Assessing reservoir operations risk under climate change

Risk-based planning offers a robust way to identify strategies that permit adaptive water resources management under climate change. This paper presents a flexible methodology for conducting climate change risk assessments involving reservoir operations. Decision makers can apply this methodology to their systems by selecting future periods and risk metrics relevant to their planning questions and by collectively evaluating system impacts relative to an ensemble of climate projection scenarios (weighted or not). This paper shows multiple applications of this methodology in a case study involving California\u27s Central Valley Project and State Water Project systems. Multiple applications were conducted to show how choices made in conducting the risk assessment, choices known as analytical design decisions, can affect assessed risk. Specifically, risk was reanalyzed for every choice combination of two design decisions: (1) whether to assume climate change will influence flood-control constraints on water supply operations (and how), and (2) whether to weight climate change scenarios (and how). Results show that assessed risk would motivate different planning pathways depending on decision-maker attitudes toward risk (e.g., risk neutral versus risk averse). Results also show that assessed risk at a given risk attitude is sensitive to the analytical design choices listed above, with the choice of whether to adjust flood-control rules under climate change having considerably more influence than the choice on whether to weight climate scenarios

An Analysis of Reporting to Parents of Secondary School Students

The purpose of this research was to analyze various types of secondary school methods of reporting to parents so that the faculty and parents would be better able to work out a process report for Prosser High School. This report should furnish information to the parent as to the objectives of the school, be understood by parents and pupils, and not necessitate too much clerical work for the teachers

An examination of the validity of hypotheses of two theories of soybean response to phosphorus and potassium

The theoretical hypotheses concerning crop response to nutrients must be reconciled with observable facts. This reconciliation is important to scientists, crop managers, and to those who assist crop managers. In this study the theories of Liebig and Mitscherlich are examined with respect to soybean response to phosphorus and potassium on the Memphis and Henry soil types of Western Tennessee. The theories are evaluated with respect to data coherency, data admissibility, valid conditioning, and encompassment. Because a complete specification of Mitscherlich\u27s theory results in a nonlinear statistical specification, the logarithmic function was substituted throughout the study. The results suggest that the logarithmic equation performed well with respect to data coherency; that is, its errors were more often normally distributed and homoskedastic than those associated with the Liebig equation. However, Liebig\u27s equation was found to be data admissible, validly conditioned, and encompassing. The results of this research supported the general conclusion that soybeans respond to potassium more so than to phosphorus, at least on the Memphis and Henry soil types. The results also supported Liebig\u27s hypotheses that a single ratio of phosphorus to potassium be used no matter what yield level is desired and that phosphorus and potassium do not substitute for each other in maintaining a given yield level. Fertilizer recommendations derived from the Liebig model were very conservative. Only prices that have never been observed for soybeans resulted in fertilizer being recommended. Fertilizer recommendations derived from the logarithmic equation were much more liberal. By comparison the University of Tennessee personnel recommendations were in between recommendations of the Liebig and logarithmic models

A Model For Implementing An Optimized Casino Degree Curriculum Within The Two-Year College

A research project was undertaken to develop a casino degree curriculum model for two-year colleges. The study began with an overview of the gambling industry and the advent of gaming curricula at various institutions of higher learning; The casino model was developed using Bloom\u27s Taxonomy for course structure and Kalani\u27s Model for curricular framework. Additional studies were conducted on curriculum development methods, and various other curriculum designs and models; The research design included data from two questionnaires and one personal interview instrument. Further data was provided by gaming employment statistics, gaming revenue statistics, and proprietary gaming school programs. This data was used to develop a proposed Casino Curriculum Model for Clark County Community College in Las Vegas. The model utilized a four-step approach to curriculum design encompassing (1) Demand Factor, (2) Selection Factor, (3) Skills and Knowledge Factor, (4) Curriculum Factor. The Demand Factor determined various gaming occupations available. The Selection Factor determined highest employment opportunities. The Skills and Knowledge Factor determined core and specialized learnings. The Curriculum Factor determined basic curricular elements. Also shown were model variations for specialized programs and a comparison between proposed and existing CCCC curriculum models; Recommendations included the development of various gaming certificates and degRees Further studies on the potential of gaming programs in other institutions and locales, and a greater vocational/technical emphasis for CCCC

A Study of Pupil Reporting Practices, School to Home, in Illinois Junior High Schools Organized on a Seven-Eight Grade Basis

