NWS 13: NetCDF Replacement for NWS12 Met Inputs and Application

Motivation for NWS=12 replacement A major source of error in ADCIRC can come from the accuracy and representation of the wind and pressure fields. Additional Motivation • Replicate NWS12 features and more • Single-file, wind/pressure/all-grids • Multiple grid overlays • Moving storm-centered grids • Grids that can change size • Curvilinear grids • Arbitrary # of grid overlays • New ADCIRC NWS interp code • Arbitrary & irregular timestep

NWS 13: NetCDF Wind/Pressure Inputs for ADCIRC

The motivation, NetCDF structure, implementation, examples and application of NWS=13

Extreme positive allometry of animal adhesive pads and the size limits of adhesion-based climbing

Organismal functions are size-dependent whenever body surfaces supply body volumes. Larger organisms can develop strongly folded internal surfaces for enhanced diffusion, but in many cases areas cannot be folded so that their enlargement is constrained by anatomy, presenting a problem for larger animals. Here, we study the allometry of adhesive pad area in 225 climbing animal species, covering more than seven orders of magnitude in weight. Across all taxa, adhesive pad area showed extreme positive allometry and scaled with weight, implying a 200-fold increase of relative pad area from mites to geckos. However, allometric scaling coefficients for pad area systematically decreased with taxonomic level, and were close to isometry when evolutionary history was accounted for, indicating that the substantial anatomical changes required to achieve this increase in relative pad area are limited by phylogenetic constraints. Using a comparative phylogenetic approach, we found that the departure from isometry is almost exclusively caused by large differences in size-corrected pad area between arthropods and vertebrates. To mitigate the expected decrease of weight-specific adhesion within closely related taxa where pad area scaled close to isometry, data for several taxa suggest that the pads’ adhesive strength increased for larger animals. The combination of adjustments in relative pad area for distantly related taxa and changes in adhesive strength for closely related groups helps explain how climbing with adhesive pads has evolved in animals varying over seven orders of magnitude in body weight. Our results illustrate the size limits of adhesion-based climbing, with profound implications for large-scale bio-inspired adhesives.We are sincerely grateful to all our colleagues who readily shared published and unpublished data with us: Aaron M. Bauer, Jon Barnes, Niall Crawford, Thomas Endlein, Hanns Hagen Goetzke, Thomas E. Macrini, Anthony P. Russell & Joanna M. Smith. We also thank Casey Gilman, Dylan Briggs, Irina Showalter, Dan King and Mike Imburgia for their assistance with the collection of gecko toepad data. This study was supported by research grants from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/I008667/1) to WF, the Human Frontier Science Programme (RGP0034/2012) to DI, AJC and WF, the Denman Baynes Senior Research Fellowship to DL and a Discovery Early Career Research Fellowship (DE120101503) to CJC.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the National Academy of Sciences via http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1073/pnas.151945911

Prospectus, October 31, 2012

PUBLIC SAFETY ATTAINS HYBRID CAR, Tips on Registering for Spring Courses, The Science Debate, Horror Scope, Meet the Staff, Obama, Romney: Two Sides of the Same Presidential Coin?, Has Halloween Become an X-Rated Holiday?, What are You Going to be for Halloween?, Cobras Prepare for Region 24 Tournament, Cobras Soccer Season Comes to a Close, Paranormal Activity 4 Disappoints Viewers, Creeps, Screams and Terror: A Review of Local Haunted Attractionshttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2012/1025/thumbnail.jp

Crummer SunTrust Portfolio Recommendations: Crummer Investment Management

The following report will walk you through this analysis beginning with an economic outlook, which in turn influences our portfolio design. The designated sector analysts then assess the portfolio holdings of each sector and determine whether the positions align with our forecast. This assessment includes a broad sector outlook, as well as a fundamental outlook for each individual holding. The decision to buy, hold, or sell is based on the sector analysts’ valuation. Finally, the report concludes with an overall portfolio assessment given the proposed changes supported by mean variance efficiency and a value at risk diagnosis

Prospectus, September 19, 2012

PARKLAND FACES BUDGET CUTS; Parkland up for re-accreditation in early October; Center for Academic Success lives up to its name; It\u27s the iPhone 5; If you can\u27t say anything nice, come log on to the Internet; Ignorance meets intolerance in a tragedy in Benghazi; Peter Goldmark: Trust in news media falls to disturbing levels; Cobra golf finds talent from across the pond; Parkland women\u27s soccer continues to thrive; A decade of reboots and remakeshttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2012/1032/thumbnail.jp

