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Parcel-level risk (PLR) describes how wildfire risk varies from home to home based on characteristics that relate to likely fire behavior, the susceptibility of homes to fire, and the ability of firefighters to safely access properties. Here, we describe the WiRē Rapid Assessment (RA), a parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessment tool designed to evaluate PLR with a small set of measures for all homes in a community. We investigate the relationship between 2019 WiRē RA data collected in the Columbine Lake community in Grand County, Colorado, and whether assessed homes were destroyed in the 2020 East Troublesome Fire. We find that the overall parcel-level risk scores, as well as many individual attributes, relate to the chance that a home was destroyed. We also find strong evidence of risk spillovers across neighboring properties. The results demonstrate that even coarsely measured RA data capture meaningful differences in wildfire risk across a community. The findings also demonstrate the importance of accounting for multiple aspects of PLR, including both hazards and susceptibility, when assessing the risk of wildfire to homes and communities. Finally, the results underscore that relatively small actions by residents before a fire can influence wildfire outcomes.

Private actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change may have benefits to both the individual and society. In some cases, an individual may be motivated by appeals that highlight benefits to others, rather than to oneself. We test whether such prosocial framing influences information-seeking behavior to address wildfire risk among homeowners. In a field experiment across ten communities in western Colorado, property owners (n = 2977) received a postcard from their local fire department highlighting the impact of risk mitigation to either “your property” (private benefits) or “our community” (social benefits). The postcard directed recipients to visit a personalized webpage on wildfire risk. Overall, 10.5% of property owners visited their personalized risk webpage. There was little difference in webpage visitation between those who received the social (11.3%) rather than the private (9.7%) benefits message (χ2 = 1.74, p = 0.19). However, response may depend on a property owner’s relationship to the community. Those who reside within the community (as opposed to out-of-town owners) or who were in an evacuation zone during a recent wildfire were more likely to visit their webpages after receiving the social benefits message. How homeowners view their contributions to shared risk and whether simple changes in messaging influence prosocial behavior can inform efforts to address climate-exacerbated hazards.

Private landowners are important actors in landscape-level wildfire risk management. Accordingly, wildfire programs and policy encourage wildland–urban interface homeowners to engage with local organizations to properly mitigate wildfire risk on their parcels. We investigate whether parcel-level wildfire risk assessment data, commonly used to inform community-level planning and resource allocation, can be used to “nudge” homeowners to engage further with a regional wildfire organization. We sent 4564 households in western Colorado a letter that included varying combinations of risk information about their community, their parcels, and their neighbors’ parcels, and we measured follow-up visits to a personalized “Web site”. We find that the effect of providing parcel-specific information depends on baseline conditions: Informing homeowners about their property’s wildfire risk increases information-seeking among homeowners of the highest-risk parcels by about 5 percentage points and reduces information-seeking among homeowners of lower-risk parcels by about 6 percentage points. Parcel-specific information also increases the overall response in the lowest risk communities by more than 10 percentage points. Further, we find evidence of a 6-percentage point increase in response rate associated with receiving a social comparison treatment that signals neighboring properties as being either low or moderate risk on average. These results, especially considered against the 13 percent overall average response rate, offer causal evidence that providing parcel-specific wildfire risk information can influence behavior. As such, we demonstrate the effectiveness of simple outreach in engaging wildland–urban interface homeowners with wildfire risk professionals in ways that leverage existing data.

The role of social determinants of health is becoming increasingly studied in orthopedic diseases. In adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), patients with public insurance have been shown to have larger Cobb angles, longer waits for surgery, and longer hospitalizations, although the literature is conflicting. We do not yet know how insurance type is associated with patient quality of life (QOL) in AIS patients who require surgical management. This retrospective cohort study was conducted among AIS patients surgically managed with posterior spinal fusion (PSF). The primary independent variable was insurance type, classified as public or private. For patient-reported outcomes, we used the Scoliosis Research Society Patient Outcome Questionnaires, which synthesizes patient responses into scores for pain, mental health, self-image, functioning, satisfaction, and total QOL. Patients completed surveys throughout the preoperative and postoperative periods.  Among 263 patients who underwent PSF, 188 (71%) were publicly insured and 75 (29%) were privately insured. Between groups, significant differences were noted for race (P<0.001) and ethnicity (P = 0.01), but no other demographic or preoperative characteristics. Publicly insured patients reported significantly worse preoperative scores for function (3.85 vs 4.11, P = 0.008), pain (3.88 vs 4.31, P = 0.001), self-image (3.18 vs 3.51, P = 0.003), mental health (3.81 vs 4.21, P = 0.002), and total QOL (3.63 vs 3.97, P<0.001). Postoperatively, publicly insured patients continued to report worse scores for pain at six weeks (3.73 vs 3.98, P = 0.03) and six months (4.16 vs 4.40, P = 0.04), and worse mental health scores at six weeks (3.97 vs 4.23, P = 0.03), six months (4.06 vs 4.30, P = 0.05), and one year (4.04 vs 4.36, P = 0.03). Publicly insured patients were found to have worse QOL metrics in nearly all domains prior to surgery and for pain and mental health after surgery. Equalization of function, self-image, and total QOL metrics postoperatively suggests that access to appropriate surgical interventions may help mitigate some, but not all, of these preoperative differences. This study provides Level III evidence, based on a retrospective cohort design.

