Search

This paper describes how the use of free and open-source software (FOSS) can facilitate the application of constructive alignment theory in power systems engineering education by enabling the deep learning approach in power system analysis courses. With this aim, this paper describes the authors' approach in using the Power System Analysis Toolbox (PSAT) for undergraduate and graduate education. Interviews with former students reveal the positive impact that the use of FOSS in general, and PSAT in particular, had on their learning and how it has influenced their professional life. (Contains 3 figures.)

The coping styles of four ethnic groups of older adults in response to negative life events were analyzed in a population-based study of 1118 residents of Brooklyn, New York. Using a molecular approach, data regarding the context of events and the corresponding coping responses was obtained. Open-ended semi-structured interviews allowed participants to describe recent negative life events and explain how they coped. An empirically derived coding system distinguished four major negative life events: Death, Illness/Injury, Empathic Response to Distress of Others, and Interpersonal Conflict. Nine major styles of coping emerged: Medicate, Active Coping, Passive Response, Prayer, Stoicism, Social Support, Positive Self-Talk, Acknowledgment of Emotions, and Distraction. Gender and ethnic differences in coping styles were found. Although ethnic specificity in coping emerged when context was considered, the few effects of ethnicity suggests that the major normative events of later life may pull for generic coping responses. (Contains 3 tables.)

We tested the effectiveness of hands-on nighttime laboratories that challenged student misconceptions, using a new assessment exam to measure learning in a nonmajor introductory astronomy class at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. We were able to increase learning at the 8.0 sigma level on one of the Moon phase objectives that was addressed in a cloudy night activity. There is weak evidence of some improvement on a broader range of learning objectives. We show evidence that the overall achievement levels of the four sections of the class are correlated with how much clear weather the sections had for observing even though the learning objectives were addressed primarily in activities that did not require clear skies. We describe our first attempt to cycle the students through different activity stations in an effort to handle 18 students at a time in the laboratories, and the lessons we learned from this. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

Amid rising congestion and transport emissions, policymakers are embracing the '15-minute city' model, which envisions neighbourhoods where basic needs can be met within a short walk from home. Prior research has primarily examined amenity access without exploring its relationship to behaviour. We introduce a measure of local trip behaviour using GPS data from 40 million US mobile devices, defining '15-minute usage' as the proportion of consumption-related trips made within a 15-minute walk from home. Our findings show that the median resident makes only 14% of daily consumption trips locally. Differences in access to local amenities can explain 84% and 74% of the variation in 15-minute usage across and within urban areas, respectively. Historical data from New York zoning policies suggest a causal relationship between local access and 15-minute usage. However, we find a trade-off: increased local usage correlates with higher experienced segregation for low-income residents, signalling potential socio-economic challenges in achieving local living., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) limits the ability to prevent and treat infection, making AMR one of the foremost threats to human and animal health. Animal agriculture's large use of antibiotics in food animals is an important factor in AMR. As such, policies to reduce antibiotic use and combat AMR in animal agriculture in the United States (US) have been in place or are developed. One key to the success of these policies in the US is understanding how a major stakeholder - veterinarians treating dairy cattle - perceive the scale of antibiotic use, the threat of AMR and the utility of antibiotic use policies. We interviewed 9 dairy veterinarians in New York State and conducted an iterative thematic analysis of their responses, through which five themes were identified: 1. veterinarians' views of the frequency and reasons for antibiotic misuse, 2. their ideas on reducing antibiotic use, 3. perceptions of AMR within the dairy industry, 4. view of organic farming and how it relates to animal welfare, and 5. the impact of consumers' beliefs on the dairy industry. Participants viewed antibiotic overuse as largely due to farmers' concern for the welfare of their cattle and desire to treat ailments swiftly. Interviewees believed that it was possible to reduce antibiotic use through regulation, such as the Veterinary Feed Directive and improved herd management activities, such as better colostrum management, culture-based mastitis treatment, and improved housing conditions. They did not view the dairy industry as a significant contributor to AMR, particularly when compared to the human medical industry. Interviewees also offered their (unsolicited) opinion on organic dairy farming in the US and expressed frustration with the limited treatment options available in organic dairy farming and how this dynamic may potentially compromise animal welfare. Finally, they commented on the impact of consumers' beliefs on the dairy industry, expressing frustration with how misinformation about the dairy industry has led to consumer driven changes. As consumer beliefs have an impact on the dairy industry, this influence could be leveraged to further decrease antibiotic use. These findings can help guide future efforts in veterinarian-client communication and the development and implementation of effective policies in New York State. These results also highlight the need for more quantitative research on antibiotic use in the dairy industry, as without this data it will be difficult to ascertain the true impact of policy interventions., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Determining the species of mycoplasma isolated from culture-positive milk samples is important for understanding the clinical significance of their detection. Between August 2016 and December 2019, 214,518 milk samples from 2,757 dairy herds were submitted to Quality Milk Production Services (QMPS) at Cornell University for mycoplasma culture. From these samples, 3,728 collected from 204 herds were culture positive. Based on the request of herd managers, owners, or veterinarians, 889 isolates from 98 herds were subjected to molecular identification by PCR and amplicon sequencing. The largest proportion of the identified isolates were from New York State (78.1%), while the others came from the eastern United States (17.8%), Texas (2.0%), and New Mexico (2.1%). As expected, Mycoplasma spp. were the most common (855 isolates, 96.2%) and Acholeplasma spp. accounted for the remainder (34 isolates, 3.8%). Mycoplasma bovis was the most prevalent Mycoplasma species (75.1%), followed by M. bovigenitalium (6.5%), M. canadense (5.9%), M. alkalescens (5%), M. arginini (1.7%), M. californicum (0.1%), and M. primatum (0.1%). A portion of the isolates were confirmed as Mycoplasma spp. other than M. bovis but were not identified at the species level (16 isolates, 1.8%) because further information was not requested by the manager, owner, or veterinarian. Mycoplasma bovis was the only species identified in 59 of the 98 herds. However, more than 1 Mycoplasma sp. was identified in 29 herds, suggesting that herd infection with 2 or more mycoplasmas is not uncommon. Moreover, a Mycoplasma sp. other than M. bovis was the only species identified in 8 herds. From the subset of 889 mycoplasma culture-positive isolates from 98 herds, we determined that over a third of the herds had either more than 1 Mycoplasma sp. or a Mycoplasma sp. other than M. bovis detected in their milk samples. In conclusion, we observed that M. bovis is the most common pathogenic Mycoplasma species found in mastitic milk, but other Mycoplasma species are not uncommon. Our results suggest that it is critical to test milk samples for mycoplasmas using diagnostic tests able to identify both the genus and the species., (The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. and Fass Inc. on behalf of the American Dairy Science Association®. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).)

