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My Turn is software used to manage several Covid-19 mass vaccination campaigns in California. The objective of this article is to describe the use of My Turn at two points of dispensing in California and comment on process improvements to reduce manual tasks of six identified processes of vaccination–registration, scheduling, administration, documentation, follow-up, and digital vaccine record–and paper. We reviewed publicly available documents of My Turn and patients vaccinated at George R. Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco and Oakland Coliseum Community Vaccination Clinic. For publicly available documents of My Turn, we examined videos of My Turn on YouTube, and documentation from EZIZ, the website for the California Vaccines for Children Program. For patients, we examined publicly available vaccination record cards on Instagram and Google. At the George R. Moscone Convention Center, 329,608 vaccines doses were given. At the Oakland Coliseum Community Vaccination Clinic, more than 500,000 vaccine doses were administered. The use of My Turn can be used to reduce manual tasks and paper for mass vaccinating patients against Covid-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  In temperate climates, female paper wasps typically initiate new colonies in the spring. Several nest-founding tactics have been documented in Polistes species, including solitary nest initiation, joining a cooperative association, usurping an existing nest, or adopting an abandoned nest. Occasionally, exceptionally large groups of females have also been found reusing nests from the previous season. Here we report this phenomenon in introduced populations of the Eurasian species Polistes dominulus. We describe in detail the demographic and genetic characteristics of one such spring colony from Los Angeles, California, USA, which was collected with 84 associated adults and all stages of developing brood in its 613 cells. Genetic and morphological data indicate the presence of multiple reproductively active females of varying relatedness, as well as many nonbreeding females, including probable early-produced offspring. Despite some evidence of chaotic social conditions, the colony appeared to have been highly productive. Additional observations of similar colonies are needed to determine how control is maintained within such a large breeding aggregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric rivers (ARs), responsible for extreme weather conditions, are mid-latitude systems that can cause significant damage to coastal areas. While forecasting ARs beyond two weeks remains a challenge, past research suggests potential benefits may come from properly accounting for the changes in sea surface temperature (SST) through air–sea interactions. In this paper, we investigate the impact of ARs on SST over the North Pacific by analyzing 25 years of ocean reanalysis data using an SST budget equation. We show that in the region of strong ocean modification, ocean dynamics can offset over 100% of the anomalous SST warming that would otherwise arise from atmospheric forcing. Among all ocean processes, ageostrophic advection and vertical mixing (diffusion and entrainment) are the most important factors in modifying the SST tendency response. The SST tendency response to ARs varies spatially. For example, in coastal California, the driver of enhanced SST warming is the reduction in ageostrophic advection due to anomalous southerly winds. Moreover, there is a large region where the SST shows a warming response to ARs due to the overall reduction in the total clouds and subsequent increase in total incoming shortwave radiation. Strong air-sea interactions during atmospheric rivers often lead to modest upper ocean heat changes. The authors show that interior ocean dynamics are compensating for these air-sea exchanges. These findings can help improve subseasonal forecasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Counting papers and citations is one way to estimate the significance of particular astronomical telescopes and other facilities in the long time gap between the verdict of history and the referee’s report on your most recent proposal. This has been done for 2,184 observational astronomy papers published between 1960 and 1964 (with 14,237 citations in 1965–1969) and the numbers looked at in various ways. The extreme dominance of California in optical astronomy and of the UK and Australia in radio astronomy provides the background against which ESO, NOAO, NRAO, and A&A were founded, with equality of access to facilities having increased enormously in the intervening 40 years, but inequality of results having increased slightly. A number of other factoids about astronomical publications, the community, and their environments surfaced during the counting process, and a subset reported here, including a few pertaining to the more distant past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the emergence of two well-defined peaks during the morning peak period in the traffic flow diurnal curve. It selects six California cities as research targets, and uses California employment and household travel survey data to explain how and why this phenomenon has risen during the pandemic. The final result explains that the double-humped phenomenon results from the change in the composition of commuters during the morning peak period after the outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In an effort to address persistent inequities in maternal and infant health, policymakers and advocates have pushed to expand access to doula care. Several states, including California, now cover doula services through Medicaid. As coverage expands, research on the impact of doula care will likely increase. To develop best practices for research, it is critical to engage community doulas, clients, and other key stakeholders. Description: Our overarching goal was to build capacity for future doula- and client-centered research on community doula care. First, we established a Steering Committee with members from seven relevant stakeholder groups: community doulas, former or potential doula clients, clinicians, payers, advocates, researchers, and public health professionals. Second, we conducted a needs assessment to identify and understand stakeholders' needs and values for research on community doula care. Findings from the needs assessment informed our third step, conducting a research prioritization to develop a shared research agenda related to community doula care with the Steering Committee. We adapted the Research Prioritization by Affected Communities protocol to guide this process, which resulted in a final list of 21 priority research questions. Lastly, we offered a training to increase capacity among community doulas to engage in research on community doula care. Assessment: Our findings provide direction for those interested in conducting research on doula care, as well as policymakers and funders. Conclusion: The findings of our stakeholder-engaged process provide a roadmap that will lead to equity-oriented research centering clients, doulas, and their communities. Significance: What is Already Known on this Subject?: Doula care is often cited as a cost-effective intervention to improve maternal and infant health and health care experiences. However, research that focuses on the community-based model of doula care is limited. What this Study Adds?: This paper describes a stakeholder-engaged process that identified important understudied research questions about community doula care. Researchers can further refine these questions to conduct partnered research with multiple stakeholder groups, including community doulas, former or potential doula clients, clinicians, payers, advocates, and public health professionals. Further, this paper outlines best practices for research on community doula care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of wildfire incidents affecting communities in Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) areas has been rapidly increasing. Understanding the fire spread between structures and evaluation of the response of the communities to the possible wildfire scenarios are crucial for proper risk management in the existing and future communities. This paper discusses a stochastic methodology to evaluate the community's response to potential wildfire scenarios. The methodology has three primary features: (1) it is based on stochastic modeling of fire spread; (2) it breaks the wildfire incident into two consecutive segments: spread inside the wildland and spread inside the community; (3) it integrates the two spread models in the form of a conditional probability. The paper focuses on fire spread inside the community and applies the proposed methodology to two case studies in California, US. The two case studies demonstrate variations in fire spread within the communities for the given fire scenarios approaching from the wildland. The performance of communities is characterized using cumulative distribution functions of the number of ignited buildings over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the two papers which were linked to an extortion attempt and originated from the laboratory of Peter Schultz, a prominent chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, San Diego, California. The papers claimed to describe the successful incorporation of amino acids linked to sugars at specific positions in proteins made by the bacterium Escherichia coli. Related issues are further discussed.

