Willow Cultivars

The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) presents fact sheets on Salix purpurea ‘Allegany’, Salix sachalinensis × S. miyabeana ‘Canastota’, Salix purpurea ‘Fish Creek’, Salix purpurea × S. miyabeana ‘Millbrook’, Salix purpurea × S. miyabeana ‘Oneida’, Salix purpurea ‘Onondaga’, Salix viminalis × S. miyabeana ‘Otisco’, Salix viminalis × S. miyabeana ‘Owasco’, Salix eriocephala ‘S25’, Salix caprea hybrid ‘S365’, Salix sachalinensis × S. miyabeana ‘Sherburne’, Salix × dasyclados ‘SV1’, Salix sachalinensis ‘SX61’, Salix miyabeana ‘SX64’, Salix miyabeana ‘SX67’, Salix viminalis × S. miyabeana ‘Tully Champion’

NYSDOT Living Snow Fence Training

New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) Living Snow Fences Training: challenges, structure, benefits, costs, limitations, economics, transport, effects, development, growth, design, conditions, site assesmen

NYSDOT Living Snow Fence Training Program 2012

New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) Snow Fence Training: plant selection, growth, effects, characteristics, change, site selection, site preparation, existing vegetation, weed control, barriers, root stock, post plant care, limitation

Cystatin F Ensures Eosinophil Survival by Regulating Granule Biogenesis

SummaryEosinophils are now recognized as multifunctional leukocytes that provide critical homeostatic signals to maintain other immune cells and aid tissue repair. Paradoxically, eosinophils also express an armory of granule-localized toxins and hydrolases believed to contribute to pathology in inflammatory disease. How eosinophils deliver their supporting functions while avoiding self-inflicted injury is poorly understood. We have demonstrated that cystatin F (CF) is a critical survival factor for eosinophils. Eosinophils from CF null mice had reduced lifespan, reduced granularity, and disturbed granule morphology. In vitro, cysteine protease inhibitors restored granularity, demonstrating that control of cysteine protease activity by CF is critical for normal eosinophil development. CF null mice showed reduced pulmonary pathology in a model of allergic lung inflammation but also reduced ability to combat infection by the nematode Brugia malayi. These data identify CF as a “cytoprotectant” that promotes eosinophil survival and function by ensuring granule integrity.Video Abstrac

U.S. Billion-ton Update: Biomass Supply for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry

The Report, Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply (generally referred to as the Billion-Ton Study or 2005 BTS), was an estimate of “potential” biomass within the contiguous United States based on numerous assumptions about current and future inventory and production capacity, availability, and technology. In the 2005 BTS, a strategic analysis was undertaken to determine if U.S. agriculture and forest resources have the capability to potentially produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass annually, in a sustainable manner—enough to displace approximately 30% of the country’s present petroleum consumption. To ensure reasonable confidence in the study results, an effort was made to use relatively conservative assumptions. However, for both agriculture and forestry, the resource potential was not restricted by price. That is, all identified biomass was potentially available, even though some potential feedstock would more than likely be too expensive to actually be economically available. In addition to updating the 2005 study, this report attempts to address a number of its shortcoming

From Interactions to Institutions: Microprocesses of Framing and Mechanisms for the Structuring of Institutional Fields

Despite the centrality of meaning to institutionalization, little attention has been paid to how meanings evolve and amplify to become institutionalized cultural conventions. We develop an interactional framing perspective to explain the microprocesses and mechanisms by which this occurs. We identify three amplification processes and three ways frames stack up or laminate that become the building blocks for diffusion and institutionalization of meanings within organizations and fields. Although we focus on “bottom-up” dynamics, we argue that framing occurs in a politicized social context and is inherently bidirectional, in line with structuration, because microlevel interactions instantiate macrostructures. We consider how our approach complements other theories of meaning making, its utility for informing related theoretical streams, and its implications for organizing at the meso and macro levels

CEO succession and the CEO’s commitment to the status quo

Chief executive officer (CEO) commitment to the status quo (CSQ) is expected to play an important role in any firm’s strategic adaptation. CSQ is used often as an explanation for strategic change occurring after CEO succession: new CEOs are expected to reveal a lower CSQ than established CEOs. Although widely accepted in the literature, this relationship remains imputed but unobserved. We address this research gap and analyze whether new CEOs reveal lower CSQ than established CEOs. By analyzing the letters to the shareholders of German HDAX firms, we find empirical support for our hypothesis of a lower CSQ of newly appointed CEOs compared to established CEOs. However, our detailed analyses provide a differentiated picture. We find support for a lower CSQ of successors after a forced CEO turnover compared to successors after a voluntary turnover, which indicates an influence of the mandate for change on the CEO’s CSQ. However, against the widespread assumption, we do not find support for a lower CSQ of outside successors compared to inside successors, which calls for deeper analyses of the insiderness of new CEOs. Further, our supplementary analyses propose a revised tenure effect: the widely assumed relationship of an increase in CSQ when CEO tenure increases might be driven mainly by the event of CEO succession and may not universally and continuously increase over time, pointing to a “window of opportunity” to initiate strategic change shortly after the succession event. By analyzing the relationship between CEO succession and CEO CSQ, our results contribute to the CSQ literature and provide fruitful impulses for the CEO succession literature

Breeding, selection and testing of shrub willow as a dedicated energy crop

Multiple national imperatives are driving a switch from fossil-based energy sources to renewable energy, such as efforts to reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change and a push to improve homeland security by reducing reliance on foreign sources of petroleum. Two important components of the portfolio of renewable energy solutions are the conversion of plant biomass to liquid transportation fuels and the production of combined heat and power (CHP) from sustainably produced biomass. Both of these can address the major national imperatives if the production, consolidation and conversion of biomass to either liquid fuel or combined heat and power are accomplished in ways that have highly favorable net returns on energy investment