41530 research outputs found
Sort by
Review of Dan C. Shahar’s Why It\u27s OK to Eat Meat and Per Bauhn’s Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice
Get PDFIt’s tricky to find decent defences of meat-eating of the kind practiced by most westerners. I was thus intrigued to pick up two short books defending meat-eating. Dan Shahar’s Why It’s Ok to Eat Meat (2022) is in Routledge’s series of short books called Why It\u27s OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live. Per Bauhn’s Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice (2023) is from Palgrave Pivot, which publishes books falling somewhere between journal articles and monographs. Shahar’s book is worth reading: it’s well-written, raising interesting questions, and offering a coherent defence of meat. Bauhn’s book is not recommended.
It’s tricky to find decent defences of meat-eating. I don’t mean defences of eating (say) roadkill or cultivated meat. I mean defences of the meat-eating practiced by most westerners. This is jarring when putting together reading lists.
I was thus intrigued to pick up two short books defending meat-eating. Dan Shahar’s Why It’s Ok to Eat Meat (2022) is in Routledge’s series of short books called Why It\u27s OK: The Ethics and Aesthetics of How We Live. Per Bauhn’s Animal Suffering, Human Rights, and the Virtue of Justice (2023) is from Palgrave Pivot, which publishes books falling somewhere between journal articles and monographs.
Shahar’s book is worth reading: it’s well-written, raising interesting questions, and offering a coherent defence of meat. Bauhn’s book is not recommended
Efficacy of Biofungicides and Their Application Timing in Managing Botrytis Bunch Rot of Wine Grape
Get PDFBotrytis bunch rot (BBR), caused by Botrytis cinerea, leads to a severe reduction of quality and yield in wine grapes (Vitis vinifera). A field study to determine the best BBR management strategy was conducted in 2021 and 2022 in Santa Maria, CA using ‘Chardonnay’, a BBR susceptible wine grape cultivar. Three biofungicides were evaluated: Actinovate® AG, Regalia®, and Serenade® ASO. The efficacy of these three biofungicides was compared with fungicide programs composed of commonly used synthetic fungicide(s) or combinations of commonly used synthetic and biofungicides. For each biofungicide, three application timings were evaluated: 7-day interval, 14-day interval, and by an incubation predictive model. At 21- and 7-days pre-harvest (2021 and 2022), 25 clusters per treatment replication were evaluated for BBR incidence and severity to determine the efficacy of each treatment. All biofungicides and control treatments resulted in significantly lower disease severity and incidence compared to the untreated control. Treatment programs were comparable in both years, except in 2021, BBR severity was observed to be significantly lower (P \u3c 0.001) when treated with the rotation of synthetic fungicides and Actinovate sprayed weekly compared to Actinovate sprayed based on the predictive model. The relation between airborne conidia counts, environmental conditions, and disease severity were investigated. Correlations between environmental conditions and airborne conidia counts were not found in 2021. However, in 2022, the number of airborne conidia were observed to be positively correlated with minimum temperature (P = 0.016) and negatively correlated with wind speed (P \u3c 0.001) v in the studied vineyard in Santa Maria. Meanwhile, the number of airborne conidia were observed to be positively correlated with average temperature (P = 0.042) in the vineyard in San Luis Obispo. No correlations were found between disease severity on grape tissue and the number of conidia trapped regardless of year and location. Biofungicides evaluated in this study have the potential to be used for BBR management in ‘Chardonnay’ grapes, but further investigations may be needed to confirm these findings
Design of an Angle Measurement Device Using Ultrasonic Pairs
Get PDFIn this paper, a new concept for ultrasonic indoor positioning built upon instantaneous frequency of ultrasonic signals is presented. Ultrasonic sensors are inexpensive and manageable sensors; they are currently not used to good advantage with their potential for the electronics industry. The current ultrasonic sensors in the market only present a distance value to the nearest object for the user and due to this kind of feedback, it’s not attainable to find the relative position of the object from the sensor in a detection area; examples vary from workpieces and robots to even people. By using an algorithm and multiple ultrasonic sensors, ultrasonic triangulation can be implemented to obtain supplemental angle information from the raw distance measurement data. The design process, raw measurement data and performance of an angle measurement device using ultrasonic pairs is discussed and evaluated further
Analytical Pipeline To Facilitate Electroencephalography Pain State Identification In Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain
Get PDFChronic low back pain (cLBP) affects the quality of life of over 23% of American adults and places an immense burden on the economy.1–3 To more effectively diagnose and treat cLBP, quantitative biomarkers are needed to objectively measure pain and better identify the underlying mechanisms of cLBP. The overarching goal of this work is to create an analytical pipeline to investigate brain activity patterns measured with electroencephalogram (EEG) data of cLBP patients treated with transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (tSCS). The specific aims of this project are to 1) investigate whether there is a difference between baseline EEG measurements and EEG measurements after transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation, 2) investigate potential brain activity patterns that may be associated with patient-reported pain scores, and 3) discuss the potential use of these brain activity patterns in wearable devices. Resting state EEG data was collected from four patients before and after completion of all tSCS therapy sessions, as well as before and after acute stimulation, for eyes open and eyes closed conditions. Patients underwent 12 or 21 tSCS sessions, with daily collection of patient-reported outcomes using a visual analog scale. EEG analysis has been done in MATLAB using the EEGLAB toolbox. A statistically significant (
Operation WEBS – Tiny Home on Wheels Preconstruction Package
