Libraries deploying the LibQUAL+™ survey can offer a lottery incentive and many do in the hope of increasing response rates. Other libraries may be prohibited from offering one because of Institutional Review Board restrictions, as is the case at [institution name]. We wanted to discover why libraries offer lottery incentives...
Myxozoans are a group of diverse, spore-forming metazoan microparasites bound to aquatic environments. Sphaerospora dykovae (previously S. renicola) causes renal sphaerosporosis and acute swim bladder inflammation (SBI) in juvenile Cyprinus carpio carpio, in central Europe. A morphologically similar species with comparably low pathogenicity, S. angulata has been described from C....
Plant wax lipids and lignin phenols are the two most common classes of molecular markers that are used to trace vascular plant-derived OM in the marine environment. However, their ¹³C and ¹⁴C compositions have not been directly compared, which can be used to constrain the flux and attenuation of terrestrial...
Complex conceptual system design trade studies
traditionally consider risk after a conceptual design has
been created. Further, one person is often tasked with
collecting risk information and managing it from each
subsystem. This paper proposes a method to explicitly
consider and trade risk on the same level as other important...
The Atlantic deep sea red crab (Chaceon quinquedens) is the target of a small, directed fishery in the Northeast US, which has been managed using total allowable annual catches (TACs) at the fleet level since 2002. Although not a catch share fishery, it shares many of the same features, behaviors,...
The case study, Implications of Energy Density on Weight Loss, examined the relationship between the consumption of energy dense foods such as whole fruits, whole vegetables and fiber with weight loss. The case study examined four participants from the LITEN Up study, which focused on the effects of a diet...
A statistical analysis technique for estimating bit-error rate (BER) and eye
opening is presented for both NRZ and duobinary signaling schemes. This method
enables fast and accurate BER distribution simulation of a serial link transceiver
including channel and circuit imperfections, such as finite pulse rise/fall time, duty cycle
variation, and...
Snags (standing dead trees) are an essential structural component of forests. Because wildlife use of snags depends on size and decay stage, snag density estimation without any information about snag quality attributes is of little value for wildlife management decision makers. Little work has been done to develop models that...
While the d⁰ transition-metal POMs of Group V (V⁵⁺, Nb⁵⁺, Ta⁵⁺) and Group VI (Mo⁶⁺, W⁶⁺) have been known for more than a century, the actinyl peroxide POMs, specifically those built of uranyl triperoxide or uranyl dihydroxidediperoxide polyhedra, were only realized within the last decade. While virtually every metal on...
Estimation of belowground carbon stocks in tropical wetland forests requires funding for laboratory analyses and suitable facilities, which are often lacking in developing nations where most tropical wetlands are found. It is therefore beneficial to develop simple analytical tools to assist belowground carbon estimation where financial and technical limitations are...
The productivity and resilience of fisheries are subject to a multitude of dynamic and interrelated influences that arise from complex coupling of fish populations with the natural and human systems of which they are a part. With few exceptions, fisheries are managed independently, ignoring important natural and human linkages among...
Crack bridging is an important source of crack propagation resistance in many materials and the bridging stress distribution as a function of crack opening displacement is widely believed to represent a true material property uninfluenced by sample geometry, loading conditions, and other extrinsic factors. Accordingly, accurate measurement of the bridging...
Given two rational maps φ and ψ on Ρ¹ of degree at least two, we study a symmetric, nonnegative real-valued pairing〈φ, ψ〉which is closely related to the canonical height functions hφ and hψ associated to these maps. Our main results show a strong connection between the value of〈φ, ψ〉and the...
The Icelandic fisheries management system has always been controversial in Iceland. In the wake of the force of the financial crisis that hit Iceland the political debate has become increasingly emotional and heated. In this debate a rational understanding of the fisheries management system‚ aims and efficiency has lacked. Previous...
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an exclusive review framework for Performance Prism.
Design/methodology/approach - An extensive literature survey on performance measurement is used to identify the main aspects of the review in such systems. Various dimensions related to the characteristics of Performance Prism are explored....
