Stryhnsvendsen6993

The United States Environmentally-Extended Input-Output (USEEIO) model includes commercial enterprises from 386 industrial sectors of the economy. The purpose of this work is to model the commercial generation of three streams of solid waste from USEEIO sectors hazardous waste, non-hazardous waste excluding construction, and non-hazardous waste from construction. The waste accounts cover 536 waste materials, with commercial non-hazardous waste presently limited to municipal solid waste and construction and demolition debris. Total combined generation for all streams based on 2015 economic activity is approximately 775 million metric tons, with concrete from construction activities accounting for 44% of this mass. The chemical and plastics industries generate the most commercial hazardous waste per dollar of economic output. In most cases, waste materials such as paper, plastic, and metals are generated in greater quantities per dollar of industry output when compared to commercial construction materials and hazardous waste. When considering direct waste generation within an industry, USEEIO model rankings identified the highway and street construction and chemical manufacturing industries as potential areas to continue to pursue new innovations in material use. The rankings change when considering final consumption of goods and services, with various construction industries and state and local governments becoming more prominent. The full detailed waste models are publicly available and will be incorporated into future USEEIO releases. Quantification of waste material generation across the economy is an essential part of decision making because it will highlight areas where intervention may be beneficial.Bacterial colonization poses significant health risks, such as infestation of surfaces in biomedical applications and clean water unavailability. If maintaining the surrounding water clean is a target, developing surfaces with strong bactericidal action, which is facilitated by bacterial access to the surface and mixing, can be a solution. On the other hand, if sustenance of a surface free of bacteria is the goal, developing surfaces with ultralow bacterial adhesion often suffices. check details Here we report a facile, scalable, and environmentally benign strategy that delivers customized surfaces for these challenges. For bactericidal action, nanostructures of inherently antibacterial ZnO, through simple immersion of zinc in hot water, are fabricated. The resulting nanostructured surface exhibits extreme bactericidal effectiveness (9250 cells cm-2 h-1) that eliminates bacteria in direct contact and also remotely through the action of reactive oxygen species. Remarkably, the remote bactericidal action is achieved without the need for any illumination, otherwise required in conventional approaches. As a result, ZnO nanostructures yield outstanding water disinfection of >99.98%, in the dark, by inactivating the bacteria within 3 h. Moreover, Zn2+ released to the aqueous medium from the nanostructured ZnO surface have a concentration of 0.73 ± 0.15 ppm, markedly below the legal limit for safe drinking water (5-6 ppm). The same nanostructures, when hydrophobized (through a water-based or fluorine-free spray process), exhibit strong bacterial repulsion, thus substantially reducing bacterial adhesion. Such environmentally benign and scalable methods showcase pathways toward inhibiting surface bacterial colonization.Uncontrolled overland flow drives flooding, erosion, and contaminant transport, with the severity of these outcomes often amplified in urban areas. In pervious media such as urban soils, overland flow is initiated via either infiltration-excess (where precipitation rate exceeds infiltration capacity) or saturation-excess (when precipitation volume exceeds soil profile storage) mechanisms. These processes call for different management strategies, making it important for municipalities to discern between them. In this study, we derived a generalized one-dimensional model that distinguishes between infiltration-excess overland flow (IEOF) and saturation-excess overland flow (SEOF) using Green-Ampt infiltration concepts. Next, we applied this model to estimate overland flow generation from pervious areas in 11 U.S. cities. We used rainfall forcing that represented low- and high-intensity events and compared responses among measured urban versus predevelopment reference soil hydraulic properties. The derivation showed that the propensity for IEOF versus SEOF is related to the equivalence between two nondimensional ratios (a) precipitation rate to depth-weighted hydraulic conductivity and (b) depth of soil profile restrictive layer to soil capillary potential. Across all cities, reference soil profiles were associated with greater IEOF for the high-intensity set of storms, and urbanized soil profiles tended towards production of SEOF during the lower intensity set of storms. Urban soils produced more cumulative overland flow as a fraction of cumulative precipitation than did reference soils, particularly under conditions associated with SEOF. These results will assist cities in identifying the type and extent of interventions needed to manage storm water produced from pervious areas.To advance the study of children's knowledge and understanding of disease, we devised a methodology for assessing key features of intuitive theories laid out by Wellman and Gelman (1998). We then assessed a disease-relevant biological ontology, causal propositions involving unobservables, and coherence in explanations of influenza offered by children aged 8 to 13. Use of disease-relevant terms and mention of propositions in a biological theory of flu causality, although not