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The book "Western Ceramic Traditions: Prehistoric and Historic Native American Ceramics of the Western U.S." edited by Suzanne Griset explores the diversity of ceramic traditions and social identities reflected in pottery production in the far southwestern desert and coastal region of the U.S. The book features 11 chapters that critically examine traditional typologies of plainware pottery and explore new datasets for dating and identifying the composition of pottery. The volume provides important discussions on the sociocultural aspects of pottery technology and challenges the limitations of typological classification. The book is recommended for researchers working with plainware or other ceramic wares, although the technical ceramic data presented may be daunting for readers without an archaeological or ceramic analyst background. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines school leaders' evasive attitudes towards race in Salt Lake City (SLC), Utah, between 1969 and 1975. Salt Lake's unique demographic status as predominantly white and Mormon underscored elements of white anti-Black racism under the guise of innocence. Utilizing critical whiteness theory and historical inquiry to analyze archival documents and interviews, I highlight one white superintendent, Arthur Wiscombe, and his failed attempts to confront anti-Blackness in schools as he navigated his conflicting values of racial justice, good intentions, and white Niceness. Framing the past as prologue, I uncover the historical legacy of white supremacy's influence on local school policies and leaders' actions, and make explicit connections to the repetition of these patterns today. Contemporary iterations of white supremacy rely on the same tools of whiteness used during intense periods of integration and racial awareness in Salt Lake City in the 1960s and 1970s. I conclude that white educational leaders must look more closely at the 'nice', color-evasive discourse that enables them to maintain power and privilege in their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As announced in Gross and Siebert (in Algebraic geometry: Salt Lake City 2015, Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics, vol 97, no 2. AMS, Providence, pp 199–230, 2018) in 2016, we construct and prove consistency of the canonical wall structure. This construction starts with a log Calabi–Yau pair (X, D) and produces a wall structure, as defined in Gross et al. (Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 278(1376), 1376, 1–103, 2022). Roughly put, the canonical wall structure is a data structure which encodes an algebro-geometric analogue of counts of Maslov index zero disks. These enumerative invariants are defined in terms of the punctured invariants of Abramovich et al. (Punctured Gromov–Witten invariants, 2020. arXiv:2009.07720v2 [math.AG]). There are then two main theorems of the paper. First, we prove consistency of the canonical wall structure, so that, using the setup of Gross et al. (Mem. Amer. Math. Soc. 278(1376), 1376, 1–103, 2022), the canonical wall structure gives rise to a mirror family. Second, we prove that this mirror family coincides with the intrinsic mirror constructed in Gross and Siebert (Intrinsic mirror symmetry, 2019. arXiv:1909.07649v2 [math.AG]). While the setup of this paper is narrower than that of Gross and Siebert (Intrinsic mirror symmetry, 2019. arXiv:1909.07649v2 [math.AG]), it gives a more detailed description of the mirror. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the resilience of urban drainage systems requires the consideration of future disturbances that will disrupt the system's performance and trigger urban flooding failures. However, most existing resilience assessments of urban drainage systems rarely consider the uncertain threats from future urban redevelopment and climate change, which leads to the underestimation of future disturbances toward system performance. This paper fills in the gap of assessing the combined and relative impacts of future impervious land cover and rainfall changes on flooding resilience in the context of a densely infilled urban catchment served by an urban drainage system in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. An event-based resilience index is proposed to measure climate change and urbanization impacts on urban floods. Compared with the traditional resilience metric, the event-based resilience index can consider climatic and urbanized impacts on each urban flooding event; the new resilience index assist engineers in harvesting high-resolution infrastructure adaptation strategies at vulnerable spots from the system level to the junction level. Impact comparison for the case study shows that impervious urban surface changes induce greater effects on the system performance curves by magnifying the maximum failure level, lengthening the recovery duration, and aggravating the flooding severity than rainfall intensity changes. A nonlinear logarithmic resilience correlation is found; this finding shows that flooding resilience is more sensitive to the land imperviousness change due to urban redevelopment than rainfall intensity changes in the case study. This research work predicts the system response to the disturbances induced by climate change and urban redevelopment, improving the understanding of impact analysis, and contributes to the advancement of resilient urban drainage systems in changing environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Zachary Wilson is first author on 'Vacuolar H+-ATPase dysfunction rescues intralumenal vesicle cargo sorting in yeast lacking PI(3,5)P2 or Doa4', published in JCS. Zachary is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Adam Hughes at University of Utah, Salt Lake City, investigating how eukaryotic cells compartmentalize, exchange and regulate essential nutrients, and how defects in these processes contribute to cellular dysfunction and disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Emergency department based Physical Therapy (ED-PT) has been practiced globally in various forms for over 20 years and is an emerging resource in the US. While there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that ED-PT has a positive effect on a number of clinical and operational outcomes in patients presenting with musculoskeletal (MSK) pain, there are few published narratives that quantify this in the US. Although there are international papers that offer outcome data on reduction of pain, imaging, throughput time, and the ability of physical therapists to appropriately manage MSK conditions in the ED setting, most papers to date have been descriptive in nature. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of ED-PT on imaging studies obtained, rates of opioids prescribed, and ED length of stay. Methods: We prospectively identified patients presenting with musculoskeletal pain to an urban academic ED in Salt Lake City between January 2017 and June 2018. During the study, a physical therapist was in the ED three days (24 hours) per week and was available to evaluate and treat patients after consultation by the ED provider. We noted patient demographic information, imaging performed in the ED, medications administered and prescribed, and ED length of stay. We classified patients as those who received PT in the ED and those who did not and compared clinical outcomes between groups. We performed a subgroup analysis of patients presenting with low back pain and matched patients by age and gender. Results: Over the 18-month study period, we identified 524 patients presenting to the ED with musculoskeletal pain. 381 (72.7%) received ED-initiated PT. The PT and non-PT groups were similar in average age (42.8 years vs. 45.1 years, p = 0.155), gender (% female: 53% vs. 46.9%, p-0.209), and primary presenting chief complaint (cervical, thoracic, or lumbar pain: 57.7% vs. 53.1%, p = 0.345). Patients who received PT had lower rates of imaging (38.3% vs. 51%, p = 0.009), ED opioid administration (17.5% vs. 32.9%, p<0.001), and a shorter average ED length of stay (4 hours vs. 6.2 hours, p<0.001). Rates of outpatient opioid prescriptions were similar between groups (16% vs. 21.7%, p = 0.129). In a subgroup analysis of patients presenting with low back pain, we found that PT patients had fewer imaging studies (PT 25% vs. non-PT 57%, p = 0.029) but found no difference in average ED length of stay (PT 3.7 hours vs. non-PT 4.6 hours, p = 0.21), opioid administration in the ED (PT 36% vs. non-PT 43%, P = 0.792), nor outpatient opioid administration (PT 17.9%. vs non-PT 17.9%, p = 1.0). Conclusion: In our experience, being