Parking supply is one of the most neglected elements of the built environment in travel behavior research, despite evidence linking parking with vehicle use. As transportation impacts of new development are increasingly measured by vehicle miles traveled (VMT), explicitly connecting parking characteristics with vehicle travel is necessary to better inform transportation and land use policy. In this paper, we begin to address this research gap and explore the relationship between constrained parking and household VMT. Utilizing the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) California add-on sample, we estimate residential parking constraint for households in Los Angeles County. Then, we develop a two-level model framework. Level 1 (Cost) models estimate travel costs, represented by vehicle ownership as a function of parking constraints, the built environment, and demographics. Level 2 (Demand) models regress household-level total and homebased-work VMT on predicted vehicle ownership, controlling for temporal and environmental characteristics. To further explore the relationship between parking and VMT by place type, we applied Level 1 and Level 2 models to develop a suite of scenarios for typical households in Los Angeles County. Our findings support the hypothesis that the built environment (including parking) influences VMT through travel costs (vehicle ownership). Results from scenarios analysis reveal constrained on-site residential parking (< 1 parking space per dwelling unit), accounts for an approximate 10–23 percentage-point decrease in VMT within each place type. Finally, implications for practice and future research are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the capacity animals and plant to shift with the changing climates and habitats. Plants and animals tend to shift with the changes at a phenomenal speed, according to global ecologist Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California. While Carnegie postdoc Scott Loarie said that species who are used to the tropics tend to prefer continuous forests, than forest fragments.

The article discusses the introduction of near-field imaging to electron microscopy to develop real-time movies of nanometre-sized structures by Ahmed Zewail and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The dubbed photon-induced near-field electron microscopy (PINEM) technique has the ability to alter the way scientists examine the nanoworld. Zewail mentions how his team work hard to discover fields of electrons within the nanostructures.

The article reports on the move of geologist Taylor Perron and his colleagues Jim Kirchner and Bill Dietrich at University of California, Berkeley, to examine how erosional processes create uniform patterns of landscapes. They compare a computational model with precise measurements of various landscapes. Moreover, it reveals that having developed a computational model that accurately predicts the natural patterns in landscapes, geologists can learn how factors have shaped Earth's topography.

The article reports on the breakthrough in stem cell research in Japan in 2006 and the efforts of various scientists worldwide in testing the cells in 2009. According to the Japanese research, induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells were produced when mouse skin cells return to an embryonic cell through manipulation. It cites that scientist Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte and his colleagues in California, has successfully generated iPS cells from skin cells of a patient with Fanconi anaemia.

The article profiles Phil Baran, a researcher and author for the journal "Nature Chemical Biology." It states the Baran is also an organic chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. According to the article, since he was called up to work on the review of the terpenes, he agreed to do the task and developed his knowledge in terpene field. Further information on the researches of Baran related to chemical synthesis is presented.

