Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund: Vermont’s green economy speeds up

In Vermont, a “sustainable” job is one that not only can endure but can boost environmental protection, social justice, and economic equity. Today business competitors collaborating on sustainable goals are doing well by doing good.Job creation - Vermont

Keeping company with hope and despair. Family therapists' reflections and experience of working with childhood depression

The BIOMED international outcome study on childhood depression offered a unique opportunity for the systematic treatment of children and families with major depression using systemic psychotherapy. This paper describes the experiences of clinicians working with the families referred and the theoretical and clinical models that evolved during the treatment process. The concept of 'keeping company with hope and despair' emerged as an overarching framework for thinking about the quality of the therapeutic relationship in this developing area of clinical practice. We illustrate our systemically informed interventions with case examples and discuss the role played by therapists' 'use of self' in engaging and fostering change in families gripped by depression

Flow induced ultrasound scattering: experimental studies

Sound scattering by a finite width beam on a single rigid body rotation vortex flow is detected by a linear array of transducers (both smaller than a flow cell), and analyzed using a revised scattering theory. Both the phase and amplitude of the scattered signal are obtained on 64 elements of the detector array and used for the analysis of velocity and vorticity fields. Due to averaging on many pulses the signal-to-noise ratio of the phases difference in the scattered sound signal can be amplified drastically, and the resolution of the method in the detection of circulation, vortex radius, vorticity, and vortex location becomes comparable with that obtained earlier by time-reversal mirror (TRM) method (P. Roux, J. de Rosny, M. Tanter, and M. Fink, {\sl Phys. Rev. Lett.} {\bf 79}, 3170 (1997)). The revised scattering theory includes two crucial steps, which allow overcoming limitations of the existing theories. First, the Huygens construction of a far field scattering signal is carried out from a signal obtained at any intermediate plane. Second, a beam function that describes a finite width beam is introduced, which allows using a theory developed for an infinite width beam for the relation between a scattering amplitude and the vorticity structure function. Structure functions of the velocity and vorticity fields deduced from the sound scattering signal are compared with those obtained from simultaneous particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements. Good quantitative agreement is found.Comment: 14 pages, 23 figures. accepted for publication in Phys. Fluids(June issue

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health: Making a Positive Impact

Offers pragmatic insights from diverse community-campus partnerships, service-learning initiatives, and workforce diversity efforts across the country, including communities from the foundation's Community Voices initiative

Securing a UAV Using Individual Characteristics From an EEG Signal

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have gained much attention in recent years for both commercial and military applications. The progress in this field has gained much popularity and the research has encompassed various fields of scientific domain. Cyber securing a UAV communication has been one of the active research field since the attack on Predator UAV video stream hijacking in 2009. Since UAVs rely heavily on on-board autopilot to function, it is important to develop an autopilot system that is robust to possible cyber attacks. In this work, we present a biometric system to encrypt the UAV communication by generating a key which is derived from Beta component of the EEG signal of a user. We have developed a safety mechanism that would be activated in case the communication of the UAV from the ground control station gets attacked. This system has been validated on a commercial UAV under malicious attack conditions during which we implement a procedure where the UAV return safely to a "home" position

Effect of ethnicity on live birth rates after in vitro fertilisation/intracytoplasmic sperm injection treatment: analysis of UK national database

Objective To evaluate the effect of ethnicity of women on the outcome of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatment. Design Observational cohort study. Setting UK National Database. Population Data from 2000 to 2010 involving 38 709 women undergoing their first IVF/ICSI cycle were analysed. Methods Anonymous data were obtained from the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the statutory regulator of IVF and ICSI treatment in the UK. Data analysis was performed by regression analysis with adjustment for age, cause and type of infertility and treatment type (IVF or ICSI) to express results as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Methods Live birth rate per cycle of IVF or ICSI treatment. Results While white Irish (OR 0.73; 95% CI 0.60–0.90), Indian (0.85; 0.75–0.97), Bangladeshi (0.53: 0.33–0.85), Pakistani (0.68; 0.58–0.80), Black African (0.60; 0.51–0.72), and other non-Caucasian Asian (0.86; 0.73–0.99) had a significantly lower odds of live birth rates per fresh IVF/ICSI cycle than White British women, ethnic groups of White European (1.04; 0.96–1.13), Chinese (1.12; 0.77–1.64), Black Caribbean (0.76; 0.51–1.13), Middle Eastern (0.73; 0.51–1.04), Mediterranean European (1.18; 0.83–1.70) and Mixed race population (0.94; 0.73–1.19) had live birth rates that did not differ significantly. The cumulative live birth rates showed similar patterns across different ethnic groups. Conclusion Ethnicity is a major determinant of IVF/ICSI treatment outcome as indicated by significantly lower live birth rates in some of the ethnic minority groups compared with white British women