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Objectives: The objectives of this paper is to conduct a bibliometric analysis to examine the research status and development trend of anterior cruciate ligament injury and reconstruction in children and adolescents over the past 20 years. Design: Descriptive Research. Methods: This study obtained information regarding studies on Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction in Children and Adolescents from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Visual and bibliometric analysis were conducted using VOSviewer, Origin 2022, Pajek64 5.18and Excel 2019. These analytic tools facilitated the analysis of various aspects, including countries/regions, institutions, authors, journals and keywords related to the research. Results: From 2003 to 2023, a total of 1328 articles were retrieved in WOS, and 637 articles were selected by two authors. The most productive institutions are Childrens Hosp Philadelphia, Kocher, ms. Their articles have the highest number of publications and citations. The American journal of sports medicine is the most frequently cited journal for articles on anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in children and adolescents. The most common keywords used in these articles were "anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction", "injury, children, adolescent", and "skeletally immature patients". Conclusions: This study provides valuable insights into the research focus of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in children and adolescents. In recent years, there has been significant attention paid to areas of "the return to sport, re-repture rate and functional recovery after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction" in this specific population. These aspects have emerged as key directions for future research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer after non-melanoma skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in US men. Its incidence and mortality rates vary substantially across geographical regions and over time, with large disparities by race, geographic regions (i.e., Appalachia), among others. The widely used Cox proportional hazards model is usually not applicable in such scenarios owing to the violation of the proportional hazards assumption. In this paper, we fit Bayesian accelerated failure time models for the analysis of prostate cancer survival and take dependent spatial structures and temporal information into account by incorporating random effects with multivariate conditional autoregressive priors. In particular, we relax the proportional hazards assumption, consider flexible frailty structures in space and time, and also explore strategies for handling the temporal variable. The parameter estimation and inference are based on a Monte Carlo Markov chain technique under a Bayesian framework. The deviance information criterion is used to check goodness of fit and to select the best candidate model. Extensive simulations are performed to examine and compare the performances of models in different contexts. Finally, we illustrate our approach by using the 2004-2014 Pennsylvania Prostate Cancer Registry data to explore spatial-temporal heterogeneity in overall survival and identify significant risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recruiting large cohorts efficiently can speed the translation of findings into care across a range of scientific disciplines and medical specialties. Recruitment can be hampered by factors such as financial barriers, logistical concerns, and lack of resources for patients and clinicians. These and other challenges can lead to underrepresentation in groups such as rural residents and racial and ethnic minorities. Here we discuss the implementation of various recruitment strategies for enrolling participants into a large, prospective cohort study, assessing the need for adaptations and making them in real-time, while maintaining high adherence to the protocol and high participant satisfaction. Methods: While conducting a large, prospective trial of a multi-cancer early detection blood test at Geisinger, an integrated health system in central Pennsylvania, we monitored recruitment progress, adherence to the protocol, and participants' satisfaction. Tracking mechanisms such as paper records, electronic health records, research databases, dashboards, and electronic files were utilized to measure each outcome. We then reviewed study procedures and timelines to list the implementation strategies that were used to address barriers to recruitment, protocol adherence and participant satisfaction. Results: Adaptations to methods that contributed to achieving the enrollment goal included offering multiple recruitment options, adopting group consenting, improving visit convenience, increasing the use of electronic capture and the tracking of data and source documents, staffing optimization via leveraging resources external to the study team when appropriate, and integrating the disclosure of study results into routine clinical care without adding unfunded work for clinicians. We maintained high protocol adherence and positive participant experience as exhibited by a very low rate of protocol deviations and participant complaints. Conclusion: Recruiting rapidly for large studies – and thereby facilitating clinical translation – requires a nimble, creative approach that marshals available resources and changes course according to data. Planning a rigorous assessment of a study's implementation outcomes prior to study recruitment can further ground study adaptations and facilitate translation into practice. This can be accomplished by proactively and continuously assessing and revising implementation strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the title and abstracts of papers presented during the 1934 annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Increasing significance of geographic conditions in the growth of nation-states; Erosional history of the wind river range, Wyoming; Long-lot farm and economic in public services.

The increase in the concentration of geological gas emissions in the atmosphere and particularly the increase of methane is considered by the majority of the scientific community as the main cause of global climate change. The main reasons that place methane at the center of interest, lie in its high global warming potential (GWP) and its lifetime in the atmosphere. Anthropogenic processes, like engineering geology ones, highly affect the daily profile of gasses in the atmosphere. Should direct measures be taken to reduce emissions of methane, immediate global warming mitigation could be achieved. Due to its significance, methane has been monitored by many space missions over the years and as of 2017 by the Sentinel-5P mission. Considering the above, we conclude that monitoring and predicting future methane concentration based on past data is of vital importance for the course of climate change over the next decades. To that end, we introduce a method exploiting state-of-the-art recurrent neural networks (RNNs), which have been proven particularly effective in regression problems, such as time-series forecasting. Aligned with the green artificial intelligence (AI) initiative, the paper at hand investigates the ability of different RNN architectures to predict future methane concentration in the most active regions of Texas, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, by using Sentinel-5P methane data and focusing on computational and complexity efficiency. We conduct several empirical studies and utilize the obtained results to conclude the most effective architecture for the specific use case, establishing a competitive prediction performance that reaches up to a 0.7578 mean squared error on the evaluation set. Yet, taking into consideration the overall efficiency of the investigated models, we conclude that the exploitation of RNN architectures with less number of layers and a restricted number of units, i.e., one recurrent layer with 8 neurons, is able to better compensate for competitive prediction performance, meanwhile sustaining lower computational complexity and execution time. Finally, we compare RNN models against deep neural networks along with the well-established support vector regression, clearly highlighting the supremacy of the recurrent ones, as well as discuss future extensions of the introduced work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Steel production emits manganese and other heavy metals into the environment, where these byproducts can lead to health problems in humans and other animals. Birds have historically been used to detect harmful chemicals in the air, and in this paper, we show that this role continues into the present day. Feathers of a small terrestrial songbird, the