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Land Use/Land Cover Uncertainty Analysis Using Hydrological Modeling in the Northern Watershed of Lake Okeechobee
No full textOver the past 150 years, Florida has undergone a major land-form transformation, transitioning from a natural to a primarily built environment. The state\u27s population has grown exponentially, from less than 50,000 residents in the 1850s to approximately 22 million residents today. This population growth has led to significant changes in land use, including urbanization, mining, and agriculture. This trend is expected to continue, with projections indicating an increase in urbanization across the state. 2070 land use/land cover projections were used as input for the Watershed Assessment Model (WAM) to analyze the potential impact of these changes on flow, total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) in the Lake Okeechobee watershed in central Florida. Results indicate that the proportion of urban land in the watershed will increase from 14% currently to 27% in 2070. Overall, flows increased in the watershed after urbanization, with the magnitude and uncertainty increasing with proportion of urban land in the watershed. TN and TP loading in the basin increased by 320656 tons/month and 3702 tons/month respectively, with the most significant change resulting from the transition of Freshwater Marshes and Mixed Wetland Hardwood to Urban. Individual sub-watersheds were analyzed, and it was found that TN and TP could increase by up to 158% and 98% respectively in some sub-watersheds, with Upper Kissimmee (UK) obtaining the largest change of TN load and Indian Prairie (IP) obtaining the largest change in TP load. For the future development, three distinct Urban Density scenarios were modeled to account for the uncertainty associated with future development patterns, providing a range of possible nutrient load values for the future. The study highlights the importance of anticipating and mitigating the potential impacts of LULC transitions and preserving natural lands. These findings have significant implications for water resource management in South Florida
“They’re Still Trying to Wrap Their Head Around Forever”: An Anatomy of Hope for Spinal Cord Injury Patients
No full textThis dissertation draws on ethnographic data to investigate the nature of spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation in Central Florida, using participant observation and interview data to understand how people with SCI (pwSCI) conceptualize their own disabilities after experiencing such radical alterations in their subjectivities. Using case studies and ethnographic vignettes, it argues that the extreme double binds in which pwSCI find themselves (where they are personally ordinarily disabled and socially extraordinarily novel; and where they are enabled resources to pursue “hopeful” therapy modalities while being designated as hopelessly disabled) is further polarized by the various legislative regimes of truth in which pwSCI rehabilitation participants find themselves – these include insurance logics, the therapy philosophy of the Dardzinski Method upon which this novel therapeutic methodology (activity-based therapy) is founded, and the various internal and culturally-supported standards that present themselves through various dichotomous categories.
This dissertation illustrates how these structural systems enable the various moral and emotional normativities present at this rehabilitation center – which I refer to throughout this dissertation as Keep Performing (KP). This dissertation also presents routes through which normative affects (i.e., ways that pwSCI are in/capable of being affected at KP) are both reinforced through motivational therapeutic processes (i.e., instances of joking) and challenged through daily experiences (e.g., where pwSCI are given opportunities to reorient themselves vis-à-vis their own subject positions and that of other pwSCIs). I conclude that activity-based therapy constitutes a novel therapeutic modality where pwSCI are enabled ways of reorienting themselves contra normative therapy modalities, carving a space for hypothesizing how hope can be useful both pragmatically/therapeutically and theoretically/philosophically
Natural Disasters and Human Capital: Empirical Evidence from Indonesia
No full textIn developing countries, natural disasters could destroy physical capital and adversely affect human capital accumulation by disrupting individual decisions. Such decisions play a critical role in determining individuals\u27 human capital accumulation process and have a lifelong effect on their happiness and economic prosperity. To better understand how natural disasters affect human capital in developing countries, this dissertation uses the earthquakes in Indonesia as a natural experiment to study how this earthquake affects health, child marriage, and education. For the first chapter, I study how the 2006 Yogyakarta Earthquake a affects water-related acute disease symptomsin the short and long run. By tracking individuals before and after the earthquake, I identify the wateidentifiedrborne diseases related symptoms decreased significantly one year and eight years after the earthquake. The improved access to safe water, which is the major concentration of the reconstruction program could explain t,he change, showing the that robust reconstruction program could turn a disastrous event into a beneficial one. For the second chapter, I explore how natural disasters affect the hazard rate of being married befobefore the age ofin Indonesia from 1990 to 2014. By tracking the migration and earthquake overtime, my coauthors and I show that earthquake resulted in less girls married