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Comparing Effects of Atrazine Exposure on Neuroendocrine Molecular Targets at Two Developmental Exposure Periods in the Zebrafish
Get PDFImpact of Equine Interaction during Psychotherapy on Anxiety and Depression for Residential Treatment Program Patients Experiencing Substance Withdrawal
Get PDFAs incidences of substance use disorders (SUD) increase in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need for more effective treatment approaches. Further, treatment approaches currently available struggle to retain patients during the period of substance withdrawal in early treatment due to patients’ withdrawal symptoms including increased feelings of anxiety and depression. Withdrawal symptoms have been linked to dysregulated cortisol concentrations present in this period. Psychotherapy incorporating equine interaction (PIE) has emerged in other populations as a treatment that decreases cortisol concentrations and improves treatment retention. The present study investigated the impact of 4 weeks of PIE on 10 (n = 10) withdrawing patients in a residential substance abuse treatment program. A survey instrument consisting of 17 questions tracking perceived anxiety and depression was given prior to the first week of PIE and at the end of the fourth week of PIE. On weeks 1 and 4 of PIE, heart rate and salivary cortisol measures were taken. Paired t-tests were performed to determine differences in survey responses and the mixed procedure was used to determine differences in heart rate and cortisol concentrations. The Spearman correlation was used to determine the association between survey responses and heart rate and cortisol measures. Significance was considered at P ≤ 0.05 and tendencies were reported at P ≤ 0.1. Significant improvements were seen in 24% of the survey questions analyzing nervousness (P = 0.01), control of worry (P = 0.05), trouble relaxing (P = 0.02), and irritability (P = 0.04), and tendencies toward improvements in another 17% of measures concerning control of one’s life (P = 0.10), worry (P = 0.10), and fear (P = 0.10). Patient heart rates were higher following the fourth week of PIE compared to the first week of PIE (P = 0.02), and no significant changes in cortisol concentrations were seen (P = 0.20). These results, in addition to therapist observations of limited activity levels in the first week of treatment, indicate potential increased activity and participation through the 4 weeks of PIE. This improvement is in addition to improvements in survey responses associated with severity of depression and anxiety during the withdrawal period, indicating PIE’s effectiveness in SUD treatment
A fractal art approach to the three-body problem
Get PDFThis preliminary study explores a new search strategy for identifying relatively stable vs. unstable solutions to the planar three-body problem in astrophysics, starting from the perspective of computer-generated art. Here classical Newtonian accelerations, speeds, and positions of all three bodies in a fixed plane are calculated. All three bodies are stationary at time zero, and the fate of the system is classified as reflecting either a bound stable orbit, a likely collision, or the ejection of one body. The initial position of one of the three bodies is varied in the image plane, and the outcome coded as one of three colors, to produce a complex image of rings, defining either stable orbits, collisions, or ejection events. The nested, randomly interspersed, non-overlapping, both thick and thin rings resemble the rings of the planet Saturn seen up-close by a passing spacecraft. However, the rings are not concentric. Instead, they are similar to the field lines around an electric dipole. Since such field lines converge at the origin, detailed measurements of the ring density per unit length are possible either along a 45-degree line or along a horizontal line close to the origin. These measurements reveal a seemingly infinite number of rings of decreasing thicknesses over linear scales spanning 16 orders of magnitude. Such self-similar ring patterns at progressively smaller scales represent a new type of fractal, embedded in the classical three-body problem of astrophysics
Recent U.S. Government and Foreign National Government and Commercial Literature on Semiconductors
No full textSemiconductors play a major role in U.S. and international economic activity and in national security policymaking. They are tiny electronic devices based primarily on silicon or germanium, facilitating multiple industrial activities including systems foundational to U.S. technological competitiveness and national security. This industry is a key U.S. exporter with this product’s design and manufacturing being a global enterprise with design, fabrication, assembly, testing, and packing distributed globally. Semiconductors are essential building blocks for emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, 5 G communications, and quantum computing. This article aspires to inform librarians and others about governmental and commercial literature produced on this subject. It aspires to enhance understanding of this topic and its intersections with economics, consumer goods, technology politics, and international security
A design team’s perspective-mixing for shared empathic understandings
