rates. Based on the findings, we propose using a two-dimensional approach to rationalize the distribution of vaccinations. The PHGIS approach has the potential to account for areas with high vulnerability characteristics as well as to incorporate the areas that were hard hit by the pandemic.<br

Environmental Justice Conditions of Communities Adjacent to a Proposed Facility in Southwest Chicago

This report is the first application of the UIC MCVD EJ.3 interface to assess the environmental justice conditions of the community near a location proposed for a scrap metal recycling facility. The environmental justice status of the densely populated Southwest Chicago communities is already poor: the residents are underserved, low-income people of color, predominantly Latinx, surrounded by industrial corridors, brownfields, asphalt plants, intermodal railyards, and storage and industrial facilities that are known emitters of hazardous materials. The effect of the proposed facility on further deterioration of the environmental justice status, especially for children, can only be assessed using a cumulative impact assessment approach. The Alderman of the 25th Ward and local community groups requested this report

MCVD: Environmental Justice and Neighborhood Schools in Chicago, Illinois: Part 2.

The UIC School of Public Health (UIC-SPH) Emergency Management and Resiliency Planning (EMRP) program is presenting a series of Midwest Comprehensive Visualization Dashboards (MCVD) focusing on environmental health and justice (EJ) issues in this region. The first dashboard and the background study (MCVD EJ.1) identified that Chicago's toxic release inventory (TRI) reporting facilities are likely to be concentrated near neighborhood public schools in communities with a predominantly Latinx student population. In this current dashboard, a comprehensive assessment of potential exposure sources is performed at a 1-mile radius from schools. The public-school children are selected as a primary exposure population unit due to their vulnerability. Because of the public health importance of this issue, a new design approach has been adopted for this dashboard. This approach relies on a community-based participatory research (CBPR) model to develop representations of data and findings that community members and policymakers can understand and use

Development, analysis and comparison of models for respirometric biodegradation data

When continuous monitoring devices such as the electrolytic respirometer are used for performing biodegradation experiments, cumulative data are acquired. The structure of these observations limits the reliable application of existing methodologies for analyzing cumulative respirometric biodegradation trends, because the resulting error terms are likely to be highly autocorrelated. To overcome these limitations it is proposed that the Oxygen Uptake Rate (OUR) should be used as the data source for further analysis, because the dependence of the error terms is then removed. To model uniform reaction rate respirometric biodegradation OUR data trends, 1st and 2nd-order OUR models are proposed. Theoretical and practical assessment of these models in comparison with their cumulative counterparts indicates that (a) they are likely to have improved nonlinear behaviour, (b) their parameters will have more reliable confidence interval estimates, and (c) the optimal duration of an experiment performed to estimate the OUR model parameters is shorter compared to that required for estimating similar parameters in the case of cumulative biodegradation data. During respirometric biodegradation studies, data trends with distinct microbial growth periods often appear as well. In order to describe such observations a new diphasic OUR model is proposed, which provides valuable information for each phase in the form of 1st-order reaction rate coefficients and the duration of the first phase. Application of this model to a number of data cases indicates that this model can be regarded as a practical alternative for modelling diphasic respirometric data trends. A similar conclusion was drawn for a proposed two-stage respirometric biodegradation model. In the present study an approach is also suggested for performing statistical comparisons between biodegradation curves which have been obtained under different experimental conditions. This approach is based on the proposed OUR models,