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About 18% of college students have disabilities. These students experience health and social disparities including lower graduation rates. Social capital, resources we can tap from relationships, may be particularly valuable for students with disabilities. Yet, disabilities often limit the individual’s ability to develop or use social capital. We studied how college students with developmental disabilities understand, develop, and use social capital. We used a qualitative approach to better understand the experience of social capital by talking at length with college students with disabilities. Our primary research question was, “How do college students with disabilities understand the role of social capital in their lives?” We also addressed, “How do college students with disabilities develop and use social capital?” Regarding our first research question, we asked about the participants’ relationships and the benefits and contributions of those relationships. We used the participants’ responses to assess how students with disabilities develop and use social capital. We also asked about access to resources, use of resources, pandemic experiences, resources contributed to and gained from relationships, and how disability affected relationships. We conducted in-depth semi-structured Zoom interviews with 10 women with developmental disabilities enrolled at a large public university in the southeastern United States early in 2021. We examined the qualitative data with thematic analysis. Participants were aged 18- 22 years (mean 20.0, SD 1.3); 70% reported attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; 90% reported multiple diagnoses. Seven reported being white, two Hispanic, and one Hawaiian/Pacific Islander. Five reported having special education in elementary, middle, or high school. Themes were: foundational relationships, reciprocity, a need for new relationships, expanding horizons, focus on the future, and relationship barriers. Participants emphasized the importance of longstanding relationships with family and close friends. Most described COVID-19 pandemic-related isolation and stress, which magnified both their need for relationships and awareness of that need, prompting participants to become proactive in forming and maintaining relationships despite anxiety about them. Participants said that before COVID-19 routine physical interaction prompted relationship formation and maintenance; some commented that they now “forget” to interact. However, many also identified a need to create new relationships to help them succeed in school and in their careers despite disability—and pandemic-associated challenges. As one said, “I've just been trying to push myself to open up to more people, even if it is scary because I know that eventually I'm gonna need people to support me.” Results highlight the importance of social relationships and the resources they provide to students with disabilities, particularly in stressful times. Social capital is foundational for employment, access to health care, mental health, and other needs. COVID 19 may have amplified barriers to social capital formation for students with disabilities. Colleges can help students by connecting them with others and providing strategies for building and maintaining social capital.

When proteins are made in the cell, their forms are reminiscent of an unwound ball of string. To become active, they must be wound up into specific shapes (“active conformation”). This winding and folding function is performed by “chaperone” proteins such as Hsp70. These proteins are present in all organisms from bacteria to yeast, frogs, mice and humans. Proteins can become unfolded throughout their lifespan at which point Hsp70 can rebind and refold them. Cells must be able to respond rapidly to changes in their surrounding temperature (heat shock). The response to heat is mediated by molecular chaperones such as Hsp70 that refold denatured proteins. Hsp70 function can be altered through the addition and removal of phosphate groups (known as phosphorylation). These modifications are added after protein is synthesized (translation) thus called as post-translational modifications. We liken Hsp70 to a piano with each phosphorylation being a key on that piano. By pressing the keys in combination (adding a specific pattern of phosphorylation) produces a particular song (a unique function on Hsp70). There are a total of 85 phosphorylation sites on Hsp70 currently reported that can be phosphorylated. The role of post-translational modifications (PTMs) on Hsp70 under heat shock are poorly understood. To understand how heat shock impacts Hsp70 PTMs, we performed quantitative mass spectrometry on yeast Hsp70 isolated from untreated and heat shocked cells. Interestingly, the only PTM site up-regulated on Hsp70 was phosphorylation at threonine T492 (T492), a result that was confirmed via Western Blotting with a phospho-specific T492 antibody. T492 phosphorylation was activated rapidly (<5mins) by heat and by other cell-wall damaging agents and was dependent on proteins in the cell-wall integrity pathway. Mutation of T492 to alanine (phospho-mutant) resulted in yeast unable to survive exposure to heat stress or cell wall damaging agents. T492A yeast were not impacted for survival to genotoxic stresses, suggesting a fine-tuning rather than abolishing of chaperone function. The T492 phospho-mutant was unable to activate the heat shock response (HSR) confirming the importance of T492 phosphorylation for survival at high temperature. Taken together we believe that T492 phosphorylation of Hsp70 is an initiating event in the heat shock response, a process which may be universally conserved in all organisms.

Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) are promising technology and yield significant impacts in the various transportation environments. Extensive efforts have been devoted to exploring the potential effect of CAVs in various transportation environments, including freeways, roundabouts, conventional intersections and on/off ramps. However, few efforts have been devoted to investigating the impact of CAVs on the operational performance of innovative intersections. Therefore, this research intends to mitigate the research gap by exploring the performance of CAVs in the environment of superstreet – one of the popular innovative intersection designs. This research is simulation-based and CAV platooning, trajectory planning models are developed and tested in superstreet and conventional intersection with different traffic volume scenarios. This research is simulation-based, and an equivalent conventional intersection was established in a simulation platform for comparison. SUMO is selected as the simulation environment. In this research, the CAVs and human-driven vehicles (HDVs) are assumed to have different car-following characteristics. A superstreet in the real world is selected for the case study and an initial operational performance comparison was made between superstreet and equivalent intersection. Different traffic scales and market penetration rates were evaluated. A superstreet situated at Leeland, NC was identified for the case study With the traffic characteristics information, the research team first calibrated HDV model with Genetic Algorithm. With calibrated W99 parameters, initial simulation runs were conducted in an equivalent conventional intersection (lane configuration and road length) and superstreet respectively. Four traffic scales were considered, i.e., 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% of peak hour traffic volume. A robust and compact platoon can be achieved through the developed platoon control strategy. The platoon control system iterates all active vehicles in the simulation environment and when the vehicles are 21 meters away from their preceding vehicle, the subject vehicle and its preceding vehicle can together form a platoon. For the vehicles inside a platoon, their minimum gap and minimum headway are reset as 0.5 meters and 0.5s respectively. In addition, the vehicles inside a platoon share the same speed. A three-acceleration segments trajectory planning strategy was employed for CAVs based on the existing literature. Findings: Platooning and trajectory planning can all yield benefits in both conventional intersection and superstreet. The developed platooning strategy can successfully reduce the traffic delay and fuel consumption at relatively high traffic demand scenarios in both the superstreet and the conventional intersection (Data evidence: average traffic delay reduced from 23.32 seconds to 20.49 seconds, fuel consumption reduced from 97.41ml to 96.14ml) Trajectory planning could reduce the traffic delay in both superstreet and conventional intersection environments but with different impacts on fuel consumption. A potential reason is that CAVs which accelerate to pass the first intersection may fail to pass the consecutive second intersection in the environment of superstreet. A notable finding was that the proposed trajectory planning control strategy can successfully reduce the average traffic delay without increasing the average fuel consumption in the conventional intersection. Overall, the improvement magnitude of platooning and trajectory planning were larger in the conventional intersection compared to superstreet.

Although the military claims its diverse makeup as one of its greatest assets, the authentic voices of diverse servicemen and women have rarely been presented in the current public discourse and scholarly research. Therefore, it is important to highlight the unique experiences of the women of color student veterans that have served and honored our country every day. The purpose of this study is to identify the major challenges experienced by women of color student veterans pursuing their civilian transition through higher education. This study intends to reveal the ways that institutions may better serve and support their holistic development throughout their transition years in higher education. Through in-depth personal interviews, I explored the experiences of eight women of color student veterans who served in three different military branches. The years of their service ranged between two and 20 years. While each participant’s individual experience was quite unique, the entire data set reveals that minority women veterans shared similar life experiences and emotions throughout their most pivotal transition period. The participants demonstrated a strong sense of independence at a young age, leading up into adulthood. The participants exhibited some notable personal characteristics, such as being ambitious, goal-oriented, and resilient. The participants detailed how the lack of structure during their civilian and college transition posed a challenge. Most importantly, the participants discussed their racial experiences as women of color in the military and higher education contexts. Details of their perspectives suggest that each participant acknowledges their identities of race and gender at least once during their transition, with some alluding to the idea that one identity appears more or less salient, depending on the situation. Through this study, we continue to investigate women of color student veterans’ unique experiences, which will generate pragmatic suggestions for institutions of higher education trying to find more efficient ways to extend their support for diverse groups of student veterans on campus.