Tufted Titmouse, were collected from live birds captured both near (0.3 km) and far (4.0 km) from steel production facilities in western Pennsylvania, USA. Tail feathers from birds living near the facilities had significantly higher amounts of manganese embedded in their structure compared to the feathers of birds living farther away. This shows that manganese is present in the environment, is localized at industrial sites, is encountered by birds, and is sequestered in their tissues. Animals could suffer ill health if exposures are high enough. Feather data cannot be used to assess the magnitude of this health risk since metals laid down within feathers are no longer circulating in the birds' bodies. However, our data do suggest that the environmental monitoring of manganese should continue, as inadvertent exposure is still occurring. Human industry and land use has led to the anthropogenic release of manganese (Mn) into the air and soil near manufacturing centers. Overexposure to Mn can cause considerable health problems in birds. We studied whether the concentration of Mn in bird feathers correlates with the distance to point sources of Mn air emissions. Feathers were collected from Tufted Titmice (Baeolophus bicolor) at two sites in western Pennsylvania, USA. One site was in proximity (0.3 km) to a steel plant with documented Mn releases, and the other site was in a different town about 4.0 km away from other steel plants with documented Mn releases. Using the microwave plasma–atomic emission spectrometer (MP–AES), we found that tail feathers collected from nearest to a steel plant had a significantly higher concentration of Mn compared to the samples from the site further from the emission source. A body mass index was calculated for each set of birds; however, the indices did not vary significantly. This is the first published study of Mn sequestration in Tufted Titmouse feathers. This study develops our general understanding of the potential use of bird feathers as non-invasive bioindicators of environmental metal exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advance directives are intended to extend patient autonomy by enabling patients to prospectively direct the care of their future incapacitated selves. There has been much discussion about issues such as whether the future incompetent self is identical to the agent who issues the advance directive or whether advance directives can legitimately secure patient autonomy. However, there is another important question to ask: to what extent and in what conditions is it ethically appropriate for one to limit the liberty or agency of one's future incompetent self by issuing an advance directive? In this paper, I use a virtue‐ethical approach to explore this question, focusing on the case of an advance directive for the future self with moderate dementia. First, I examine virtuous attitudes with regard to autonomy and argue that one can manifest vices or ethically undesirable character traits in trying to intervene in the future self's life. In particular, I argue that this case can manifest vices such as disdainfulness, intellectual arrogance, and self‐dictatorship, which is the vice of trying to control one's life to an excessive degree, and that a self‐dictator fails to give due moral consideration to the future self's liberty or agency. I then introduce the Daoist idea of wu‐wei, which recommends embracement of what happens in one's life, as one of the possible remedies for the overemphasis on the value of autonomy and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political redistricting is the redrawing of electoral district boundaries. It is normally undertaken to reflect population changes. The process can be abused, in what is called gerrymandering, to favor one party or interest group over another, resulting thereby in broadly undemocratic outcomes that misrepresent the views of the voters. Gerrymandering is especially vexing in the United States. This paper introduces an algorithm, with an implementation, for creating districting plans (whether for political redistricting or for other districting applications). The algorithm, Seed-Fill-Shift-Repair (SFSR), is demonstrated for Congressional redistricting in American states. SFSR is able to create thousands of valid redistricting plans, which may then be used as points of departure for public deliberation regarding how best to redistrict a given polity. The main objectives of this paper are: (i) to present SFSR in a broadly accessible form, including code that implements it and test data, so that it may be used for both civic deliberations by the public and for research purposes. (ii) to make the case for what SFSR essays to do, which is to approach redistricting, and districting generally, from a constraint satisfaction perspective and from the perspective of producing a plurality of feasible solutions that may then serve in subsequent deliberations. To further these goals, we make the code publicly available. The paper presents, for illustration purposes, a corpus of 11,206 valid redistricting plans for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (produced by SFSR), using the 2017 American Community Survey, along with descriptive statistics. Also, the paper presents 1,000 plans for each of the states of Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, using the 2018 American Community Survey, along with descriptive statistics on these plans and the computations involved in their creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work zone safety is a high priority for transportation agencies across the United States. Enforcing speed compliance in work zones is an important factor for reducing the frequency and severity of crashes. This paper uses connected vehicle trajectory data to evaluate the impact of automated work zone speed enforcement on three work zones in Pennsylvania and two work zones in Indiana. Analysis was conducted on more than 300 million datapoints from over 71 billion records between April and August 2021. Speed distribution and speed compliance studies with and without automated enforcement were conducted along every tenth of a mile, and the results found that overall speed compliance inside the work zones increased with the presence of enforcement. In the three Pennsylvania work zones analyzed, the proportions of vehicles travelling within the allowable 11 mph tolerance were 63%, 75% and 84%. In contrast, in Indiana, a state with no automated enforcement, the proportions of vehicles travelling within the same 11 mph tolerance were found to be 25% and 50%. Shorter work zones (less than 3 miles) were associated with better compliance than longer work zones. Spatial analysis also found that speeds rebounded within 1–2 miles after leaving the enforcement location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main challenge in addressing constrained multi-objective optimization problems (CMOPs) lies in achieving a balance among convergence, diversity, and feasibility. To address this issue, this paper proposes a constrained multi-objective evolutionary algorithm with Pareto estimation via neural network named CMOEA-PeNN. In order to exploit and explore the decision space, the proposed algorithm employs a dual-population mechanism, which is trained with a self-organizing map (SOM). Firstly, the population distribution structure in decision space is mapped to objective space while preserving neighborhood information, and then the neuron weight is utilized to estimate the Pareto front (PF). Secondly, a novel approach is devised to preserve the feasibility of the population and enhance the estimation of the Pareto front by SOM. The achievement scalarizing function (ASF) is employed to choose promising solutions. This strategy could guide the population toward the optimal solution while exploring the small feasible regions. Finally, the performance of CMOEA-PeNN is compared with five state-of-the-art constrained multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (CMOEAs) on three widely used benchmark problems and a real-world problem. The experimental results show that CMOEA-PeNN could archive competitive performance in solving CMOPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to highlight a less illustrated topic in Romanian bibliographic resources. According to the World Health Organization reports, breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer worldwide. The sequelae of mastectomy are systematised as follows: conditions secondary to the application of local radiotherapy, systemic conditions after oncological treatment and psychosocial conditions. The most common side effect of the treatment applied for breast cancer is lymphoedema and, according to a study carried out in Pennsylvania, 42% of patients develop lymphoedema. Some authors classify it into mild, moderate and severe, but