Interest in the welfare of children is as old as love for the first born of primitive man. Despite this ideal of education, the place given the child as an important factor in educational practice has been relatively low. Slow in its initial development pupil reporting practices did not find a place in the educational accounting until the start of the century. In the year 1908 very few cities in the United States, probably not more than thirty, could without great difficulty furnish a record of a pupil’s school life. Today almost all schools can produce some record of the pupils enrolled. One of the important facts of modern education is that it has provided a system of pupil accounting and progress reporting. The most serious conflict is between those who believe that no comparative marks of achievement should be reported either to pupil or parent and those who believe that both pupil and parent should be frankly and completely informed on the pupils progress and status. The theorists who tells nothing believes in two basic facts: first, marks are too unreliable and involved to justify their use; and second, comparative marks stir up undesirable competition among students and discourage many poor students. They believe that any method of marking or reporting based on the plan of rank in class or comparative standing of pupils is not a satisfactory method of reporting pupil progress. In contrast there are those who believe the best way to have maximum parental cooperation is to share all information with parents and that pupils are stimulated to better and greater things when they know their progress and where they stand. The latter claim that competition is fundamental in the American way of life. It is not the same purpose of this problem to say which of these theories is the more nearly correct

Undivided Loyalty and Unwavering Leadership: The Life and Times of David Wooster (1710-1777)

By the spring of 1777 loyalty and leadership in America had been tested both politically in congress and militarily on the battlefield for well over two years. The Continental Congress had declared independence the previous July, and General Washington’s military victories at Trenton in December 1776 and Princeton the following month stabilized wavering American patriotism after the massive loss of New York during the previous fall. Regional tensions were at a heightened state, especially in the Continental Congress. By March 1776 the Continental Army had lost their foothold on upper Canada, in large part due to the lack of material support from congress. Politicians in Philadelphia required a scapegoat for their inaction. They found one with the oldest general officer they had appointed to the position of brigadier general in 1775: David Wooster of Connecticut. On April 27, 1777, after being recommissioned as Connecticut’s senior ranking major general of militia, Wooster learned of a pending invasion of his home state. Major General Wooster, supported by Brigadier Generals Benedict Arnold and Gold Selleck Silliman, also from Connecticut, called out the militia and marched to Danbury to oppose the invaders. British troops under the command of General Tryon, the tory governor of New York, marched into Connecticut to seize a store of munitions held by the patriots in Danbury. On Tuesday morning, April 29, American troops met the British forces at the Battle of Ridgefield. As the enemy was engaged by Arnold and Silliman, Wooster’s troops attacked the rear of the retreating enemy. Wooster rallied his men forward to drive the British and loyalist forces from the field. While repositioning his men, he turned in his saddle, sword in hand, and was struck in his side by an enemy bullet and fell mortally wounded from his horse. The ball shattered Wooster’s spine. Soldiers removed the general’s scarlet sash from around his waist, unwrapped it, bore the dying officer from the field in the make-shift stretcher. On May 2, 1777, with his wife and son present, Major General David Wooster died and was quickly buried due to the proximity of the enemy still along the coast. At age sixty-seven, the oldest American general in the Revolution was dead. On June 17, 1777, the Continental Congress passed a resolution creating a committee to determine the most fitting way to honor “Brigadier Wooster.” The responsibility fell to Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull, who had highly praised Wooster in a letter to General Washington on July 13, 1775, as being “held in high estimation by our Assembly, and by the officers and troops.” However, due to continued British threats followed by a second attack on the Connecticut coast in 1779, no memorial was ever erected. In 1786, the Confederation Congress officially created the Western Reserve of Connecticut in northeast Ohio, the “Firelands” as they were more commonly called. This land was made available to those in Connecticut who had lost their homes due to the devastation of the war. Wayne County was located on the southern edge of the Western Reserve and became home of many Connecticut refugees. By 1808, Wayne County had become sufficiently populated to establish an official county seat, and the veterans who resided there took the opportunity to honor the late Major General David Wooster by naming the county seat after the fallen general, who had been dead for almost thirty-two years. Yet today the question still arises: Who was David Wooster, and why should he be remembered within the annals of eighteenth-century American History? If this man was held in such “high estimation” by those in power in Connecticut throughout the 1700s, why has no one heard of him? Why has history, and the historiography of the eighteenth-century neglected him? Wooster’s experience highlighted the development and growth of American ideology throughout the 1700s that revolved around Lockean republicanism, military training, and civic leadership. His story provides new evidence which highlights the importance of eighteenth-century New England as an epicenter of political revolutionary ideology. David Wooster was a prominent leader in Connecticut throughout the 1700s, and was actively engaged in the civic, political, and military life of the colony. As historians continue to write about eighteenth-century America, as well as the Revolutionary War, David Wooster continues to evade the narrative, or at best is offered a peripheral reference. Why? By 1775 Wooster already had decades of successful military experience and was appointed the first major general of Connecticut militia before the Continental Army was even created. Yet, the historiography continues to provide only a tertiary glance at Wooster’s undeniable leadership. The focus of this dissertation will be to uncover how David Wooster shaped eighteenth-century Connecticut, and how his undivided loyalty and unwavering leadership are two characteristics that embody and define his life. As a British subject and commissioned officer in the army, his loyalty to England was unquestioned in his early years. However, as political abuses of royal authority and parliamentary government in London permeated into the colonies in North America, the seeds of political discontentment were sown, and Wooster eventually refocused his political loyalty upon his home colony of Connecticut. What would make a sixty-five-year-old merchant, justice of the peace, captain of the 51st Regiment of Foot, and naval custom officer for the port of New Haven yield his royal commission in 1775 and endanger his entire livelihood to take up arms in the republican cause of independence and liberty? The historical record of David Wooster is sparce. In 1779 British General Tryon led a raid upon New Haven and the surrounding Connecticut countryside. Wooster’s home was targeted. Many of his personal papers, including much of his correspondence, were destroyed. Thus, to recreate Wooster’s place within the historic narrative requires analysis of a limited number of surviving letters and intense research to locate additional sources within the correspondences of those who wrote to Wooster. Political journals of the colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York provide important details, as well as the Journals of the Continental Congress. In addition, the personal papers of Connecticut Governors, Law, Fitch, Pitkin, and Trumbull illuminate the historical record where Wooster’s actions become difficult to trace. Furthermore, prominent individuals who interacted with Wooster wrote about him, such as Sir William Pepperrell, Philip Schuyler, Roger Sherman, and John Adams whose letters contain invaluable material on his life