The article elaborates on the study conducted by Charles Cobb, a neurosurgeon at the California Pacific Medical Center, in San Francisco, California. Aside from practicing his profession, he is also a virus hunter, Since 1998, he studied on whether viruses have an association with brain tumours. He and his co-authors discovered that the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) needs a particular cellular receptor, normally involved in growth-factor signaling, to infect a type of cancer cell in the brain. He found out that this type of virus causes defects at birth and fatal diseases in immunocompromised people, especially patients with AIDS. People who are infected with the virus is associated with the occurrence of glioma, an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer that is difficult to treat.

The article discusses the success of Erica Ollmann Saphire, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and her team in winning the race on providing a picture of how the deadly Ebola virus evades the immune system and enter cells. The move was risky and the work was long and difficult. It took them over four years to express 130 versions of the Ebola virus glycoprotein, grow and test crystal diffractions. The team found out that the virus can lie in wait for years. Saphire and her colleagues managed to solve the structure of an infection-blocking antibody bound to a viral protein, revealing a possible defence against the virus.

The article focuses on the effort of Douglas Hofmann to produce a new class of resistive bulk metallic glasses. In 2003, he studied the materials engineering program together with his college teacher William Johnson at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in California. He further knew the concept of ductility to the glasses. He decided to apply the induction coil, an instrument which conducts heat over a lower range of temperature. Based on the subsequent analysis, he learned that two phases are formed when the glass composites are heated in the temperature range above the melting point of glass and below the dendrite's temperature.

The article responds to comments on the study "Evolution of Tidal Creek Networks in a High Sedimentation Environment: A 5-year Experiment at Tijuana Estuary, California," which appeared in a 2005 issue of the periodical. The authors restate the purposes of the study which include to test the need to excavate creeks during salt marsh restoration. They respond to Gregory Hood's comment that the study design suffers from pseudoreplication.

The article provides information on the research of neuroscientist Gilles Laurent of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, using locust as a model in experimenting the neural mechanisms of insects use to learn odors. He chose the locust as a model of his study in which he first began studying insect olfaction because it was a good way of tracing circuit function and neural computation in the brain. Meanwhile, the article also discusses the detailed experimental design and the results of the study.

The article focuses on Lawrence Steinman, a neurologist from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California who studied the role of protein αB-crystallin (CRYAB), an eye lens protein in the neurological disease multiple sclerosis. The work of Steinman distinguished CRYAB as a central agent in controlling inflammation and programmed cell death in the brain. Steinman's team has also shown that CRYAB likewise tones down many inflammatory pathways and helps in preventing programmed cell death.

The article discusses the study on the development of ciliated cells in the skin of the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis by Chris Kintner, a molecular neurobiologists, and his team in California. It is stated that the group observed that Xenopus embryos tended to float at the bottom of the culture media because of the cilia on the skin cells. The group realized that when cilia first form on cells in Xenopus skin, they tend to point towards the tail.

The article analyzes the missing link between T lymphocytes and psoriasis. The observations of Immunologist Yan Zheng and his colleagues at the company Genentech in San Francisco, California are discussed in detail. An overview of the cause for the white cell infiltration into the skin and the role of IL-22 in causing the disease of psoriasis, through experimentation on mice, is presented. The article also presents the observations of Wenjun Ouyang on TH 17 and T22 to find the missing link.

The article describes how Jay Keasling, a synthetic chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his team have engineered yeast cells to produce an important precursor for a drug to treat malaria. Keasling collaborated with Amyris Biotechnologies and non-profit drug company Institute for OneWorld Health to try to complete the synthesis of artemisinin. The research was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The article focuses on the career of Cheng-Ming Chuong, a developmental biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Chuong has interest on how feathers are generated in adult birds. He decided to try to track down the location of stem cells in feathers. Chuong and his team discovered that in flight feathers, the ring of stem cells tilts towards the side where the quill arises. He plans to continue his characterization of feather stem cells.

