The University of Texas at Tyler
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INSANE ASYLUMS IN BRITAIN DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Get PDFThis thesis analyzes insane asylums, in Britain, during the nineteenth century and argues that government, society, and gender had a profound impact on insane asylums and determined the quality of care that female and male patients received as a consequence
NICHE PARTITIONING OF FOOD RESOURCES BY FRESHWATER MUSSELS IN A MULTISPECIES MUSSEL BED IN THE SABINE RIVER
Get PDFFreshwater mussels (Unionids) are a very diverse group of bivalves, with about 300 species in the United States. Although freshwater mussels are very diverse, they are also critically endangered and are declining at extremely high rates. In fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed excluding eight freshwater mussel species from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2021 because they went extinct. Mussels play a key role in keeping our water systems healthy because of their filter feeding method. Filter feeding influences the rest of the ecosystem through the transfer of energy, cycling of nutrients, and purification of the surrounding water. Multispecies mussel beds challenge ecological theory which suggests that multiple species cannot occupy the same niche because of resource competition. This study focuses on determining what food resources freshwater mussels consume and evaluate if, and to what extent, mussel species in a complex, multispecies freshwater mussel bed are partitioning available food resources. We examined the available food resources using eDNA and the preferred food resources of four species of freshwater mussels (pistolgrip (Tritogonia verrucose), yellow sandshell (Lampsilis teres), Texas pigtoe (Fusconaia askewi), and the bluefer (Potamilis purpuratus)) found in a single mussel bed in the Sabine River (Texas). These species will be used to address the following questions: 1) Does shell morphology and habitat preference affect the food resources that freshwater mussels are utilizing; 2) Are tissue and shell coloration of some mussels related to the algae (pigments) they are utilizing as food resources? Results show that the pigments of the algae mussels are consuming has likely no relationship to the colorization of the mussel’s tissue or shell; however, our results did support that the shell morphology of the mussel can determine if a mussel is a food resource specialist or generalist. Based on the data presented here and previous habitat data, the pistolgrip can be classified as a specialist and the yellow sandshell a generalist based on these mussel’s habitat and food resource preferences. These results support ecological theory that mussels co-exist in the same environment because they utilize different food resources. Overall, this study aids in our ability to promote healthy freshwater environments through the management of mussel conservation
MOSQUITO EDGE: An Edge-Intelligent Real-Time Mosquito Threat Prediction Using an IoT-Enabled Hardware System
Get PDFSpecies distribution models (SDMs) that use climate variables to make binary predictions are effective tools for niche prediction in current and future climate scenarios. In this study, a Hutchinson hypervolume is defined with temperature, humidity, air pressure, precipitation, and cloud cover climate vectors collected from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that were matched to mosquito presence and absence points extracted from NASA\u27s citizen science platform called GLOBE Observer and the National Ecological Observatory Network. An 86% accurate Random Forest model that operates on binary classification was created to predict mosquito threat. Given a location and date input, the model produces a threat level based on the number of decision trees that vote for a presence label. The feature importance chart and regression show a positive, linear correlation between humidity and mosquito threat and between temperature and mosquito threat below a threshold of 28 °C. In accordance with the statistical analysis and ecological wisdom, high threat clusters in warm, humid regions and low threat clusters in cold, dry regions were found. With the model running on the cloud and within ArcGIS Dashboard, accurate and granular real-time threat level predictions can be made at any latitude and longitude. A device leveraging Global Positioning System (GPS) smartphone technology and the Internet of Things (IoT) to collect and analyze data on the edge was developed. The data from the edge device along with its respective date and location collected are automatically inputted into the aforementioned Random Forest model to provide users with a real-time threat level prediction. This inexpensive hardware can be used in developing countries that are threatened by vector-borne diseases or in remote areas without cloud connectivity. Such devices can be linked with citizen science mosquito data platforms to build training datasets for machine learning based SDMs
Physics-Based Proxy Modeling of CO2 Sequestration in Deep Saline Aquifers
Get PDFThe geological sequestration of CO2 in deep saline aquifers is one of the most effective strategies to reduce greenhouse emissions from the stationary point sources of CO2. However, it is a complex task to quantify the storage capacity of an aquifer as it is a function of various geological characteristics and operational decisions. This study applies physics-based proxy modeling by using multiple machine learning (ML) models to predict the CO2 trapping scenarios in a deep saline aquifer. A compositional reservoir simulator was used to develop a base case proxy model to simulate the CO2 trapping mechanisms (i.e., residual, solubility, and mineral trapping) for 275 years following a 25-year CO2 injection period in a deep saline aquifer. An expansive dataset comprising 19,800 data points was generated by varying several key geological and decision parameters to simulate multiple iterations of the base case model. The dataset was used to develop, train, and validate four robust ML models--multilayer perceptron (MLP), random forest (RF), support vector regression (SVR), and extreme gradient boosting (XGB). We analyzed the sequestered CO2 using the ML models by residual, solubility, and mineral trapping mechanisms. Based on the statistical accuracy results, with a coefficient of determination (R2) value of over 0.999, both RF and XGB had an excel-lent predictive ability for the cross-validated dataset. The proposed XGB model has the best CO2 trapping performance prediction with R2 values of 0.99988, 0.99968, and 0.99985 for residual trap-ping, mineralized trapping, and dissolution trapping mechanisms, respectively. Furthermore, a feature importance analysis for the RF algorithm identified reservoir monitoring time as the most crit-ical feature dictating changes in CO2 trapping performance, while relative permeability hysteresis, permeability, and porosity of the reservoir were some of the key geological parameters. For XGB, however, the importance of uncertain geologic parameters varied based on different trapping mech-anisms. The findings from this study show that the physics-based smart proxy models can be used as a robust predictive tool to estimate the sequestration of CO2 in deep saline aquifers with similar reservoir characteristics
