Background UW Medicine was one of the first health systems to encounter and treat COVID-19 patients in the United States, starting in late February 2020. Objective Here we describe the rapid rollout of capabilities by UW Medicine Information Technology Services (ITS) to support our clinical response to the COVID-19 pandemic and provide recommendations for health systems to urgently consider, as they plan their own response to this and potentially other future pandemics. Methods Our recommendations include establishing a hospital incident command structure that includes tight integration with IT, creating automated dashboards for incident command, optimizing emergency communication to staff and patients, and preparing human resources, security, other policies, and equipment to support the transition of all nonessential staff to telework. We describe how UW Medicine quickly expanded telemedicine capabilities to include most primary care providers and increasing numbers of specialty providers. We look at how we managed expedited change control processes to quickly update electronic health records (EHR) with new COVID-19 laboratory and clinical workflows. We also examine the integration of new technology such as tele-intensive care (ICU) equipment and improved integration with teleconferencing software into our EHR. To

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This study assesses the water repellency (WR) of aggregated oil sand material (AOSM) from the Athabasca region, Canada, and evaluates the onion-skin weathering hypothesis, which postulates that with increasing depth into the soil profile or into individual AOSM samples, the exposure to and extent of weathering of AOSM decreases and petroleum hydrocarbon (PHC) content and WR increase. WR and PHC content were determined for outer and inner portions of AOSM from depths of 15-200 cm. Results show AOSM displays a wide range of WR, in terms of both contact angle (CA) (0° to 129°) and water drop penetration time (WDPT) (0 to > 3600 s). As salvage depth or depth into AOSM increases, PHC content and WR increase, confirming onion-skin weathering. These findings imply the benefit of discreet salvaging into separate layers, as opposed to composite salvaging of shallow and deep soils. Deep materials, which contain relatively high PHC contents, can be salvaged and replaced as deep layers to avoid the excessive drying and expression of WR which may occur in the near-surface. By controlling the location of AOSM within the soil profile, water storage in the rooting zone may be increased, allowing the establishment of relatively productive ecosystems.

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Abstract. Modeling water stable isotope transport in soil is crucial to sharpen our understanding of water cycles in terrestrial ecosystems. However, isotope and soil water transport are not fully coupled in current models. In this study, we developed MOIST: a MATLAB-based one-dimensional isotope and soil water transport model, a program that solves one-dimensional water, heat, and isotope transport equations simultaneously. Results showed that the MOIST model has good agreements to the theoretical tests and semi-analytical solutions of isotope transport under fixed boundary conditions. Furthermore, we validated the program with short- and long-term measurements from lysimeters studies. The overall Nash-Sutcliff efficiency coefficient (NSE) of soil water and deuterium (2H) transport for the short-term measurements are 0.66 and 0.69, respectively, with respective determine coefficient (R2) of 0.82 and 0.70, mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.02 m3 m-3 and 11.84 ‰. For the long-term lysimeter study, the overall NSE, R2, and MAE of simulated δ18O are 0.47, 0.49, and 0.92 ‰, respectively. These indices indicated the excellent performance of the MOIST model in simulating water flow and isotope transport in simplified ecosystems, suggesting a great potential of our program in promoting understandings of ecohydrological processes in terrestrial ecosystems.

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