The use of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) is one of the most successful tools for solving remote sensing problems. The multidimensional speckle noise encountered in the acquisition of these images is the main challenge for PolSAR users. Therefore, tailored processing of PolSAR images is required, especially for the use of hypothesis testing in change detection. In this paper, we use McKay's bivariate gamma distribution (MBG) to describe a joint distribution resulting from two components of the total scattering power image (SPAN). We derive closed form expressions for the MBG Kullback–Leibler and Rényi divergences between SPAN-based random pairs. We provide new two-sample divergence-based hypothesis tests and evaluate their performance using Monte Carlo experiments. Finally, we apply the new tests to real PolSAR images to evaluate the changes caused by urbanization processes in the Los Angeles and California regions. The results show that our proposals are able to detect changes in PolSAR images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether shocks in oil prices affect the level of crime in Kern County, California's top oil producing county. Monthly data from 2003 to 2018 is employed using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model to test the asymmetric effects of these changes. Results for Kern County indicate that in the long-run, a negative shock in oil prices increases criminal activity while short-run oil price changes have no effect on criminal activity. Results from neighboring counties indicate that positive shocks to oil prices increase criminal activity in wealthy regions. Findings from generalized impulse response functions indicate that criminal activity in Los Angeles, Kings and San Bernardino Counties respond to shocks from Kern County's crime rates. They also indicate that criminal activity in Inyo and Los Angeles Counties influence Kern County's crime rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of sediment for helping coastal habitats and infrastructure respond to sea level rise is widely recognized. Across the country, coastal managers are seeking ways to beneficially use sediment sourced from dredging and other projects to counter coastal erosion and protect coastal resources. However, these projects are difficult to permit and have been slow to actualize. This paper draws on interviews with sediment managers and regulators in California to explore the challenges and opportunities for habitat restoration and beach nourishment within the current permitting regime. We find that permits are costly, difficult to obtain, and sometimes stand as a barrier to more sustainable and adaptive sediment management. We next characterize streamlining approaches and describe entities and ongoing efforts within California that apply them. Finally, we conclude that to keep pace with coastal losses due to climate change impacts, efforts toward efficient permitting must be accelerated and approaches diversified to support coastal resilience practices state-wide, in a timeframe that will allow coastal managers to innovate and adapt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) is the primary gatekeeper to secure financial aid for college. The federal government instituted two changes to the process in 2017, commonly known as "prior-prior year" FAFSA: (1) an earlier start date that lengthens the filing period and (2) the ability to use completed taxes from the prior calendar year. This paper uses descriptive statistics to examine resulting changes in application filing behavior in California. Students submitted their FAFSA substantially earlier and refiling rates increased among independent students in the policy year. Although these changes may have reduced the burden of applying, the earlier submissions did not appear to substantially alter state aid receipt or postsecondary attendance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gradual loss of water resource in the Salton Sea has got much attention from researchers recently for its damage to the local environment and ecosystems for human beings, animals and plants. To monitor the water resource of the lake, researchers usually obtain certain water resource indices manually from databases such as the satellite images of the region. In this paper, we develop a new method to monitor the area of the Salton Sea automatically. By this method, the lake boundary is first segmented from each satellite image by an image segmentation procedure, and then its area is computed by a numerical algorithm. The sequence of lake areas computed from satellite images taken at different time points is then monitored by a control chart from the statistical process control literature. Because the lake area changes gradually over time, the control chart designed for detecting process mean drifts is used here for the water resource surveillance application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This second special issue of the Grape Remote sensing Atmospheric Profile and Evapotranspiration eXperiment (GRAPEX) further advances and expands upon the initial research findings of the first GRAPEX special issue on the measurement and remote sensing of vine water use and stress. This is a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary experiment, which involves USDA-ARS scientists, industry, and university researchers. The large scope of this research has allowed the development of new measurement and remote sensing tools and techniques to quantify vine evapotranspiration, moisture status, and stress, with the ultimate goal of improving irrigation management in California vineyards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although widely acknowledged as an important social determinant of health, until recently researchers and policymakers have primarily approached housing insecurity as an urban issue, obscuring the visibility of its impacts in rural contexts, including the ways in which housing insecurity intersects with other health and structural inequities facing rural populations. Working to address this gap in the existing literature, this paper explores the experiences of housing insecurity in a rural context by reporting on an analysis of 210 in-depth interviews with 153 adults between the ages of 18–35, living in California's rural North State, a relatively overlooked far northern region of the state comprised of 12 north central and north eastern counties. Using in-depth qualitative interview data, we conducted an exploratory pattern-level analysis of participants' narratives structured by four dimensions of housing insecurity defined in the literature (housing affordability, housing stability, housing conditions, and neighborhood context). Drawing attention to the pervasiveness of rural