others highlight four stages of lymphoedema development. Physiotherapy has a major role in post-mastectomy recovery and requires various kinetic means, which can be both specific (physical exercise, hydrokinetic therapy, massage, posture) and non-specific (multilayer compression bandage and wearing a compression sleeve). Over time, a lot of clinical studies have been conducted on the implications of physical therapy for post-mastectomy functional recovery. Thus, physical exercise performed during the kinetic programme improves muscle strength, the activity of the cardiorespiratory system and self-esteem. Several authors recommend the practice of aerobic exercise and moderate-intensity exercise twice a week during chemotherapy treatment to prevent the development of lymphoedema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The aim of this paper is to describe the utility of various recruitment modalities utilized in the Working to Increase Stability through Exercise (WISE) study. WISE is a pragmatic randomized trial that is testing the impact of a 3-year, multicomponent (strength, balance, aerobic) physical activity program led by trained volunteers or delivered via DVD on the rate of serious fall-related injuries among adults 65 and older with a past history of fragility fractures (e.g., vertebral, fall-related). The modified goal was to recruit 1130 participants over 2 years in three regions of Pennsylvania.Methods: The at-risk population was identified primarily using letters mailed to patients of three health systems and those over 65 in each region, as well as using provider alerts in the health record, proactive recruitment phone calls, radio advertisements, and presentations at community meetings.Results: Over 24 months of recruitment, 209,301 recruitment letters were mailed, resulting in 6818 telephone interviews. The two most productive recruitment methods were letters (72% of randomized participants) and the research registries at the University of Pittsburgh (11%). An average of 211 letters were required to be mailed for each participant enrolled. Of those interviewed, 2854 were ineligible, 2,825 declined to enroll and 1139 were enrolled and randomized. Most participants were female (84.4%), under age 75 (64.2%), and 50% took an osteoporosis medication. Not having a prior fragility fracture was the most common reason for not being eligible (87.5%). The most common reason provided for declining enrollment was not feeling healthy enough to participate (12.6%).Conclusions: The WISE study achieved its overall recruitment goal. Bulk mailing was the most productive method for recruiting community-dwelling older adults at risk of serious fall-related injury into this long-term physical activity intervention trial, and electronic registries are important sources and should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the resignation of Bambang Parmanto, the editor-in-chief of "The Open Information Science Journal" in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It notes that the Parmanto claimed the its publisher Bentham Science Publishing received a fake article without his knowledge. Mahmood Alam, director of publications at Bentham Science Publishing emphasizes the conviction of submitting fake manuscripts because of its being unethical.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity for academic libraries to advance open access (OA) to scholarly articles. Awareness among faculty on the importance of OA has increased significantly during the pandemic, as colleges and universities struggle financially and seek sustainable access to high-quality scholarly journals. Consortia have played an important role in establishing negotiation principles on OA journal agreements. While the number of OA agreements is increasing, case studies involving individual libraries are still limited. This paper reviews existing literature on publisher negotiation principles related to OA journal negotiations and reflects on recent cases at an academic library in Pennsylvania, in order to identify best practices in OA journal negotiations. It provides recommendations on roles, relationships, and processes, as well as essential terms of OA journal agreements. This study's findings are most relevant to large academic libraries that are interested in negotiating with scholarly journal publishers independently or through consortia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the two most recent elections we have seen the importance of social media, and Twitter in particular, for political discourse. This paper describes the effort of an academic library to collect election-related Twitter data from Pennsylvania-specific organizational accounts and hashtags for 2018 and 2020 in the run-up and aftermath of both election cycles. Because of its importance to understanding contemporary politics and its historic value, libraries need to consider the opportunity to collect and make this data accessible to Pennsylvanians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the annual meeting of the society of scientific study of religion at Vista International Hotel Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This year's theme of religious marginality encourages participants to go beyond core beliefs and practices of members of mainline churches to the expressions of interest or disinterest in religion that are less common religious experience, mixed intermarriage, unclear interpreting "don't know" responses to questions on belief, nonestablishment (religion among street people), or rejections of religion atheism and apostasy. List of topics related to this year's theme would include, denominational switching and conversion, sources of membership change in the mainline churches, apostates and returnees, new nones (apostates) vs. stable nones with no prior ties, inter-religious marriage and religion of children, divorce, religious socialization of children, religiosity and the life cycle, Inter-racial marriage and religion and the Black Church.

With the development of alternative fuel (AF) vehicle technologies, studies on finding the potential location of AF refueling stations in transportation networks have received considerable attention. Due to the strong limited driving range, AF vehicles for long-distance intercity trips may require multiple refueling stops at different locations on the way to their destination, which makes the AF refueling station location problem more challenging. In this paper, we consider that AF vehicles requiring multiple refueling stops at different locations during their long-distance intercity trips are capable of making detours from their preplanned paths and selecting return paths that may be different from original paths for their round trips whenever AF refueling stations are not available along the preplanned paths. These options mostly need to be considered when an AF refueling infrastructure is not fully developed on a highway system. To this end, we first propose an algorithm to generate alternative paths that may provide the multiple AF refueling stops between all origin/destination (OD) vertices. Then, a new mixed-integer programming model is proposed to locate AF refueling stations within a preselected set of candidate sites on a directed transportation network by maximizing the coverage of traffic flows along multiple paths. We first test our mathematical model with the proposed algorithm on a classical 25-vertex network with 25 candidate sites through various scenarios that consider a different number of paths for each OD pair, deviation factors, and limited driving ranges of vehicles. Then, we apply our proposed model to locate liquefied natural gas refueling stations in the state of Pennsylvania considering the construction budget. Our results show that the number of alternative paths and deviation distance available significantly affect the coverage of traffic flows at the stations as well as computational time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Aggregation and cooperation among peers will expand beyond prosumers in microgrids. • Growth in IoT and metering infrastructure is empowering end-use consumers. • Methodology allows aggregated consumers to schedule load and share energy. • Application demonstrates a significant cost reduction while assuring fairness. • Offers a novel cost-sharing strategy guided by cost minimization and Nash bargaining. End-use consumers (peers) are being empowered to aggregate for direct demand-side participation through load scheduling and energy sharing. This is the result of the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) enabled loads, availability of advanced metering infrastructure, and the move towards real-time (RT) pricing of electricity. Peer-to-peer (P2P) cooperation has received significant interest in recent years, though the focus of this growing body