The Effects Of Elevated Total Dissolved Solids On The Behavior And Survival Of The Allegheny Mountain Dusky Salamander, Desmognathus Ochrophaeus

Elevated total dissolved solids (TDS) have been found in streams in Pennsylvania primarily due to unconventional natural gas development (UNGD) and mine drainage. TDS is the concentration of dissolved salts in water. To understand the effects of TDS on amphibians, a semi-aquatic salamander (Desmognathus ochrophaeus exposed to synthetic solutions containing TDS up to 5,000 ppm. In an initial study, animals exposed to a solution of approximately 2,000 ppm TDS containing elevated sulfate experienced reduced survival and decreased locomotory activity. Follow-up studies were consistent with the hypothesis that elevated TDS had adverse effects on survival, but effects were not seen unless the TDS was closer to 5,000 ppm. In all studies, larger animals were more prone to adverse effects of TDS. Results indicated that elevated TDS can have adverse effects on D. ochrophaeus further research is needed to understand the doses and conditions at which effects are evident

Information Seeking Behavior of Engineers

Research paper for SI 551 Information Seeking Behavior with Dr Soo Young RiehEngineers are largely specialists trained in areas such as mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering, yet they work in a broad range of environments, such as research and development, design, testing, manufacturing, construction, management, consulting and sales. Engineers need to seek highly specialized information when working in the industry and need information to provide a product, system, process or service to their customer. The purpose of this study is to understand how engineers find the information they need to effectively perform their job. What sources do most engineers turn to first and why? Do they depend on their corporate library, do they subscribe to databases? Do they read reports, catalogs, handbooks, and trade journals? How do engineers organize their own information - do they form their own systems for papers, computer files, drawings, etc? Are there any cultural barriers that impede their search for information? By studying practicing engineers, we would like to try to understand how they solve their problems when searching for information at work.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135952/6/Information Seeking Behavior of Engineers.pdf-

SmartSense: An Improved Method for Hospital Acquired Pressure Ulcer Prevention

Hospital acquired pressure ulcers (HAPUs), also called bedsores, are damage to the skin and/or underlying tissue caused by prolonged pressure on the bony areas of the body, with around 20% of pressure ulcers occurring in the heel region. Currently, the most common practice for HAPU prevention is arbitrary manual repositioning of patients by nurses every 1-2 hours. The goal of our project was to address HAPUs in the heel region of low mobility patients through an ulceration risk sensing system. Our team has created a wearable ulceration risk assessment system that combines individual patient risk data with real time pressure data to determine overall HAPU risk level. This system includes a pressure sensor system embedded within a silicone foam dressing, which can be strapped around the heel. The pressure data is wirelessly sent to a computer display and combined with scores from the current risk assessment scale (Braden Scale) to create a real time HAPU risk assessment tool for clinicians. Based on our validation testing, the system accurately reads pressure at the heels and creates an accurate ulceration risk assessment tool. This tool, when fully developed, could lead to faster recovery time for patients, a decrease in the overall cost of patient treatment, and a decreased burden on nurses, allowing them to better optimize their time

An Improved Method for Hospital Acquired Pressure Ulcer (HAPU) Prevention

Hospital acquired pressure ulcers (HAPUs), also called bedsores, are damage to the skin and/or underlying tissue caused by prolonged pressure on the bony areas of the body, with around 20% of pressure ulcers occurring in the heel region. Currently, the most common practice for HAPU prevention is arbitrary manual repositioning of patients by nurses every 1-2 hours. The goal of our project was to address HAPUs in the heel region of low mobility patients through an ulceration risk sensing system. Our team has created a wearable ulceration risk assessment system that combines individual patient risk data with real time pressure data to determine overall HAPU risk level. This system includes a pressure sensor system embedded within a silicone foam dressing, which can be strapped around the heel. The pressure data is wirelessly sent to a computer display and combined with scores from the current risk assessment scale (Braden Scale) to create a real time HAPU risk assessment tool for clinicians. Based on our validation testing, the system accurately reads pressure at the heels and creates an accurate ulceration risk assessment tool. This tool, when fully developed, could lead to faster recovery time for patients, a decrease in the overall cost of patient treatment, and a decreased burden on nurses, allowing them to better optimize their time

Infrared and Ultraviolet Star Formation in Brightest Cluster Galaxies in the ACCEPT Sample