housing insecurity within our sample, this analysis highlights the unique ways in which rurality creates distinct experiences not currently captured in the existing literature. Further research is needed across different types of rural communities to better understand the various ways that housing insecurity affects the everyday lives and health of rural residents. By grounding research within the experiences of rural residents, we are better able to respond to the crisis of rural housing insecurity and develop solutions that are tailored to rural residents' unique needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalating challenges of waste management and the increasing demand for sustainable construction practices have spurred growing attention to the innovative use of waste materials in various construction applications. Past studies reveal that the incorporation of waste materials into construction processes has contributed to environmental sustainability by reducing the burden on landfills and conserving natural resources. This paper explores the diverse range of waste materials being re-purposed in construction, including, agricultural residues of rice husk called rice husk ash and industrial by-products from brick kilns called brick kiln dust (BKD). Various laboratory tests including differential free swell, Atterberg's limits, modified Proctor, unconfined compressive strength, and California bearing ratio, were performed on black cotton soil (BCS) alone and in combination with varying percentages of rice husk ash and brick kiln dust. Additionally, the thickness of the flexible pavement was evaluated for various optimum combinations based on California bearing ratio values and finally, economic feasibility associated with the use of waste materials was addressed, providing insights into the overall sustainability of such practices. Also, the laboratory test indicates an improvement in the geotechnical characteristics of black cotton soil by adding an optimum amount of RHA (20%) and BKD (15%) alone and in combination with each other. Moreover, the required thickness for the flexible pavement was found to be reduced corresponding to each million standard axels loading conditions. Furthermore, it is evident from the results that the cost of the flexible pavement was substantially reduced for all the optimum mixes and the highest economy of 65% has been achieved corresponding to BCS:RHA:BKD::65:20:15. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of air pollution is one of the hotspots attracting continuous scholarly attention, but the comprehensive statistical and visual analysis reviews are few. Employing the method of bibliometric analysis, this paper took the relevant literature from 1996 to April 2022 on the Web of Science as the research object. Through the methods of keyword co-occurrence analysis and burst analysis, the spatiotemporal evolution trend, cooperation network, outstanding scholars, knowledge base, and research focus of air pollution impact research are visually presented. Via constructing a common word matrix of high-frequency words, clustering analysis is used to aggregate high-frequency keywords into 24 clusters. By the strategic coordinate analysis method, the relationships within and between clusters were revealed. The main findings include (1) research on the impact of air pollution mainly focusing on human health; (2) the six keywords with the highest centrality are California, hydrocarbons, dioxide, generation, Asia, and diesel; (3) these 11 clusters may be developed into future research hotspots: particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, mortality, ozone, pollution, air quality, asthma, children, epidemiology, aerosols, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; and (4) seven topics are research hot: daily mortality, long-term exposure, coronary heart disease, concentration, North China plain, traffic-related air pollution, and air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strandings have been extensively documented for large mammals, however, a comprehensive survey focusing on batoids is currently lacking. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a review of available stranding data sourced from iNaturalist, news websites, and published papers. A total of 3.148 reports encompassing 189 batoid species were recovered, revealing the vulnerability of both oceanic and coastal species to strandings. Nevertheless, limited data on life stage, sex, animal condition, and fate hinder a comprehensive understanding of this phenomenon. Putative causes were identified only for a small percentage (6%) of the reports, namely pollution, abrupt environmental alterations, predation, pathologies, and fishing activities. The earliest reported stranding dates back to 1989, with an increase in reports observed since 2019. iNaturalist accounted for the majority (75%) of records, emphasizing its significance as a platform for reporting and monitoring batoid strandings. These strandings were reported in 51 countries, with the coastal areas of California, United States, particularly notable. Among the identified species, Rhinoptera bonasus exhibited the highest number of strandings, with 392 recorded individuals. Alarmingly, more than half of the reports involved threatened species, underscoring the need for increased attention to batoid strandings. To address these issues, we propose the establishment of stranding monitoring networks and the development of a freely accessible global database. In addition, the training of volunteer citizen scientists, the development of rescue and rehabilitation protocols, and manuals of good fishing practices aimed at commercial and recreational fisheries are also recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, California lifted its legal work status requirement for dozens of occupational licenses - a major obstacle for undocumented immigrants in the US to access professional jobs. This paper assesses this policy's effects on the employment outcome of undocumented immigrants in the state. Analyzing likely undocumented immigrants in the American Community Survey, I find that the policy increased their employment, particularly in lower-education and blue-collar licensed occupations and for older and Hispanic workers. The effects were not driven by job switchers but by the unemployed transiting into employment. I also find that the law did not crowd out documented workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports that Agouron Pharmaceuticals, La Jolla, California, has been found guilty of stealing research. Work stolen from Huguette Pelletier when she worked at the University of California at San Diego; Pelletier's work published by Agouron in `Cell'; Decision of a state court jury against Agouron.

