The Secure Program: Safety Enhanced Communities Utilizing Resident Endeavors - Final Report

This report describes a collaborative project between the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) and the Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) at Loyola University Chicago. The project, entitled Safety Enhanced Communities Utilizing Resident Endeavors (SECURE), is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of physical security improvements in affordable housing developments. The project began in August of 1997 and was completed in December of 1998. The focus of the SECURE program was to address the growing security needs and concerns among residents who live in transitional neighborhoods with relatively high crime rates. The SECURE project studied four affordable housing developments in the Chicago area. The housing developments that participated in the program were The Pines of Edgewater, Northpoint, Diversey Square, and Park Apartments. IHDA selected the participating developments based on location, ability to implement the program, neighborhood characteristics, and management capacity. The four developments are geographically dispersed throughout Chicago and each is situated in a unique neighborhood setting. Each development submitted a proposal describing the security concerns at the property and how they planned to address these problems. In addition, the developments were to create a local partnership including the active participation of residents, the integration of local community policing strategies (CAPS), and the collaboration with an existing neighborhood organization to promote safety. In return, IHDA provided funding for physical security improvements at each of the four participating developments. The security upgrades included hardware, such as lighting, fencing, metal doors, and monitoring equipment. The total grant amounts to $435,000, serving a total of 885 units. CURL’s responsibility was to conduct a comprehensive research evaluation of the SECURE program. The evaluation determined the impact of the security improvements in creating a safer environment and reducing residents’ fear of crime

Laboratory Focus on Improving the Culture of Biosafety: Statewide Risk Assessment of Clinical Laboratories That Process Specimens for Microbiologic Analysis

The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene challenged Wisconsin laboratories to examine their biosafety practices and improve their culture of biosafety. One hundred three clinical and public health laboratories completed a questionnaire-based, microbiology-focused biosafety risk assessment. Greater than 96% of the respondents performed activities related to specimen processing, direct microscopic examination, and rapid nonmolecular testing, while approximately 60% performed culture interpretation. Although they are important to the assessment of risk, data specific to patient occupation, symptoms, and travel history were often unavailable to the laboratory and, therefore, less contributory to a microbiology-focused biosafety risk assessment than information on the specimen source and test requisition. Over 88% of the respondents complied with more than three-quarters of the mitigation control measures listed in the survey. Facility assessment revealed that subsets of laboratories that claim biosafety level 1, 2, or 3 status did not possess all of the biosafety elements considered minimally standard for their respective classifications. Many laboratories reported being able to quickly correct the minor deficiencies identified. Task assessment identified deficiencies that trended higher within the general (not microbiology-specific) laboratory for core activities, such as packaging and shipping, direct microscopic examination, and culture modalities solely involving screens for organism growth. For traditional microbiology departments, opportunities for improvement in the cultivation and management of highly infectious agents, such as acid-fast bacilli and systemic fungi, were revealed. These results derived from a survey of a large cohort of small- and large-scale laboratories suggest the necessity for continued microbiology-based understanding of biosafety practices, vigilance toward biosafety, and enforcement of biosafety practices throughout the laboratory setting

Thermal modulation for gas chromatography

A thermal modulator device for gas chromatography and associated methods. The thermal modulator device includes a recirculating fluid cooling member, an electrically conductive capillary in direct thermal contact with the cooling member, and a power supply electrically coupled to the capillary and operable for controlled resistive heating of the capillary. The capillary can include more than one separate thermally modulated sections

Merleau-Ponty and neuroaesthetics: Two approaches to performance and technology

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Digital Creativity, 23(3-4), 225 - 238, 2012. Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14626268.2012.709941.Assisted by the rapid growth of digital technology, which has enhanced its ambitions, performance is an increasingly popular area of artistic practice. This article seeks to contextualise this within two methodologically divergent yet complimentary intellectual tendencies. The first is the work of the philosopher Merleau-Ponty, who recognised that our experience of the world has an inescapably ‘embodied’ quality, not reducible to mental accounts, which can be vicariously extended through specific instrumentation. The second is the developing field of neuroaesthetics; that is, neurological research directed towards the analysis, in brain-functional terms, of our experiences of objects and events which are culturally deemed to be of artistic significance. I will argue that both these contexts offer promising approaches to interpreting developments in contemporary performance, which has achieved critical recognition without much antecedent theoretical support

Chlorpyrifos Oxon Primes Microglia: Enhanced LPS-Induced TNFα Production

poster abstractMicroglia, the resident innate immune cells of the brain, respond to various environmental stimuli, including factors from surrounding tissue and from systemic inputs. These stimuli impact microglial function in both health and disease. Increasing evidence implicates microglia and neuroinflammation in Gulf War illness (GWI) pathology. Gulf War illness is an untreatable chronic multi symptomatic disorder that affects about 30% of Gulf War veterans. It has been proposed that “multiple hits” from exposure to various environmental neurotoxicants such as Chlorpyrifos (CPF), an organophosphate pesticide, combined with low inflammation may initiate exaggerated and persistent central nervous system (CNS) pathology to drive GWI. CPF oxon, an active metabolite of CPF, is associated with deleterious CNS effects, but the role of microglia behind this phenomenon is not fully understood.To investigate the effects of CPF oxon on microglia, we assessed microglial ROS, pro-inflammatory cytokine factors, and NF-κB p50 DNA binding activity in the presence of CPF oxon. HAPI microglia cells were treated with CPF oxon (1μM-1nM), which resulted in a dose dependent increase in H2O2 production at 3 hours and elevated superoxide at 30 minutes. CPF oxon failed to initiate TNFα and nitric oxide from microglia cultures. However, CPF oxon significantly decreased NF-κB p50 binding to DNA in microglia, a key redox signaling mechanism linked to microglial priming. Consistent with this premise, pre-treatment with CPF oxon (0.5μM) amplified LPSinduced TNFα production in microglia and neuron-glia cultures. Moreover, when CPF oxon and LPS challenged cells were pre-treated with DPI, a NOX2 inhibitor, we found a significant reduction in TNFα response when compared to non-treated cells, supporting that NOX2 may regulate CPF oxon priming in microglia. These data suggest that CPF oxon may induce ROS production in microglia to reprogram these cells to become more sensitive to pro-inflammatory stimuli (priming)