No description available.

The continued growth of the nation’s older adult population will bring many societal challenges. One of these challenges deals with meeting this population’s basic needs. Among the most crucial basic needs in older adulthood is proper nutrition, which is heavily impacted by one’s ability to access adequate amounts of healthy foods. Extensive research has been conducted on low food access among diverse populations, but opportunities remain to expand upon this research by concentrating on the food access challenges facing the older adult population. The current study had a twoold purpose. First, this study aimed to serve a basic academic purpose by integrating key elements of theories related to environmental gerontology and ecological models of aging and human development to explain the relationship between summary-level conditions and the food environments of older adults, particularly as they were related to food access in nonmetropolitan counties. Second, this study aimed to serve an applied-evaluative purpose by utilizing the results of the quantitative analysis to serve as an initial needs assessment that identified the characteristics of nonmetropolitan counties that were associated with higher levels of senior low food access. It was argued that the ability to identify counties facing high levels of senior low food access would aid in the development of interventions to help address this social problem. To this end, this study’s concluding sections proposed an initial logic model, which outlined an intervention designed to address low food access among older adults residing in nonmetropolitan counties. Support was found for several of the research hypotheses, with results indicating that a county’s proportion of minority residents and status as a high outmigration county were the two strongest predictors of a county’s status as a senior low food access county. Based on these results, an intervention was proposed that concentrated on educating older adults on the importance of nutrition in older age and facilitating more convenient access to food outlets for older adults in nonmetropolitan counties. Practical implications for this study and suggestions for future research related to this topic also were discussed.

A randomized complete block design with three replications (n=432, 72 broilers per treatment) was utilized to evaluate the effects of electrical (ES) and low atmosphere pressure stunning (LAPS) on the quality of broiler breast meat deboned at 0.75, 2, and 4h postmortem. The L* values were lower (P<0.05) for LAPS than ES at 4 h and 2 h deboning times. Shear force did not differ (P>0.05) between stun methods but decreased (P<0.05) as deboning time increased. Consumers were clustered into 8 groups based on preference and liking of samples. Sixtyive percent of consumers (3 clusters) liked all broiler breast treatments. Within these three clusters, some consumers preferred (P<0.05) 4 h deboned samples over those deboned at 2 h (Cluster 7), and other consumers preferred (P<0.05) those deboned at 2 h over 4 h samples (Cluster 6). Data reveals that both stunning methods provide high quality breast meat with minimal product differences.

No description available.

No description available.

Determining safe yield of an existing water supply is a basic aspect of water supply planning. Where water is withdrawn from a river directly without any storage, the withdrawal is constrained by the worst drought flow in the river. There is no flexibility for operational adjustments other than implementing conservation measures. Where there is a storage reservoir, yields higher than the flow in the source stream can be maintained for a period of time by releasing the water in storage. The determination of safe yield in this situation requires elaborate computation. This thesis presents a synthesis of methods of drought flow analysis and yield estimation. The yield depends on both the magnitude of the deficit and its temporal distribution. A new Markov chain analysis for assessing frequencies of annual flows is proposed. The Markov chain results compare very well with the empirical data analysis. Another advantage of the Markov chain analysis is that both high and low flows are considered simultaneously; no separate analyses for the lower and upper tails of the distribution are necessary. The temporal distribution of drought flows is considered with the aid of the generalized bootstrap method, time series analysis, and cluster sequencing of worsening droughts called Waitt's procedure. The methods are applied to drought inflows for three different water supply reservoirs in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and different yield estimates are obtained. / Master of Science

In this thesis, we propose a circuit design technique that reduces the energy utilized by any logic circuit for computation. We achieve this, by reducing the voltage swing on the circuit without greatly compromising the speed of operation and keeping in mind the noise margin constraints. Our technique involves the use of head or tail transistors that provide a Vth drop in the voltage swing. We choose to use head or tail transistors on alternate logic levels providing us with an option of driver stage, based on the noise margin of the subsequent stage. We demonstrate the working of this concept on inverter chains, to prove the correctness as well as the ability of the reduced voltage swing circuits to drive subsequent stages. We also discuss the implementation of this technique on basic gates and simple combinational circuits. We then show detailed experiments on a larger circuit, in this case a Kogge-Stone parallel prefix adder. We will discuss the overheads involved in the design and methods to partially overcome these by the use of selectively skewed gates and application of forward body bias. Finally we implement the same design using a different technology to demonstrate the scalability of the technique. / text

No description available.