of research is on modeling prosumer behavior in microgrids. Hence, there is a need for new methodologies to examine empowerment of all end-use consumers (not limited to prosumers) to form aggregations and develop fair rules of cooperation to reduce cost. This paper offers an optimization based methodology to address the above need for power systems. It minimizes the total cost and considers fairness using a Nash bargaining approach. Since cost and fairness are often in conflict, trade-off strategies are also presented. The model to asses fairness is nonlinear. Hence, it is transformed into a second order cone program (SOCP) and solved using GUROBI software version 7.5.2. The methodology is implemented on a sample 5-bus network, built using price and demand data from one of the load zones of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland (PJM) power network in the United States. It is shown that two aggregations of peers participating in the sample network can reduce their total cost by 14.17% and 22.7%, while maintaining fairness. Concluding remarks highlight some of the limitations of the methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although water and energy systems are interdependent, they are still designed individually due to their complexity. This paper proposes a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) model predictive control (MPC) for demand management of an integrated water distribution system (WDS) supplied by an islanded microgrid (MG) system, offering an additional opportunity for energy-saving at the WDS. This strategy benefits the island and remote communities, which have limited access to the centralized electric grid. The existing literature either used an open-loop approach for energy management of water-energy microgrids or ignored the interconnected nature and MIMO nature of these systems. Compared to that, the proposed closed-loop energy management system is developed to address the detailed dynamics of assets, the inherent interconnections between water and energy networks, and to provide resilience as well as energy saving and demand management capabilities. The integrated MPC algorithm is designed in discrete time, utilizing a state-space model and sequential quadratic programming (SQP) as the solution method. Considering the intensive use of electricity by the pumps in WDS, their energy consumption is accommodated by an islanded microgrid system that incorporates a diesel generator, renewable energy sources (wind and solar), and a battery bank that serves as an energy source and a storage device. The proposed approach is investigated using base water demand from a real-world community, Telford, in Pennsylvania. Several case studies, such as variations in renewable energy contributions and increments of the control actions, are carried out to demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of the integrated MPC to provide efficient water and energy demand management concurrently. • Model predictive control algorithm of the interconnected water-energy is developed. • The full dynamics of energy-consuming assets in the water system are considered, including quadratic pump relations. • Effect of the renewable energy variations on the 24-hr energy dispatch is studied. • Multiple optimal configurations result in up to $360k/year savings, reduced carbon footprint, and smoother control. • The developed framework is applied in a Telford, PA case study, showcasing its real-world implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper employs multilevel factor modelling techniques to unravel systematic unobserved determinants of the intraday and interzonal price curve dynamics for the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) interconnection. These techniques make an explicit separation of global drivers from region-specific common factors, thereby facilitating the identification of the actual sources of co-variability. Our empirical findings confirm the hypothesis that the common unobserved determinants of power prices in the PJM interconnection obey a block structure, some of which affect different segments of our panel. We argue that a multilevel factor approach offers a more systematic and transparent representation of intertemporal and cross-sectional patterns in PJM electricity prices compared to alternative brute-force VARMAX parametrizations and the single-level factor models, which are often put forward in the literature as viable modelling alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health care spending usually contributes to a large part of a developed country's economy. In 2011, the U.S. consumed about 17.7% of its GDP on health care. As one of the most significant components of the health care industry, the hospital sector plays a key role to provide healthcare services. Healthcare services industry can be affected by many factors, of which economic downturn is a crucial one. As a result, it is worth investigating the condition and state of hospital management when economic downturn occurs. This paper aims to analyze how the Great Recession affects hospital performance in Pennsylvania during the period 2005–2012 by using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Specifically, we measure efficiency for hospitals in Pennsylvania, and use several DEA models to calculate the global Malmquist index (GMI). We find that: (1) 15.4% hospitals are always efficient while 36.9% hospitals are always inefficient for all years in 2005–2012; (2) The relative distance for a group of hospitals to the frontier is almost unchanged post-recession and pre-recession; (3) The average efficiency/GMI decreases by 2.43%/3.07% from pre-recession to post-recession. The analysis indicates that hospital performance slightly decreased due to the economic downturn in Pennsylvania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • Copaifera reticulata oleoresin showed antigenotoxic effect on colon. • Pre-neoplastic lesions of the colon were reduced by treatment with Copaiba oleoresin. • The oleoresin reduced the progression of carcinogenesis. • Major chemical constituent of the oleoresin showed anti-inflammatory activity. • The anti-inflammatory activity of oleoresin is involved in its chemopreventive effect. Abstract In Brazilian folk medicine, copaiba oleoresin is widely known for its therapeutic activity, especially its wound healing and anti-inflammatory actions. Considering the relationship between inflammatory processes and carcinogenesis, this paper reports on the Copaifera reticulata Ducke oleoresin (CRO) chemopreventive potential in the colon carcinogenesis model in rats. To understand the mechanisms involved in this effect, the anti-inflammatory activity of CRO and its major chemical constituent, the diterpene ent -polyalthic acid (PA), were evaluated on the production of nitric oxide (NO) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in mouse macrophages. For the chemoprevention assessment, the effect of CRO administered by gavage was investigated on DNA damage, pre-neoplastic lesions and mitotic frequencies induced by the 1,2-dimethylhydrazine (DMH; intraperitoneal injection) carcinogen by comet, aberrant crypt focus (ACF) and long-term assays, respectively. CRO reduced DNA damage (average 31.5%) and pre-neoplastic lesions (average 64.5%) induced by DMH, which revealed that CRO has antigenotoxic and anticarcinogenic effects. In the long-term assay, treatment with CRO significantly decreased mitoses in the tumor tissue, which suggested that CRO influenced carcinogenesis progression. PA reduced NO levels induced by lipopolysaccharides in macrophages. However, this diterpene showed no effect on PGE2. Taken together, our results suggest that PA exerts anti-inflammatory action via the NO pathway. The CRO chemopreventive effect may be partly due to the anti-inflammatory property of its major chemical constituent, PA. Our findings indicate that CRO is a promising agent to suppress colon carcinogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market transaction data are used to estimate the quantity of specie in circulation. This estimate is used to provide the first comprehensive measure of a colony''s money supply and, along with data on population and prices, to retest the quantity theory of money and measure output growth using the equation of exchange. Output growth is found to depend on periodization and the extent that rising commercialization increased the velocity of circulation. Specie was becoming relatively less scarce as the Revolution approached, and movements in specie and paper currency both offset and reinforced each other depending on the period of analysis. (JEL N11, N21, E42, E51) [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We use the synthetic control method to determine the economic impact of shale exploitation on Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Estimation