ActiveRemediation: The Search for Lead Pipes in Flint, Michigan

We detail our ongoing work in Flint, Michigan to detect pipes made of lead and other hazardous metals. After elevated levels of lead were detected in residents' drinking water, followed by an increase in blood lead levels in area children, the state and federal governments directed over $125 million to replace water service lines, the pipes connecting each home to the water system. In the absence of accurate records, and with the high cost of determining buried pipe materials, we put forth a number of predictive and procedural tools to aid in the search and removal of lead infrastructure. Alongside these statistical and machine learning approaches, we describe our interactions with government officials in recommending homes for both inspection and replacement, with a focus on the statistical model that adapts to incoming information. Finally, in light of discussions about increased spending on infrastructure development by the federal government, we explore how our approach generalizes beyond Flint to other municipalities nationwide.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, To appear in KDD 2018, For associated promotional video, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbIn_axYu9

A Data Science Approach to Understanding Residential Water Contamination in Flint

When the residents of Flint learned that lead had contaminated their water system, the local government made water-testing kits available to them free of charge. The city government published the results of these tests, creating a valuable dataset that is key to understanding the causes and extent of the lead contamination event in Flint. This is the nation's largest dataset on lead in a municipal water system. In this paper, we predict the lead contamination for each household's water supply, and we study several related aspects of Flint's water troubles, many of which generalize well beyond this one city. For example, we show that elevated lead risks can be (weakly) predicted from observable home attributes. Then we explore the factors associated with elevated lead. These risk assessments were developed in part via a crowd sourced prediction challenge at the University of Michigan. To inform Flint residents of these assessments, they have been incorporated into a web and mobile application funded by \texttt{Google.org}. We also explore questions of self-selection in the residential testing program, examining which factors are linked to when and how frequently residents voluntarily sample their water.Comment: Applied Data Science track paper at KDD 2017. For associated promotional video, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g66ImaV8A

Conceptualizing and investigating mathematics teacher learning of practice

Researchers and teacher educators have made advances in describing mathematics instruction that can support all students in developing conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and productive dispositions toward mathematics. Some scholars have described teaching toward these goals as ambitious teaching – teaching that attends and responds to all students as they engage in intellectually rigorous mathematical activity. To further specify this broad vision, core practices of ambitious teaching are being unpacked and identified so that teachers can learn to enact these practice to support student learning. To support teacher learning, teacher educators have increasingly engaged prospective teachers in rehearsing core practices in less complex settings to learn the skills and purpose for enacting these practices. Emerging research on rehearsals has demonstrated its value in aiding prospective teachers in beginning to enact ambitious teaching practices prior to entering the profession. While interest in a core practice approach to teaching and teacher learning has grown, scholars have noted that a shared conceptual model of practice might further the field in making progress in accumulating knowledge and building theory of teacher learning of practice. Additionally, others posit that a core practice approach may also support teachers in professional development, yet to this point there has been little conceptual and empirical efforts attending to teacher learning of core practices. This study addresses these gaps in the literature by investigating a conceptual model of teaching and a teacher educator pedagogy, rehearsal, to advance efforts promoting mathematics teacher learning of ambitious teaching. Three manuscripts collectively illustrate progress on these ideas, drawing upon data and analyses from two years of research in a practice-based professional development for secondary mathematics teachers. The first manuscript develops and investigates a conceptual model of teaching to improve design and research efforts for teacher learning of ambitious teaching. This conceptual paper addresses a set of design considerations and learning tensions inherent in a core practice approach and examines hierarchical modularity as a way to conceptualize teaching to reconcile these challenges. The second manuscript brings together this conceptual model with a social theory of learning and reports on a retrospective analysis of four teachers’ attempts to enact core practices in their classrooms to explore the ways teachers recompose practices over time toward more ambitious forms of teaching. Findings from an analysis of 5,300 instructional moves teachers used over 20 lessons, highlight that small changes in teachers’ use of instructional moves that press students to justify their reasoning and orient students to one another’s mathematical ideas, supported corresponding changes in teachers’ enactments of larger practices of teaching. The third manuscript describes a design for rehearsals for teacher learning of core practices in professional development. It details our design process, describes the ways teachers engaged in rehearsals, and offers evidence of how two teachers engagement in rehearsals corresponded to changes in their classroom practices. The conceptual arguments in the first manuscript furthers the fields efforts to conceptualize practice to explore teacher learning using a core practice approach. The empirical analysis in the second manuscript provides new ways to explore how learning can be evidenced and investigated across teachers enactments of core practices in their teaching. The design of rehearsals discussed in the third manuscript provides the field with ways to envision and repurpose pedagogies of practice from teacher development to support teacher learning of ambitious teaching. Together, the three manuscripts identify areas for continued inquiry and effort for the design and implementation of practice-based professional development and research on teacher learning of practice

The Grizzly, February 20, 1996

Talk Show Trouble • Major Fair 1996 • J.D. Salinger: A Grizzly Staffer!; The Skipped Diploma • Boxer Tommy Morrison HIV-Positive • Swedish Vocal Ensemble to Perform • Meet the Candidates: A Largely Biased Commentary • Take it Back, Captain Jack? • Blatant Generalizations • You Bet Your Life • Confessions of a Computer Dork • To Bus or Not to Bus • Vicki Abt Revisited • Free Speech, Abortion, and Presidential Politics • Valentine\u27s Spectacular Brings Elegant Dining to Zack\u27s • WVOU: State of the Nation • Airband Proceeds to Help Student Ryan Auch • Guys Come Up Short in Muhlenberg • Lady Bears Get Crushed by Muhlenberg • Bears Place Four at Eastern Regionalshttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1375/thumbnail.jp

