Staff Notes Daily Announcements

SPEAKER:       Dr. Jorgen Jensen, RAF Scientist and Lead, Science and Instrumentation Group, NCAR EOL

DATE:               June 2, 2020

TIME:                3:30-4:30 pm MT

WEBCAST:       www.ucar.edu/live?room=fl21022

QUESTIONS:    Email questions during the talk to Uhrike Romatschke: romatsch@ucar.edu

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ABSTRACT

Human exhaled drops (sputum) may originate as lung fluid, phlegm, saliva and nasal fluid. Fundamentally such drops are dilute saline solutions with added protein, lipids, etc. Thus their properties share similarities with atmospheric sea-spray drops, although with a higher organic contribution.

In relation to the current COVID pandemic, two critical areas are: (1) What are the hygroscopic properties of such exhaled drops, over what distances do they evaporate, and what drop sizes can be expected to fall out vs. what drop sizes will remain suspended as aerosol particles, and (2) given that drops will partially or fully evaporate, what are the relative humidity-dependent mechanisms that likely affect virus viability.

This talk examines the chemical composition of such drops, and what likely happens when these exhaled drops partially or completely dry out. This is followed by a discussion of a classical sea-salt aerosol hygroscopicity study and another prior study of hygroscopic measurements of salt solution with bovine protein added (thus resembling human exhaled drops). These two studies, in combination with a very recent MS2 virus viability study, is used to arrive at a threshold for a minimum relative humidity in hospitals, nursing homes, offices, etc., in order to minimize virus viability by natural processes (assuming that COVID and other viruses behave as MS2).

The speaker is not a medical specialist, thus the behavior of human exhaled drops is only approached from an atmospheric science point of view, looking at physical responses of such drops. A set of future experiments will be conducted to quantify hygroscopic properties of human exhaled drops; these will be described in the talk.

UCAR Human Resources is pleased to announce that Kim Carlson, Senior Benefits Specialist, has joined the Benefits team.

Kim is responsible for the administration and oversight of benefits programs including health, dental, vision, COBRA, retirement, employee assistance, dependent care assistance, wellness events, and leave of absence management.

Kim may be reached at 303-497-8726 or kcarlson@ucar.edu.

Homemade Granola

To finish off our week of breakfast foods, here's a simple and healthy recipe that I used to teach kids to make. You can substitute with whatever nuts, seeds, and dried fruit that you like and eat it with yogurt or as a cereal or snack.

Overnight Chia Seed Pudding Breakfast Bowl

This breakfast is super easy and packed with lots of superfoods. Pair it with my recipe for homemade granola or use anything you like really. I use this same mix of toppings and ingredients when eating a bowl of non-dairy yogurt or oatmeal. Enjoy!

Sylvia Ng, Event Services Coordinator

sylviang@ucar.edu

Links to Recipes:

Homemade Granola

Overnight Chia Seed Pudding Breakfast Bowl

Link to Shared Collection of Recipes:

Event Services, What's Cooking?!

Or access them through our UCAR Event Services website here  

“According to the CDC, one in every four Americans is living with a disability… Add in the disabilities that come from aging—such as vision and hearing loss, or cognitive disabilities like dementia—and what soon becomes clear is that on a long enough timeline, accessibility will be important to everyone.” (from “Why Accessibility is the Future of Tech”)

This is why accessibility for websites, digital documents, and videos is critical to ensure everyone in your target audience can perceive, understand, navigate, and engage with your message—and ultimately, to increase the reach of NCAR science.

If you’re a creator, designer, developer, or manager of web content, this series of online courses (available for free through Workday Learning) is for you. As you start thinking about your next set of performance goals, consider improving your web design and development skills with accessibility practices. These courses (details below) make it easy!

Want to better understand the web accessibility challenges experienced by people with disabilities? The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)—an effort led by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which develops international standards for web accessibility—has a series of accessibility perspective videos (approx. 8 minutes total) to help with this, and also demonstrate the benefits of web accessibility practices for all users. This video series is a great supplement to the following Website Accessibility Courses offered through Workday Learning:

WORKDAY WEB ACCESSIBILITY COURSES

Using Accessibility to Improve SEO

• 149 minutes
• For web content creators and developers, or anyone who creates web content via HTML, including text and images.

Accessibility for Web Design

• 124 minutes
• For anyone who designs or develops websites, this course has sections broken out by topic such as color contrast, content headings, video/audio, forms, etc.

UX Foundations: Accessibility

• 80 minutes
• For anyone who designs, develops, or otherwise determines features of any interface that people interact with, including user researchers, content providers, information architects, designers, and developers. This course covers what the designer needs to make explicit to help the developer ensure accessibility.

Stay tuned to Staff Notes Daily for details about additional courses related to document and video accessibility. Questions? Contact the Web Accessibility Team at web-accessibility@ucar.edu.