Association between alcohol-impaired driving enforcement-related strategies and alcohol-impaired driving

All states in the U.S. prohibit alcohol-impaired driving but active law enforcement is necessary for effectively reducing this behavior. Sobriety checkpoints, saturation patrols, open container laws, and media campaigns related to enforcement efforts are all enforcement-related strategies for reducing alcohol-impaired driving. We conducted surveys of all state patrol agencies and a representative sample of local law enforcement agencies to assess their use of alcohol-impaired driving enforcement-related strategies and to determine the relationship between these enforcement-related strategies and self-reported alcohol-impaired driving behavior obtained from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. We found that sobriety checkpoints, saturation patrols, and enforcement of open container laws were associated with a lower prevalence of alcohol-impaired driving but, more importantly, a combination of enforcement-related strategies was associated with a greater decrease in alcohol-impaired driving than any individual enforcement-related activity. In addition, alcohol-impaired driving enforcement-related strategies were associated with decreased alcohol-impaired driving above and beyond their association with decreased binge drinking. Results suggest law enforcement agencies should give greater priority to using a combination of strategies rather than relying on any one individual enforcement activity.     

Role of rheology on the formation of Nanofibers from pectin and polyethylene oxide blends

Characterizing the parameters critical to the prediction of a successful electrospinning process from solution properties is essential, yet, not easy in the case of biopolymers. In this study, we attempted to present a broad perspective by simultaneously evaluating the effect of eight different parameters, namely zero shear viscosity, tip viscosity, elastic modulus, phase angle, cohesive energy, pH, conductivity, and surface tension, on the formation of smooth pectin nanofibers. Our results showed that (1) the viscosity of the solution is not an indication of jet formation, but once the jet is formed, high zero shear viscosity and high tip viscosity are required to maintain a dominant whipping instability for smooth nanofiber formation and (2) while evaluating the elasticity of the spinning solutions, comparing only the elastic modulus values would be misleading, since low phase angle values are also necessary for pectin solutions to be electrospun into nonbeaded fibers. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2020 , 137, 48294.     

The impact of advanced metering infrastructure on energy conservation: A case study of two utilities

An analysis of the potential of energy management tools enabled by advanced metering infrastructure to induce energy conservation behavior among customers of two utilities suggests that EMTs empower individual residential customers to have a more thorough understanding of their electricity consumption. This is encouraging news at a time that many U.S. states are developing climate action plans with aggressive targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.     

Scenes: Abstracting interaction in immersive sensor networks

Pervasive computing deployments are increasingly using sensor networks to build instrumented environments that provide local data to immersed mobile applications. These applications demand opportunistic and unpredictable interactions with local devices. While this direct communication has the potential to reduce both overhead and latency, it deviates significantly from existing uses of sensor networks that funnel information to a static central collection point. This pervasive computing driven perspective demands new communication abstractions that enable the required direct communication among mobile applications and sensors. This paper presents the scene abstraction, which allows immersed applications to create dynamic distributed data structures over the immersive sensor network. A scene is created based on application requirements, properties of the underlying network, and properties of the physical environment. This paper details our work on defining scenes, providing an abstract model, an implementation, and an evaluation.     

Plasma Ceramides and Sphingomyelins of Pediatric Patients Increase in Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia but Decrease in Cystic Fibrosis

We investigated plasma sphingomyelin (CerPCho) and ceramide (Cer) levels in pediatric patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) and primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). Plasma samples were obtained from CF (n = 19) and PCD (n = 7) patients at exacerbation, discharge, and stable periods. Healthy children (n = 17) of similar age served as control. Levels of 16–24 CerPCho and 16–24 Cer were measured by LC–MS/MS. Concentrations of all CerPCho and Cer species measured at exacerbation were significantly lower in patients with CF than PCD. 16, 18, 24 CerPCho, and 22, 24 Cer in exacerbation; 18, 24 CerPCho, and 18, 20, 22, 24 Cer at discharge; 18, 24 CerPCho and 24 Cer at stable period were significantly lower in CF patients than healthy children (p < 0.001 and p < 0.05). All CerPCho and Cer levels of PCD patients were significantly higher except 24 CerPCho and 24 Cer during exacerbation, 24 CerPCho at discharge, and 18, 22 CerPCho levels at stable period (p < 0.001 and p < 0.05) compared with healthy children. There was no significant difference among exacerbation, discharge, and stable periods in each group for Cer and CerPCho levels. This is the first study measuring plasma Cer and CerPCho levels in PCD and third study in CF patients. The dramatic difference in plasma levels of most CerPCho and Cer species found between two diseases suggest that cilia pathology in PCD and CFTR mutation in CF seem to alter sphingolipid metabolism possibly in opposite directions.     