Premise of study: Sequence analyses for Pinaceae have suggested that extant genera diverged in the late Mesozoic. While the fossil record indicates that Pinaceae was highly diverse during the Cretaceous, there are few records of living genera. This description of an anatomically preserved seed cone extends the fossil record for...
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is predicted to experience considerable negative impacts of climate change. The IPCC Fourth Assessment emphasizes that adaptation strategies are essential. Addressing adaptation in the context of small-scale, semi-subsistence agriculture raises special challenges. High data demands including site-specific bio-physical and economic data are an important constraint. This paper...
Accurately simulating gross primary productivity (GPP) in terrestrial ecosystem models is critical because errors in simulated GPP propagate through the model to introduce additional errors in simulated biomass and other fluxes. We evaluated simulated, daily average GPP from 26 models against estimated GPP at 39 eddy covariance flux tower sites...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD or autism) is a pervasive developmental disorder characterized by deficits in social skills, communication and repetitive or restricted interests. Research indicates that young children with autism experience delayed infant motor milestones resulting in deficits of fine and gross motor skills. The purpose of this larger study,...
Intelligent air traffic flow management is one of the fundamental challenges facing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today. FAA estimates put weather, routing decisions and airport condition induced delays at 1,682,700 h in 2007 (FAA OPSNET Data, US Department of Transportation website, http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/), resulting in a staggering economic loss of...
A ones adder is an important circuit block that is required in many varying applications. This work proposes a design that largely relies on passive transmission-gate multiplexers. Many variations are suggested that can inherently generate a thermometer coded output or one-hot encoded output. The proposed structure has area and power...
This study records the fifth consecutive year that winter losses of managed honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in the USA have been around 30%. In April 2011, a total of 5,441 US beekeepers (an estimated 11% of total US beekeepers) responded to a survey conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership....
From almost 7000 near-surface eddy-covariance flux measurements over the sea, the authors deduce a new air–sea drag relation for aerodynamically rough flow: u* = 0.0583Uₙ₁₀ 2 0.243. Here u* is the measured friction velocity, and Uₙ₁₀ is the neutral-stability wind speed at a reference height of 10 m. This relation...
Adults and nymphs of a new genus and species of the family Macrochelidae are described from detritus cavities of the leafcutting ant, Atta texana. This new species is notable in having peritremes with no posterior loop, a series of small subterminal teeth on the fixed cheliceral digit rather than the...
In this study, triglycidylamine (TGA) was synthesized and evaluated as a crosslinking agent for soy flour (SF) for making five-ply plywood from yellow poplar. Glycerol polyglycidyl ether (GPE) and trimethylolpropane triglycidyl ether (TTE) were also investigated as crosslinking agents for SF as adhesive for plywood. The plywood panels bonded with...
In this modeling study we investigate the dynamical mechanisms controlling the spreading of the Magellan Plume, which is a low-salinity tongue that extends along the Patagonian Shelf. Our results indicate that the overall characteristics of the plume (width, depth, spreading rate, etc.) are primarily influenced by tidal forcing, which manifests...
Background: Academic detailing is an interactive, convenient, and user-friendly approach to delivering non-commercial education to healthcare clinicians. While evidence suggests academic detailing is associated with improvements in prescribing behavior, uncertainty exists about generalizability and scalability in diverse settings. Our study evaluates different models of delivering academic detailing in a rural...
We developed a hybrid cellular automata (CA) modelling approach to explore the dynamics of a key predator–prey interaction in a marine system; our study is motivated by the quest for better understanding of the scale and heterogeneity-related effects on the arrowtooth flounder (Atheresthes stomias) and walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) dynamics...
This paper highlights the development of a rapid visual screening (RVS) tool to quickly identify, inventory, and rank residential buildings that are potentially seismically hazardous, focusing on single-family, wood-frame dwellings with plan irregularity. The SAPWood software was used to perform a series of nonlinear time-history analyses for 480 representative models,...
Marine provinces, founded on contrasting floras or faunas, have been recognized for more than 150 years but were not consistently defined by endemism until 1974. At that time, provinces were based on at least a 10% endemism and nested within biogeographic regions that covered large geographic areas with contrasting biotic...