results are mixed. The shale development decreased the poverty rate and increased the employment growth rate in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the short run. Top oil and gas producing counties in West Virginia also experienced short‐term personal income growth due to fracking. However, most of the positive impacts disappeared a few years after the initial boom periods. The shale development did not bring significant economic benefits to Ohio. Further, shale drilling activities exert a potential long‐term negative effect on population growth in all three states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short article provides a legal analysis of the Hale et al. white paper on specific learning disabilities identification. The white paper presents a purported consensus of experts that an approach combining response to intervention with severe discrepancy is consistent with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The analysis examines the white paper position in relation to the IDEA legislation, regulations, and agency policy interpretations. The conclusions are that this position is legally flawed in terms of its reliance on the “pattern of strengths and weaknesses” provision, its failure to consider state special education laws, and its overemphasis on the processing component. As a result, the position is justifiable only as advocating revisions, rather than in finding support, in the law. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the background, history, and results of multiple investigations associated with pyrite-based expansive soils spanning almost 40 years in conjunction with a private elementary school located in western Pennsylvania. The school was initially designed in 1960. Original construction was completed in September 1961 and the first signs of distress, which were primarily related to slab heave, were reported in early 1962. One wing of the school, a 1965 classroom addition (1965 addition) with different structural and foundation systems, did not experience any expansive soil-related damages and served as a valuable comparison throughout multiple subsequent investigations. Pyritic soil material in the subgrade in conjunction with oxygen-rich groundwater was determined to be the cause of soil movement and building distress. Expansive soil-related problems at the school continued for decades despite an investigation, civil court action, and judgment in the late 1960s followed by a remediation program in the 1970s and 1980s. Following a second round of investigations and litigation in the late 1990s, all of the original classroom, office, and gymnasium building sections, with the exception of the 1965 addition, were demolished in late 2000 and early 2001 based on safety concerns and economic evaluation. Investigation and monitoring to confirm subgrade conditions continued throughout the demolition process. As a part of this paper, the history of this case dating back to one of the early identifications of pyrite as an expansive element of concern in building construction, including one of the earliest comprehensive identifications of the complete chemical-microbiological oxidation process is presented. The initial 1960s investigation and conclusions are identified as well as the series of engineering, procedural, and construction errors that took place during and after the first remediation process that led to ongoing soil expansion and structural damage, including misguided actions and misunderstandings that complicated and delayed a final resolution in this case. Today, the industry is more familiar with the potential for pyrite-related construction problems, nevertheless, the paper incorporates lessons learned for avoiding problems and in particular, the procedural failures that led to the eventual need to abandon and demolish the school facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human exposure models often make the simplifying assumption that school children attend school in the same census tract where they live. This paper analyzes that assumption and provides information on the temporal and spatial distributions associated with school commuting. The data were obtained using Oak Ridge National Laboratory's LandScan USA population distribution model applied to Philadelphia, PA. It is a high-resolution model used to allocate individual school-aged children to both a home and school location, and to devise a minimum-time home-to-school commuting path (called a trace) between the two locations. LandScan relies heavily on Geographic Information System (GIS) data. With respect to school children attending school in their home census tract, the vast majority does not in Philadelphia. Our analyses found that: (1) about 32% of the students walk across two or more census tracts going to school and 40% of them walk across four or more census blocks; and (2) 60% drive across four or more census tracts going to school and 50% drive across 10 or more census blocks. We also find that: (3) using a 5-min commuting time interval — as opposed to the modeled “trace” — results in misclassifying the “actual” path taken in 90% of the census blocks, 70% of the block groups, and 50% of the tracts; (4) a 1-min time interval is needed to reasonably resolve time spent in the various census unit designations; and (5) approximately 50% of both the homes and schools of Philadelphia school children are located within 160 m of highly traveled roads, and 64% of the schools are located within 200 m. These findings are very important when modeling school children's exposures, especially, when ascertaining the impacts of near-roadway concentrations on their total daily body burden. As many school children also travel along these streets and roadways to get to school, a majority of children in Philadelphia are in mobile source-dominated locations most of the day. We hypothesize that exposures of school children in Philadelphia to benzene and particulate matter will be much higher than if home and school locations and commuting paths at a 1-min time resolution are not explicitly modeled in an exposure assessment. Undertaking such an assessment will be the topic of a future paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sedimentation basins (SBs) are commonly used during highway construction for erosion and sedimentation pollution control as well as for attenuation of overland storm waters. In order to evaluate the sediment removal capacity of these SBs, four basins were selected for monitoring from a new highway construction that extends I-99 to I-80, in Pennsylvania. Between September 2004 and August 2005, ten sampling trips were conducted during which basin inlet and outlet water samples were obtained. The SB samples were analyzed for pH, color, turbidity, total suspended solids (TSS), volatile suspended solids (VSS), total and dissolved iron, magnesium, manganese, aluminum, calcium, sulfate and phosphate. The data showed peaks in concentrations of TSS, total aluminum, total manganese, total iron and total phosphate that closely correlated to localized rainfall peaks. For certain samples, the concentration of TSS in the outlet was higher than the TSS concentration at the basin inlet, suggesting sediment re-suspension. In general SBs managed high flows during wet weather events, but were not effective in capturing particulates. This paper discusses the need for Best Management Practices (BMPs) for the design of SBs that reflect contemporary concerns for management of particle removal and to control the release of particulate-bound metals. This paper also evaluates the water quality impacts of naturally occurring acidic drainages into SBs, as several acidic seeps with pH in the range of 5–6 and having high dissolved concentrations of metals (Fe, Mn, Mg and Ca), sulfate and phosphate were observed draining into the SBs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