Staphylococcus aureus is recognized worldwide as one of the main contagious mastitis agents in cattle and can express a set of antimicrobial resistance genes and virulence-associated genes that explain the wide range of outcomes of intramammary infections. Staphylococcus aureus strains are heterogeneous: their different resistance and virulence patterns, associated with host-level factors and treatment factors, are related to the severity of infection. The aim of this study was to determine phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility, occurrence of selected antimicrobial resistance genes and other virulence genes in 93 S. aureus strains isolated from clinical mastitis in 6 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Italy, the United States (New York State), and South Africa. These isolates were tested against a total of 16 drugs (amoxicillin-clavulanate, ampicillin, cefazolin, cefoperazone, cefquinome, enrofloxacin, erythromycin, gentamicin, kanamycin, lincomycin, oxacillin, penicillin, rifampin, spiramycin, sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim, tylosin) by minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) assay, and examined for the presence of 6 antibiotic-resistance genes (blaZ, mecA, mecC, ermA, ermB, ermC) and 6 virulence-associated genes (scn, chp, sak, hla, hlb, sea) via PCR analysis. The phenotypic results of this study revealed the presence of 19.4% penicillin-resistant strains, whereas 22.6% of the strains were classified as having resistance (5.4%) or intermediate resistance (17.2%) to erythromycin. Most (96.8%) of the isolates were inhibited by cephalosporins, and all were susceptible to amoxicillin-clavulanate. Two strains (1 from Germany, 1 from Italy) were resistant to oxacillin and were positive for mecA. Among the other antimicrobial resistance genes, the most frequently detected was blaZ (46.2%), and 32.3% of the isolates were positive for erm genes: ermC (21.5%) and ermB (10.8%). The most prevalent virulence gene was hla (100%), followed by hlb (84.9%) and sea (65.6%). These results show a low prevalence of antibiotic multidrug resistance in S. aureus isolates, even if the detection of selected antimicrobial resistance genes did not always correspond with the occurrence of phenotypic antibiotic resistance; the immune evasion cluster gene prevalence was quite low in the samples analyzed., (Copyright © 2020 American Dairy Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Plants may benefit from limiting the community of generalist floral visitors if the species that remain are more effective pollinators and less effective pollenivores. Plants can reduce access to pollen through altered floral cues or morphological structures, but can also reduce consumption through direct pollen defenses. We observed that Eucera (Peponapis) pruinosa, a specialist bee on Cucurbita plants, collected pure loads of pollen while generalist honey bees and bumble bees collected negligible amounts of cucurbit pollen, even though all groups of bees visited these flowers. Cucurbit flowers have no morphological adaptations to limit pollen collection by bees, thus we assessed their potential for physical, nutritional, and chemical pollen traits that might act as defenses to limit pollen loss to generalist pollinators. Bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) microcolonies experienced reduced pollen consumption, mortality, and reproduction as well as increased stress responses when exposed to nutritional and mechanical pollen defenses. These bees also experienced physiological effects of these defenses in the form of hindgut expansion and gut melanization. Chemical defenses alone increased the area of gut melanization in larger bees and induced possible compensatory feeding. Together, these results suggest that generalist bumble bees avoid collecting cucurbit pollen due to the physiological costs of physical and chemical pollen defenses.

