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Risk, Protection and Mental Health Among Incarcerated People
Get PDFApproximately 40 percent of incarcerated adults experience some history of mental illness, whereas prevalence in the general population is less than 20 percent (Criss & John, 2023). The Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI) is a self-reported survey, examining numerous aspects of prisoners’ life. It has been used to quantify the prevalence of both physical and mental health problems, however, little or no examination regarding the underlying health determinants has been done. The current study assessed state prisoners in the United States and examined both risk and protective factors (historical and current) and their relationships to mental health. The results showed that several risk and protective factors influence incarcerated persons mental health, and the strongest were homelessness before age 18 (b = .569, [CI95%:.50-.64]) and contact with children (b = -.169, [CI95%:(-.25)-(-.09)]). The final model of this study suggests that risk and protection of incarcerated persons’ mental health is influenced by multiple factors, both inside and outside the prison environment. The study defines the exact factors, some of which can be decreased and/or increased, and some of which would need further elaboration and more comprehensive examination. Improving incarcerated persons mental health can not only help the individual and their transition in varying living environments and conditions, but also the daily life of other inmates and the guards
Echoes of Silence: A Translation of Fathia al-Assal’s Women’s Prison
Get PDFThis thesis presents a literary translation of Egyptian playwright Fathia al-Assal’s seminal work, Sijn al-Nisāʾ (سجن النسا) - Women’s Prison, a compelling two-act play published in 1993. The text serves as a prism reflecting the societal, political, and personal intricacies of 1970s Cairo. Al-Assal’s narrative, meticulously woven with both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and colloquial Egyptian Arabic, reveals the dichotomies and struggles faced by its characters, particularly Salwa Azmi and Layla Mukhtar, who find themselves incarcerated in the women’s prison. The translation delves into the nuanced interchange between the formal standard Arabic, reflective of societal structures, and the informal colloquial Egyptian Arabic, embodying the pulse of everyday life. Through this linguistic interplay, the thesis aims to evoke the authenticity and cultural nuances of the original text while making it accessible to the broader Anglophone audience. The play is structured into two acts: Act One unfolds across five scenes, setting the stage for the societal tumult in Cairo, while Act Two comprises four scenes, delving deeper into the lives and intertwined stories of the incarcerated women, particularly centered around protagonists Salwa and Layla. This thesis offers not merely a literary translation but a lens into the silenced narratives of Egyptian women, encapsulating their struggle, resilience, and unwavering spirit in the face of societal and political adversities
Hardware Trojan Detection Utilizing Graph Neural Networks and Structural Checking
Get PDFThe integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced exponential growth, particularly in the complexity and scale of hardware designs. To sustain this growth, faster development cycles and cost-effective solutions have been the focus for many companies. One strategy to maintain this growth is through the incorporation of third-party intellectual property (IP) into the IC design process. Outsourcing the production of sub-components reduces development time and enables faster time-to-market, however, this approach also introduces the threat of Hardware Trojans. Hardware Trojans, defined as any malicious modification or addition to an IC, pose significant security risks due to their small size, low activation frequency, and complex obfuscation techniques. Subsequently, efficient and cost-effective detection of Hardware Trojans has become a crucial area of research. This dissertation research proposes an improvement to the Trojan detection mechanisms incorporated in the Structural Checking Tool, a Trojan detection tool that focuses on the identification of logical Trojans embedded within soft IPs. This tool facilitates direct conversion of HDL source code into a structural representation using directed graphs. Leveraging these graph structures and signal-level features, this research develops a new dataset and three graph neural networks architectures. Each of the three neural networks correspond to classical graph neural network layers and execute graph-level probabilistic binary classification of Trojan inclusion. Through rigorous testing with two potential sets of node-level feature vectors, this dissertation offers a faster, more accurate, and more adaptable approach than those existing within the current tool
Gaseous Ozone to Improve the Microbial Safety of Spices, Seeds, and Nuts