On August 14, 2003, a cascading outage of transmission and generation facilities in the North American Eastern Interconnection resulted in a blackout of most of New York state as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. On September 23, 2003, nearly four million customers lost power in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden following a cascading outage that struck Scandinavia. Days later, a cascading outage between Italy and the rest of central Europe left most of Italy in darkness on September 28. These major blackouts are among the worst power system failures in the last few decades. The Power System Stability and Power System Stability Controls Subcommittees of the IEEE PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee sponsored an all day panel session with experts from around the world. The experts described their recent work on the investigation of grid blackouts. The session offered a unique forum for discussion of possible root causes and necessary steps to reduce the risk of blackouts. This white paper presents the major conclusions drawn from the presentations and ensuing discussions during the all day session, focusing on the root causes of grid blackouts. This paper presents general conclusions drawn by this Committee together with recommendations based on lessons learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Intergroup Coordination key process area (KPA) for theoretical significance and measurability. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has developed a framework called the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) which enables organizations to measure their "maturity" in doing software engineering. The CMM is not theoretically derived. It is, however, a result of years of anecdotal evidence collected from practitioners. This paper compares the Intergroup Coordination KPA to the body of literature on coordination and measures it using theoretically derived determinants. These determinants are then evaluated for possible relationships to productivity factors that indicate business process support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dense phase pneumatic conveying of pulverized fuel particles under high pressure is one of the key techniques in large scale gasification of coal and petroleum coke. The real time and continuous measurement of dense phase gas–solid flow parameters such as particle velocity, concentration and mass flow rate has great significance for the in-depth understanding of particle flow dynamic behaviors and the optimized design of the conveying system. In this paper, an integrated electrostatic sensor is designed and used to explore the flow characteristics of anthracite and petroleum coke particles on a dense phase pneumatic conveyor. The ring electrodes in the integrated sensor are capable of measuring the “mean” velocity of solid particles over the whole cross-section of the pipeline, while the arc electrodes are employed to determine the local velocity of particles near them. The experimental results on a dense phase pneumatic conveyor under high pressure demonstrate that the flow characteristics depend on the physical properties of solid particles and carrying gas. Petroleum coke particles are much easier to be suspended in the gas flow than the anthracite particles, but its flow stability is worse. The local velocities from the arc electrode pairs mounted on the top of the pipeline are usually higher than those from the arc electrodes on the bottom for a stratified flow. The velocity from the ring electrode pair, indicating the mean velocity of particles over the whole cross-section, is usually higher than the local velocities from the arc electrode pairs for a suspension flow. In addition, the relationship between the mass flow rate and charge level of dense phase pneumatically conveyed solid particles is very complicated due to the complexity of the particle flow and the charge level cannot be used to measure particle concentration or mass flow rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper contains observations of families in a small anthracite coal region in Pennsylvania who regularly present themselves for treatment at the local Mental Health Center. These observations are anecdotal in nature and they are not based on any statistical findings. The purpose of the paper is to present a unique cultural tradition and how this tradition influences the operation of the family in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The health care sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in the United States. Researchers are interested in conducting studies in the area of health economics in order to propose solutions to curb the rapid increase in health care spending and to improve the efficiency of the health care system in the United States. Specifically, hospital efficiency is one important research area in health economics. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to assess hospital efficiency. An additive super-efficiency model is presented and applied to a sample of general acute care hospitals in Pennsylvania. In addition to the conventional choice of input and output variables, we include the survival rate as a quality measure of health outcome in the set of output variables. Thus our model takes both the quantity and the quality of the output into account. With the results obtained from our proposed DEA model, inefficiencies can be identified for hospitals to address without sacrificing the quality of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a large number of building energy consumption prediction models, with various intended uses, have been proposed. The majority of these models have either taken a data-driven or a physical modeling approach, with each approach having its own strengths and limitations. Towards leveraging the strengths and reducing the limitations of each approach for improved prediction performance, this paper presents a hybrid machine-learning approach for occupant-behavior-sensitive energy consumption prediction. The proposed approach is composed of three constituent models: (1) a machine-learning model that learns the impact of outdoor weather conditions from simulation-generated data, (2) a machine-learning model that learns the impact of occupant behavior from real data, and (3) an ensemble model that predicts cooling energy consumption based on the outputs of the first two models. The simulation-generated data were created through simulating a set of reference buildings in EnergyPlus. The real data were collected from an office building in Pennsylvania. The proposed hybrid model was validated on an unseen real dataset. It achieved 0.73 kWh RMSE and 9.07% CV in hourly cooling energy consumption prediction, which indicates that the proposed approach is promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The problem of historical steel truss bridges preservation is presented. • A novel hybrid deductive failure analysis approach (Analytical Fault Tree - AFT) is developed. • Numerical models investigate fault scenarios including fatigue and concurring causes. • AFT and fault scenarios are applied to a historical bridge located in the East of Spain. • Guidelines and conservation strategies are obtained for the investigated bridge. Historical steel bridges represent an important construction typology integrating the constructive heritage of the past century that needs to be preserved. Exposure to fatigue phenomenon, aging, improper design or execution, extreme events, and other aggressive environmental agents can seriously compromise the conservation and performance of these structures as some recent catastrophic collapses have shown (Mississippi River bridge, Minneapolis, Minnesota 2007; Kinzua Bridge State Park, Pennsylvania 2003). In this context, the diagnostic of historical steel bridges becomes of basic importance to identify and implement maintenance, monitoring and conservation strategies. Fault Trees are useful tools for practitioners that provide a complete overview of possible failures. In the related literature, this instrument is mainly applied with approaches that are based on previous experience or failures detected in similar structures, and so the Fault Tree can only provide qualitative support. This paper proposes a new method to achieve an "Analytical" Bridge Fault Tree linking the technician's experience and the numerical simulations of different fault scenarios. The latter are achieved by a numerical model able to consider fatigue failure and different concurring causes in the analysis (e.g., and aggressive phenomena, corrosion, defects, lack of maintenance). The proposed approach was applied to a historical railway steel truss bridge located in the East of Spain (Valencia Region) in order to show its applicability and potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a new method for detecting individual tree stems that was designed to perform well in the challenging hardwood-dominated, mixed-species forests common to the northeastern U.S., where canopy height-based methods have proven unreliable. Most prior research in individual tree detection has been performed in homogenous coniferous or conifer-dominated forests with limited hardwood presence. The study area in central Pennsylvania, United States, includes 17+ tree species and contains over 90% hardwoods. Existing methods have shown reduced performance as the proportion of hardwood species increases, due in large part to the crown-focused approaches they have employed. Top-down approaches are not reliable in deciduous stands due to the inherent complexity of the canopy and tree crowns in such stands. This complexity makes it difficult to segment trees and accurately predict tree stem locations based on detected crown