seen by a physical therapist for MSK pain within the ED was associated with reduced use of imaging and time spent in the ED. Patients seeing a Physical Therapist were also less likely to receive an opioid prescription within the ED, a potentially significant finding given the need for opioid reduction strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contributing to organizational rhetoric, environmental communication, and persona criticism, this paper offers the corporate persona as a heuristic for mapping the rhetorical forces of corporate rhetors in a networked era of rhetoric and subjectivity. Giving the rhetor presence where there is absence, the corporate persona is a single image of a multiple subject implied by discursive and extra-discursive networks. I show how mining giant Rio Tinto Kennecott (RTK), which owns the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine outside of Salt Lake City, uses places, spaces, and objects—including a visitor's center, a suburban community, a soccer stadium, and a natural history museum—to create a pioneer persona that is tied to cultural memories of the Utah Deseret. RTK's persona is illustrative of how corporations are networked subjects that can adapt their very selfhoods to meet different exigencies while evading singular responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Certification labels have become a ubiquitous feature on food products across grocery store shelves. Although it is widely acknowledged that certified products often garner higher prices than their noncertified competition, less is known regarding what those price differences are based on, and what the personal, political, or ethical implications are for consumers. This research note argues for greater attention to the implications of certified food prices—which we conceptualize as the "consumer costs" of food certification. The paper discusses the theoretical linkages between food certifications and prices, and outlines the resulting consumer costs of which we are concerned. Through a pilot study in Salt Lake City, Utah, we investigate prices found on certified grocery store rice, and consider the causes and implications of the consumer costs of food certification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, connected vehicle (CV) technology has reached a level of maturity and can be beneficial for traffic control at signalized intersections. Enriched information provided by CVs could be utilized to perform a more efficient signal control. This paper proposes a methodology to dynamically adjust the offsets to provide progression bands for multiple critical paths in a CV environment. The critical paths refer to the routes connecting origin-destination (OD) pairs with the highest volumes and are determined based on the CV trajectory. A real-time optimization model is constructed to design a coordination plan, and the control objective is to provide maximum green bandwidth along the determined critical paths by optimizing the offsets of all intersections along an arterial. To solve this model, a solution algorithm based on dynamic programming is proposed. A real-world arterial in Salt Lake City, Utah, is modeled in commercially available software to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed control strategy. Simulations are conducted to compare the proposed system with a fixed coordination strategy. The results reveal that the travel times of those critical paths by the proposed coordination strategy are lower the ones by the fixed coordination strategy. The average delay and average number of stops of critical paths are reduced by about 16.82% and 5.94%, respectively, compared with the fixed coordination strategy. Moreover, results also indicate that the proposed coordination strategy outperforms the fixed coordination strategy by reducing 7.84% and 5.79% of the average delay and average stops, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variationist research on subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Spanish typically incorporates all grammatical persons/numbers into the same analysis, with important exceptions such as studies focusing exclusively on first-person singular (e.g., Travis, Catherine E. 2005. The yo-yo effect: Priming in subject expression in Colombian Spanish. In Randall Gess & Edward J Rubin (eds.), Selected papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), 329–349. Amsterdam, Salt Lake City: Benjamins 2004; Travis, Catherine E. 2007. Genre effects on subject expression in Spanish: Priming in narrative and conversation. Language Variation and Change 19. 101–135; Travis, Catherine E. & Rena Torres Cacoullos. 2012. What do subject pronouns do in discourse? Cognitive, mechanical and constructional factors in variation. Cognitive Linguistics 23(4). 711–748), third-person singular (Shin, Naomi Lapidus. 2014. Grammatical complexification in Spanish in New York: 3sg pronoun expression and verbal ambiguity. Language Variation and Change 26. 303–330), and third-person plural subjects (Lapidus, Naomi & Ricardo Otheguy. 2005. Overt nonspecific ellos in Spanish in New York. Spanish in Context 2(2). 157–174). The current study is the first variationist analysis (to the best of my knowledge) to focus solely on first-person plural SPE. It is well-established that nosotros/nosotras exhibits one of the lowest rates of SPE relative to the other persons/numbers; however, factors conditioning its variation are less understood. Conversational corpus data from Mexican Spanish are employed to examine tokens of first-person plural SPE (n=660) in terms of frequency and constraints, incorporating factors such as TMA, switch reference, and verb class in logistic regression analyses. Results suggest that nosotros, like other subjects, is strongly impacted by switch reference and tense-mood-aspect (TMA). However, the TMA effect is unique in that preterit aspect is shown to favor overt nosotros relative to other TMAs, diverging from previous studies. Furthermore, verb class — a factor found to be repeatedly significant in the literature — is inoperative for nosotros. These results suggest that nosotros does not respond to the same factors as other persons/numbers. Additionally, the findings lend support to researchers regarding the importance of studying individual persons/numbers in subject variation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing constellation of satellites is providing near‐global coverage of column‐averaged CO2 observations. Launched in 2019, NASA's OCO‐3 instrument is set to provide XCO2 observations at a high spatial and temporal resolution for regional domains (100 × 100 km). The atmospheric column version of the Stochastic Time‐Inverted Lagrangian Transport (X‐STILT) model is an established method of determining the influence of upwind sources on column measurements of the atmosphere, providing a means of analysis for current OCO‐3 observations and future space‐based column‐observing missions. However, OCO‐3 is expected to provide hundreds of soundings per targeted observation, straining this already computationally intensive technique. This work proposes a novel scheme to be used with the X‐STILT model to generate upwind influence footprints with less computational expense. The method uses X‐STILT generated influence footprints from a key subset of OCO‐3 soundings. A nonlinear weighted averaging is applied to these footprints to construct additional footprints for the remaining soundings. The effects of subset selection, meteorological data, and topography are investigated for two test sites: Los Angeles, California, and Salt Lake City, Utah. The computational time required to model the source sensitivities for OCO‐3 interpretation was reduced by 62% and 78% with errors smaller than other previously acknowledged uncertainties in the modeling system (OCO‐3 retrieval error, atmospheric transport error, prior emissions error, etc.). Limitations and future applications for future CO2 missions are also discussed. Plain Language Summary: Several satellites are providing near‐global observations of Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). One example is NASA's new OCO‐3 instrument which is set to provide spatially dense CO2 measurements over targeted areas. Measurements may contain signals of emissions from cities and power plants. One method of finding the source(s) of observed CO2 is using a Lagrangian particle dispersion model such as X‐STILT. This model takes OCO‐3 measurements and runs atmospheric transport backwards in time to trace out the sources affecting these measurements. However, OCO‐3 and future satellite missions will yield many measurements, significantly