We investigated the distribution of pathogenic non-agalactiae gram-positive, catalase-negative cocci (GPCN) in a convenience sample of New York State dairy farms. Our primary objective with the clinical mastitis (CM) GPCN samples was to evaluate somatic cell count (SCC) resolution and bacteriological cure of Streptococcus dysgalactiae or Streptococcus uberis versus Lactococcus lactis or Lactococcus garvieae in cows that received an approved intramammary treatment. In phase I, we assessed the distribution of the GPCN and SCC resolution. In phase II, we evaluated the SCC resolution and bacteriological cure in CM samples from the 4 farms with the highest prevalence of L. lactis or L. garvieae in phase I. In phase I, 8,868 CM and subclinical mastitis (SCM) milk samples were received from 143 farms. The GPCN samples identified by culture were confirmed with MALDI-TOF. From the 473 MALDI-TOF-confirmed GPCN samples, 155 were S. dysgalactiae (33%); 150, S. uberis (32%); 112, L. lactis (24%); 16, L. garvieae (3%); and 40, other GPCN (8%). From these, 277 were CM samples and 127 were eligible for the evaluation of SCC resolution, which was defined as SCC ≤200,000 cells/mL in a composite sample 15 to 60 d post-diagnosis. The odds of SCC resolution in CM samples was evaluated with multivariable logistic regression, and the odds were 6.1 [95% confidence interval (CI):2.7-13.9] times higher for S. dysgalactiae or S. uberis compared with L. lactis or L. garvieae. In phase II, a total of 1,662 CM and SCM samples were evaluated with microbiological methods as in phase I, of which 211 samples were confirmed by MALDI-TOF: 39% were S. dysgalactiae (n = 61) and S. uberis (n = 21); 55%, L. lactis (n = 114) and L. garvieae (n = 2); and 6%, other GPCN (n = 13). In total, 168 CM samples were eligible for analysis and 118 were included in the final SCC resolution model. Similar statistical methods as in phase I were performed, and the odds of SCC resolution were 2.4 (95% CI: 1.1-5.5) times higher for S. dysgalactiae or S. uberis compared with L. lactis or L. garvieae. Bacteriological cure was defined as having a different or negative culture on a quarter sample taken 14 to 28 d after initial diagnosis. The odds of bacteriological cure (n = 121) were 8.0 (95% CI: 2.5-25.6) times higher for S. dysgalactiae or S. uberis compared with L. lactis or L. garvieae. Differences in SCC resolution and bacteriological cure between these groups may dictate a different management approach., (Copyright © 2020 American Dairy Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) survivors are at increased risk of thyroid cancer (TC). We sought to determine whether increased risks of high-risk pathology or mortality are seen with thyroid cancer after HL (HL-TC) compared with first primary thyroid cancer (TC-1). From the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) registry, we compared patient and tumor characteristics as well as survival outcomes between HL-TC and TC-1 and fit a multivariable Cox model to assess for a possible association between HL history and overall survival after TC. Among 139,297 TC-1 and 174 HL-TC patients, history of HL was not associated with anaplastic or sarcoma TC. Multivariable analyzes showed that history of HL was not associated with a difference in risk of death after TC (hazard ratio: 0.96, 95% confidence interval: (0.81, 1.13), p = .61). Despite a significantly increased risk of TC among HL survivors, prior HL is not associated with more aggressive pathologic subtypes or worse prognosis.