coherence or connectedness of ideas, increased with age. Measures were moderately correlated with one another and with a traditional Piagetian measure of level of disease understanding, each contributing uniquely to the characterization of children's thinking. In multiple regression analyses, scores were highest for older children, Latino/minority children, and children of more educated parents with other factors controlled. Specific gaps in children's intuitive theories are identified to guide theory-based interventions aimed at helping children understand and protect themselves from infectious diseases.With a qualitative approach drawing from four focus groups, this study explored what aspects of preschool are valued most by 30 low-income Latino/a immigrant parents with children enrolled in a state-funded preschool program in Texas. Beyond the push and pull factors of necessity, convenience, and supply, parents reported valuing the responsiveness of schools to families' needs and concerns, the provision of a safe and developmentally appropriate environment, the role of preschool in both care and education, the incorporation of parents within the school, and the school's capacity for developing parents' human and navigational capital. Even though parents saw great value in preschool preparing their children for school and helping themselves as parents, there was also fear and mistrust in neighborhood schools that was rooted in discrimination and long-term educational inequality.The current abundance of technology in daily life creates opportunities for interruptions in couple interactions, termed technoference or phubbing. The current study examined reports from both partners in 173 romantic relationships who completed daily surveys on technoference and relational well-being measures across 14 days. By using daily diary data, we were able to examine within-person associations and more closely approximate everyday life. Utilizing multilevel modeling, we found that on days when participants rated more technoference than usual, they felt worse about their relationship, perceived more conflict over technology use, rated their face-to-face interactions as less positive, and experienced more negative mood. These relationships existed even after controlling for general feelings of relationship dissatisfaction, depression, and attachment anxiety, and there were no significant differences between women and men in these associations. This suggests that regardless of an individual's or a couple's current level of well-being, if individuals perceive technology use as interfering in their interactions with their partner, these perceptions may affect their daily assessments of their relationship and mood.Polyhedral meshes are increasingly becoming an attractive option with particular advantages over traditional meshes for certain applications. What has been missing is a robust polyhedral meshing algorithm that can handle broad classes of domains exhibiting arbitrary curved boundaries and sharp features. In addition, the power of primal-dual mesh pairs, exemplified by Voronoi-Delaunay meshes, has been recognized as an important ingredient in numerous formulations. The VoroCrust algorithm is the first provably correct algorithm for conforming Voronoi meshing for non-convex and possibly non-manifold domains with guarantees on the quality of both surface and volume elements. A robust refinement process estimates a suitable sizing field that enables the careful placement of Voronoi seeds across the surface circumventing the need for clipping and avoiding its many drawbacks. The algorithm has the flexibility of filling the interior by either structured or random samples, while all sharp features are preserved in the output mesh. We demonstrate the capabilities of the algorithm on a variety of models and compare against state-of-the-art polyhedral meshing methods based on clipped Voronoi cells establishing the clear advantage of VoroCrust output.The presence of persistent bioaccumulative toxics (PBT) in aquatic food chains complicates decision processes of people with a strong culture of fish consumption. This environmental contamination is especially problematic for Native American populations in the Laurentian Great Lakes region (Anishinaabeg). Pursuing the growing discipline of environmental health literacy (EHL) may help reduce toxic exposures, support healthy decision-making, and combat health deficits. Our goals for this research were first to improve environmental health literacy using novel technologies and second to help define environmental health literacy metrics that can be tracked over time, especially regarding culturally-contextualized health interests. We recently reported that a mobile app (Gigiigoo'inaan App) presenting personalized, culturally-contextualized fish consumption advice may improve EHL for the Anishinaabeg. Gigiigoo'inaan App safely supports desired fish consumption rates by putting local data into the hands of the Anishinaabeg. We conducted a pre-test post-test evaluation with 103 Aninishinaabe adults. Participants estimated their current fish meal consumption over a hypothetical month before exposure to the software and then planned their future consumption of fish meals in a month after using the mobile app. Significantly more monthly traditional fish meals on average (Median 4 vs 2, p=0.0005) were selected when using the app versus pre-exposure to the app. Significantly more traditional grams of fish were also selected during use of the app relative to the pretest (Median 680.39g vs 453.59g, p=0.0007). These increases were accompanied by widespread (97%) adherence to conventional advice that minimizes PBT exposure health effects (ATSDR minimum risk levels).