Get PDFDue to the increasing number of reported outbreaks of pathogens in low-moisture foods (LMFs), there is a need to investigate novel non-thermal gaseous technologies to increase the microbiological safety of spices, nuts, and seeds without compromising the product quality. The objective of this study was to inactivate Salmonella spp. in different spices, seeds, and nuts using gaseous ozone treatment and evaluate the suitability of Enterococcus faecium as a potential surrogate for Salmonella. Each food product (dried basil leaves, black peppercorn, chia seeds, and walnuts) was separately inoculated with a 5-strain Salmonella and E. faecium cocktail and equilibrated to water activity (aw) of 0.55. Two-gram samples of inoculated foods were treated with ozone concentrations of 900-930 ppm at relative humidity (RH) of 70-90% within a test chamber for predetermined time intervals of 1-5 h, followed by mild heating at 40℃ for 4 h. Treatment comparisons of means of log reductions of each product for microbial inactivation were performed in JMP Pro 16 software at the significance level of 5%. At ozone concentration of 900-930 ppm and RH of 90%, the 5 h ozone treatment resulted in maximum log CFU/g reductions of 5.0 ± 0.4 for basil, 2.5 ± 0.2 for black pepper, 1.1 ± 0.1 for chia seeds, and 1.5 ± 0.2 for walnuts. There was no significant difference between 1 h and 5 h ozone treatment for chia seeds and walnuts (p\u3c0.05). Post-treatment mild heating at 40ºC for 4 h further significantly inactivated Salmonella by 1-1.5 log CFU/g for black pepper and dried basil, but not for walnuts and chia seeds. E. faecium was a good surrogate for Salmonella just for basil leaves treated with gaseous ozone at 90% RH. With lower R2 and RMSE values, the Weibull model fit data better than log-linear model. There was no significant impact of gaseous ozone treatment on color, antioxidants, and total phenolics of the 4 LMFs. However, 5 h ozone treatment caused significant loss in a few minor volatile compounds of dried basil leaves, and black peppercorn and increased the primary and secondary oxidation products in walnuts. The results of this study indicate the potential of using the synergistic effect of gaseous ozone, relative humidity, and mild heating to improve the microbial safety of spices and nuts during storage
CAM and Design for Manufacturing: Developing a Project-Based Learning Course
Get PDFTo effectively serve student career success, mechanical engineering programs must teach students how to account for manufacturing considerations in design. Despite this, manufacturing education is a glaring area of need in current engineering curricula. In fact, basic manufacturing knowledge is one of the only hard skills consistently ranked as one of the greatest weaknesses of mechanical engineering hires in surveys of industrial employers over the last few decades. Without radically changing departmental curriculum to include more emphasis on design-build projects, one solution to combat this is to incubate a lab course in mechanical engineering programs in which undergraduates would practice the principles of design for manufacturing (DFM). This paper details a plan for a project-based course conceived of to accomplish exactly this while maintaining a realistic scope. Avoiding the mistakes of past attempts to incorporate manufacturing topics into mechanical engineering education by narrowing the vision for the course to the context of enhancing students’ design skills, the proposed content is targeted to directly benefit the senior design project experience and reconcile mechanical engineering curricula with the hiring need in industry for engineers who understand common manufacturing processes and how to design for them. Using computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and other visual learning methods as a starting point, students would master the ability to design for specific manufacturing processes representative of universal DFM principles and later apply that knowledge to hands-on manufacturing projects. The motivation behind this course proposal is to boost engineering career success by ensuring students are capable and ready to engineer immediately upon graduation
Addressing Social Determinants of Health in Medication-assisted Treatment Programs
Get PDFIntroduction: Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is considered the most effective treatment for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD); however, MAT program retention rates are consistently low across the United States. Addressing social determinants of health (SDOH) through text message could impact MAT retention; therefore, a pilot project at a federally qualified healthcare center (FQHC) was implemented.
Methods: The Protocol for Responding to and Assessing Patients’ Assets, Risk, and Experiences (PRAPARE) SDOH screening tool was implemented for patients undergoing MAT for OUD. Community resource referrals were provided via text message based on the screening results. Retention in treatment was measured by prescriptions filled without a gap of more than seven days for four consecutive months.