We present IR and UV photometry for a sample of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). The BCGs are from a heterogeneous but uniformly characterized sample, the Archive of Chandra Cluster Entropy Profile Tables (ACCEPT), of X-ray galaxy clusters from the Chandra X-ray telescope archive with published gas temperature, density, and entropy profiles. We use archival GALEX, Spitzer, and 2MASS observations to assemble spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and colors for BCGs. We find that while the SEDs of some BCGs follow the expectation of red, dust-free old stellar populations, many exhibit signatures of recent star formation in the form of excess UV or mid-IR emission, or both. We establish a mean near-UV to 2MASS K color of 6.59 \pm 0.34 for quiescent BCGs. We use this mean color to quantify the UV excess associated with star formation in the active BCGs. We use fits to a template of an evolved stellar population and library of starburst models and mid-IR star formation relations to estimate the obscured star formation rates. Many of the BCGs in X-ray clusters with low central gas entropy exhibit enhanced UV (38%) and mid-IR emission (43%), above that expected from an old stellar population. These excesses are consistent with on-going star formation activity in the BCG, star formation that appears to be enabled by the presence of high density, X-ray emitting gas in the the core of the cluster of galaxies. This hot, X-ray emitting gas may provide the enhanced ambient pressure and some of the fuel to trigger the star formation. This result is consistent with previous works that showed that BCGs in clusters with low central gas entropy host H{\alpha} emission-line nebulae and radio sources, while clusters with high central gas entropy exhibit none of these features. UV and mid-IR measurements combined provide a complete picture of unobscured and obscured star formation occurring in these systems.Comment: 81 pages, 14 figures, Accepted for ApJ

Nontuberculous Mycobacteria–associated Lung Disease in Hospitalized Persons, United States, 1998–2005

This bacterium is an underappreciated cause of lung disease and infection rates appear to be increasing

Broadly cross-reactive antibodies dominate the human B cell response against 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus infection

Although scarce after annual influenza vaccination, B cells producing antibodies capable of neutralizing multiple influenza strains are abundant in humans infected with pandemic 2009 H1N1 influenza

With(in) U.S.: Resistive Accommodation and Cultural Strangers’ Discourses of National Belonging

The influences of inclusion and exclusion shape the landscape of the United States in profound ways, contouring the nation’s conditions of belonging to privilege some and to marginalize others. The question of how these instances of belonging and marginalization are discursively constructed served as the foundation of this project. This dissertation engages with the discursivity and materiality of belonging, tracing vernacular contributions to, and experiences with, these constructions. To address questions about national belonging, I turned to two online social movement groups that had initiated parallel online campaigns to rally for the rights of marginalized individuals. The Center for Community Change initiated the We Are America campaign to collect and showcase voices of migrant individuals, and the Courage Campaign organized and featured the voices of members and/or allies of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/queer (LGBT/Q) community. Both groups solicited, organized, and curated websites where members of their respective communities could upload videos of themselves speaking about challenges that they have faced as marginalized community members and their desire to belong within dominant U.S. culture. Investing the vernacular narratives of their populations with value, the Courage Campaign and the Center for Community Change bring cultural strangers into conversation with other U.S. national community members, constituting discursive moments for examining contributions that each group makes to understanding of belonging. As this dissertation argues, discourses of national belonging balance and construct a set of tensions in the United States that give rise to hierarchies of inclusion that shape the cultural landscape, as represented in tensions of (in)visibility, (in)dependence, and (in)valuability. These tensions necessarily engage with U.S. investments in whiteness, heteronormativity, and neoliberalism. By creating and reinforcing a norm for U.S. citizenship that locates the ideal U.S. citizen as being white, reproductively and monogamously heterosexual, and as a valuable laboring body, I argue that neoliberalism works to protect white U.S. Americans and to scapegoat others

An Improved Method for Hospital Acquired Pressure Ulcer (HAPU) Prevention

Hospital acquired pressure ulcers (HAPUs), also called bedsores, are damage to the skin and/or underlying tissue caused by prolonged pressure on the bony areas of the body, with around 20% of pressure ulcers occurring in the heel region. Currently, the most common practice for HAPU prevention is arbitrary manual repositioning of patients by nurses every 1-2 hours. The goal of our project was to address HAPUs in the heel region of low mobility patients through an ulceration risk sensing system. Our team has created a wearable ulceration risk assessment system that combines individual patient risk data with real time pressure data to determine overall HAPU risk level. This system includes a pressure sensor system embedded within a silicone foam dressing, which can be strapped around the heel. The pressure data is wirelessly sent to a computer display and combined with scores from the current risk assessment scale (Braden Scale) to create a real time HAPU risk assessment tool for clinicians. Based on our validation testing, the system accurately reads pressure at the heels and creates an accurate ulceration risk assessment tool. This tool, when fully developed, could lead to faster recovery time for patients, a decrease in the overall cost of patient treatment, and a decreased burden on nurses, allowing them to better optimize their time