Establishing priorities for Pennsylvania community flood resilience

This white paper provides an overview of priorities related to community resilience to flooding that emerged during a 27 September 2019 meeting with local, regional and state representatives in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. The document compiles workshop details, participants and a summary of discussions and outcomes. It does not, however, attempt to provide a comprehensive listing of every topic raised by participants. In addition, this workshop was held before the advent of covid-19; the impacts of this pandemic are not addressed in this document.

Immunotherapy for Dogs: Still Running Behind Humans

Despite all good intentions, dogs are still running behind humans in effective cancer immunotherapies. The more effective treatments in humans, like infusions of CAR-T and NK-cells are not broadly pursued for canines due to significant costs, the rather complicated logistics and the lack of targetable surface antigens. Monoclonal antibodies are challenging to develop considering the limited knowledge about canine target antigens and about their mode of action. Although immunogenic vaccines could be less costly, this approach is hampered by the fact that cancer by itself is immuno-suppressive and any preceding chemotherapy may suppress any clinically meaningful immune response. This review – rather than providing a comprehensive listing of all available immunotherapies for dogs, aims at pointing out the issues that are holding back this field but which hopefully can be addressed so that dogs can “catch up” with what is available to humans.

Update of river health assessment indicator system, weight, and assignment criteria in China

Comprehensive assessment of river health is challenging due to the diversity of rivers, the complexity of their ecosystem and functional service. This paper updates the river health assessment indicator system, weight, and assignment criteria in China by reviewing and examining the peer-reviewed literature. We propose an indicator system, weight and criteria, validated by 9 case studies and able to assess the country-scale river health. Our analysis shows that the rule layer of indicator system includes hydrology, water quality, aquatic organism, physical habitats, and functional service; its corresponding weights are set to 0.15, 0.21, 0.18, 0.22, and 0.24 respectively. The ten selected indicators are most representative for incorporating the indicator layer with their corresponding weights. The evaluation based on case studies shows that in 8 out of 9 cases, our results are consistent with those obtained by previous studies. Therefore, the suggested index system, weight and three-assessment criteria are well suited for the complex cases in China. This paper can serve as a reference for a river health assessment and present a comprehensive listing of assessment criteria.

Bird Eye View of Protein Subcellular Localization Prediction

Proteins are made up of long chain of amino acids that perform a variety of functions in different organisms. The activity of the proteins is determined by the nucleotide sequence of their genes and by its 3D structure. In addition, it is essential for proteins to be destined to their specific locations or compartments to perform their structure and functions. The challenge of computational prediction of subcellular localization of proteins is addressed in various in silico methods. In this review, we reviewed the progress in this field and offered a bird eye view consisting of a comprehensive listing of tools, types of input features explored, machine learning approaches employed, and evaluation matrices applied. We hope the review will be useful for the researchers working in the field of protein localization predictions.

Philippine Performance Evaluation and Assessment Scheme (PPEAS): Experiences in Newborn Screening System Quality Improvement

Newborn Bloodspot Screening (NBS) has existed for over 60 years, having been initiated by Guthrie in the U.S. In the Philippines, NBS was introduced in 1996 and later was supported by legislation. The NBS program now includes 29 conditions, covering 91.6% of the newborn population in 2019. Program growth and expansion necessitated development of a formal performance evaluation and assessment scheme (PEAS) for monitoring performance and for continuously improving quality. This study’s objective was to present the development, implementation, and results to date of the Philippine Performance PEAS (PPEAS). Using the comprehensive listing of laboratory and non-laboratory elements in the model PEAS system in the U.S., PPEAS tools were developed for critical Philippine NBS system components: regional Department of Health (national health agency, Philippines) (DOH) offices (CHDs), NBS laboratories (NSCs), NBS specimen submitters (NSFs), and long-term case management centers (NBSCCs). Data generated from the various PPEAS have been periodically reviewed and analyzed for NBS system impact. PPEAS were developed to facilitate quality improvement at various levels of the Philippine NBS system. PPEAS identified successes, gaps, and challenges to be addressed by NSCs, NSFs, CHDs, and NBSCCs with the assistance of the Newborn Screening Reference Center and the Department of Health.