segments. The proposed voxel column-based approach has advantages over both traditional canopy height model-based methods and computationally demanding point-based solutions. The method was tested on 1125 reference trees, ≥10 cm diameter at breast height (DBH), and it detected 68% of all reference trees and 87% of medium and large (sawtimber-sized) trees ≥28 cm DBH. Significantly, the commission rate (false predictions) was negligible as most raw false positives were confirmed in follow-up field visits to be either small trees below the threshold for recording or trees that were otherwise missed during the initial ground survey. Minimizing false positives was a priority in tuning the method. Follow-up in-situ evaluation of individual omission and commission instances was facilitated by the high spatial accuracy of predicted tree locations generated by the method. The mean and maximum predicted-to-reference tree distances were 0.59 m and 2.99 m, respectively, with over 80% of matches within <1 m. A new tree-matching method utilizing linear integer programming is presented that enables rigorous, repeatable matching of predicted and reference trees and performance evaluation. Results indicate this new tree detection method has potential to be operationalized for both traditional forest management activities and in providing the more frequent and scalable inventories required by a growing forest carbon offsets industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantifies and discusses the three-dimensional kinematic and kinetic characteristics of the female softball swing as performed by fourteen female collegiate amateur subjects. The analyses were performed using a three-dimensional computer model. The model was driven kinematically from subject swings data that were recorded with a multi-camera motion analysis system. Each subject used two distinct bats with significantly different inertial properties. Model output included bat trajectories, subject/bat interaction forces and torques, work, and power. These data formed the basis for a detailed analysis and description of fundamental swing kinematic and kinetic quantities. The analyses revealed that the softball swing is a highly coordinated and individual three-dimensional motion and subject-to-subject variations were significant in all kinematic and kinetic quantities. In addition, the potential effects of bat properties on swing mechanics are discussed. The paths of the hands and the centreof- curvature of the bat relative to the horizontal plane appear to be important trajectory characteristics of the swing. Descriptions of the swing mechanics and practical implications are offered based upon these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how gender and religious belief come together in an elderly woman's experience of suffering. It is based on qualitative research that explored experiences of suffering in a group of community-dwelling elders (80+) living in a North American city. We use the case study method to introduce themes that show suffering's uniqueness to the individual whose narrative we report, as well as similarity to themes that emerged in other participants' narratives. In this case, an elderly woman's gender and religious identities merge in her stories of suffering, which include the memory of a childhood disability and an incident of clergy abuse that occurred 70 years previously . A key finding in this paper is that key themes in her story of suffering, which are disablement and clergy abuse, resonate to the general themes of suffering found in our study, which are (1) threats to personal identity; (2) loss of a valued item, quality, or relationship; and (3) a lack of control over self or the circumstances of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This paper uses a sample of convicted offenders from Pennsylvania to estimate the effect of incarceration on post-release criminality. Methods: To do so, we capitalize on a feature of the criminal justice system in Pennsylvania-the county-level randomization of cases to judges. We begin by identifying five counties in which there is substantial variation across judges in the uses of incarceration, but no evidence indicating that the randomization process had failed. The estimated effect of incarceration on rearrest is based on comparison of the rearrest rates of the caseloads of judges with different proclivities for the use of incarceration. Results: Using judge as an instrumental variable, we estimate a series of confidence intervals for the effect of incarceration on one year, two year, five year, and ten year rearrest rates. Conclusions: On the whole, there is little evidence in our data that incarceration impacts rearrest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article tackles one of the biggest problems with clinical trial reporting, the suppression of negative results. Christine Lane, an editor at the Annals of Internal Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania called the archiving of medical investigation results as phantom papers. The practice of having phantom papers would give an over-optimistic impression of the treatments studied, with consequences for peer reviewers, government regulators and maximizing patients.

Since the Pennsylvania oil rush of 1859, petroleum has quickly become the dominant fuel of industrial society. The "Peak Oil" debate focused on whether or not there was an impending production crunch of cheap oil, and whilst there have been no shortages across the globe, a shift from conventional to unconventional oil liquids has occurred. One aspect of this shift was not fully explored in previous discussions–although of some importance in a low-carbon energy transition context: the extent to which the net-energy supply of oil products is affected by the use of lower quality energy sources. To fill this gap, this paper incorporates standard EROI (energy-return-on-investment) estimates and dynamic decline functions in the GlobalShift all-liquids bottom-up model on a global scale. We determine the energy necessary for the production of oil liquids (including direct and indirect energy costs) to represent today 15.5% of the energy production of oil liquids, and growing at an exponential rate: by 2050, a proportion equivalent to half of the gross energy output will be engulfed in its own production. Our findings thus question the feasibility of a global and fast low-carbon energy transition. We therefore suggest an urgent return of the peak oil debate, but including net-energy issues and avoiding a narrow focus on 'peak supply' vs 'peak demand'. [Display omitted] • Global gross and net-energy of oil liquids production is determined from 1950 to 2050. • Energy required for production is estimated to be 15.5% of the actual gross energy. • Oil liquids become a limit to a rapid and global low-carbon energy transition. • The peak supply vs. peak demand dispute needs to be re-examined. • Focus should be put instead on net-energy transition and wise energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern has been raised in the scientific literature about the environmental implications of extracting natural gas from deep shale formations, and published studies suggest that shale gas development may affect local groundwater quality. The potential for surface water quality degradation has been discussed in prior work, although no empirical analysis of this issue has been published. The potential for large-scale surface water quality degradation has affected regulatory approaches to shale gas development in some US states, despite the dearth of evidence. This paper conducts a large-scale examination of the extent to which shale gas development activities affect surface water quality. Focusing on the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, we estimate the effect of shale gas wells and the release of treated shale gas waste by permitted treatment facilities on observed downstream concentrations of chloride (Cl-) and total suspended solids (TSS), controlling for other factors. Results suggest that (i) the treatment of shale gas waste by treatment plants in a watershed raises downstream Cl- concentrations but not TSS concentrations, and (ii) the presence of shale gas wells in a watershed raises downstream TSS concentrations but not Cl- concentrations. These results can inform future voluntary measures taken by shale gas operators and policy approaches taken by regulators to protect surface water quality as the scale of this economically important activity increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper used farm income tax returns (Schedule F) data from 62 dairy farmers who milked 200 cows or fewer in western and central Maryland and south- western Pennsylvania (hereafter, the mid-Atlantic region) to assess the relative financial performance of management-intensive