...organizations may have multiple assets running far below targeted capacity. ...decentralized equipment acquisition often doesn't take into account the service lines in which the organization wants ...to excel, or future safety and accreditation requirements.
Damage tracker Hodapp, Chris; Robbins, Matt; Gray, Jeff ...
Proceedings of the 51st ACM Southeast Conference,
04/2013
Conference Proceeding
Tornadoes and other natural disasters frequently cause large amounts of damage to buildings and infrastructure. An important part of learning from these events is assessing key damage-indicators ...within the affected area. Researchers can analyze these damage-indicators to better understand the event and how to minimize future loss. These assessments require many teams of researchers, government agencies, and volunteer citizen groups to survey affected areas and collect information. Assessment teams take thousands of digital photographs for later review. When combined with GPS data, these images can be used to document and understand an extreme event. In this paper, we present Damage Tracker, a software system for capturing and managing tornado damage information. A mobile application for Android devices allows users to capture, annotate, and upload geo-tagged photos. A web application stores uploaded photos and meta-data and displays this information on an interactive map. This system allows an online community of users to easily share data, which encourages more collaboration, reduces duplicate collection efforts, and potentially improves the quality and depth of subsequent research. Damage Tracker realizes the benefits of crowdsourcing and citizen science in the context of disaster data collection.
We tested the competing hypotheses that (1) nitrogen discrimination in mammals and birds increases with dietary nitrogen concentration or decreasing C:N ratios and, therefore, discrimination will ...increase with trophic level as carnivores ingest more protein than herbivores and omnivores or (2) nitrogen discrimination increases as dietary protein quality decreases and, therefore, discrimination will decrease with trophic level as carnivores ingest higher quality protein than do herbivores. Discrimination factors were summarized for five major diet groupings and 21 different species of birds and mammals. Discrimination did not differ between mammals and birds and decreased as protein quality (expressed as biological value) increased with trophic level (i.e., herbivores to carnivores). Relationships between discrimination factors and dietary nitrogen concentration or C:N ratios were either the opposite of what was hypothesized or non-significant. Dietary protein quality accounted for 72% of the variation in discrimination factors across diet groupings. We concluded that protein quality established the baseline for discrimination between dietary groupings, while other variables, such as dietary protein intake relative to animal requirements, created within-group variation. We caution about the care needed in developing studies to understand variation in discrimination and subsequently applying those discrimination factors to estimate assimilated diets of wild animals.
DNA damage-how and why we age? Yousefzadeh, Matt; Henpita, Chathurika; Vyas, Rajesh ...
eLife,
01/2021, Letnik:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Aging is a complex process that results in loss of the ability to reattain homeostasis following stress, leading, thereby, to increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Many factors contribute to ...aging, such as the time-dependent accumulation of macromolecular damage, including DNA damage. The integrity of the nuclear genome is essential for cellular, tissue, and organismal health. DNA damage is a constant threat because nucleic acids are chemically unstable under physiological conditions and vulnerable to attack by endogenous and environmental factors. To combat this, all organisms possess highly conserved mechanisms to detect and repair DNA damage. Persistent DNA damage (genotoxic stress) triggers signaling cascades that drive cells into apoptosis or senescence to avoid replicating a damaged genome. The drawback is that these cancer avoidance mechanisms promote aging. Here, we review evidence that DNA damage plays a causal role in aging. We also provide evidence that genotoxic stress is linked to other cellular processes implicated as drivers of aging, including mitochondrial and metabolic dysfunction, altered proteostasis and inflammation. These links between damage to the genetic code and other pillars of aging support the notion that DNA damage could be the root of aging.
South Americans aren't exactly blase about President Clinton's visit next week. But their excitement has been tempered by the fact that so many other leaders -- including Germany's Helmut Kohl, ...France's Jacques Chirac, Spain's Jose Maria Aznar and this week the Pope -- have made it here before him. More than anything, Mr. Clinton's better-late-than-never tour beginning Sunday to Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina will be hampered by the uncertain fate of American "fast-track" trade legislation. The law would give the president broad negotiating authority, which is essential if he is to move forward with his plan for a hemispheric free-trade zone by the year 2005. Mr. Clinton has an undeniable way with crowds and White House officials expect him to make up for lost time once he hits the ground. He's even planning one of his trademark town-hall meetings while in Buenos Aires, which will be broadcast all over the continent. White House officials are also hoping that the trip will generate new support in Congress for the fast-track bill. Mr. Clinton will try to correct Congress's negative stereotypes about Latin America while showcasing the region's strengths: its deepening democracies, reforming economies and enthusiasm for all things American.
Telehealth services have the potential to improve access to care, especially in rural or urban areas with scarce health care resources. Despite the potential benefits, telehealth has not been fully ...adopted by health centers. This study examined factors associated with and barriers to telehealth use by federally funded health centers. We analyzed data for 2016 from the Uniform Data System using a mixed-methods approach. Our findings suggest that rural location, operational factors, patient demographic characteristics, and reimbursement policies influence health centers' decisions about using telehealth. Cost, reimbursement, and technical issues were described as major barriers. Medicaid reimbursement policies promoting live video and store-and-forward services were associated with a greater likelihood of telehealth adoption. Many health centers were implementing telehealth or exploring its use. Our findings identified areas that policy makers can address to achieve greater telehealth adoption by health centers.
Humans are willing to incur personal costs to punish others who violate social norms. Such "costly punishment" is an important force for sustaining human cooperation, but the causal neurobiological ...determinants of punishment decisions remain unclear. Using a combination of behavioral, pharmacological, and neuroimaging techniques, we show that manipulating the serotonin system in humans alters costly punishment decisions by modulating responses to fairness and retaliation in the striatum. Following dietary depletion of the serotonin precursor tryptophan, participants were more likely to punish those who treated them unfairly, and were slower to accept fair exchanges. Neuroimaging data revealed activations in the ventral and dorsal striatum that were associated with fairness and punishment, respectively. Depletion simultaneously reduced ventral striatal responses to fairness and increased dorsal striatal responses during punishment, an effect that predicted its influence on punishment behavior. Finally, we provide behavioral evidence that serotonin modulates specific retaliation, rather than general norm enforcement: depleted participants were more likely to punish unfair behavior directed toward themselves, but not unfair behavior directed toward others. Our findings demonstrate that serotonin modulates social value processing in the striatum, producing context-dependent effects on social behavior.
PDF