increasing the computational cost for X‐STILT and other similar models. This paper presents an algorithm that will reduce the computational effort for X‐STILT by tracing the sources of only a subset of OCO‐3 measurements and then infers (interpolates) the rest. The following two questions are addressed: (1) How many OCO‐3 measurements does X‐STILT need for the interpolations to be accurate? (2) How do meteorology and topography affect the accuracy of the interpolations? Applying the algorithm on simulated OCO‐3 data at two test cities—Los Angeles and Salt Lake City—the time required to elucidate the CO2 sources was reduced by 62% and 78%, respectively. Key Points: Determining sources of spatially dense XCO2 observations with LPDM techniques can become time intensive and strain computational resourcesPresented in this work is an interpolation scheme that eases the computational burden of spatially dense XCO2 source determination studiesEvaluating the efficiency of this interpolation scheme revealed reductions of >50% in computational time at two testing locations [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Little research has examined how media outreach strategies affect the outcomes of contraceptive initiatives. Thus, this paper assesses the potential impact of an online media campaign introduced during the last six months of a contraceptive initiative study based in Salt Lake City, UT (USA).Methods: During the last six months of the HER Salt Lake Contraceptive Initiative (September 2016-March 2017), we introduced an online media campaign designed to connect potential clients to information about the initiative and a brief (9-item) appointment request form (via HERsaltlake.org). Using linked data from the online form and electronic medical records, we examine differences in demographics, appointment show rates, and contraceptive choices between "online requester" clients who made clinical appointments through the online form (n = 356) and "standard requester" clients who made appointments using standard scheduling (n = 3,051). We used summary statistics and multivariable regression to compare groups.Results: The campaign logged 1.7 million impressions and 15,765 clicks on advertisements leading to the campaign website (HERSaltLake.org). Compared to standard requesters, online requesters less frequently reported a past pregnancy and were more likely to be younger, white, and to enroll in the survey arm of the study. Relative to standard requesters and holding covariates constant, online requesters were more likely to select copper IUDs (RRR: 8.14), hormonal IUDs (RRR: 12.36), and implants (RRR: 10.75) over combined hormonal contraceptives (the contraceptive pill, patch, and ring). Uptake of the contraceptive injectable, condoms, and emergency contraception did not differ between groups.Conclusion: Clients demonstrating engagement with the media campaign had different demographic characteristics and outcomes than those using standard scheduling to arrange care. Online media campaigns can be useful for connecting clients with advertised contraceptive methods and initiatives. However, depending on design strategy, the use of media campaigns might shift the demographics and characteristics of clients who participate in contraceptive initiatives.Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT02734199, Registered 12 April 2016-Retrospectively registered, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02734199 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this volume, studies springing from a BMAA symposium held in Salt Lake City, Utah, in April 2019 are presented. Although most studies of neurotoxicity consider the effects of BMAA as an isolated molecule, it is now known that environmental exposures can be to a combination of BMAA-related molecules, including enantiomers, isomers, other co-occurring cyanotoxins, and BMAA carbamates. Within the body, BMAA may exist in equilibrium with α- and β-carbamates formed in the presence of bicarbonate. BMAA and its isomers 2,4-DAB and AEG, accumulate over decades in biocrusts and persist at depths in soil profiles of the Gulf deserts. In Florida, releases of cyanobacterially ladened water from Lake Okeechobee can extend into coastal environments where diatoms and possibly dinoflagellates also produce BMAA and isomers in addition to brevetoxins. Along the African Lake Chad, neurotoxic risks from consumption of dried cyanobacterial cakes may, however, be outweighed by their amino acid addition to otherwise protein-deficient diets. Discrepancies in the detection and quantification of BMAA from different laboratories likely originate in the use of different analytical methods. C-18 columns, used to study derivatized BMAA, can efficiently separate BMAA from its isomers in validated methods, while validation is not possible for HILIC columns in the study of underivatized BMAA, since they do not adequately separate BMAA from its isomer BAMA. The presence of BMAA dimers, metal adducts, and carbamates may result in underestimation of BMAA by mass spectrometry. BMAA research led to the identification of the dietary amino acid L-serine as a neuroprotective molecule. In animal and clinical trials, L-serine appears to slow neurodegeneration, although the modes of action are still under study. Based on zebra fish sensitivity to platinum-based chemotherapeutic agents, investigators have found that L-serine reduces reactive oxygen species (ROS) but does not protect auditory hybridoma cells from cisplatin. Another possible mode of action of L-serine, induction of autophagic-lysosomal enzymes, is also being explored. The hypothesis that cyanobacterial exposures in general, and chronic exposures to BMAA in particular, may prove to be risk factors for neurodegenerative illnesses has not been without critics. Emerging from the symposium, a multi-authored response to one such critical paper appears in this collection of articles. Instead of waiting until there is a conclusive proof of risk, the adoption of the "precautionary default principle," proposed by Ingvar Brandt and his colleagues in Sweden, is suggested. Avoidance of exposures to cyanobacterial blooms and other sources of BMAA is suggested, until further research indicates such precautions to be unnecessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combined actions of natural and human factors change the timing and availability of water resources and, correspondingly, water demand in metropolitan areas. This leads to an imbalance between supply and demand and, thus, an increase in the vulnerability of water supply systems. Accordingly, methods for systematic analysis and multifactor assessment are needed to estimate the vulnerability of individual components in an integrated water supply system. This paper introduces a new approach to comprehensively assess vulnerability by integrating water resource system characteristics with factors representing exposure, sensitivity, severity, potential severity, social vulnerability, and adaptive capacity. These factors provide a way to consider broader system elements beyond the traditional vulnerability evaluation methods solely on the basis of the magnitude of failure (i.e., severity). In this way, the new vulnerability index gives a more detailed assessment with the potential to recognize critical conditions and components in an integrated system. The effectiveness and advantages of the proposed approach are checked using an investigation of the water supply system of Salt Lake City (SLC), Utah. First, an integrated water resource model was developed using a system simulation software to allocate water from different sources in SLC among designated demand points. The model contains individual simulation modules with representative interconnections among the natural hydroclimate system, built water infrastructure, and institutional decision making. The results of the analysis illustrate that basing vulnerability on a sole factor may lead to insufficient understanding and, hence, inefficient management of the system. For example, ranking of different water sources on the basis of the traditional vulnerability index (i.e., severity) in SLC is not consistent with the ranking on the basis of the proposed integrated vulnerability index. Therefore, during a failure event in the system, such as a water shortage, incomplete understanding of the system's performance may lead to incorrect decisions by managers. The new vulnerability index and assessment approach was able to identify the most vulnerable water sources in the SLC integrated water supply system. In conclusion, use of a more comprehensive approach to simulate the system