Get PDFEmpathic design involves two social practices – collaboration with users and intra team collaboration forshared empathic understandings. This study is focused on the latter phenomenon, aiming to characterise a social mechanism underlying it. To achieve this objective, we used a framework of perspective-mixing in empathic design, including three distinct perspectives: first, second, and third-person perspectives. With this framework, we traced how team members share and integrate individuals’ user knowledge and insights to develop and apply their shared empathic understandings. We conducted conversation analysis to examine one design team’s conversations over a design journey from need-finding to initial ideation to prototyping and testing. To characterise this team’s perspective-mixing during their conversations, we analysed how team members took and combined the three perspectives within and between their utterances (perspective transitions). Our analysis revealed that the team used the third-person perspective as an underlying mechanism for perspective-mixing. In addition, the nature of perspective-mixing was distinct for specific design activities – the transitions involving the first and second-person perspectives were prominent during need-finding and initial ideation, while the third-person perspective was predominant during prototyping and testing. Based on these findings, we discuss what and how perspective-mixing can support intrateam collaboration for shared empathic understandings
Modelling the Bottom-Up Development Pattern of Tar Spot Disease in Corn
Get PDFIn 2015, the corn-infecting pathogen Phyllachora maydis (causal agent of tar spot disease) was reported for the first time in the United States. The disease has since spread across the US, causing major yield losses. In 2021 alone, 5.88 million metric tons (231.3 million bushels) of US corn yield were lost to this disease, costing an estimated US$1.25 billion. Though fungicides can protect against these agroeconomic losses, application timing can be difficult to optimize because our understanding of tar spot dynamics is still evolving. The current view is that tar spot typically develops bottom-up through a repeating infection cycle. Because signs and symptoms are usually seen first on the lower leaves then sequentially up the plant, it has been assumed that the infection of the lower leaves fuels that of the middle leaves, which then fuels infection of the upper leaves. We explored this idea by using data-driven modelling techniques to gain deeper insights into the vertical dynamics of sign/symptom development. We found that the probability of bottom-up, or even top-down, tar spot sign/symptom development is incredibly low. In striking contrast to conventional assumptions, it seems that the disease re-circulates at each leaf canopy level without any sizable influence from other levels. Though tar spot may appear to develop bottom-up, our model is showing that this pattern is not due to a repeating cycle of infections up the plant. These findings provide a more data-driven, mechanistic view of tar spot epidemiology and what it could mean for its vertical-temporal developmen
Accuracy of Nitrate Hysteresis and Flushing for Agricultural Watersheds in the Midwest
Get PDFStorm event-based metrics, such as hysteresis (HI) and flushing (FI), are used to differentiate nitrate pathways and sources, which is essential for watershed management. Estimations of these event-based metrics typically use high frequency (15-minute – hourly) measurements, but daily data are also used due to their greater availability. To date, there has been no study assessing how using lower frequency samples affect the accuracy of HI and FI, which could skew interpretation of potential nutrient pathways and sources. We used continuous measurements of nitrate collected at 9 watersheds throughout the Midwest spanning 448 storms. HI and FI were estimated from resampled time series at different sampling frequencies (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 24 hours). Uncertainty was quantified using the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and range of possible values for NSE were estimated through Monte Carlo simulations and bootstrapping. Daily sampling frequencies had mean HI NSE of -0.12 [-3.0 – 0.91] and a mean FI NSE of 0.004 [-4.1 – 0.83]. 16-hour sampling frequencies had mean HI NSE of 0.19 [-2.5 – 0.92] and a mean FI NSE of 0.37 [-2.1 – 0.90]. No apparent trend existed between watershed characteristics, such as contributing area and land-use, on HI and FI NSE. Correlations between HI and FI of hydroclimatic variables were similar when using daily or 15-minute values, suggesting that daily measurements can still be used to make inferences on watershed processes controlling nitrate transport. These results can be used to choose appropriate sampling frequencies to estimate HI and FI
Centerless? Making Sense of Disruptions in the Graduate Writing Center
Get PDFThis critical self-reflection is not a success story; rather, it is an effort of decolonial thinking that reckons with the idea, experience, and practice of centerlessness during pandemic-induced online transitions and operations in a graduate writing center (GWC). By tracing the contours of a series of interlocking disruptions the author and her graduate writing center community experienced during COVID-19, this article brings into sharp focus present colonial legacies inhibiting effective developments, moves, and adaptations to the GWC physical center space and praxis. Through retrospectively following pandemic-induced disruptions to her center, the author critically engages how epistemologies of coloniality and modernity cultivate a narrative of centeredness that unintentionally objectifies graduate writing centers and reduces them to disembodied artifacts of the institution. Ultimately, the author shares how the struggle with feelings of centerlessness—in space, practice, and ideology—provides insights into how we might move toward different, always emergent, and unrealized alternative relational praxis for decolonial and ecological graduate writing center futures. Rather than conceive of and experience the graduate writing center as a placed and institutionalized entity, the author imagines how the disruptions she felt with her center might instead suggest storying and practicing the GWC as a distributed interactional space