before age of 18 in the rural area, more girl married in the urban area. This result indicates a graving and pressing needs for local and international governments to implement policies to alleviate negative impof from the natural disasters. For the last chapter, I explore how the 2006 Yogyakarta affected the total education years and likelihood of finishing different school level in the earthquake affected area. The result indicates that education process was largely disrupted after the earthquake, leading to education years lost and less students were able to finish senior high school and this effect is more pronounced among boys. Evidence from the labor market indicates that more boys left school for work and higher paid reconstruction jobs, giving evidence that reconstruction programs might have attracted boys to leave school and forced them to less education as a result. Such result indicates that although reconstruction might have helped the affected area, but it also caused unwanted consequences in education and local government might needs to provide better education policies to the affected region for long term human capital development
Organizations Ensuring Resilience: A Case Study of Cortez, Florida
No full text“Resilience” has often been defined by examining case studies in resilience failures. In contrast, this case study utilizes the oldest, still functional fishing village in Cortez, Florida to rhetorically analyze how organizational communicative practices have worked to ensure its resilience. Situating this conversation within Rhetoric proves valuable since so many attempts to define and utilize “resilience” seek to capitalize on its positive connotation but distort resilience definitions and practice. This dissertation explores three research questions: 1. “What systems and/or structures made our continued existence possible and what ideologies or goals drove their creation?” 2. “What ideologies, perceptions, and/or goals inspired the creation of sustaining organizations in Cortez such as FISH and how do these beliefs influence organizational rhetoric and public communication?” 3. “Through the use the resilience heuristic (i.e., intrinsic value, preservation work, and attuning to space/place and beyond), what advice might Cortez hold as a case study for other threatened community-ecosystem-cultures (CECs), especially within Florida?” The qualitative research records and highlights local knowledge by collecting interviews from female activists within three organizations (FISH, CVHS, and FMM), analyzing existing interviews and organizational communications, proving rhetorical awareness of our own vulnerability, keen insight to the ecosystem benefits Cortezians rely upon using space and place theory within New Materialism, and documenting responsive attitudes and institutions. By exploring these existing documents, contributing helpful concepts to the field such as the networks created by shared Community-Ecosystem-Cultures (CECs), a heuristic for other vulnerable CECs to follow, this research proves that resilience practices ought to grow and be accessed by all vulnerable communities. This dissertation uncovers thinking, communicating, and organizing practices that move “resilience” forward revealing how vulnerable communities have enacted it
Losing the Streaming Wars: What Netflix loses in Television Narrative and Participatory Fan Cultures
No full textThis thesis focuses on the rise of streaming television and subsequent “binge-watching” and its impact on the narrative structure of a series. By looking at shows such as Stranger Things, which pioneered the rise in this new form of television, one can see the shift in narrative structure in comparison to previous long- form television such as LOST. This shift can be seen in the slow disappearance of “game-changer” cliffhangers within episodes that build to a larger implication in a season arc in favor of one longer mystery that stretches throughout the season. In this thesis, I argue that this shift consequently has come with a loss in the communal fan culture that has accompanied the television viewing experience in comparison to serialized weekly broadcast. This shift ultimately poses a risk to the medium as a whole due to its reliance on the participatory nature of viewership and fandom
Diet and Salivary Microbiome on Cardiovascular Risk and Glycemic Control in Participants with and without Type 1 Diabetes: The CACTI Study
No full textIntroduction: The prevalence of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) has been increasing drastically in the United States. People with T1DM are at a higher risk of developing diabetes-related complications, including cardiovascular disease (CVD). Diet is one of the most modifiable factors and healthy eating could reduce CVD risk among individuals with T1DM. The current 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans focus on overall healthy eating patterns rather than individual foods and nutrients. A healthy dietary pattern or high-quality diet can be measured by diet quality indexes, and generally contains minimal ultra-processed foods (UPF). Although substantial evidence has linked poor diet quality and high UPF intake with negative health outcomes, the impact of dietary intake in people with T1DM and their associations with cardiovascular risk factors and glycemic status remains understudied. In addition, oral microbiome plays a crucial role in human health and oral microbiota dysbiosis has been associated with atherosclerosis and CVD. Diet may shape oral microbial profile and affect CVD risk through diet-microbiome-host interaction. No study has investigated the associations among diet, cardiometabolic profile, and salivary microbiome in people with T1DM.