behavior and estimate vulnerability provides more guidance for decision makers to detect vulnerable components of the system and ameliorate decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper explores alternative spaces in a conservative context. • This paper is an in-depth ethnographic exploration of the production of space. • Counterspaces are found to act in response to the domination of space. • The domination of space is found to inform the creation of differential space. • The creation of a new social space is found in five material-social moments. Prefigurative action that aims to construct desired transformations pose new and interesting questions centering on the geography of transitioning towards more ecologically-sound and socially-just systems. Geographers and others have employed a number of theoretical lenses to grapple with how best prefigurative activities might be supported, and how they both envision alternative futures and actually 'do stuff' to embody that vision. However, missing from this academic conversation is that prefigurative activity is not solely about the alternative material and economic practices, but the creation of alternative social spaces. This paper draws from both a Lefebvrian reading of space and a feminist geographical perspective to explore the spaces of a prefigurative community teeming within the politically and religiously conservative context of Salt Lake City, Utah (USA). An in-depth ethnography was conducted over an 18-month period, employing both participant-observation and semi-structured interviews. The sociality and spatiality of the production of alternative spaces is explored through Lefevbre's discussion of abstract and differential space, which opens up multiple possibilities for resistance. This research finds that the process of creating this alternative space is grounded in five moments: (i) the self, (ii) social networks, (iii) material practices, (iv) knowledge creation, and (v) economic practices. At the same time, a feminist 'killjoy' perspective calls attention to the limits of the emancipatory potential of these movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper models the TV audience for NFL games in a market without a local team. The model is estimated using all NFL games shown in the Salt Lake City market over the last 10 years. Team popularity varies season to season, with fans preferring high-scoring close games between good teams. The primary motivation of the model was to advise the local station in week-to-week selection of high TV audience games from the slate of FOX games. In 2013 the most popular team was the San Francisco 49ers and the local station broadcast more of their games than any other team. While the predictions offer modest discrimination between popular games, the predicted error precision must be reduced to compete with local station expertise. Reviewing the prediction performance in 2013 reveals insight into strengths and weaknesses of predictive analytics in business decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation focuses on poor air quality episodes in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a result of winter temperature inversions in the Salt Lake Valley. The research question, "What strategies does the analysis of community response to poor winter air quality episodes from 2000-2015 in Salt Lake City, Utah offer for the reduction of emissions?" is concerned primarily with the relationship between Salt Lake residents and air quality research, education, and policy. The unique geography of the Salt Lake Valley makes it prone to cold-air pools during the winter that trap emissions in the valley for several days at a time. This leads to the buildup of particulate matter and significant health impacts on Salt Lake residents. Additionally, it led to the designation of Salt Lake as a nonattainment zone for air quality by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Because of this, the Utah state government must prove that the state is actively improving the air. Several sources were synthesized and analyzed in order to determine which strategies have been effective in the past and what future actions could be taken to improve air quality in Utah. These include surveys conducted by the organization Envision Utah regarding the relationship between quality of life and air quality, personal interviews with University of Utah air quality researchers Kevin Perry and John Lin and air quality educator Deborah Burney-Sigman, a series of air quality research papers and news articles, and specific environmental policies. This analysis illustrates the need for more effective government policies that incorporate air quality education into schools, fund research programs, expand public transit and community involvement, and require more efficient combustion technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates evictions and housing stability specifically among Latina and immigrant mothers in Salt Lake City, Utah utilizing a gender lens. This is a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project in partnership with Community Voices for Housing Equality (CVHE). Researcher-participants from CVHE, a non-incorporated community group of social workers, residents, students, and professors from the University of Utah, were concerned about the climate of hostility that was felt toward those living in west side neighborhoods where most immigrants, refugees, and people of color live. The data for the study is drawn from 20 Latinas—nine (9) one-on-one interviews and a focus group with 11 participants as well as a community workshop with the same participants where researchers invited staff from the Disability Law Center to discuss with participants' legal questions that emerged during the focus group. The main findings of the study were that many of the participants were unsure or completely unaware of their rights as tenants. The majority of them felt they had been a victim of housing discrimination at least once, much of it stemming from difficulty with language barriers between themselves and their landlords or property managers. The absence of written contracts and tendency to search out housing where extensive background checks were not required, resulted in many participants living in month-to-month arrangements, leaving them vulnerable housing instability and fearing an eviction. Moreover, many participants expressed being powerless to law changes in eviction and tenant-landlord relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this research was to investigate what older adults think about the idea of living in micro-housing as an affordable housing option in Salt Lake City. By conducting interviews with 20 individuals over 65 years old, we discovered that they prefer Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) and micro apartments. Participants expressed concerns about tiny homes. The participants highlighted the importance of having a sense of community and access to amenities when choosing their housing. Additionally, they still preferred single-family homes because of space and financial factors. These findings offer insights for housing developers, architects, and policymakers who aim to create cities that are both sustainable and livable for people of all age groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central component of mosquito and vector surveillance programs globally is the adult mosquito trap, which is intended to collect host-seeking mosquitoes. The miniature CDC trap is a widely distributed trap style in part due to its relative affordability and compact nature. Despite already being a simple trap, in-house production methods, such as 3D printing, could improve the accessibility of the CDC trap by eliminating some of the supply chain variables. We present here several trials with the Salt Lake City (SLC) trap, a three-dimensional (3D) printed trap design. Functional assessments were made on secondary components and found no statistically significant differences when comparing CO2 line height (above vs. below fan), battery types (sealed lead acid vs. USB battery pack), and trap body collection shape (funnel body vs. simple/straight body). The SLC trap was compared directly to a commercial equivalent, the ABC trap, with comparative assessment on species diversity and evenness in collections and found to be statistically equivalent on all metrics. Methods also detail an accompanying optional transport system for a pressurized CO2/regulator set-up, should a practitioner elect not to use dry ice. Our final design is presented here with the publicly published stereolithography (STL) files and a detailed