The Raman Spectrum of Boron Trifluoride Gas

The Raman spectrum of BF3 was photographed using a purified preparation obtained from the thermal decomposition of C6H5N2BF4. Of the lines observed, that with the frequency 888 cm^—1 is certainly, and the band at 439–513 cm^—1 is probably due to BF3. The Raman frequencies and the infra-red results of Bailey et al. are assigned to the fundamental modes of vibrations

Climate change and the Delta, San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science

Anthropogenic climate change amounts to a rapidly approaching, “new” stressor in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta system. In response to California’s extreme natural hydroclimatic variability, complex water-management systems have been developed, even as the Delta’s natural ecosystems have been largely devastated. Climate change is projected to challenge these management and ecological systems in different ways that are characterized by different levels of uncertainty. For example, there is high certainty that climate will warm by about 2°C more (than late-20th-century averages) by mid-century and about 4°C by end of century, if greenhouse-gas emissions continue their current rates of acceleration. Future precipitation changes are much less certain, with as many climate models projecting wetter conditions as drier. However, the same projections agree that precipitation will be more intense when storms do arrive, even as more dry days will separate storms. Warmer temperatures will likely enhance evaporative demands and raise water temperatures. Consequently, climate change is projected to yield both more extreme flood risks and greater drought risks. Sea level rise (SLR) during the 20th century was about 22cm, and is projected to increase by at least 3-fold this century. SLR together with land subsidence threatens the Delta with greater vulnerabilities to inundation and salinity intrusion. Effects on the Delta ecosystem that are traceable to warming include SLR, reduced snowpack, earlier snowmelt and larger storm-driven streamflows, warmer and longer summers, warmer summer water temperatures, and water-quality changes. These changes and their uncertainties will challenge the operations of water projects and uses throughout the Delta’s watershed and delivery areas. Although the effects of climate change on Delta ecosystems may be profound, the end results are difficult to predict, except that native species will fare worse than invaders. Successful preparation for the coming changes will require greater integration of monitoring, modeling, and decision making across time, variables, and space than has been historically normal

The economic interpretation of history

Mode of access: Internet