Mental Health and Grit

This piece details my personal experiences and struggles with mental health, and how the concept of grit was detrimental to my overall health. At the end of the piece, I list some ways people can move forward and incorporate healthy habits into their routine, rather than being pressured by the grit trope

A Note from the Editor

This is a letter from the editor Kamryn Dehn regarding the first issue of this volume. It details how theatre can be utilized to promote social change, and discusses how Tasia Jones focuses on the Black experience in some of her works

Trophic relationships in an Arctic marine foodweb and implications for trace element dynamics

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2005Tissues of subsistence-harvested Arctic marine and terrestrial mammals and potential prey species were analyzed for isotopes of carbon and nitrogen and selected trace elements describing contaminant pathways in the food web. Feeding habits of ice seals were characterized using stable isotopes and gastric contents analysis. Bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus) relied on the benthic food chain. Zooplankton and fishes were significant prey for ringed seals (Phoca hispida), while fishes were the principal prey in spotted seals (Phoca largha). Gastric prey composition and isotope ratios varied with age and sex. Effects of age, trophic level, and prey prevalence on trace element concentrations in seal tissues were investigated. Most trace elements differed significantly in phocid tissues. Bearded seals had the highest cadmium (Cd) concentrations and spotted seals the lowest. This indicates a connection of Cd with invertebrate prey, while mercury (Hg), in particular the proportion of organic to total Hg (THg), accumulated in the piscivorous food web. Silver (Ag) showed possible association to benthic feeding habits. Altered trace element accumulation patterns were observed in compromised seals. Stable isotopes illustrated belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) occupied a higher trophic level than bowheads (Balaena mysticetus) and gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus). Trace element concentrations also differed significantly among these cetaceans. Observed relationships with age or length in species analyzed were complex and nonlinear rather than previously reported continuous bioaccumulation with age. Cd was similar in belugas and bowheads but lowest in gray whales. THg was highest in belugas and near detection limit in mysticetes, supporting the connection of Hg with fish and Cd with invertebrates. The hepatic selenium (Se ):THg ratio exceeded the frequently described equimolarity in all species. Se:THg molar ratios and tissue concentrations of zinc (Zn) may show promise as indicators of immune status and animal health. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) feed on the highest trophic level, though Cd concentrations were either similar to, or significantly lower than those in belugas or ice seals. Conversely, THg increased significantly from seal to bear. Generally, trace elements in Alaska-harvested animals were lower than for other Arctic regions, and trace metal magnification in the Arctic food web was not significant.Feeding ecology of phocid seals in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic -- Trace elements in tissues of phocid seals harvested in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic : influence of age and feeding ecology -- Stable isotope and trace element status of subsistence hunted bowhead (Balaena mysticetus) and beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) in Alaska and gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) in Chukotka -- Trophic ecology of Arctic marine biota and implications for trace dynamics -- General conclusions -- References

Experimental study on basic and drying creep for an alkali‐activated slag concrete and comparison with existing creep models

Slag is a by-product of the steel industry that can be activated using alkali solutions to form concrete. This study presents new experimental results of basic and drying creep behavior of alkali-activated slag (AAS) concrete. Different parameters affecting creep such as loading age, sample size and creep stress-strength ratio were varied for experimental studies. The results show that the basic creep of AAS concrete is higher than that of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) concrete. The drying creep of AAS is lower than for OPC and this could be explained by a higher internal drying during the activation of slag. The experimental results were used to check the applicability of two existing engineering models, the fib MC 2010 and the B4s model, for AAS concrete. It was found that both models could be extended to predict the basic creep of AAS concrete. For drying creep, the B4s could better capture the creep behavior. For the fib MC 2010, a new formulation for drying creep would be required

Extension of the fib MC 2010 for basic and drying shrinkage of alkali‐activated slag concretes

Alkali-activated slag is an alternative to ordinary Portland cement that has been studied for the past 20 years. One of the main challenges for its practical use is understanding and controlling its shrinkage behavior. In this study, new experimental results for two alkali-activated slag concrete mixes are presented under both sealed and unsealed conditions. The results show that basic shrinkage increases with increased sodium silicate ratio. Under unsealed conditions, the age to exposure to drying has a most significant impact on the final drying shrinkage. Finally, the mechanisms explaining shrinkage of such materials are discussed and thefib Model Code 2010 is extended for alkali-activated slag concrete using the new experimental results. The extended model consists of four parameters influencing the final values and the speed of both basic shrinkage and drying shrinkage. It is extensively compared with experimental datasets from the literature and improves significantly predictions compared with the original models for both basic and drying shrinkage. This demonstrates clearly the feasibility to extend it for predicting shrinkage of alkali-activated slag concrete

Optical Satellite Volcano Monitoring: A Multi-Sensor Rapid Response System

Non

Decoupling 802.11B From the Partition Table in Erasure Coding

Many cyberneticists would agree that, had it not been for extensible epistemologies, the evaluation of superblocks might never have occurred. In this paper, authors disprove the improvement of context-free grammar, demonstrates the technical importance of distributed systems. In our research, we concentrate our efforts on showing that IPv4 and erasure coding are never incompatible

Comparison of cloud models for Brown Dwarfs

A test case comparison is presented for different dust cloud model approaches applied in brown dwarfs and giant gas planets. We aim to achieve more transparency in evaluating the uncertainty inherent to theoretical modelling. We show in how far model results for characteristic dust quantities vary due to different assumptions. We also demonstrate differences in the spectral energy distributions resulting from our individual cloud modelling in 1D substellar atmosphere simulationsComment: 5 pages, Proceeding to "Exoplantes: Detection, Formation, Dynamics", eds. Ferraz-Mello et