RIBA Research in Practice Guide

The RIBA Research in Practice Guide was developed as part of a project that looked into the state of housing research undertaken by architecture practices. This project titled ‘Home Improvements’ began with a survey and series of interviews with practitioners who suggested that architects consider research to be integral to their business. However it was clear that there are con icting understandings of research, in particular about what exactly constitutes research and how it aligns with other everyday activities in practice. This guide is meant to be read with the RIBA Plan of Work, giving architects practical guidance on how to understand and further exploit the research they already do. Its purpose is to help broaden architects’ research horizons, building useful and rewarding programmes of work and strengthening relationships with the wider research community

Wolbachia and DNA barcoding insects: patterns, potential and problems

Wolbachia is a genus of bacterial endosymbionts that impacts the breeding systems of their hosts. Wolbachia can confuse the patterns of mitochondrial variation, including DNA barcodes, because it influences the pathways through which mitochondria are inherited. We examined the extent to which these endosymbionts are detected in routine DNA barcoding, assessed their impact upon the insect sequence divergence and identification accuracy, and considered the variation present in Wolbachia COI. Using both standard PCR assays (Wolbachia surface coding protein – wsp), and bacterial COI fragments we found evidence of Wolbachia in insect total genomic extracts created for DNA barcoding library construction. When >2 million insect COI trace files were examined on the Barcode of Life Datasystem (BOLD) Wolbachia COI was present in 0.16% of the cases. It is possible to generate Wolbachia COI using standard insect primers; however, that amplicon was never confused with the COI of the host. Wolbachia alleles recovered were predominantly Supergroup A and were broadly distributed geographically and phylogenetically. We conclude that the presence of the Wolbachia DNA in total genomic extracts made from insects is unlikely to compromise the accuracy of the DNA barcode library; in fact, the ability to query this DNA library (the database and the extracts) for endosymbionts is one of the ancillary benefits of such a large scale endeavor – for which we provide several examples. It is our conclusion that regular assays for Wolbachia presence and type can, and should, be adopted by large scale insect barcoding initiatives. While COI is one of the five multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) genes used for categorizing Wolbachia, there is limited overlap with the eukaryotic DNA barcode region

Self-Harm and Suicide Attempts among High-Risk, Urban Youth in the U.S.: Shared and Unique Risk and Protective Factors

The extent to which self-harm and suicidal behavior overlap in community samples of vulnerable youth is not well known. Secondary analyses were conducted of the “linkages study” (N = 4,131), a cross-sectional survey of students enrolled in grades 7, 9, 11/12 in a high-risk community in the U.S. in 2004. Analyses were conducted to determine the risk and protective factors (i.e., academic grades, binge drinking, illicit drug use, weapon carrying, child maltreatment, social support, depression, impulsivity, self-efficacy, parental support, and parental monitoring) associated with both self-harm and suicide attempt. Findings show that 7.5% of participants reported both self-harm and suicide attempt, 2.2% of participants reported suicide attempt only, and 12.4% of participants reported self-harm only. Shared risk factors for co-occurring self-harm and suicide attempt include depression, binge drinking, weapon carrying, child maltreatment, and impulsivity. There were also important differences by sex, grade level, and race/ethnicity that should be considered for future research. The findings show that there is significant overlap in the modifiable risk factors associated with self-harm and suicide attempt that can be targeted for future research and prevention strategies

Deep resequencing reveals excess rare recent variants consistent with explosive population growth

Accurately determining the distribution of rare variants is an important goal of human genetics, but resequencing of a sample large enough for this purpose has been unfeasible until now. Here, we applied Sanger sequencing of genomic PCR amplicons to resequence the diabetes-associated genes KCNJ11 and HHEX in 13,715 people (10,422 European Americans and 3,293 African Americans) and validated amplicons potentially harbouring rare variants using 454 pyrosequencing. We observed far more variation (expected variant-site count ∼578) than would have been predicted on the basis of earlier surveys, which could only capture the distribution of common variants. By comparison with earlier estimates based on common variants, our model shows a clear genetic signal of accelerating population growth, suggesting that humanity harbours a myriad of rare, deleterious variants, and that disease risk and the burden of disease in contemporary populations may be heavily influenced by the distribution of rare variants