outline of the transport container system. Alternative models are available for in-house manufacture of mosquito traps, and we contribute these designs in an effort to stimulate further growth in vector surveillance. Author summary: Mosquitoes are among of the most commonly encountered public health pests when discussing zoonotic infectious diseases. Several specific tools exist to collect host-seeking mosquitoes from the field. The miniature CDC trap is a widely distributed, compact trap type that is best used when baited with carbon dioxide, such as through dry ice or pressurized gas. Even if the miniature CDC trap is among the more accessible variants of host-seeking mosquito traps, there can still be barriers to entry for small/local programs needing to trap, learn about, and make management decisions against their local mosquito species. To facilitate this, the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District (SLCMAD) developed a blueprint for 3D printing your own mini-CDC trap and validated its use against commercial equivalents. If a 3D printer is already available through a nearby institution (University, research institute, WHO centers, etc.), then the total cost without the dry ice is ~$4 USD (at the time of writing) to print this trap, as compared to commercially supplied models being ~$200 USD or more. The SLCMAD will continue to improve on the design specifications to require fewer materials and design plans are available publicly without cost at ThingiVerse under the SLCMAD page. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Women veterans have a high prevalence of comorbidities that increase the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes. Screening for pregnancy desires in primary care provider (PCP) visits offers an opportunity to optimize preconception health. This pilot quality improvement initiative sought to assess Veterans Healthcare Administration provider preferences on One Key Question (OKQ) implementation, identification of veterans' reproductive needs, and the effect of training on documentation in a women's primary care clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah.Methods: We hosted OKQ training sessions for providers and staff, audio recorded group discussions on implementation barriers, and explored themes. Women veterans presenting for a PCP visit in July 2018 self-completed a paper OKQ screening tool. We calculated summary statistics on responses. We conducted a pre-post analysis, with respect to training sessions, to measure for changes in family planning documentation during PCP visits.Results: Nineteen providers and staff completed the training. They acknowledged the importance, but believed that the screening tool should be completed by veterans and not be provider prompted. Forty-two women veterans completed the screening tool: 21% desired pregnancy in the next year and 26% desired contraceptive information. Chart reviews found a nonsignificant increase in current contraceptive method documentation between periods (20% vs 37%; P = 0.08), a decline in documentation of reproductive goals (22% vs 3%; P = 0.02), and no significant change in counseling.Conclusions: Veterans identify reproductive needs via the OKQ screening tool, but provider documentation did not reflect changes in care following training. Further study is necessary to develop an optimal, patient-centered tool and implementation plan to support women veterans in their reproductive goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current best algorithms for the convex body chasing (CBC) problem in online algorithms use the notion of the Steiner point of a convex set. In particular, the algorithm that always moves to the Steiner point of the request set is O(d) competitive for nested CBC, and this is optimal among memoryless algorithms [Bubeck et al.: Chasing nested convex bodies nearly optimally. In: 31st Annual ACM–SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (Salt Lake City 2020), pp. 1496–1508. SIAM, Philadelphia (2020)]. A memoryless algorithm coincides with the notion of a selector in functional analysis. The Steiner point is noted for being Lipschitz with respect to the Hausdorff metric, and for achieving the minimal Lipschitz constant possible. It is natural to ask whether every selector with this Lipschitz property yields a competitive algorithm for nested CBC. We answer this question in the negative by exhibiting a selector that yields a non-competitive algorithm for nested CBC but is Lipschitz with respect to Hausdorff distance. Furthermore, we show that being Lipschitz with respect to an L p -type analog of the Hausdorff distance is sufficient to guarantee competitiveness if and only if p = 1 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faculty and administrators often present risk-taking as something honors students must do, but rarely do they take risks themselves . In an ideal situation, communal risk-taking would subvert institutional power dynamics, free students from grade-associated anxiety, and enable them to build dynamic partnerships with faculty. This paper discusses how one honors college piloted self-grading in the second semester of its first-year seminar as a mechanism of liberatory learning for both faculty and students. While self-grading was originally intended to provide increased freedom for risk-taking, in truth it led to increased anxiety in students and high levels of frustration for faculty. This pilot program demonstrated the underlying flaws in the concept of risk-taking and ultimately failed . Although faculty may have good intentions, simply removing grades does not remove internalized, perceived judgment. Real risk-taking requires all parties to participate with enthusiasm and to adapt when necessary in order to be successful. While self-grading did not accomplish its original aims, the process demonstrated previously underappreciated underlying cultural tensions that fundamentally affect student and faculty freedom and risk-taking, displaying how deeply entrenched the social mores are for honors faculty and students, as well as how much work is left to encourage risk-taking by both groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethylene oxide (EtO) is a colorless, flammable gas at room temperature produced by the catalytic oxidation of ethylene. EtO is widely used by medical sterilization facilities to clean medical supplies and equipment. Recent epidemiological studies showed that EtO is a more potent carcinogen than previously documented, leading the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update, in December 2016, the inhalation unit risk estimate for EtO. This resulted in the identification of EtO as a potential health concern in several areas across the US, including the state of Utah. The geography surrounding Salt Lake Valley creates a bowl, which is ideal for collecting air pollution emissions. The region often experiences inversion episodes which inhibit vertical mixing and cause an accumulation of air pollutants, leading to unhealthy pollution levels. Using the EPA's dispersion modeling software, AERMOD, this study estimated EtO concentrations through facility stack and fugitive emissions modeling results. These values were compared with those of canister-based concentrations from ambient air samples taken near a medical device sterilization facility in Salt Lake Valley. Stainless steel whole-air passivated canisters were used to collect 24 h ambient concentration samples of EtO. Eight locations surrounding a Salt Lake Valley medical device sterilization facility and four background sites were chosen to measure the ambient concentrations. Accounting for potential atmospheric impacts on EtO, measurements were sampled in winter 2022 (January–March) and summer 2022 (July–September). The modeled EtO concentrations were adjusted to account for background values associated with the winter or summer data. Then, the two methodologies were compared using a Wilcoxon signed-ranked paired test. The statistical analysis resulted in six of the eight sample locations surrounding the sterilization facility being significantly different when comparing the canister-based measurements of ambient EtO to modeled estimates. Canister-based measurements taken at sites one, three, and four were statistically greater than the modeled estimates, while sites two, five, and seven were statistically less than the modeled estimates. Also, the summer background value calculated was almost 2.5 times greater than the winter one. The results do not suggest whether one method is more or less conservative than the other. In conclusion, the five of the closest sites and site seven