grazing (MIG) and confinement dairy operations over the 15-yr period from 1995 through 2009. Data were not available from all farmers in all years; on average, the sample analyzed contained 11 MIG farms and 26 confinement farms. Management-intensive grazing operators were more profitable on a per hundredweight, per cow, and per acre basis, and no less profitable on a whole-farm basis. Even though the confinement operators had higher gross income than MIG operators, their expenses exceeded those of MIG operators. Profits of MIG operations were less variable as well, so that MIG operators faced less income risk. Increased reliance on grazing has other benefits as well. Grazing seems to be a much healthier practice for dairy cows. Veterinary, breeding, and medicine costs per cow are much less for cows that are pastured than those raised in confinement systems. Because they are healthier, cows that are grazed can be milked longer (or culled less frequently). As a result, MIG operators have a larger number of higher quality animals for sale (e.g., bred heifers). Management-intensive operations are also less labor intensive. Reductions in crop production and in the time cows spend in the barn led to significant reductions in field work and cleaning operations in the barn. Costs of hired labor were thus substantially lower in MIG operations than in confinement operations. Land requirements likely impose the principal limitation on the size of intensive grazing operations. In the mid-Atlantic, for instance, grazing operations need 1.5 to 2.0 acres of pasture for every dairy cow/ calf equivalent to provide sufficient grass to support a dairy operation. Pasture land for MIG operators must be contiguous to the milking parlor and located no farther than a cow can walk to and from twice a day. That requirement likely limits the maximum size of an intensive grazing operation, especially in areas where land prices and rents are high, as they are in much of the mid-Atlantic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lattimer Massacre occurred in September of 1897 in the anthracite coalfields of Northeast Pennsylvania. This tragic event saw the death of 19 miners, fired upon by local law enforcement and a posse gathered from local businessmen. This paper will situate this event amidst the deeply turbulent themes underlying the Gilded Age: race, American exceptionalism and Empire and labor struggle. A project undertaken by archaeologists from the University of Maryland seeks to restore the memory of the massacre, highlighting the implications of this history within the current anti-immigrant politics extant in its contemporary setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between weather patterns and bird migration to determine the feasibility of a site-specific migration forecast. Autumn migration data from Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, Pennsylvania for ten species were correlated with individual weather variables. Stepwise multiple linear regressions revealed a positive relationship with raptor migration to northwesterly winds and wind speed and an inverse relationship to sea level pressure. Composite maps were created using data from days with the greatest migration counts for each species and categorized by synoptic situations. A relationship between bird migration and cold-front passage was revealed, with five of the species having their highest migration days after the recent passage of a cold front. Morphological differences are noted for birds in different synoptic groupings. The results suggest that a site-specific weather forecast for hawk watching sites is feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A graphical screening method was previously developed by Kney and Brandes (2007) for assessing stream water quality data using electronic conductivity (EC) and alkalinity data. The method was aimed at providing citizen scientists involved in stream monitoring programs with a relatively simple way to interpret EC data. The method utilizes a plot of EC against concurrent alkalinity data, and is used to distinguish EC values for impacted or degraded streams from those that can be considered background values in a particular geologic setting. The method performs well in areas underlain by carbonate bedrock, as streams in those areas characteristically have EC values that are strongly correlated with alkalinity. However, in areas of low stream alkalinity (less than approximately 50 mg/L as CaCO3), the Kney and Brandes (2007) method was found to be much less effective in identifying impacted streams. This paper extends the graphical screening approach to streams with low alkalinity, specifically regions underlain by clastic sedimentary or crystalline bedrock, by using the strong correlation between EC and total hardness (TH). A baseline relationship of EC vs. TH is developed using surface water chemistry data from Hydrologic Benchmark Network streams (deemed as having minimal anthropogenic impacts) and regional groundwater quality data. The usefulness of the method is demonstrated by application to publicly available stream chemistry data and to field data collected from streams of eastern Pennsylvania under baseflow conditions. Results demonstrate that for streams with alkalinity <75 mg/L as CaCO3, the TH-based graphical screening method should be used rather than the alkalinity-based method of Kney and Brandes (2007). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The School of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (SEMS) at Robert Morris University (RMU) was awarded a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund scholarships to 21 academically talented but financially challenged students majoring in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Each student will receive a total of $24,000 over their four years of study. This study presents the planning of the first cohort and its experiences during the first year of the grant project. Most importantly, this paper focuses on the experiences and tracking data from these students during their first year as college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integral abutment bridges (IABs) are now a routine construction and design of choice for many DOTs as bridges are replaced or for new roadways. However, current design and analysis methodologies have not matured substantially because of a lack of available long-term field data. Often current analysis methods predict bridge behavior that is much different from observed. Because of thermal loading, time-dependent effects, and soil-structure interaction, significant irreversible abutment displacements and rotations occur. The primary objective of this paper is to report the actual in situ measurements obtained at four short to medium-long IABs and one weather station, all located in central Pennsylvania. A total of 240 instruments was installed on four IABs during bridge construction and monitored continuously. Monitoring duration at each bridge ranges from 2.5 years to nearly 7 years, having initiated the program in 2002 and continuing to the present. Because of a unique environmental issue, the bridges were not subjected to traffic until December 2007, allowing isolation of traffic loading to thermal loadings and time-dependent effects. Measured IAB responses that are reported herein include: (1) abutment displacement; (2) backfill pressure; (3) abutment rotation; (4) girder rotation; (5) girder bending moment; (6) girder axial force; (7) pile moment; (8) pile axial force; and (9) strain in the approach slab. All measurements demonstrate that IAB response is cyclical, highly nonlinear, and irreversible over time. This study of field measurements over 7 years provides a basis to evaluate and develop future sound IAB analysis and design methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rate of asthma in the pediatric population has risen over the last two decades and is now considered to be the most common serious chronic disease in children and adolescents as well as a serious public health concern. In one suburban, Pennsylvania nurse-managed clinic, a group of pediatric nurse practitioners (PNPs), noted an increase in the number of children with asthma and purchased a pulmonary function machine (Spirometer). The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the integration of a pulmonary function measurement printout influenced a small group of PNPs visit satisfaction, their delivery of nursing care, and the response of the families. As the incidence of asthma increases in the pediatric population, nurse practitioners and other healthcare professionals can take a leading role in patient teaching and provision of care by augmenting their practice with new technology combined with continued education for the client and family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]