Introduction

The book’s introduction provides a comprehensive listing of female figures in the Qur’an. This includes references to the family members of Qur’anic prophets—figures who feature as mothers, wives, daughters, and extended female kin. It situates each Qur’anic female figure vis-à-vis other figures along the narrative arc from the genesis of humanity, through the ancient peoples and their prophets, to the advent of the Qur’an in Arabia. The listing also includes categories of paradisal beings and women figures who are alluded to but not depicted directly. In addition, the book’s introduction outlines how retelling the sacred past generates a new sacred present that is affective and didactic. It discusses relevant rhetorical and stylistic elements of the Qur’an, considers competing methodological trends in Qur’anic studies, and summarizes some of the work’s broader implications for feminist and female-centric exegesis.

Superconductivity, correlated insulators, and Wess–Zumino–Witten terms in twisted bilayer graphene

Recent experiments on twisted bilayer graphene have shown a high-temperature parent state with massless Dirac fermions and broken electronic flavor symmetry; superconductivity and correlated insulators emerge from this parent state at lower temperatures. We propose that the superconducting and correlated insulating orders are connected by Wess–Zumino–Witten terms, so that defects of one order contain quanta of another order and skyrmion fluctuations of the correlated insulator are a “mechanism” for superconductivity. We present a comprehensive listing of plausible low-temperature orders and the parent flavor symmetry-breaking orders. The previously characterized topological nature of the band structure of twisted bilayer graphene plays an important role in this analysis.

Flipped Classroom: A coderdojo perspective.

The coderdojo movement is a grassroots literacy movement to bridge the digital divide using a flipped classroom, similar to edx and most corporate education. In this paper we describe the alternative learning experiments at a coderdojo at St Paul MN, USA, where we used AWS educate to teach many streams including SLAM, robotics, web design, hardware designing, circular economy and operating systems.Future work includes flipped teaching of python and mathematics at the graduate level and adoption of flipped learning at universities.Keywords: education psychology, constructivism, dojo, active learning, flipped school, pbs learning media, raspberry pi, arduino, cost effective soc based computers. What:A comprehensive listing of raspberry pi projects for a coderdojo.A comprehensive listing of suggested videos from pbs and popsci.A comprehensive listing of suggested reading material.A review and discussion of present, past and future flipped classroom experiments at Coderdojo St Paul MN

Unmet need in rheumatology: reports from the Targeted Therapies meeting 2018

To develop a comprehensive listing of the greatest unmet scientific and clinical needs in rheumatology. The 20th annual international Targeted Therapies meeting brought more than 100 leading basic scientists and clinical researchers in rheumatology, immunology, epidemiology, molecular biology and other specialties. During the meeting, breakout sessions were convened, consisting of five disease-specific groups with 20–30 experts assigned to each group based on expertise. Specific groups included rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, axial spondyloarthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, connective tissue diseases and a basic science immunology group spanning all of these clinical domains. In each group, experts were asked to consider recent accomplishments within their clinical domain in the last year and update the unmet needs in three categorical areas: basic/translational science, clinical science and therapeutic development, and clinical care. While progress was noted among some of previously identified needs, both new needs were identified and themes from prior meetings were re-iterated: the need for better understanding the heterogeneity within each disease, and for identifying preclinical states of disease allowing treatment and prevention of disease in those at risk, and the elusive ability to cure disease. Within the clinical care realm, improved comorbidity management and patient-centred care continue to be unmet needs, and the need for new and affordable therapeutics was highlighted. Unmet needs for new and accessible targeted therapies, disease prevention and ultimately cure remain a priority in rheumatology.

Development of a wetland plant indicator list to inform the delineation of wetlands in New South Wales

Wetlands experience fluctuating water levels, so their extent varies spatially and temporally. This characteristic is widespread and likely to increase as global temperatures and evaporation rates increase. The temporary nature of wetlands can confound where a wetland begins and ends, resulting in unreliable mapping and determination of wetland areas for inventory, planning or monitoring purposes. The occurrence of plants that rely on the presence of water for part or all of their life history can be a reliable way to determine the extent of water-affected ecosystems. A wetland plant indicator list (WPIL) could enable more accurate mapping and provide a tool for on-ground validation of wetland boundaries. However, this introduces the problem of the definition of ‘wetland plant’, especially with species that can tolerate, or require, water level fluctuation, and that respond to flooding or drought by adjusting their morphology or phenology (i.e. ‘amphibious’ plants and those that grow only during drawdown). In this study we developed a WPIL through a process of expert elicitation. The expert decisions were compared and standardised for each species. It is envisaged that this work will lead to a comprehensive listing of wetland plants for Australia for the purposes of planning, mapping and management.