Results: Fourteen of the 28 patients reported SDOH barriers on the PRAPARE instrument in the first month. The rate of continuous pharmacotherapy for OUD without a gap of more than seven days (96%) was significantly increased in the experimental group (M = .96, SD = .19) as compared to the control group six months prior (22%) (t = 15.61, p = 1.4806E-26) by the second month. The retention rate was significantly increased in the experimental group (82%) (M = .82, SD = .39) when compared to the control group (t = 7.39, p = 5.34E-9) during the third month. The retention rate was significantly increased in the experimental group (61%) (M = .64, SD = .48) as compared to the control group (t = 5.19, p= 1.25E-5) during the fourth month.
Conclusions: MAT retention can be increased by identifying and addressing SDOH barriers with community resource referrals via text message
Lucy Through the Years -- Temporal Trends in the Australopithecus Dentition
Get PDFAustralopithecus afarensis, an extinct human ancestor (ca. 3.75 – 2.95 million years ago) first distinguished in 1978, has a dense fossil record. Until recently, A. afarensis fossils were primarily known from two locations, Laetoli, Tanzania, and Hadar, Ethiopia, that are approximately 1750 kilometers apart. Additionally, there is no temporal overlap between the sites; fossils from Laetoli are older than 3.5 Ma and those from Hadar stretch from 3.4 – 3.0 Ma. For some tooth positions, the Laetoli and Hadar fossils subtly differ in size and shape. Previous research indicated that some of these differences could be attributable to evolutionary change, or “temporal trends,” that occurred within the species. However, due to small sample sizes at critical intervals and potential age and geographical biases, these trends were difficult to conclude with any certainty. Recent discoveries of A. afarensis fossils at Hadar and other sites in Ethiopia have expanded the sample and extended the evidence to include fossils of equivalent age to those at Laetoli. Further, another species, Australopithecus anamensis (4.1 – 3.8 Ma), has been discovered and hypothesized to represent the earliest part of the A. afarensis lineage. This study investigates temporal trends in dental evolution in A. afarensis considering new discoveries and considers whether trends extend across the proposed A. anamensis/afarensis lineage. The pattern that emerges for most teeth is evolutionary stasis across the nearly 1.1 million years represented by the samples of A. anamensis and A. afarensis. Significant trends are found primarily for the canines, mandibular P3, and maxillary P4
Open-Source Optimization for Green Last Mile Delivery and Other Applications
Get PDFSolving combinatorial optimization problems at scale and of sufficiently interesting context has historically required commercial solvers and access to proprietary company data. The development of performant open-source mathematical programming software and crowdsourced datasets has created an opportunity for individuals and enterprises alike to consider alternative solutions to problems with social and personal implications. This honors thesis represents a summary of my undergraduate research work, an application of optimization to three distinct problems connected to these developments. First, we present an optimization study of a last mile delivery system that shows optimization for energy consumption can generate vehicleindependent fuel savings at acceptable tradeoff costs in time and distance. Vehicle assignmentbased savings in a heterogenous fleet environment are identified as well under different explicit capacity prioritization schemes. Open-source technologies have also provided the opportunity to apply optimization techniques to personal decision making to provide clearly improved outcomes without a significant financial investment. To that end, we explore an integer programming formulation for personal task scheduling and a shortest path-based heuristic to create safe and enjoyable running routes of a particular distance. These models are implemented in a publicly available web-app that integrates with the relevant input-output data formats and solution visualization
LARGE EDDY SIMULATION OF FLUID MIXING IN MIGADOME FACILITY FOR THE ASTFE NUCLEAR THERMAL HYDRAULICS CFD COMPETITION
Get PDFThis paper is a documentation of a submission to the First Annual ASTFE Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Competition [1]. To validate simulations of turbulent mixing in buoyancy-driven flows, an air and argon test case was set up inside the University of Michigan’s MiGaDome mixing vessel. This submission to the competition used a polyhedral mesh of about two and a half hundred thousand cells, a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of the MiGaDome, and the Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-viscosity (WALE) subgrid approximation model. The competition included a factor considering the energy cost of our simulations, so it was decided to not refine the grid further, nor to run the simulation any further than the onset of convergence. While the data could not be compared to actual results during testing due to the blind nature of the competition, the simulation results made reasonable physical sense based on the data we recorded, that being the mean velocities, Reynolds normal stresses, and Reynolds shear stresses