were statistically different when comparing measured and modeled ambient concentrations of EtO. The comparison results do not clearly indicate if a correction factor could be derived for future human exposure to cancer risk assessment modeling. However, it is reasonable that the closer to the sterilization facility, the more total EtO exposure will be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tools for rearing hematophagous insects, such as mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae), in an insectary are essential for research and operational evaluations in vector biology and control. There is an abundance of low-cost options for practitioners without conventional infrastructure. However, few midrange options exist that provide a balance of efficiency and low material waste. We present here a reproducible design for an electrically powered blood-feeding device that offers long-term reusability, low material waste, and customizability for different species or experiments. The limitation is the requirement for electricity, but the gain is a simple, low-skill device that can be modified as needed. To validate the design, assessments of feeding angle and blood-feeding success were compared between the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District artificial membrane feeder (SLAM) and a commercial system (Hemotek). Engorgement in Aedes aegypti (80–90%), Culex pipiens (50–80%), and Culex tarsalis (30–75%) was similar between the 2 units, resulting in nearly identical fecundity outcomes between devices. Additionally, 45° angles were more successful, generally, than presenting the feeders flat or vertical to the mosquitoes (df3,48, P  = 1.014 × 10−15). This angle is simple to present with the SLAM device. Materials for in-house reproduction of the SLAM system are now widely available in regions with access to e-commerce and shipped goods. This results in a device schematic that should fit well into a relatively modular, do-it-yourself paradigm where the practitioner needs only to assemble some materials without complex engineering. This article provides schematics, cost comparison, and validation of the in-house-made SLAM system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Patients with drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) who are not surgical candidates must rely solely on medical management. • Drug-resistant epilepsy medical management can be optimized by systematically addressing factors that promote/inhibit seizures. • A simultaneous implementation of multiple measures can yield a clinically relevant improvement. Failure to control epileptic seizures with two medications, adequately chosen and dosed, indicates drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE). The chance of pharmacologically controlling seizures is low for patients with DRE and uncontrolled seizures who are not candidates for surgery, who have already undergone surgery, or who already had a vagus nerve stimulator (VNS) placed. Patients experiencing these conditions must instead rely on medical management of their seizures, and there is no breakthrough solution on the horizon. Medical care of DRE might be optimized by systematically considering factors that promote and inhibit breakthrough seizures. For example, seizure control could be enhanced through measures such as increasing the frequency of follow-up visits, tracking treatment plan compliance, treating sleep disorders, rational polypharmacy, adjusting drug administration to achieve higher levels when seizures are more likely and educating patients on seizure triggers. A systematic and simultaneous implementation of all of these measures is likely to yield a sizable, clinically relevant, improvement. This paper presents an exploratory study on the effects of implementing such an approach, specifically evaluating this method's impact on seizure frequency. I performed a retrospective chart review of 659 consecutive adult patients with epilepsy followed up at the University of Utah and at the Salt Lake City VA Medical center using the multimodal approach described above. I identified 27 patients who had DRE and uncontrolled seizures and in whom a medical management optimization protocol was implemented. I measured these patients' seizure frequency at the beginning and the end of the study period and compared the results with those of a matching control group of 48 patients. The optimization protocol did not increase the number of seizure-free patients with DRE; however, it was effective in minimizing seizure frequency in patients whose seizures remained uncontrolled. Among these patients, the median seizure frequency dropped by 64% in the optimization group but did not change in the control group. Despite the high occurrence of DRE, there is no accepted protocol for the related medical management. This paper describes an effective approach that can be implemented in a clinically relevant and readily achievable manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an irreversible blinding eye condition with complex genetic and environmental etiologies. Genetic testing for AMD for previously identified multiple-risk single nucleotide polymorphisms can help determine an individual's future susceptibility. However, such testing has been discouraged until evidence shows that providing such information to symptomatic or pre-symptomatic individuals will alter their disease course. Therefore, we designed this study to investigate whether knowledge of AMD risk could stimulate the adoption of a healthier lifestyle that could lower the incidence of AMD later in life. We hypothesize that pre-symptomatic individuals informed of a high genetic risk of AMD are more likely to make quantifiable, positive lifestyle changes relative to participants informed of lower genetic risk or randomized to deferred disclosure of genetic testing results. Methods: The Moran AMD Genetic Testing Assessment (MAGENTA) study is a phase 2, single-center, prospective, double-masked, randomized controlled trial conducted at the John A. Moran Eye Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Participants are randomized by a 3:1 allocation ratio to immediate and deferred disclosure groups and followed for 12 months. Skin, ocular, and serum carotenoid status, as well as nutritional and social surveys, are assessed at study visits. Skin carotenoid assessment is by resonance Raman spectroscopy and reflectance spectroscopy, ocular carotenoids are measured with Heidelberg Spectralis autofluorescence imaging and fluorescence lifetime imaging ophthalmoscopy (FLIO), and serum carotenoids are quantified using high-performance liquid chromatography. The primary outcome evaluates changes in skin carotenoid status in response to genetic risk disclosure. The secondary outcomes examine changes in ocular and serum carotenoid status in response to genetic risk disclosure. Also, we will correlate AMD genetic risk with baseline ocular and systemic carotenoid status and FLIO. Discussion: MAGENTA will provide much-needed evidence on whether pre-symptomatic testing for AMD risk can lead to quantifiable long-term changes in behavior and lifestyle associated with a lower incidence of AMD later in life. Findings from the MAGENTA trial will facilitate the design of a future larger, longer-term, multicenter phase 3 trial that could feature subgroup analysis, expanded measures of lifestyle modification, and potential active nutritional interventions. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05265624. Registered on March 3, 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We aimed to identify the genes of 35 pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, and protozoa that cause waterborne infectious diseases, and to assess the feasibility of a wastewater-based surveillance system. Materials and Methods: Wastewater was aseptically sampled once a month from 2 sites. A total of 1 L of wastewater from each site underwent 0.2 μm filtration to generate the sample A. Subsequently, 200 ul of the filtered water was ultra-filtered and concentrated to generate the sample B, which was mixed with sample A in a 1:1 ratio. We performed a Filmarray® Gastrointestinal (GI) panel (BioFire Diagnnostics’, Salt Lake City, UT, USA) test to simultaneously detect 13 enterobacteria, 5 enterovirus, and 4 protozoa. RNA was extracted to assess 18 types of viruses. Results: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 adenovirus, bocavirus, and rhinovirus was detected at both site. Norovirus GI/GII was continuously detected at both sites. Moreover, adenovirus, group A rotaviruses, and hepatitis A virus were frequently detected; however, hepatitis E virus was absent at either site. Campylobacter, enteroaggregative Escherichia coli, enterotoxigenic E. coli, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, and Clostridioides difficile toxin A/B were detected at both sites. Giardia lamblia was also detected in both sites. Conclusion: We analyze multiple infectious disease pathogens under sample surveillance with incidence. Further indepth studies on wastewater-based surveillance will be feasible and important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using surrogate safety measures is a common method to assess safety on roadways. Surrogate safety measures allow for proactive safety analysis; the analysis is performed prior to crashes occurring. This allows for safety improvements to be implemented proactively to prevent crashes and the associated injuries and property damage. Existing surrogate safety measures primarily rely on data generated by microsimulations, but the advent of connected vehicles has allowed for the incorporation of data from actual cars into safety analysis with surrogate safety measures. In this study, commercially available connected vehicle data are used to develop crash prediction models for crashes at intersections and segments in Salt Lake City, Utah. Harsh braking events are identified and counted within the influence areas of sixty study intersections and thirty segments and then used to develop crash prediction models. Other intersection characteristics are considered as regressor variables in the models, such as intersection geometric characteristics, connected vehicle volumes, and the presence of schools and bus stops in the vicinity. Statistically significant models are developed, and these models may be used as a surrogate safety measure to analyze intersection safety proactively. The findings are applicable to Salt Lake City, but similar research methods may be employed by researchers to determine whether these models are applicable in other cities and to determine how the effectiveness of this method endures through time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral Corrective Feedback is a widely used teaching strategy that has been found to help language acquisition. The factors that contribute to its effectiveness, however, remain elusive. In this study, the role of smiling during teachers' OCF provision is investigated in intact language classrooms by modifying the analytical framework developed by Lyster and Ranta (Stud Second Lang Acquis, 19(1):37–66, 1997), which determines OCF effectiveness by the success of the learner uptake. In addition to the feedback strategies used, this study examines teacher smiling during the feedback instances, and whether they were genuine or polite smiles. The Facial Action Coding System (Ekman & Friesen, Environ Psych Nonver, 1(1), 56–75, 1976; Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, Facial Action Coding System: The Manual on CD ROM. Salt Lake City, UT: Research Nexus division of Network Information Research Corporation, 2002) is utilized to operationalize smile genuineness. Significant findings indicate that when teacher smiling is genuine, learners are more likely to correct their errors, while polite smiles do not have the same effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Osiris Martinez-Guzman is first author on 'Mitochondrial-nuclear heme trafficking in budding yeast is regulated by GTPases that control mitochondrial dynamics and ER contact sites', published in JCS. Osiris conducted the research described in this article while a PhD student in Dr Amit Reddi's lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA. She is now a postdoc in the lab of Dr Adam Hughes at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, where she is investigating organelle communication and mitochondrial metabolism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

4 Speth, John D. 2008 Following in Jane Kelley's Footsteps: Bloom Mound Revisited. Most of their discussion relies on Henderson Pueblo given the more limited excavations at Bloom Mound and the overall uncertainty regarding earlier excavations. Living & Dying on the Periphery: The Archaeology and Human Remains from Two 13th-15th Century AD Villages in Southeastern New Mexico: by Jamie L. Clark and John D. Speth. [Extracted from the article]

Increased heat stress and air pollution are two major causes of health issues and productivity loss in the construction industry. This will be exacerbated by global warming and an increased possibility of extreme weather conditions in the future. Previous studies revealed that each 1°C rise in temperature reduces construction workers' productivity by up to 2%. Also, it is found that a 10 μg/m3 particulate matter sized 2.5 μm (PM2.5) fluctuation over 25 days lowers workers' daily production by 1%. As an effective dust control and cooling strategy, water spraying is used by practitioners to mitigate the effect of air pollution and heat-related problems on construction workers. Considering low costs and high mobility, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be considered as a potential alternative for ground-based, stationary water spraying systems. To this end, a case study approach is adopted in this project to investigate the feasibility of using nebulizer-retrofitted UAVs in controlling air pollution and reducing heat stress at construction job sites. The case study consists of two different residential job sites in the state of Utah: one in Salt Lake City and the other one in St. George. The main contribution of this study is to determine the effect of aerial water spraying on air temperature and pollution at job sites. The outcomes of this study show that the average wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) decreases 1.7° during the flight phase compared to average values for preflight and postflight phases. The aerial water spraying technique yields better and more water-efficient results in decreasing temperature at job sites compared to the existing approaches, such as stationary fans. Moreover, the results of PM variations illustrate that the mean value of particulate change was significantly different between flight and preflight (p=0.005), and flight and postflight (p<0.001) modes. Future studies should include the deployment of multiple drones flying simultaneously at job sites to cover larger areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stormwater urban drainage systems are historically designed to mitigate certain recurrence interval flooding events. However, increases in impervious land cover due to urban redevelopment enhance the surface imperviousness and then magnifies urban floods over the design criteria by elevating flooding peaks and volumes. In this paper, the object-based image classification was developed to evaluate the impervious land cover impacts on system peak flooding rate and total flooding volume. The object-based aerial image classification quantified the spatiotemporal changes in impervious surfaces with an average accuracy of 92%. A drainage model, based on a stormwater drainage system in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, was calibrated and validated under four storm events with an average of Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency of 0.69 and 0.46 for calibration and validation outcomes. Results show that impervious areas increased up to 32% under impacts induced by urban redevelopment from 1950 to 2018. The land cover imperviousness resulted in a maximum of 575% and 753% growth in flooding peak and volume, respectively, under storm events from 10-year to 100-year return periods. Implications of this research seek to inform homeowners and engineers of the flooding risks in human-altered landscapes based on remote sensing image classification. [Display omitted] • Object-based image classification can track the imperviousness changes due to urban redevelopment. • Urban flooding follows the trend of spatiotemporal changes in impervious surfaces. • Low-frequency urban floods are influenced more by impervious land cover change than high-frequency urban floods. • Quantitative adaptation strategies seek to handle future flooding hotspots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at a symposium held in Salt Lake City, Utah on July 23, 2016, on the contents of the adipose tissue is presented. Topics include identification of the biological markers of adipose tissues, investigation of the methods to increase the quality of meat products, and effect of DNA methylation in adipose tissues. The symposium featured several researchers from various universities including B. P. Dalrymple, Mario S. Duarte, and M. Baik.