Objective: The objectives of this study were to investigate diet quality and UPF consumption among people with and without T1DM, and to examine their associations with cardiovascular biomarkers and salivary microbiome, using data collected from a longitudinal Coronary Artery Calcification in Type 1 Diabetes (CACTI) cohort study.
Methods: A total of 1,416 adults (N=652 T1DM, N=764 non-diabetic controls) aged 19 to 56 years with no known history of coronary heart disease were enrolled. Dietary intake was assessed using a self-administered Harvard food frequency questionnaire, and cardiovascular biomarkers were measured at baseline, 3-, 6-, and 14-year follow-ups. The salivary microbiome was only collected from a subset of the cohort at the last follow-up visit (N=109 T1DM and 99 non-diabetic controls). Alternative Healthy Eating Index-2010 (AHEI-2010) and Mediterranean-style Dietary Pattern Score (MSDPS) were used to compute the dietary quality scores, and NOVA food classification system was used to compute UPF consumption among participants during all four visits. Linear mixed-effects models were used to estimate the prospective associations of dietary quality and UPFs, with cardiovascular biomarkers, adjusting for potential confounders. Cross-sectional associations of UPF intake with salivary microbiome, and salivary microbiome with cardiovascular biomarkers, were examined using Microbiome Multivariable Association with Linear Models (MaAsLin2). Statistical analyses were performed in SAS version 9.4 and R 3.6.0.
Results: People with T1DM had lower but non-significant diet quality scores (AHEI-2010: 40.8 ± 10.4 in T1DM, 41.6 ± 10.3 in non-diabetic controls; MSDPS: 24.9 ± 7.8 in T1DM, 25.3 ± 7.7 in non-diabetic controls) and higher UPF consumption (T1DM: 8.7±7.8 servings/d, controls: 7.3±6.7 servings/d, all P\u3c0.05) compared to non-diabetic controls at baseline. Participants with T1DM had significantly higher consumption of soft drinks, red or processed meat, sweets, savory snacks, sodium, and lower fish and other seafood than the controls at one or multiple time points (all P\u3c0.05). Diet quality was significantly associated with better cardiometabolic profiles, including lower BMI (AHEI-2010: β=-0.19±0.05, MSDPS: β=-0.14±0.06), waist circumference (AHEI-2010: β=-0.49±0.14, MSDPS: β=-0.44±0.16), systolic blood pressure (AHEI-2010: β=-0.60±0.22, MSDPS: β=-1.31±0.26), and higher HDL-C (AHEI-2010: β=1.25±0.24, MSDPS: β=0.91±0.28) (all P\u3c0.05), after adjusting for a wide range of potential confounders including diabetes stauts. Higher UPF consumption was prospectively associated with worse cardiometabolic profiles, including higher BMI (β=0.10±0.04), waist circumference (β=0.30±0.11), systolic blood pressure (β=0.55±0.19), triglycerides (β=1.79±0.84), and lower HDL-C (β=-0.43±0.20) (all P\u3c0.05), after adjusting diabetes status. There was no statistically significant association of salivary microbial alpha diversity with UPFs and cardiovascular risk factors. However, consumption of UPFs was positively associated with the genera Aggregatibacter (β= 0.61±0.14), Leptotrichia (β=0.45±0.14), and Proteobacteria members (β=0.30±0.07) (all FDR-adjusted p-value: q\u3c0.05).