Supporting Diversity in Teams Through Asset Mapping

Severe obesity (SevO) is a primary driver of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), cardiometabolic diseases (CMD) and several cancers, with a disproportionate impact on marginalized populations. SevO is an understudied global health disease, limiting knowledge about its mechanisms and impacts. In genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analyses of the tail end of the BMI distribution (≥95 th percentile BMI) and two SevO phenotypes [Obesity Class III BMI ≥ 40 kg/m 2 and Obesity Class IV BMI ≥ 50 kg/m 2 ] in 159,359 individuals across eleven ancestrally diverse population-based studies followed by replication in 480,897 individuals across six ancestrally diverse studies, we identified and replicated three novel signals in known loci of BMI [ TENM2 , PLCL2 , ZNF184 ], associated with SevO traits. We confirmed a large overlap in the genetic architecture of continuous BMI and severe obesity phenotypes, suggesting little genetic heterogeneity in common variants, between obesity subgroups. Systematic analyses combining functional mapping, polygenic risk scores (PRS), phenome wide association studies (PheWAS) and environmental risk factors further reinforce shared downstream comorbidities associated with continuous measures of BMI and the importance of known lifestyle factors in interaction with genetic predisposition to SevO. Our study expands the number of SevO signals, demonstrates a strong overlap in the genetic architecture of SevO and BMI and reveals a remarkable impact of SevO on the clinical phenome, affording new opportunities for clinical prevention and mechanistic insights.

Authentic engineering practice is often introduced to students through engineering problem-solving in the classroom. These problems usually have a single, correct answer and fail to guide students’ problem framing against real-world parameters and constraints. In this paper, we present techno-economic modeling as a computer-based pedagogical tool in a sophomore chemical engineering course to connect students’ collective inquiry activities to real-world consequences. Engaging in inquiry with an interactive process modeling tool can help students frame engineering design problems by directing them to explore and consider specific details and how these relate to real problems. This work aligns well with inquiry-based approaches [1] and extends previous work, which focused on students’ exposure to uncertainties in engineering design [2]. We conducted a study to illustrate how a techno-economic modeling tool can be used to enhance engineering reasoning within a collaborative environment. We aimed to answer the following research question: How might techno-economic modeling enhance students’ ability to empathize with the communities for which they design? An algae biofuel design challenge was embedded into the sophomore material and energy balances course (n=75 in 10 teams) at a Hispanic-serving research university in the Southwest US. Wikis were used as a supporting collaborative tool for students to visually and textually report their knowledge and decisions on the three design phases (growth of algal species, harvesting algae from water and extraction of oil from algae) of the challenge. Each team was assigned to investigate the economic feasibility of algal biofuel plant in a specific county. An open coding scheme was developed and used to analyze each teams' work on the economic feasibility of the algae biofuel plant. Descriptive statistics were also used to examine the data collected. Analyses revealed that all student teams investigated the effect of constraints, such as population size and resource availability on design parameters like the choice of carbon dioxide source and biofuel production rate. Teams used cost and environmental impact as critical decision criteria to make informed decisions about the various process technologies. Additionally, we found teams to be attentive to decisions that could adversely affect a community. We found the economic modeling supported the students to engage in design decision making akin to the professional practices of real-life engineers. 1. McElhaney, K.W., Chang, H.-Y. Chiu, J. L., Linn, M.C. (2015) Evidence for effective uses of dynamic visualisations in science curriculum materials, Studies in Science Education. 51:1.49-85

