How to Measure Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Using the HANNA Portable Conductivity Meter

The HANNA D4 portable conductivity meter allows you to quickly estimate the amount of total dissolved solids (TDS) present in a water sample. To obtain valid measurements, you need to follow proper procedures in calibrating, rinsing, and measuring. Here is a step-by-step procedure for two HANNA D4 model meters, along with instructions for converting the meter reading of each meter to TDS (ppm). Depending on which meter you have, the actual meter reading will be different, but EC or TDS results are the same

Replacement of Chlorination Treatment for Cake Flours

Established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centre Progra

How a Small Rural University Can Effectively Approach High School Students?

Nowadays many small rural universities or colleges are faced with the challenge of how to expand schools\u27 student body. Given the limited budget, these schools need to make preliminary decisions on how to better reach high school students in order to achieve optimal enrollment goals. In this study, a survey was conducted to make an attempt at determining how a small rural university can effectively approach its anticipated target market. The objectives of this study are: 1. to determine how the target audiences hear about the university; 2. to determine who makes the final decisions regarding the target audience’s future education; 3. to identify the most effective advertisement approach to the target audience; 4. to determine the target audience’s media habits. Data are collected and analyzed. The results are presented

UB Knightlines Spring 2016

The UB Knightlines newsletter for spring of 2016. This issue contains articles discussing the heart of the city storytelling series, SASD student Erin LaFavor’s story of entrepreneurship, two UB alumni being awarded teaching awards, alumnus Jim Ford honored at White House for STEM education, UB chaplain leading an interfaith prayer vigil, UB model UN team’s win at the National Model United Nations Europe Conference, SASD students exhibiting at book fair at Yale, UB students win the Connecticut Space Grant, UB seminar on image, perception, and self-perception, a new scholarship to at risk students, UB and the Connecticut Technology Council host a programming challenge, a new Student Entrepreneur Center opens its doors, UB student volunteering during Martin Luther King Jr. Day, emeritus professor Richard Allen’s appearance on Prairie Home Companion, faculty news, alumni news, books published by alums and faculty, an African-American alumni reunion, and other campus and sports news

Advanced manufacturing process design for Mesenchymal Stromal Cell therapies

For decades, the potential immunomodulatory effects of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSCs) have prompted numerous cell-therapy clinical investigations targeting various diseases such as graft-versus-host disease and autoimmune diseases. Despite their ubiquitous usage in clinical trials, significant challenges related to their manufacturing and biological variabilities have led to poorly reproducible outcomes of therapeutic efficacy. Therefore, identification of validated critical quality attributes (CQAs) correlative to therapeutic function is of great interest to the MSC community. Such CQAs would also permit identification of critical process parameters (CPPs) to achieve and maintain MSC quality while producing a high yield. In this study, we designed and tested a “smart” feedback-controlled hollow fiber-based bioreactor for maintaining nutrient and waste levels for human umbilical cord tissue-derived MSC expansions. The bioreactor platform is a semi-autonomous system complete with in-line sensors, modeling, data-driven controllers, and an automated sampling platform. The small-scale system reduced costs, labor, time, and perturbations and improved yields of MSC products using a hollow fiber cartridge that closely models the basic design of the large-scale Quantum Cell Expansion System. Our feedback-controlled bioreactor responded to in-line glucose and lactate levels while recorded pH and dissolved oxygen measurements. This information was fed into a controller, which auto-calculates cell growth rates based on our developed mathematical model, and subsequently regulated media feed rates to support cell growth and nutrient requirements. Compared to the manual expansion process, the automated expansion processes showed higher yields and comparative therapeutic potency of MSCs, indicated by indolamine 2,3-dioxygenase assay and T cell proliferation assay. Future directions of our study propose to correlate metabolites and secreted proteins in culture media as putative CQAs that can be used as in-line predictors of MSC yield and therapeutic potency. Moreover, we aim to maintain a metabolic and secretory profile throughout MSC expansions enabled by real-time modulation of CPPs and scale up of the “smart” bioreactor. The proposed bioprocess for MSC products can be adapted and applied to industrial cell therapy manufacturing and can enable high-yield and high-quality products while minimizing variabilities. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Prospectus, May 6, 2009

https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2009/1014/thumbnail.jp

Sal-Site: Integrating new and existing ambystomatid salamander research and informational resources