Get PDFOperation WEBS (Women Empowered Build Strong) Tiny Home on Wheels Preconstruction Package is an interdisciplinary project based senior project completed by California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, College of Architecture and Environmental Design students Jake Torres and Brendan Moynahan. With the help of Hunter Smith Architecture, Wethington Engineering Inc, electrician Lloyd Taylor, and plumber Paolo Sena we completed deliverables for designing and planning the construction of a tiny home on wheels with the goal of providing a displaced women veteran a sustainable housing solution through owner Sandy Blair’s nonprofit Operation WEBS. Our team intended to design and build a home that will change the trajectory of a displaced female’s life as well as showcase Cal Poly students’ ability to provide construction management services on a small scale, unique residential project. The paper will describe the entire preconstruction process it took to deliver the construction drawings, project proposal, budget and cost estimate, material quantity take offs, schedule and phasing plan, site logistics, and safety plan
Evaluation Of Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) For Electrospinning Utility In The Blood Vessel Mimic (BVM) Lab
Get PDFElectrospinning has provided the opportunity to create extracellular matrix (ECM) mimicking scaffolds for the development of tissue-engineered constructs. Within Professor Kristen Cardinal’s Blood Vessel Mimic (BVM) Lab, at Cal Poly, there exists a constant demand for innovation and the expansion of polymer types and electrospinning capabilities for its BVM model. Along these lines, the BVM Lab has recently acquired two new electrospinning systems: the Spinbox, a commercially graded electrospinning system, and the Learn-By-Doing system, which was part of a recently completed thesis conducted by Jason Provol. Additionally, recently published literature has demonstrated polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a viable option for creating electrospun scaffolds in the nanometer range. These findings prompt interest in investigating this polymer type due to its potential for producing extremely thin fiber diameters. Therefore, the overall objective of this thesis was to enhance the electrospinning capabilities of the BVM Lab through the utilization of the water-soluble polymer, PVA and to comprehensively compare the three available electrospinning systems within the BVM Lab, for novel tissue engineering or classroom applications.
The work performed in this thesis was structured around three main Aims. The first Aim of this thesis was to demonstrate the feasibility of using PVA to create flatsheet scaffolds using the Spinbox system. To achieve this, different PVA types with varying degrees of hydrolysis (DH) and molecular weight (MW) were spun to determine the most suitable PVA formulation. These experiments revealed that PVA with low DH and ultra-high MW was the most suitable for electrospinning. Subsequently, a formal Design of Experiments (DOE) was conducted to determine an effective parameter combination for Spinbox flatsheets. The DOE yielded a parameter combination with a voltage of 27 kV, a flow rate of 0.50 ml/hr, a gap distance of 17 cm, and a weight percentage of 10%. The selection of a PVA formulation with appropriate parameters in Aim 1 established the groundwork for accomplishing the objectives of Aim 2. Aim 2 sought to extend PVA’s electrospinning utility to other collector geometries across all three of the BVM lab’s electrospinning systems, while also comparing the usability, safety, and adjustability of each system relative to one another. This was the first time all 3 systems were directly compared. The results from Aim 2 demonstrated the reproducibility of tubular scaffolds on both the Custom and Spinbox systems, featuring nanoscale fibrous scaffolds, as well as on the LBD system with flatsheets. Furthermore, a qualitative comparison of the systems indicated that the Spinbox exhibited the highest degree of adjustability and safety among the electrospinners, albeit with the lowest relative degree of usability. Conversely, the LBD system demonstrated the highest usability or intuitiveness, while also being the most hazardous and least adjustable of the systems. The Custom system ranked in the middle for all three metrics.
Finally, the successful creation of tubular PVA scaffolds led to Aim 3 of this thesis, which focused on evaluating the potential of PVA scaffolds in a bioreactor environment for research applications and devising an accessible classroom PVA protocol for teaching applications. To accomplish this final aim, the scaffolds produced in Aim 2 were characterized and evaluated based on their solubility in cell-media. Additionally, methods for enhancing water-resistance through methanol cross-linking were explored and assessed. The results indicated that cross-linking PVA with methanol could enhance water resistance, but additional treatment would be necessary for PVA to serve as a standalone vascular scaffold in BVMs. However, a PVA Lab protocol was successfully developed to facilitate classroom education, providing a tangible and immediately impactful outcome of this thesis
DocAI
Get PDFDocAI presents a user-friendly platform for recording, transcribing, summarizing, and classifying doctor-patient consultations. The application utilizes AssemblyAI for conversational transcription, and the user interface allows users to either live-record consultations or upload an existing MP3 file. The classification process, powered by \u27ml-classify-text,\u27 organizes the consultation transcription into SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan) format – a widely used method of documentation for healthcare providers. The result of this development is a simple yet effective interface that effectively plays the role of a medical scribe. However, the application is still facing challenges of inconsistent summarization from the AssemblyAI backend. Future work involves refining summarization consistency and exploring integration with medical platforms
Defining Her Future Conference Application
Get PDFThe Women and Business club hosts the Defining Her Future Conference every year in order to empower young women and aid in their professional development. The conference has many opportunities for students to connect with professionals and learn from inspiring women but it does not currently have an application to enrich the experience. An application with all current conference information would minimize waste, provide conference information and logistics, and allow participants to network