Conclusions: An overall healthy dietary pattern is beneficial for reducing CVD risk, especially for T1DM who are at a greater risk of developing diabetes-related complications. People with and without T1DM are encouraged to replace UPFs with whole foods, lower the consumption of soft drinks, red and processed meat, sweets, and sodium, and increase the consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fish and other seafood, to improve overall diet quality and better protect against CVD risk. The findings provided new insights into the independent associations between healthy eating and cardiovascular disease risk among people with and without T1DM. The study calls for the need to develop targeted nutrition interventions promoting healthful eating patterns to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease among people with T1DM. Future randomized controlled trials or longitudinal studies with large sample sizes and diverse racial/ethnic groups are needed to assess trends in dietary quality and study the impact of cultural and food preference attributes on dietary pattern adherence among people with T1DM
Histone Deacetylase 8 is a Novel Therapeutic Target for Mantle Cell Lymphoma and Preserves Natural Killer Cell Cytotoxic Function
No full textThis study demonstrates for the first time that HDAC8 function is critical for MCL survival, and abrogating its activity in human primary NK cells does not interfere with NK IgG antibody directed ADCC therapies ex vivo. Human NK cells, isolated from healthy donors, are highly resistant to HDAC8 inhibitor treatment with PCI-34051. Even at the highest concentration, 20uM, no toxicity was observed. Conversely, MCL cell lines representative of the aggressive MCL subtype, classical MCL, were especially sensitive to PCI-34051, an HDAC8 selective inhibitor, treatment. Blocking HDAC8 activity and/or abrogating expression through shRNA silencing induced significant DNA damage, hyperacetylation of SMC3, and apoptosis. Furthermore, DNA damage was an indicator of sensitivity. Drug washout experiments indicated that PCI-34051 can be dosed twice at half the original dose, distributed across 2-sequential days, to achieve the same effect as a single high dose.
Stimulating human NK cells with IL-2, IL-12, and IL-15 or IL-18, leads to a significant upregulation of HDAC8. It was hypothesized that HDAC8 may play a role in NK activity. However, blocking HDAC8 activity did not dampen NK survival, proliferation, cytotoxic responses, cytokine secretion, or NK phenotype. Interestingly, PCI-34051 increased the abundance of IFNγ+ NK cells, possibly indicating enhanced activity. There was insufficient evidence that PCI-34051 sensitizes MCL cell lines to NK cytotoxicity. Rather, PCI-34051 may induce a NK memory-like phenotype, indicated by enrichment of IFNγ+ NK cells.
The focus of this study was to identify a novel HDAC protein critical for MCL survival and to evaluate if inhibiting activity interferes with IgG antibody therapies dependent on NK ADCC for therapeutic efficacy. NK cell cytolytic function is critical for anti-tumor response and is dependent on the expression of sensors that detect aberrancies. NK cells are capable of sensing abnormally low levels of HLA class I molecules through a plethora of KIR receptors. They are capable of detecting stress signals on the surface of tumor cells through their NKG2D receptor and elicit a robust cytotoxic response. Additionally, the low-affinity Fc binding receptor CD16 is imperative for antibody therapies dependent on NK ADCC for clinical efficacy. Thorough investigation was performed to determine if blocking HDAC8 in NK cells caused any attributes not favorable for NK anti-tumor responses. PCI-34051 did not alter NK anti-tumor phenotype. The results presented in this dissertation indicate that NK cells can robustly induce cytotoxic responses during treatment with the HDAC8 selective inhibitor, PCI-34051, in combination with IgG-targeting therapies.