While industry values teamwork and research suggests that diverse teams are more creative [1], there is limited understanding of how to support students to learn to work in such teams. We conducted a design-based research study to investigate how an asset-mapping activity could help team members to value each other’s contributions in chemical engineering design projects. As part of our ongoing effort to redesign the curriculum to better support diverse students to persist in chemical engineering, we have been guided by the notion of building on students’ assets and seeing their potential, rather than focusing on their deficits [2], [3]. We extended this notion by investigating how to help students see the assets they and their teammates bring. We report on student progress in a sophomore-level material and energy balance course (n= 63 in 10 teams) and a capstone chemical engineering design course (n= 53 in 12 teams) at a large, Hispanic-serving research university in the Southwest. The sophomores had prior design experience, as they were in a cohort that began after the curriculum had been redesigned to incorporate design challenges throughout the core chemical engineering coursework. The seniors did not have prior design experience within the curriculum. Both courses stressed the importance of teamwork and engaged students in working on design challenges. Students completed a two-part activity: They first identified their own assets and the assets of their teammates. They were then guided to map the assets across their team members and critically evaluate areas of strength and weakness. To aid them on the second portion, we provided a list of specific skills valued in professional engineering practice. In this paper, we focus on professional communication, project management, and interpersonal / teamwork skills. We collected all student work related to the activity. We developed a coding scheme to analyze the qualitative data and conducted basic statistics (correlations and t-tests) to analyze quantitative data. The two areas that fewer students reported having skills were in project management and communication, particularly communicating outside of engineering. Overall, the sophomores tended to report similar numbers of team members with each professional skill as the seniors. Whereas the seniors could clearly distinguish between the professional skill areas, the sophomores were not adept at this. To understand the impact of the team asset-mapping activity, we compared the sophomores’ scores on items from a peer evaluation conducted twice during the semester. Early in the semester, students tended to report some difficulty managing conflicts related to team tasks, but by the end of the semester, significantly fewer teams did so. We also describe an asset-based modification we made to the teams in the senior capstone class.

Early chemical engineering coursework provides an important foundation in topics such as energy and material balances and a common pedagogical approach to these topics includes providing engineering analysis problems with basic context and a single correct answer. While this approach can help students develop mastery of content, it does not help students develop an understanding of authentic engineering practices, especially design problem framing and solving. Without this aspect, we risk losing students from underrepresented groups in engineering as they are less likely to have engineering relatives and friends who can help them see the real-world relevance of what they are doing in their early coursework. We present a balanced approach to threading a community-based, entrepreneurial design challenge throughout the semester, focused on algal biofuel production. Participants include students (N=126) enrolled in two cohorts of a sophomore-level Chemical Process Calculations course at a large minority-serving research university in the American Southwest. For both cohorts, students worked in teams on homework assignments, and the class met in a learning studio style classroom for three 50-minute lecture sessions and one 50-minute recitation session per week. For the second cohort, we replaced six homework assignments with design challenge assignments; students worked in subteams on one of three production phases (i.e., growth, harvesting, extraction). They developed individual accountability through jigsaw sessions in which they explained their subteam’s work to students from other production phases. They built whole-class consensus through “parley” sessions that involved decision matrices. We describe the design challenge and our study, which investigated the following broad questions: 1) To what extent can a design challenge threaded through a sophomore course provide students with a picture of authentic engineering design practices? 2) How do parley and jigsaw sessions support student learning and engagement in managing the complexity of framing and solving a design challenge? Students completed pre/post assessments of their design experiences, beliefs, self-efficacy and problem framing ability. We video recorded one class session in cohort 1 and four class sessions in cohort 2. We analyzed quantitative data statistically (descriptives, tests of difference, regression) and used interaction analysis for the video records [1]. Students in cohort 2 developed significantly more in their problem framing ability, and still made gains in their content understanding. We found that students were engaged within their table-teams in both cohorts. In cohort 2, we additionally observed students making requests for their colleagues to back their work with citations, arguing from evidence, and making clear connections between engineering content and application. This balanced approach provided all students with opportunities to understand engineering design practices as an iterative process without sacrificing core course content. References 1. Jordan, B. and A. Henderson, Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 1995. 4(1): p. 39-103.

Badges have been used extensively outside of academia to recognize proficiency and goal attainment. The more modern interpretation of this validation system comes in a digital and highly accessible form. Digital badging, sometimes referred to as Microcredentialing, has emerged as a growing trend in higher education as an efficient means for validating and recognizing specific skills and proficiency. Digital badges or other forms of electronic skill verification usually use a secure online platform or repository for authentic display of objective party verification of student competence and related student work. Our program has implemented digital badging to allow students the opportunity to take ownership of and highlight specific skills which are poorly conveyed on a resume, transcript, or graduate school application. Our goal in implementing an undergraduate digital badging program is to recognize students who present a diverse professional skill set beyond the usual focus of course work, since this is typically not recognized and rewarded explicitly. In this way badges present an expertverified means of recognizing students’ professional skills, something industry recruiters and graduate programs greatly value [1]. Beyond these benefits, digital badges have been shown to improve student motivation [2] and can also be used for assessment [3]. The purpose of this extended abstract is to share the process of digital badge implementation in our undergraduate chemical engineering program.