This paper underscores the importance of damage assessment and recognizes the direct effect it has on post-disaster response and recovery operations. The paper first explores the literature on this subject, including the history, types, methods, and problems relating to damage assessment. After discussing the employed research methodology, the paper uses the Paso Robles (San Simeon, California) earthquake as a case study to illustrate the challenges and successes with regard to damage assessment. Logistics, politics, information management, coordination, preparedness, and other topics are discussed in this section. The paper concludes with lessons and opportunities for research and its application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Poor communication between referring clinicians and specialists may lead to inefficient use of specialist services. San Francisco General Hospital implemented an electronic referral system (eReferral) that facilitates iterative pre-visit communication between referring and specialty clinicians to improve the referral process.Objective: The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of eReferral (compared with paper-based referrals) on specialty referrals.Design: The study was based on a visit-based questionnaire appended to new patient charts at randomly selected specialist clinic sessions before and after the implementation of eReferral.Participants: Specialty clinicians.Main Measures: The questionnaire focused on the self-reported difficulty in identifying referral question, referral appropriateness, need for and avoidability of follow-up visits.Key Results: We collected 505 questionnaires from speciality clinicians. It was difficult to identify the reason for referral in 19.8% of medical and 38.0% of surgical visits using paper-based methods vs. 11.0% and 9.5% of those using eReferral (p-value 0.03 and <0.001). Of those using eReferral, 6.4% and 9.8% of medical and surgical referrals using paper methods vs. 2.6% and 2.1% were deemed not completely appropriate (p-value 0.21 and 0.03). Follow-up was requested for 82.4% and 76.2% of medical and surgical patients with paper-based referrals vs. 90.1% and 58.1% of eReferrals (p-value 0.06 and 0.01). Follow-up was considered avoidable for 32.4% and 44.7% of medical and surgical follow-ups with paper-based methods vs. 27.5% and 13.5% with eReferral (0.41 and <0.001).Conclusion: Use of technology to promote standardized referral processes and iterative communication between referring clinicians and specialists has the potential to improve communication between primary care providers and specialists and to increase the effectiveness of specialty referrals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideas of the papers in this special section have originally been presented at the first edition of the workshop on Specification and Validation of Real Time and Embedded Systems (SVERTS) that was held as a satellite workshop of the UML 2003 Conference in San Francisco. The motivation for initiating this workshop was the fact that UML started to be used more and more also for modelling real-time and embedded software systems, whereas it was lacking features for appropriately modelling this kind of systems. Another motivation was the fact that UML was missing an accepted dynamic semantics, or at least a framework for defining profiles not just in terms of syntax, but also their semantics. The six papers in this section reflect all parts of this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We compared approaches to recruitment of diverse women with breast cancer in a study designed to collect complex social network data. Methods: We recruited 440 women from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California population newly diagnosed with breast cancer, either in person at a clinic, by email, or by mailed letter. In clinic and mail recruitment, women completed a brief 3-page paper survey (epidemiologic data only), and women had the option to complete a separate, longer (30–40 min) personal social network survey online. In email recruitment, we administered epidemiologic and personal social network measures together in a single online survey. In email and mail recruitment, we limited the sample of non-Hispanic white (NHW) women to 30% of their total. We used descriptive analysis and multinomial logistic regression to examine odds of recruitment vs. mailed letter. Results: Women responded to the social network surveys on average 3.7 months post-diagnosis. Mean age was 59.3 (median = 61.0). In-person clinic recruitment was superior with a 52.1% success rate of recruitment compared with 35.6% by mail or 17.3% by email (χ2 = 65.9, p < 0.001). Email recruitment produced the highest completion rate (82.1%) of personal network data compared with clinic (36.5%) or mail (28.7%), (χ2 = 114.6, p < 0.001). Despite intentional undersampling of NHW patients, response rates for Asian, Hispanic, and Black women by email were lower. However, we found no significant differences in recruitment rates by race and ethnicity for face-to-face clinic recruitment vs. by letter. Letter recruitment produced the highest overall response. Conclusion: Mailed letter was the best approach to representative recruitment of diverse women with breast cancer and collection of social network data, and further yielded the highest absolute response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For evacuations, people must make the critical decision to evacuate or stay followed by a multi-dimensional choice composed of concurrent decisions of their departure time, transportation mode, route, destination, and shelter type. These choices have important impacts on transportation response and evacuation outcomes. While extensive research has been conducted on hurricane evacuation behavior, little is known about wildfire evacuation behavior. To address this critical research gap, particularly related to joint choice-making in wildfires, we surveyed individuals impacted by the 2017 December Southern California Wildfires (n = 226) and the 2018 Carr Wildfire (n = 284). Using these data, we contribute to the literature in two key ways. First, we develop two latent class choice models (LCCMs) to evaluate the factors that influence the decision to evacuate or stay/defend. We find an evacuation keen class and an evacuation reluctant class that are influenced differently by mandatory evacuation orders. This nuance is further supported by different membership of people to the classes based on demographics and risk perceptions. Second, we develop two portfolio choice models (PCMs), which jointly model choice dimensions to assess multi-dimensional evacuation choice. We find several