Low-template deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) samples are commonly found within forensic biological evidence. Low amounts of DNA become increasingly difficult to analyze as the allelic peaks become less distinguishable from instrumental noise. Forensic laboratories currently try to increase allele signal intensity through additional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) cycles or enhancing capillary electrophoresis injection times or potentials. Purification of the post-PCR product may also be conducted as PCR reagents can compete with DNA fragments during electrokinetic injection. Though these strategies have proven useful, resulting in a higher signal to noise ratio, low-template samples continue to exhibit allele drop-out due to the stochastic variation induced by the forensic DNA laboratory process. Further complicating analysis is the fact that low-template DNA samples are often exhausted as the full amount is needed for analysis. Thus, PCR can be considered a destructive technique. Since allele drop-out is hypothesized to be the result of 1) insufficient levels of amplicons and 2) sampling effects, it is desirable to obtain the original DNA template after amplification for future analysis. This would minimize the impact of 1) above. Thus, a novel method which isolates genomic DNA after PCR amplification has been developed. Amplification products were produced using biotinylated primers and cleaned from the solution with streptavidin-coated magnetic beads. Filtration was then used to remove remaining PCR reagents and primers. The result is a recovered sample containing the original genomic DNA. Re-amplification was then performed showing the method is successful. Although the method is capable of re-amplifying isolated DNA after PCR, there are points within the procedure that need to be optimized. For example, significant amounts of DNA are lost during the cleaning process and there is a high retention of the original amplified product. This study describes the optimization steps taken to reduce DNA loss, specifically through the filtration step. When method optimization is complete, low-template DNA samples could be analyzed recursively without being destroyed during PCR.

Thesis (PhD. (Clinical Psychology)) --University of Limpopo, 2008 / Low-birth-weight/premature children seem to be vulnerable to psychiatric, neuropsychological and other deficiencies. Limited research is available in the South African context about these ever-increasing phenomena. The aim of this study was to investigate the magnitude and characteristics of internalising (Separation Anxiety, Overanxious and Major Depressive Disorders) and externalising symptoms (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity, Oppositional Defiant and Conduct Disorders) among low-birth-weight children in comparison with normal-birth-weight children, as well as to establish neuropsychological deficiencies (motor, visual-spatial, memory and executive functioning) between the birth weight groups, analysed as a function of gender and age. The sample (158 children) was selected from nine urban mainstream primary schools in the Tshwane North and South districts by means of stratified random sampling. Low-birth-weight children (weighing below 2 000 g) (N=79) were matched with normal-birth-weight children (above 3 000 g) (N=79) according to age, gender, language and socio-economic status. The neuropsychological test battery and self-reporting questionnaire were individually administered to the sample at the selected schools during school hours. Teachers and parents of selected participants were requested to complete a rating scale. As expected, low birth weight is associated with a tendency towards increased internalising and externalising psychological symptoms, as well as poorer neuropsychological functioning. This was particularly significant in the domains of internalising symptoms (depression), externalising symptoms (hyperactivity/impulsiveness, inattention, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder) and neuropsychological impairments (motor, visual-spatial/visual-motor, memory and executive functioning). The neuropsychological impairments observed in this study among the LBW children probably increase the risk of subsequent externalising (conduct and oppositional behavioural problems) and internalising (depressive) psychological symptoms. These impairments are possibly exacerbated by inattention and hyperactivity/ impulsiveness. Reciprocal interaction seems to take place between the psychological symptoms andneuropsychological functions. Only a few gender differences were observed. Neuropsychological deficits were observed both in the 6 to 9 and 10 to 13 age groups, indicating deficient resolution of impairments with increasing age. Increased pre-, peri- and postnatal complications in the low-birth-weight group may predispose these children biologically to neuropsychological deficiencies and subsequent internalising/externalising symptoms. These impairments most probably affect academic, emotional, social and other significant areas of functioning, increasing public health cost.