Building intelligent assistants has been a long-cherished goal of AI, and many were built and fine-tuned to specific application domains. In recent work, a domain-independent decision-theoretic model of assistance was proposed, where the task is to infer the user’s goal and take actions that minimize the expected cost of the...
We propose a novel, accurate quantification of precipitation and evaporation, as needed to understand fundamental hydrologic processes. Our system uses a collection vessel placed on top of a slender rod that is securely fixed at its base. As the vessel is deflected, either by manual perturbation or ambient forcing (for...
Graphical methods for displaying uncertainty are often the most concise and informative way to communicate abstract concepts. Presentation methods currently in use for the display and interpretation of scientific uncertainty are reviewed. Numerous subjective and objective uncertainty display methods are presented, including qualitative assessments, node and arrow diagrams, standard statistical...
During mitosis, sister chromatids are separated by the action of the mitotic spindle. The mitotic spindle attaches to chromosomes at centromeres through a protein complex called the kinetochore. While ~100 proteins have been identified at kinetochores and centromeres, the function of most is poorly understood.
The centromere protein, CENP-T (Centromere...
In 2004-2005, 2007 and 2009, three major drought disasters occurred in Guangdong
Province of southern China, which caused serious economic losses. Hence, it has recently become
an important research subject in China to monitor surface soil moisture (SSM) and the drought
disaster quickly and accurately. SSM is an effective indicator...
The authors employ a social-ecological framework to aid our understanding of the complex array of factors in the immediate and broader environment that influence adolescent sexual development. Further, sexual development is viewed as normative and critical to positive growth. The authors provide an overview of the
Two-Cities Study, a multi-stage...
An investigation was carried out on Lake Geriyo in the month of April to know the pattern of
fish exploitation. The fish species sampled were mainly by using canoes as they were landed at
the landing site of the lake. A total of fourteen (14) species of thirteen (13) families...
In this work, stainless steel wire cloth (SSWC) for metallic support was thermally treated to increase the adhesive strength of Al₂O₃ by improving superficial roughness. After coating Al₂O₃ on SSWC, Pt particles as a catalytic component were deposited on the Al₂O₃/SSWC. These supports and catalysts were characterized by N₂ gas...
Horticultural nurseries are heterogeneous and spatially complex agricultural systems, which present formidable challenges to management of diseases and pests. Moreover, nursery plants shipped interstate and internationally can serve as important vectors for pathogens and pests that threaten both agriculture and forestry. Current regulatory strategies to prevent this movement of pathogens...
While contemporary civil engineering projects are increasingly complex, the cognitive abilities of the decision maker remain limited. There is a conflict between the complexity that is required to describe a scenario with all its relevant properties and the limited number of ideas that can be included in rational considerations and...
There are many drivers for the pursuit of renewable energy extraction from coastal seas. In the United Kingdom these include moving away from fossil fuels to mitigate the impacts of climate change, improving energy security by diversifying supply options, increasing wealth generation in outlying coastal communities, and seeking alternative sources...
Photovoltaic cells have long been a desirable alternative to the consumption of fossil fuels, but current manufacturing practices suffer from poor energy efficiency, large carbon footprints, low material utilization, and high processing temperatures. A critical step in production of thin film CdTe and CuInSe₂ solar cells is the chemical bath...
The purpose of this article and presentation is to present an overview of the value-chain analysis project on international fish trade and food security with an impact assessment of the small-scale sector. Outlining the project’s importance, approach, results and conclusions, the summary article serves as an initial background document to...
The residual of the surface energy budget is represented as the linearized sum of energy losses due to storage, advection and flux underestimation. Individual contributions to the residual can be quantified through constrained multiple linear regression which identifies the site specific processes that are responsible for the lack of energy...
The ability of selected plant extracts from wood and foliage to inhibit mold regrowth on fungal colonized wood was evaluated on Douglas-fir sapwood. Most foliage extracts produced some inhibition of Graphium or Trichoderma species, but isolations of other fungi increased following treatment. Five out of eight wood extracts produced 50%...
Although field-collected recordings typically contain multiple simultaneously vocalizing birds of different species, acoustic species classification in this setting has received little study so far. This work formulates the problem of classifying the set of species present in an audio recording using the multi-instance multi-label (MIML) framework for machine learning, and...