Measurement of χ c1 and χ c2 production with s√ = 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for the χ c1 and χ c2 charmonium states are measured in pp collisions at s√ = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using 4.5 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. The χ c states are reconstructed through the radiative decay χ c → J/ψγ (with J/ψ → μ + μ −) where photons are reconstructed from γ → e + e − conversions. The production rate of the χ c2 state relative to the χ c1 state is measured for prompt and non-prompt χ c as a function of J/ψ transverse momentum. The prompt χ c cross-sections are combined with existing measurements of prompt J/ψ production to derive the fraction of prompt J/ψ produced in feed-down from χ c decays. The fractions of χ c1 and χ c2 produced in b-hadron decays are also measured

Programmable Ligand Detection System in Plants through a Synthetic Signal Transduction Pathway

There is an unmet need to monitor human and natural environments for substances that are intentionally or unintentionally introduced. A long-sought goal is to adapt plants to sense and respond to specific substances for use as environmental monitors. Computationally re-designed periplasmic binding proteins (PBPs) provide a means to design highly sensitive and specific ligand sensing capabilities in receptors. Input from these proteins can be linked to gene expression through histidine kinase (HK) mediated signaling. Components of HK signaling systems are evolutionarily conserved between bacteria and plants. We previously reported that in response to cytokinin-mediated HK activation in plants, the bacterial response regulator PhoB translocates to the nucleus and activates transcription. Also, we previously described a plant visual response system, the de-greening circuit, a threshold sensitive reporter system that produces a visual response which is remotely detectable and quantifiable.We describe assembly and function of a complete synthetic signal transduction pathway in plants that links input from computationally re-designed PBPs to a visual response. To sense extracellular ligands, we targeted the computational re-designed PBPs to the apoplast. PBPs bind the ligand and develop affinity for the extracellular domain of a chemotactic protein, Trg. We experimentally developed Trg fusions proteins, which bind the ligand-PBP complex, and activate intracellular PhoR, the HK cognate of PhoB. We then adapted Trg-PhoR fusions for function in plants showing that in the presence of an external ligand PhoB translocates to the nucleus and activates transcription. We linked this input to the de-greening circuit creating a detector plant.Our system is modular and PBPs can theoretically be designed to bind most small molecules. Hence our system, with improvements, may allow plants to serve as a simple and inexpensive means to monitor human surroundings for substances such as pollutants, explosives, or chemical agents

Genetic Analysis of Fin Development in Zebrafish Identifies Furin and Hemicentin1 as Potential Novel Fraser Syndrome Disease Genes

Using forward genetics, we have identified the genes mutated in two classes of zebrafish fin mutants. The mutants of the first class are characterized by defects in embryonic fin morphogenesis, which are due to mutations in a Laminin subunit or an Integrin alpha receptor, respectively. The mutants of the second class display characteristic blistering underneath the basement membrane of the fin epidermis. Three of them are due to mutations in zebrafish orthologues of FRAS1, FREM1, or FREM2, large basement membrane protein encoding genes that are mutated in mouse bleb mutants and in human patients suffering from Fraser Syndrome, a rare congenital condition characterized by syndactyly and cryptophthalmos. Fin blistering in a fourth group of zebrafish mutants is caused by mutations in Hemicentin1 (Hmcn1), another large extracellular matrix protein the function of which in vertebrates was hitherto unknown. Our mutant and dose-dependent interaction data suggest a potential involvement of Hmcn1 in Fraser complex-dependent basement membrane anchorage. Furthermore, we present biochemical and genetic data suggesting a role for the proprotein convertase FurinA in zebrafish fin development and cell surface shedding of Fras1 and Frem2, thereby allowing proper localization of the proteins within the basement membrane of forming fins. Finally, we identify the extracellular matrix protein Fibrillin2 as an indispensable interaction partner of Hmcn1. Thus we have defined a series of zebrafish mutants modelling Fraser Syndrome and have identified several implicated novel genes that might help to further elucidate the mechanisms of basement membrane anchorage and of the disease's aetiology. In addition, the novel genes might prove helpful to unravel the molecular nature of thus far unresolved cases of the human disease

Hydroxychloroquine for treatment of non-hospitalized adults with COVID-19: A meta-analysis of individual participant data of randomized trials

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was initially promoted as an oral therapy for early treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Conventional meta-analyses cannot fully address the heterogeneity of different designs and outcomes of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the efficacy of HCQ in outpatients with mild COVID-19. We conducted a pooled analysis of individual participant data from RCTs that evaluated the effect of HCQ on hospitalization and viral load reduction in outpatients with confirmed COVID-19. We evaluated the overall treatment group effect by log-likelihood ratio test (−2LL) from a generalized linear mixed model to accommodate correlated longitudinal binary data. The analysis included data from 11 RCTs. The outcome of virological effect, assessed in 1560 participants (N = 795 HCQ, N = 765 control), did not differ significantly between the two treatment groups (−2LL = 7.66; p = 0.18) when adjusting for cohort, duration of symptoms, and comorbidities. The decline in polymerase chain reaction positive tests from day 1 to 7 was 42.0 and 41.6 percentage points in the HCQ and control groups, respectively. Among the 2037 participants evaluable for hospitalization (N = 1058 HCQ, N = 979 control), we found no significant differences in hospitalization rate between participants receiving HCQ and controls (odds ratio 0.995; 95% confidence interval 0.614–1.610; −2LL = 0.0; p = 0.98) when adjusting for cohort, duration of symptoms, and comorbidities. This individual participant data meta-analysis of 11 HCQ trials that evaluated severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 viral clearance and COVID-19 hospitalization did not show a clinical benefit of HCQ. Our meta-analysis provides evidence to support the interruption in the use of HCQ in mild COVID-19 outpatients to reduce progression to severe disease