similarities between wildfires including a joint preference for within-county and nighttime evacuations and a joint dislike for within-county and highway evacuations. Altogether, this paper provides evidence of heterogeneity in response to mandatory evacuation orders for wildfires, distinct membership of populations to different classes of people for evacuating or staying/defending, and clear correlation among key wildfire evacuation choices that necessitates joint modeling to holistically understanding wildfire evacuation behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debris flows pose a serious threat to communities in mountainous areas, particularly in the years following wildfire. These events have been widely studied in regions where post-wildfire debris flows have been historically frequent, such as southern California. However, the threat of post-wildfire debris flows is increasing in many regions where detailed data on debris-flow physical properties, volume, and runout potential are sparse, such as the Southwest United States (Arizona and New Mexico). As the Southwest becomes more vulnerable to these hazards, there is an increasing need to better characterize the properties of post-wildfire debris flows in this region and to identify similarities and differences with nearby areas, particularly southern California, where there is a greater abundance of data. In this paper, we study the characteristics and downstream impacts of two post-wildfire debris flows that initiated following the 2021 Flag Fire in northern Arizona, United States. We gathered data regarding soil hydraulic properties, rainfall characteristics, watershed response, and debris-flow initiation, runout, volume, grain size, and downstream impacts during the first two monsoon seasons following the containment of the Flag Fire. We also applied established debris-flow runout and volume models that were developed in southern California to our study watershed and compared the output with observations. In the first monsoon season following the fire, there were two post-wildfire debris flows, one of which resulted in damage to downstream infrastructure, and one major flood event. We found that, while more intense rainfall is required to generate debris flows at our study site compared to southern California, burned watersheds in northern Arizona are still susceptible to debris flows during storms with low recurrence intervals in the first year following fire. During the second monsoon season, there were no major runoff events, despite more intense storms. This indicates that the temporal window for heightened debris-flow susceptibility at our study area was less than one year, due to the recovery of soil hydraulic properties and vegetation regrowth. We also found that the debris-flow properties at our study site, such as volume, mobility, and grain size distribution, may differ from those in other regions in the western United States, including southern California, potentially due to regional differences in rainfall characteristics and sediment supply. Differences in rainfall characteristics and sediment supply may have also influenced the performance of the debris-flow runout and volume models, which overpredicted the observed runout distance by 400 m and predicted a volume more than 17 times greater than what was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In this study, we describe a participatory design process to develop a technology-based intervention for sun protection for children and their parents. Our methodology embraces and leverages the expert knowledge of the target users, children and their parents, about their sun protection practices to directly influence the design of our mobile just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI). The objectives of this paper are to describe our research procedures and summarize primary findings incorporated into developing our JITAI modules. Methods: We conducted 3 rounds of iterative co-design workshops with design expert KidsTeam UW children (N: 11–12) and subject expert children and their parents from local communities in California (N: 22–48). Iteratively, we thematically coded the qualitative data generated by participants in the co-design sessions to directly inform design specifications. Results: Three themes emerged: (1) preference for non-linear educational format with less structure,; (2) situations not conducive for prioritizing sun protection; and (3) challenges, barriers, and ambiguity relating to sun protection to protect oneself and one's family. Based on the design ideas and iterative participant feedback, three categories of modules were developed: personalized and interactive data intake module, narrative-education module with augmented reality experiment, person/real-time tailored JITAI, and assessment modules. Conclusions: This is one of the first projects that maximally engage children and parents as co-designers to build a technology to improve sun protection with iterative and intentional design principles. Our scalable approach to design a mobile JITAI to improve sun protection will lay the foundation for future public health investigators with similar endeavors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time series prediction of wind speed has been widely used in wind power generation. The volatility and instability of wind speed have a large negative impact on wind turbines and power systems, which can lead to grid collapse in severe cases. Therefore, accurate wind speed prediction is crucial for wind power generation. In this paper, considering the influence of different parameters on algorithm training and prediction, an improved moth flame optimization algorithm is constructed to optimize the LSTM wind energy prediction system to obtain better performance. The system consists of three modules: data preprocessing, optimization, and prediction. The data preprocessing module uses fuzzy information granulation to blur the input data. On this basis, the combination of swarm intelligent optimization algorithm and prediction model can effectively predict wind speed time series. Taking the California wind farm as an example, the MAPE of the experiment in the short-term forecast is 3.15%, the MAPE of the medium-term forecast is 4.38%, and the MAPE of the long-term forecast is 18.28%. The experimental results show that the proposed model has obvious advantages over the previous model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing solar photovoltaic supply has significantly reshaped energy prices, lowering them during solar generating hours. Large-scale hydropower reservoir operations need to adapt to changes in energy prices to maximize hydropower revenue. This paper evaluates