Synthesis of core–shell-type styrene acrylic latexes with low NMA content and their application in pigment printing pastes

In this paper, novel core–shell polymers comprising styrene (St) and butyl acrylate (BA) in both core and shell layers of the polymer particles have been synthesized and employed in pigment printing pastes which were applied on 100% cotton and 65% cotton/35% polyester (PET) fabrics. The aim was to reduce the NMA content and the formation of free formaldehyde from pigment printing pastes by employing newly synthesized core-/shell-type polymers. After five washing cycles, the synthesized core-/shell-type polymer including 1% NMA in the core and 1% NMA in the shell with T _g values +30°C and ?20°C, respectively, with lowest total NMA content (1.03%) yielded the best result and showed closest ΔE values to the commercially available polymer including 4% NMA. Dry and wet rubbing fastness results showed no significant changes in the absence of NMA when compared with NMA containing samples. The penetration degree of the pigment pastes of the corresponding polymers was relatively higher on 100% cotton fabric for both red- and blue-colored pigments. A negligible decrease in color strength has been observed for all polymers when colored in red.     

Effect of complexation conditions on xanthan–chitosan polyelectrolyte complex gels

Polyelectrolyte hydrogels formed by xanthan gum and chitosan can be used for encapsulation and controlled release of food ingredients, cells, enzymes, and therapeutic agents. In this study, xanthan–chitosan microcapsules were formed by complex coacervation. The effects of initial polymer concentration and chitosan solution pH on the crosslinking density of xanthan–chitosan network were investigated by swelling studies and modulated differential scanning calorimetry (MDSC) analysis. The crosslinking density was found to be less dependent on chitosan solution concentration than xanthan solution concentration and chitosan pH. The capsules were completely crosslinked at all conditions studied when initial xanthan solution concentration was 1.5% (w/v). The changes in the conformation of chitosan chains as chitosan pH approaches 6.2 were found to be important in achieving capsule network structures with different crosslinking densities. These findings indicate that the parameters studied cannot be viewed as independent parameters, as their effects on the degree of swelling are interdependent.     

A Generic Framework for Distributed Multirobot Cooperation

DEMiR-CF is a generic framework designed for a multirobot team to efficiently allocate tasks among themselves and achieve an overall mission. In the design of DEMiR-CF, the following issues were particularly investigated as the design criteria: efficient and realistic representation of missions, efficient allocation of tasks to cooperatively achieve a global goal, maintenance of the system coherence and consistency by the team members, detection of the contingencies and recover from various failures that may arise during runtime, efficient reallocation of tasks (if necessary) and reorganization of team members (if necessary). DEMiR-CF is designed to address different types of missions from the simplest to more complex ones, including missions with interrelated tasks and multi-resource (robot) requirements. Efficiency of the framework is validated through experiments in three different types of domains.     

The metamorphosis of a historical city: From the Byzantine city Argyropolis to the Ottoman neighborhood Süleymaniye

Anatolia, which has hosted many civilizations since the early ages, is historically very important. While the majority of the settlements of these civilizations are still present where they were founded, there are some historical cities that have disappeared or moved to another place; while some are known with their names only in old sources, the ruins of some of them are found, and some continue to exist in other places because the original places of foundation of the cities were deserted. One of the cities which sought its continuity in another place is Argyropolis. The city which was founded on a sloping area with rich silver mines and which was spread along heights of 1400–1500 m, moved to a valley of a height of 1150 m and some 4 km away from its original place of foundation because of the loss of its socio-economic power. In its original place of foundation, the city was called as Argyropolis and Canca, respectively. After the city was left it was called Eski?ehir (Old City) and Eski Gümü?hane (Old Gümü?hane), respectively; and when it lost its status as a city and reduced to the status of a neighborhood it was called Süleymaniye (The City of Suleiman). The names given to the old city before it reduced to the status of a neighborhood and to the new city refer to the ‘silver mines’, which were an indication of the economic condition of the city. The closure of these mines was to the desertion of the city what the running of these mines was to its foundation and development.