Background: Scientists have amassed a wealth of microbiome datasets making it possible to study microbes in biotic and abiotic systems on a population- or planetary-scale; however, this potential hasn’t been fully realized given that the tools, data sets, and computation are available in diverse repositories and locations. To address this challenge, we developed iMicrobe.us, a community-driven microbiome data marketplace and tool exchange for users to integrate their own data and tools with those from the broader community. Findings: The iMicrobe platform brings together analysis tools and microbiome data sets by leveraging National Science Foundation-supported cyberinfrastructure and computing resources from CyVerse, Agave, and XSEDE. The primary purpose of iMicrobe is to provide users with a freely available, web-based platform to (1) maintain and share project data, metadata, and analysis products, (2) search for related public datasets, and (3) use and publish bioinformatics tools that run on highly-scalable computing resources. Analysis tools are implemented in containers that encapsulate complex software dependencies and run on freely available XSEDE resources via the Agave API which can retrieve datasets from the CyVerse Data Store or any web-accessible location (e.g., FTP, HTTP). Conclusions: iMicrobe promotes data integration, sharing, and community-driven tool development by making open source data and tools accessible to the research community in a web-based platform.

A retrospective validation study was implemented to identify the defining characteristics of the nursing diagnosis Alteration in Comfort-Pain, specifically chest pain. The interventions instituted by coronary care nurses to relieve the chest pain were also explored. Fifty-two records were reviewed. A Demographic Instrument (DI) and Alteration in Comfort-Pain (Chest Pain) Intervention Instrument (ACPII) were developed for the study and the Alteration in Comfort-Pain Assessment Tool for Chest Pain (ACPAT-CP) was revised from the Alteration in Comfort-Pain Assessment Tool (ACPAT) for the study. The three instruments were assessed for content validity and reliability. The critical defining characteristic was determined to be a verbal complaint of chest pain with or without a specific descriptor and nurses made the appropriate nursing diagnosis for chest pain in the majority of the records reviewed. Nursing interventions documented for the relief of chest pain were interdependent interventions, specifically monitoring and an electrocardiogram. The results indicated that there is a need for improved documentation in nurses' notes.

This study was conducted to explore the influence of architecture on emotions and communication. Correlations were proposed between dimensions of affect (pleasure, arousal, dominance) and communication (formality, warmth, privacy, familiarity, constraint, psychological distance) in interaction environments. Hypotheses also proposed that affective and communicative responses would differ for architectural styles as well as for architects and laypeople. Three contemporary styles of architecture (Modern Traditionalism, Deconstructivism, and Post-Modernism) were depicted in photographs of houses. Using written self-report measures, architects and laypeople rated their affective responses and expectations for communication in stimulus houses. Hypotheses were partially confirmed for correlations between affect and communication dimensions. Results also confirmed that different architectural styles are perceived differently in terms of affect response and expectations for communication. No differences, however, were found between architects' and laypeople's perceptions of architecture. Implications of the findings were discussed concerning the impact of architectural style on human communication and behavior.

Summer floods are an important source of sustained streamflow in arid and semi-arid rivers of the American Southwest and Northwest Mexico. The degree to which natural function versus human alterations influence the system is subject to debate. Environmental information in the tree ring cellulose of Populus can be used to investigate the variation in water sources over time in these areas. Past research has shown that streamflow sources in the San Pedro Basin of Arizona vary isotopically between a source water of basin ground water and a summer flood water source. This study uses isotopic analyses of Populus fremontii and atmospheric data in the San Pedro Basin to estimate the water source of the trees and the river water source condition. After analyzing weather data within the basin, an inversion of the Barbour oxygen isotope model using tree ring cellulose isotopes was used to obtain the water source isotopic composition. The variation in water source composition inferred from the model was then compared to the river composition over time. It was initially found that each site’s water source isotopic composition was significantly different from the source water. However, several water source isotopic compositions were found to be more negative than the known basin groundwater signature in each of the study sites. Following sensitivity analyses on various parameters within the model, it was seen that relative humidity has a strong influence on the determination of source water. Therefore, relative humidity must be an accurate measurement and is not considered to be so in this study. Furthermore, in order to understand the degree to which natural function versus human alterations influence the system, older Populus fremontii tree ring isotopes are needed, posing a question regarding the reliability of the species.

An hedonic model of apple prices was developed using data from the three largest producing regions of the United States. Results were used to determine the relative values of selected quality attributes. Specifically, coefficients on the variables produced by the regression represented price premia and discounts for the quality attributes. The variables included in the model were crop year, seasonality, region, variety, size, grade, storage, and a variable designed to measure the impact of the Alar scare on the 1988 crop of Red Delicious apples. Three models were developed. Model I utilized a linear functional form; Model II utilized a log-linear functional form; and Model III utilized a linear functional form with real price as the dependent variable. The results of Model I were used in the final analysis. It was found that size, grade, storage, and seasonality had consistent relationships to the price of an apple. The findings are applied to the Arizona apple industry.