MCL cell lines representing the highly aggressive SOX11+ MCL subtype, conventional MCL, had the highest sensitivity to HDAC8 inhibition, indicating a potential therapeutic option for treating this patient population
High specific capacitance solid state supercapacitor and method of manufacture
No full textA novel electrode and associated method of manufacturing said novel electrode comprising a porous structure having absorbed polystyrene sulfonate (PSS), a self-assembled polypyrole (PPy) layer adjacent to the PSS absorbed porous structure, a self-assembled polyaniline (PANI) layer adjacent to the PPy layer, an electrochemically deposited PANI layer adjacent to the PPy layer and an electrochemically deposited PANI-molybdenum disulfide (PANI-MoS2) layer adjacent to the electrochemically deposited PANI layer. A supercapacitor and associated method of manufacturing a supercapacitor comprising a first novel electrode and a second novel electrode separated by a polyvinyl gel and a porous separator
Capítulo 09 Introducción a las hojas de cálculo
No full textLas hojas de cálculo son documentos electrónicos que ayudan a los usuarios a procesar datos. Si bien los procesadores de texto y el correo electrónico son probablemente las aplicaciones de productividad más utilizadas, gran parte de los negocios del mundo se ejecutan en hojas de cálculo. Esto se debe a que estos programas son aplicaciones de productividad diseñadas para almacenar números. Así, facilitan la visualización de datos e identifican tendencias. Cualquier profesor que realice un seguimiento de las calificaciones de los estudiantes encontrará que es más fácil hacerlo utilizando hojas de cálculo. A los clubes estudiantiles les resultará más práctico realizar un seguimiento de las contribuciones y los gastos si las emplean. Quizás no uses hojas de cálculo todos los días, pero es probable que tu información más valiosa se almacene en este tipo de programa.
Precisamente por esta razón, las hojas de cálculo fueron la aplicación asesina para las computadoras en los negocios. Así como el correo electrónico animó a los consumidores a comprar computadoras y a obtener conectividad a la Internet, las hojas de cálculo hicieron que valiera la pena para las empresas comprar computadoras para realizar un seguimiento de su desempeño. Steve Jobs reconoció que el primer programa de hoja de cálculo, VisiCalc, fue el impulsor de las primeras ventas de Apple.
A Dan Bricklin se le ocurrió la idea de una calculadora visual en 1978 mientras estudiaba su maestría en Administración de empresas en Harvard. Inicialmente, visualizó la interfaz de usuario de las hojas de cálculo como la pantalla de la cabina de un avión, pero se decidió por el formato actual de filas y columnas para permitir añadir nombres descriptivos a los elementos de los datos. Dan primero llamó a su programa “Calcu-ledger”, pero luego lo cambió a VisiCalc contracción de Visual Calculator (Calculador Visual). El socio comercial de Bricklin, Dan FylsrenLtra, quien también hizo su maestría en administración de empresas en Harvard y fue uno de los primeros editores de software, le hizo una demostración del programa VisiCalc a Steve Jobs. Se vendieron casi un millón de copias de VisiCalc por alrededor de $100 cada una, lo que impulsó las ventas de Apple así como también la adopción de las computadoras en los negocios. Posteriormente, Mitch Kapor y Jonathan Sachs crearon Lotus 1-2-3, que fue comprado por IBM, y Microsoft presentó Excel. Y así, VisiCalc perdió su liderazgo en el mercado
Boletín EspeleoAr, Número 26, June 2023
No full textContents: Staff y Editorial -- Expedición Internacional BioespeleoSud 2023. Primera etapa: cavernas de Cuchillo Curá y León -- Expedición Internacional BioespeleoSud 2023. Tercera Etapa: Norte Neuquino -- Expedición Poti Malal 2023 -- Nace la Escuela Nacional de Espeleología Argentina -- El Año Internacional de las Cuevas y el Carso superó los 1000 eventos en todo el mundo -- Actividades del GEMA La Otra Parte -- Geólogas del GEA exponen en el I Congreso Latinoamericano de Geoespeleología -- SAE participa en curso de espeleosocorro en El Sauce -- GEA en la Semana de las Ciencias de La Tierra 2023 organizada por la Universidad de Buenos Aires -- Proyecto La Yesera del Tromen. GAEMN Explora -- II Taller de Introducción a la Espeleología y Técnicas de Progresión Vertical -- Obituarios -- Asamblea y Nueva Junta Directiva UAE -- Como asociarse a la UAE -- Agradecimientos.https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/espeleoar/1019/thumbnail.jp