effects of solar generation-changed energy prices on hydropower generation for five multipurpose reservoirs in California using a hydroeconomic optimization model. In California, major solar generation began in 2013, so years 2010–2012 are a pre-solar period, and years 2013–2018 are post-solar. Reservoir operations, hydropower generation and revenue between these periods are compared. Operations in the wet season (January to June), and the dry season (July to December) are evaluated. Results show that releases are more profitable when hydropower is generated twice a day during on-peak hours in the morning and evening in the wet season. When water is scarce, energy is generated only during the higher-price evening peak. Hydropower generation is mostly curtailed between 10am and 6pm due to large solar supplies, and increase during morning and evening peaks when solar generation is unavailable. However, by optimizing hydropower scheduling hours, the new energy price pattern can be more profitable. With increased energy price variability and adaptation, overall daily revenue can increase by about 14% in the wet season and 30% in the dry season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous estimates indicate that COVID-19 led to a large drop in the number of operating businesses operating early in the pandemic, but surprisingly little is known on whether these shutdowns turned into permanent closures and whether small businesses were disproportionately hit. This paper provides the first analysis of permanent business closures using confidential administrative firm-level panel data covering the universe of businesses filing sales taxes from the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. We find large increases in closure rates in the first two quarters of 2020, but a strong reversal of this trend in the third quarter of 2020. The increase in closures rates in the first two quarters of the pandemic was substantially larger for small businesses than large businesses, but the rebound in the third quarter was also larger. The disproportionate closing of small businesses led to a sharp concentration of market share among larger businesses as indicated by the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index with only a partial reversal after the initial increase. The findings highlight the fragility of small businesses during a large adverse shock and the consequences for the competitiveness of markets. Plain English Summary: Small businesses were more likely to close permanently during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic than large businesses. Although they rebounded strongly thereafter, market concentration remains higher than before the pandemic. We obtain these results from analyzing administrative firm-level data covering all businesses filing sales taxes in California. Our analysis contributes to research by demonstrating the fragility of small businesses during a crisis relative to large businesses. Our findings imply that small businesses may need additional support given the trend toward purchases from large online retailers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent scatterer interferometric synthetic aperture radar (PS-InSAR) is a widely used technique for local ground deformation estimation due to its millimetric accuracy and full-resolution results. However, with the enhancement of data acquisition capability of the SAR sensors, larger coverage and higher temporal-spatial resolution of SAR images can cause explosive increase and uneven distribution of PS points. PS network constructed between PSs with different qualities may cause spatial-error propagation. Large PS points list with large amount of data also have high requirements on computing performance and storage space. Those problems can bring big challenge for PS-InSAR technique in processing capacity, deformation monitoring accuracy and algorithm efficiency. In order to effectively overcome those limitations, this paper proposed a novel block PS-InSAR method that uses the approach of partitioning a study area into regular blocks with overlapping regions, selecting a high-quality reference point for each block and eliminating the discontinuity of the parameter calculating results in adjacent blocks by the weighted least square method. We used this approach to analyze ground subsidence in over 13,000 km2 of southern California, and it performed successfully when 69 Sentinel-1 images were used and 21,029,968 PSs were selected. Only approximately 10 h was needed for this experiment. Comparing the deformation rate and time series of the InSAR results with 29 GPS observations, the mean and standard deviation of difference of deformation rate were − 0.63 mm/yr and 1.53 mm/yr, respectively, and the average root mean squared error of deformation time series was 3.7 mm. The experiment demonstrated that this method could achieve high accuracy results without spatial discontinuity and increase the computational efficiency significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-wildfire investigations of structures provide engineers with data to understand how to harden building infrastructure for future wildfire hazards. This paper presents a preliminary framework where field-collected LiDAR and drone data is integrated with numerical models for post-wildfire assessment of buildings with the goal of learning from wildfire-damaged buildings. The developed framework provides a new and novel approach for post-wildfire instigations of buildings using field-collected data, particularly LiDAR and drone data. This framework is demonstrated on a metal-framed school building in Paradise, California that was heavily damaged in the 2018 Camp Fire. The authors collected drone aerial images and light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scans of Achieve Charter High School after the 2018 Camp Fire. All data were used to create a system-level finite element model to simulate the fire behavior of a portal frame with non-prismatic members. A parametric study was performed with three typical compartment fires to examine the influence of building characteristics on the fire's maximum temperature and duration. Several time–temperature (T–t) curves, representing different fire scenarios, were generated between the two extreme cases produced by the parametric study. Finally, the finite element model was subjected to the generated fire curves, and the results were compared with the measured deformations from the LiDAR data collected in the field. The finite element model, subjected to each fire Time–temperature curve scenario, simulated global deformations within 2% of the true deformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]