Salamanders of the genus Ambystoma are a unique model organism system because they enable natural history and biomedical research in the laboratory or field. We developed Sal-Site to integrate new and existing ambystomatid salamander research resources in support of this model system. Sal-Site hosts six important resources: 1) Salamander Genome Project: an information-based web-site describing progress in genome resource development, 2) Ambystoma EST Database: a database of manually edited and analyzed contigs assembled from ESTs that were collected from A. tigrinum tigrinum and A. mexicanum, 3) Ambystoma Gene Collection: a database containing full-length protein-coding sequences, 4) Ambystoma Map and Marker Collection: an image and database resource that shows the location of mapped markers on linkage groups, provides information about markers, and provides integrating links to Ambystoma EST Database and Ambystoma Gene Collection databases, 5) Ambystoma Genetic Stock Center: a website and collection of databases that describe an NSF funded salamander rearing facility that generates and distributes biological materials to researchers and educators throughout the world, and 6) Ambystoma Research Coordination Network: a web-site detailing current research projects and activities involving an international group of researchers. Sal-Site is accessible at

Clinical Utility of Random Anti–Tumor Necrosis Factor Drug–Level Testing and Measurement of Antidrug Antibodies on the Long-Term Treatment Response in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objective: To investigate whether antidrug antibodies and/or drug non-trough levels predict the long-term treatment response in a large cohort of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) treated with adalimumab or etanercept and to identify factors influencing antidrug antibody and drug levels to optimize future treatment decisions.  Methods: A total of 331 patients from an observational prospective cohort were selected (160 patients treated with adalimumab and 171 treated with etanercept). Antidrug antibody levels were measured by radioimmunoassay, and drug levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 835 serial serum samples obtained 3, 6, and 12 months after initiation of therapy. The association between antidrug antibodies and drug non-trough levels and the treatment response (change in the Disease Activity Score in 28 joints) was evaluated.  Results: Among patients who completed 12 months of followup, antidrug antibodies were detected in 24.8% of those receiving adalimumab (31 of 125) and in none of those receiving etanercept. At 3 months, antidrug antibody formation and low adalimumab levels were significant predictors of no response according to the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) criteria at 12 months (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve 0.71 [95% confidence interval (95% CI) 0.57, 0.85]). Antidrug antibody–positive patients received lower median dosages of methotrexate compared with antidrug antibody–negative patients (15 mg/week versus 20 mg/week; P = 0.01) and had a longer disease duration (14.0 versus 7.7 years; P = 0.03). The adalimumab level was the best predictor of change in the DAS28 at 12 months, after adjustment for confounders (regression coefficient 0.060 [95% CI 0.015, 0.10], P = 0.009). Etanercept levels were associated with the EULAR response at 12 months (regression coefficient 0.088 [95% CI 0.019, 0.16], P = 0.012); however, this difference was not significant after adjustment. A body mass index of ≥30 kg/m2 and poor adherence were associated with lower drug levels.  Conclusion: Pharmacologic testing in anti–tumor necrosis factor–treated patients is clinically useful even in the absence of trough levels. At 3 months, antidrug antibodies and low adalimumab levels are significant predictors of no response according to the EULAR criteria at 12 months

The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE)

The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE), one of the programs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III), has now completed its systematic, homogeneous spectroscopic survey sampling all major populations of the Milky Way. After a three-year observing campaign on the Sloan 2.5 m Telescope, APOGEE has collected a half million high-resolution (R ~ 22,500), high signal-to-noise ratio (>100), infrared (1.51–1.70 μm) spectra for 146,000 stars, with time series information via repeat visits to most of these stars. This paper describes the motivations for the survey and its overall design—hardware, field placement, target selection, operations—and gives an overview of these aspects as well as the data reduction, analysis, and products. An index is also given to the complement of technical papers that describe various critical survey components in detail. Finally, we discuss the achieved survey performance and illustrate the variety of potential uses of the data products by way of a number of science demonstrations, which span from time series analysis of stellar spectral variations and radial velocity variations from stellar companions, to spatial maps of kinematics, metallicity, and abundance patterns across the Galaxy and as a function of age, to new views of the interstellar medium, the chemistry of star clusters, and the discovery of rare stellar species. As part of SDSS-III Data Release 12 and later releases, all of the APOGEE data products are publicly available