Structural health assessment of pavement sections in the southern central United States using FWD parameters
Get PDFVarious Departments of Transportation in the South-Central States and elsewhere have made extensive use of the Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) surface deflection bowl data. The falling weight deflectometer (FWD) test is a popular NDT-based test used by transportation authorities to evaluate the performance of flexible pavement. Nevertheless, it is rare to develop a method for evaluating pavement sections using FWD data from all sensors. There is a constant demand for DOTs and highway agencies to have a streamlined approach that can be applied directly to their databases. This research focuses on extending and verifying the concept of previously published area ratio parameters to the pavement section of South-Central States (Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas) in order to properly analyze pavement performance. Simulation-based deflections are employed to strengthen deflection-based parameters and minimize the need for lengthy FWD field testing. Ninety-seven pavement sections in these states are being investigated for the implementation and validation of simplified processes that will be widely accessible to different transportation authorities in order to assess pavement problems at the network level
COVID-19 Academic Integrity Violations and Trends: A Rapid Review
Get PDFThe rapid shift from classroom course delivery to online education modalities during the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on academia. Student loss of face-to-face interaction, the lost social benefits of the educational milieu, and restricted instructor ability to control both the learning environment and assessment process have been significant. The purpose of this paper is to discover if due to the unplanned shift to online course delivery, educators and researchers experienced impacts to academic integrity during the peak of the online shift. A systemic review utilizing the PRISMA methodology of peer reviewed literature published during the period of March 2020 till September 2021 demonstrated that violation types continued to fall within the existing academic integrity constructs of inappropriate information sharing, cheating on exams and assignments, incidents of plagiarism, and falsifying or fabricating information. The results showed that pre-COVID concerns with academic integrity were amplified with previous concerns moving to the forefront. In addition, the rapid shift opened doors for greater opportunity for violations and increased instructor concern especially within the hard sciences and courses with lab-based components. Reinforcing the importance of providing formal academic integrity student and faculty training can be a beneficial intervention to ensure students understand the ethical implications of student behavior and performance during the assessment process. Given the emerging trend pre-COVID that skyrocketed during the pandemic, ensuring academic integrity should remain a key priority for learning institutions
Employment Recovery: It Doesn\u27t Advance at the Same Pace Everywhere
Get PDFIn this issue of the Hibbs Brief, we discuss post-pandemic employment recovery levels across the country and state
What is Quiet Quitting?
Get PDFIn this issue of the Hibbs Brief, we discuss a relatively new trend experienced by the U.S. labor market during the past 18 months or so, called the Quiet Quitting
Promoting Sleep to Decrease Delirium
Get PDFDelirium is potent risk factor for complications, an increase length of stay, and mortality. Hospital acquired delirium is a prevalent and serious health condition that can occur in patients, especially the older adult population, when admitted to the hospital. It has the ability to be prevented if properly addressed and interventions are set in place to help reduce the occurrence of hospital acquired delirium. Many factors can contribute to the development of delirium, including a disruption of one’s circadian rhythm. Sleep is not always a high priority in the hospital, therefore there are little interventions and goals aimed at improving sleep within the hospitalized patient. A majority of patients within the hospital may be prescribed a as needed sleep aide, however, there are several non-pharmacological interventions that are overlooked that can be implemented by the staff and the patients themselves aimed at improving sleep during their hospital stay
Changing Hand-off Communication in the PACU setting
Get PDFThrough extensive research on the importance of hand off communication in the PACU setting a correlation between patient safety and hand off report was found. Lack of a standardized hand off communication report in the PACU setting may lead to compromised patient safety and negative patient outcomes. In year 2021- 2022, the PACU there had several occurrences of miscommunication that were considered “near misses” in their incident reporting system. The objective of this capstone project is to investigate if utilizing a standardized hand off communication tool to guide healthcare professionals when transferring patient care to the next provider will mitigate the occurrence of omitted patient information or miscommunication in the PACU setting. The results of the narrative review recommend a pre-implementation and post implementation observational study to be performed in the PACU setting. Implications of this study will identify specific areas of communication improvement and measure the effectiveness of implemented communication hand off tools. Participant surveys and incident reporting systems will be used in this study. The study results may lead to the development or revision of current facility policies regarding hand off report between healthcare professionals that will promote consistent, accurate, and vital patient information needed to provide safe patient care