Mycoplasma mastitis is a contagious and costly disease of dairy cattle that significantly affects animal health and milk productivity. Mycoplasma bovis is the most prevalent and invasive agent of mycoplasma mastitis in dairy cattle, and early detection is critical. Other mycoplasma have been isolated from milk; however, the role and prevalence of these species as mastitis pathogens are poorly understood. Routine screening of milk for mycoplasma by bacteriological culture is an important component of a farm control strategy to minimize a herd mycoplasma outbreak, but phenotypic methods have limited ability to speciate mycoplasma, affecting how farms and practitioners can understand the role and effect of species other than M. bovis in herd health. Fastidious mycoplasma culture can be lengthy and inconclusive, resulting in delayed or false negative reports. We developed and validated a multitarget PCR assay that can in the same day confirm or reject a presumptive positive mycoplasma culture found upon bacteriological testing of clinical specimens, further discriminate between Acholeplasma and Mycoplasma, and identify M. bovis. Coupled with sequence analysis isolates can be further identified as bovine mycoplasma Mycoplasma arginini, Mycoplasma alkalescens, Mycoplasma canadense, Mycoplasma bovirhinis, Mycoplasma bovigenitalium, Mycoplasma californicum, Acholeplasma laidlawii, and Acholeplasma oculi. Assay validation included analysis of 845 mycoplasma representing these species and 30 additional bacterial species obtained from routine milk submissions to the Quality Milk Production Services from New York State farms and veterinary clinics between January 2012 and December 2015. Among 95 herds, we found 8 different Mycoplasma species and 3 different Acholeplasma species, with an overall prevalence of M. bovirhinis of 1%, A. oculi of 2%, M. arginini of 2%, M. californicum of 3%, M. canadense of 10%, M. bovigenitalium of 10%, A. laidlawii of 11%, M. alkalescens of 17%, and M. bovis of 78%. More than one mycoplasma was found in 14% of the herds tested, and both M. bovis and Acholeplasma were found in 6% of the farms. Incorporation of the validated molecular diagnostic assay into routine bacteriological screening as a supportive confirmation and identification tool will lead to an improved assessment of Mycoplasma and Acholeplasma prevalence data, which will facilitate increased knowledge about the role of these mycoplasma in mastitis., (Copyright © 2016 American Dairy Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Lactococcus species are counted among a large and closely related group of environmental streptococci and streptococci-like bacteria that include bovine mastitis pathogenic Streptococcus, Enterococcus, and Aerococcus species. Phenotypic and biochemical identification methods can be inaccurate and unreliable for species within this group, particularly for Lactococcus spp. As a result, the incidence of Lactococcus spp. on the farm may have been historically underreported and consequently little is known about the clinical importance of this genus as a mastitis pathogen. We used molecular genetic identification methods to accurately differentiate 60 environmental streptococci and streptococci-like bacteria isolated from cows with high somatic cell count and chronic intramammary infection (IMI; >2 somatic cell scores above 4) among 5 geographically distinct farms in New York and Minnesota that exhibited an observed increase in IMI. These isolates were phenotypically identified as Streptococcus uberis and Streptococcus spp. Genetic methods identified 42 isolates (70%) as Lactococcus lactis ssp. lactis, including all 10 isolates originally phenotypically identified as Streptococcus uberis. Antibiotic inhibition testing of all Lc. lactis ssp. lactis showed that 7 isolates were resistant to tetracycline. In the present study, a predominance of Lc. lactis ssp. lactis was identified in association with chronic, clinical bovine IMI among all 5 farms and characterized antimicrobial resistance for treatment therapies. Routine use by mastitis testing labs of molecular identification methods for environmental streptococci and streptococci-like bacteria can further define the role and prevalence of Lc. lactis ssp. lactis in association with bovine IMI and may lead to more targeted therapies., (Copyright © 2014 American Dairy Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Although it is recognized that acidification of freshwater systems results in decreased overall species richness of plants and animals, little is known about the response of aquatic microbial communities to acidification. In this study we examined bacterioplankton community diversity and structure in 18 lakes located in the Adirondack Park (in the state of New York in the United States) that were affected to various degrees by acidic deposition and assessed correlations with 31 physical and chemical parameters. The pH of these lakes ranged from 4.9 to 7.8. These studies were conducted as a component of the Adirondack Effects Assessment Program supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Thirty-one independent 16S rRNA gene libraries consisting of 2,135 clones were constructed from epilimnion and hypolimnion water samples. Bacterioplankton community composition was determined by sequencing and amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis of the clone libraries. Nineteen bacterial classes representing 95 subclasses were observed, but clone libraries were dominated by representatives of the Actinobacteria and Betaproteobacteria classes. Although the diversity and richness of bacterioplankton communities were positively correlated with pH, the overall community composition assessed by principal component analysis was not. The strongest correlations were observed between bacterioplankton communities and lake depth, hydraulic retention time, dissolved inorganic carbon, and nonlabile monomeric aluminum concentrations. While there was not an overall correlation between bacterioplankton community structure and pH, several bacterial classes, including the Alphaproteobacteria, were directly correlated with acidity. These results indicate that unlike more identifiable correlations between acidity and species richness for higher trophic levels, controls on bacterioplankton community structure are likely more complex, involving both direct and indirect processes.

This article presents the multifaceted efforts of Syracuse Healthy Start, a federally funded initiative of the Onondaga County Health Department and over 20 partnering agencies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in infant mortality. The analyses presented in this article demonstrate that many women--Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic--have serious risks for low birth weight and infant death. In many cases, multiple, simultaneous risks complicate a pregnant woman's situation and in other cases the longitudinal cumulative risks impact health across generations. Infant mortality decreased overall, and for both Caucasian and African American infants during the first 3 years of the project.