Recently, there has been a growing interest in color-changing materials for use in smart windows, displays, wearable devices, biosensors, chemical sensors, and energy storage. This includes materials that change color with exposure to electricity (electrochromism) or light (photochromism) and change in fluorescence intensity with the application of a voltage (electrofluorochromism). Although many materials and devices show one or two of these properties, there have been few that possess all three for truly multifunctional applications, for example, windows that can automatically darken with light exposure, or controlled with a low applied voltage during the day, while also controllably fluorescent at night. This is ideal to reduce solar heat gain and maintain occupant comfort in buildings while also useful for displays or lighting in the very same window device. Here, we aim to make such a device out of inexpensive and easily made materials. Dipyridinium thiazolothiazole (TTz) molecules have previously been used in organic solvents, which showed high color change contrast electrochromism and electrofluorochromism, however, these devices were not very reversible, used toxic solvents, and only showed one color change. TTz’s are rigid, highly conjugated, organic molecules synthesized via two-step reactions from inexpensive starting materials and are environmentally stable, while also able to reversibly gain two electrons, which cause color and fluorescence change. To reduce toxicity and possible leaks, we use water-based hydrogels that are inexpensive. In the hydrogels, the TTz’s show two color changes, a high fluorescence contrast, and photochromism, which can all be seen with the human eye, however, we use UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopies to determine reversibility, stability, and exact color contrasts. A computer controlled potentiostat is employed to apply specific voltages to the hydrogel devices, which causes the color and fluorescence changes. By applying different voltages and monitoring color change, we determined the voltage needed to change the yellow device to purple or blue. Using those voltages, reversibility and durability studies were performed by cycling the device on/off while monitoring the color change using a UV-vis spectrometer or fluorometer. After 250 on/off cycles, the TTz hydrogel devices only lose 6% color contrast, which shows high contrast, high reversibility and stability. The devices also show strong electrofluorochromism, where fluorescence can be reversibly turned off with over 90% contrast. Although we have developed highly reversible, stable, large contrast, easily synthesized chromogenic dyes that are electrochromic, photochromic, and electrofluorochromic in simple, low-cost, aqueous hydrogel devices, we continue to make more reversible devices that can retain their colors after thousands of cycles and prolonged use. We have already fully characterized these devices for color changing, however, they also may have potential for applications like sensors, biosensors, energy production/storage, and wearable devices.

Organisms must continuously adapt and respond to changes in environmental temperature. This is accomplished through expression of Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs) which act like cellular mechanics, fixing any heat-damaged proteins. Although one such HSP, Hsp40 has been studied for several decades, several questions remain about how Hsp40 works in all organisms. Recent research has uncovered a large number of modifications (acetylation) on Hsp40 proteins in cells, but the role of these remains unknown. To investigate these Hsp40 modifications, we used baker’s yeast a well-established model system. We changed the Hsp40 protein to prevent acetylation from occurring at different points on Hsp40 and studied how yeast cells grew and responded to different stresses. Interestingly, none of the mutations had an effect on yeast growth and stress resistance. We followed up by altering the same positions on Hsp40 to trick the cell into thinking Hsp40 was permanently modified. These changes had a dramatic effect on yeast-they were slower growing and could not respond well to changes in temperature. To understand at the molecular level the reason for these changes, we purified the altered Hsp40s from yeast and analyzed them by a technique known as mass spectrometry. We successfully identified 533 protein interactions of Hsp40 and are now looking at these to understand which cellular pathways are impacted by Hsp40 acetylation. We are currently testing a working model is that Hsp40 acetylation disrupts as an “emergency brake” to halt cellular growth and division to allow cells to respond to stress. Importantly, these same Hsp40 modifications are also detected in cancer cells. We hope that by understanding how Hsp40 acetylation is regulated in yeast that we will be able to develop a new anticancer therapy that relies on altering Hsp40 modifications.

Buildings are significant energy consumers. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), buildings consume about 75% of the total electricity generated in the United States and account for 39% of carbon emissions. As such, any sustainable pathway to a zero-emissions future will need to pay close attention to emissions reductions in buildings. An interesting sub-category of buildings is the multi-building commercial facility with different buildings within a defined geographical area, operated by the same entity, serving different purposes, and containing varying equipment types. Typical examples of multi-building commercial facilities include school campuses, e-commerce fulfillment centers, shopping complexes, and data centers. While most existing building management approaches focus on minimizing energy consumption and emissions for each building separately, a better strategy will capture complementary building operations and equipment usage patterns across the different buildings within a single framework to yield additional emissions reduction and energy savings. Such improved strategies are referred to as co-optimization strategies. In this work, a co-optimization strategy was developed and simulated to examine the additional carbon emissions reduction and corresponding comfort impacts that can be realized by considering all buildings in a multi-building facility within a single optimization framework instead of treating each building separately. The co-optimization strategy was formulated as a Mixed Integer Quadratic Programming (MIQP) mathematical problem and implemented using the Python programming language. The strategy was tested with a hypothetical e-commerce fulfillment facility consisting of two office buildings and a warehouse. Each building in the facility includes heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment, electric water heaters, solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, batteries, and electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. Also, different daily (weekdays and weekends) and seasonal (summer and winter) building and equipment operation patterns were considered. A Python-based building simulation toolbox developed by the research team was used to run all simulations. Preliminary results show that the co-optimization strategy produced at least an additional 5% reduction in carbon emissions under different daily and seasonal operating conditions with minimal impacts on the comfort of each building’s occupants. Subsequently, the initial results will be extrapolated to estimate annual additional emission reductions from using the co-optimization strategy and the corresponding financial and environmental implications.