Farmington Bay (FB), UT, has undergone major water quality changes due to human interventions. An arm of the Great Salt Lake (GSL), FB, is an endorheic body, actively accumulating nutrients. Human impacts to FB began in 1847 when European settlers arrived and major ecosystem changes have resulted through local development. Major impacts include anthropogenically impacted discharges (AID), causeway construction, and water-level declines. AID includes raw and treated sewage, septic leachate, irrigation returns, and feedlot or pasture runoff. Causeway construction produced freshening (hypersaline to fresh-brackish) via hydrodynamic isolation, whereas diversions and a drying climate prevent AID from mixing with the rest of the GSL. The timing of human interventions is known, allowing identification of ecosystem response in three sediment cores analyzed for 210Pb chronology, mineralogy, C and N isotopes, pyrolysis, porewater chemistry, and diatom stratigraphy. From these proxies, three events have profoundly altered FB. A sewage canal (1911) brought raw effluent from Salt Lake City, causing a rise in the d15N of organic matter (OM). A corresponding increase in carbonate production occurred as enhanced productivity led to higher pH. Causeway construction (1969) spurred algal growth as FB freshened. Declining water levels (> 1990) resulted in a shrinking volume of bay water, resulting in increased eutrophication. P is elevated in porewater due to OM decay. ~ 0.9 gm−2 year−1 phosphate is released to the water column, compared to an estimated 3.0 gm−2 year−1 surface inflow loading. Although ecosystem improvements may result from AID reductions, improvements in water quality are most easily achieved by restoring surface inflows to FB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As with many other chapters, Roberts emphasizes the difficulties faced by women entering and succeeding in Great Basin archaeology. With Grit and Determination: A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology: edited by Suzanne Eskenazi and Nicole M. Herzog. It is a solid document on the history of Great Basin archaeology, yet also delves into the history of the discipline of archaeology in general, as many of the authors discuss the theoretical changes that occurred while they worked their way up in the discipline. [Extracted from the article]

Shared mobility is an essential component of the larger sharing economy. Ride-hailing, bike-sharing, e-scooters, and other types of shared mobility continue to grow worldwide. Among these services is microtransit, a new transport mode that extends transit coverage within a region. Mobile devices enable microtransit services, aggregating riders and using real-time routing algorithms to group customers traveling in similar directions. Meanwhile, the newly emerged coronavirus, COVID-19, has radically reshaped the ridership behavior of all transit services, including microtransit. While existing research evaluates the performance of microtransit pilot programs before the pandemic, there is no information concerning the spatio-temporal pattern of microtransit activities under the impact of COVID-19. The purpose of this paper is to apply eigendecomposition and k -clique percolation methods to uncover the spatio-temporal patterns of microtransit trips. Further, we used these approaches to identify underlying communities using data from a pilot program in Salt Lake City, Utah. The resulting research offers insight into how COVID-19 altered travel behavior. Specifically, eigendecomposition delineated the homogeneity and heterogeneity of travel patterns across temporal dimensions. We identified first mile/last mile trips as a major source of variance in both pre- and post-COVID periods and that transit-dependent users prove to be inelastic despite the threat of COVID-19. The k-clique percolation method detected possible community formations and tracked how these communities evolved during the pandemic. In addition, we systematically analyzed overlapping communities and the network structure around shared nodes by using a clustering coefficient. The workflow developed in this research broadly is generalizable and valuable for understanding the unique spatio-temporal patterns of microtransit. The framework can also help transit agencies with performance evaluation, regional transport strategies, and optimal vehicle dispatching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, advanced informatics and sensing techniques show promise of enabling a new generation of smart stormwater systems, where real-time sensors are deployed to detect flooding hotspots. Existing stormwater design criteria assume that historical rainfall frequency and intensity are reliable predictors to place real-time sensing devices. However, nonstationarity in rainfall due to climate change violates this assumption by disturbing hydrologic regimes and relocating flooding spots. This paper proposes a novel methodology of combining unsupervised machine learning (Agglomerative Clustering) and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to optimize the sensor placement under uncertain rainfalls. An urban drainage network located in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, is chosen as the case study to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. Results show that: i) the proposed Agglomerative Clustering and ANOVA integrated approach can efficiently and accurately pinpoint sensor locations for drainage flooding detection; ii) rainfall uncertainty has limited impacts on the number of sensors, but it induces significant effects on sensor locations from the historical period (2000–2009) to the future period (2040–2049). By exploring the effects of climate nonstationarity on sensor placement, this work aims to help engineers and decision-makers better respond to the changing climates and rainfall extremes in urban drainage catchments. [Display omitted] • Sensor locations can be accurately pinpointed by using Agglomerative Clustering and Analysis of Variance. • Future rainfall changes induce impacts on sensor placement strategy for detecting urban floods. • Not all drainage flooding hotspots need to be monitored to capture the heterogeneity of water level datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in measurement technology are producing increasingly time-resolved environmental exposure data. We aim to gain new insights into exposures and their potential health impacts by moving beyond simple summary statistics (e.g., means, maxima) to characterize more detailed features of high-frequency time series data. This study proposes a novel variant of the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) algorithm called Dynamic Time Warping Self-Organizing Map (DTW-SOM) for unsupervised pattern discovery in time series. This algorithm uses DTW, a similarity measure that optimally aligns interior patterns of sequential data, both as the similarity measure and training guide of the neural network. We applied DTW-SOM to a panel study monitoring indoor and outdoor residential temperature and particulate matter air pollution (PM2.5) for 10 patients with asthma from 7 households near Salt Lake City, UT; the patients were followed for up to 373 days each. Compared to previous SOM algorithms using timestamp alignment on time series data, the DTW-SOM algorithm produced fewer quantization errors and more detailed diurnal patterns. DTW-SOM identified the expected typical diurnal patterns in outdoor temperature which varied by season, as well diurnal patterns in PM2.5 which may be related to daily asthma outcomes. In summary, DTW-SOM is an innovative feature engineering method that can be applied to highly time-resolved environmental exposures assessed by sensors to identify typical diurnal (or hourly or monthly) patterns and provide new insights into the health effects of environmental exposures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]