Town of Strafford NROC Projects

The three Strafford committees formed through the work with the Natural Resources Outreach Coalition in 2004 and supported by the grant award from the New Hampshire Estuaries Project have succeeded in furthering land protection, water quality protection, and managing growth here in Strafford. The original NROC meetings brought many new volunteer citizens into the process, but even their enthusiasm and willingness to work could not have earned these results without the financial support of the NHEP grant award. Hours of letter writing and personal contact with landowners by the volunteers of the Land Protection Group have raised awareness of the need for land protection and the ways it can be accomplished. The previous experience of the Strafford Conservation Commission in working with a landowner who was donating an easement showed us that the legal and logistical work involved is daunting. The NHEP grant allowed the land Protection Group to contract the professional services of Dan Kern of Bear-Paw Regional Greenways. His work streamlined the process for the landowners, and the Land Protection Group was able to celebrate the closing of two donated easements in 2006. Several other landowners have begun the process to protect their lands, and the Land Protection Group will continue its volunteer work. The Water Quality Group was pleased to have more than a dozen volunteers willing to focus on the need for tributary monitoring as a way to gauge and protect Bow Lake’s water quality. Testing supplies from the grant funds were essential. The sample gathering carried out at two-week intervals took place at a critical time for Bow Lake studies. Both Strafford and Northwood were in a period of legal moratorium on new development, and tributary monitoring at this time provides unique baseline data. It was not only useful in the establishment of Strafford’s Wetlands Overlay District ordinance, but will be used in future Bow Lake studies. After the Managed Growth Committee spent its time discovering gaps between the goals of the 2002 Strafford Master Plan and the present Strafford ordinances, Strafford Regional Planning Commission members helped with research for ordinances that had worked in other towns. The grant funds allowed the Committee to keep the public involved in the process and aware of the slate of proposed new ordinances that were coming up on the 2006 ballot. The blanket mailing to every Strafford address and the public meeting that followed are largely responsible for the successful passage of three new growth control ordinances. The Committee continued its work and has new measures to present to the town in 2007. The impetus and organization from NROC, and the financial support from NHEP have been a great gift to the Town of Strafford. Our thanks will be evident in the continued work and progress we make in protecting our land and water and the very nature of our town

Using infrared thermography for monitoring thermal efficiency of buildings - case studies from Nottingham Trent University

Global warming and the continuous increase of energy cost are driving the need for reducing energy consumption. Buildings are responsible for approximately 50% of the UK energy consumption. Major part of this consumption is for heating and air conditioning of buildings. Nottingham Trent University is a leading university in the UK in relation to improving the performance of its buildings in order to improve insulation and energy consumption. The experimental case studies presented in this paper highlights some of the new measures taken to reduce energy consumption and enhance the sustainability of the University buildings. Infrared thermography is used to evaluate insulation measures and energy performance. The results indicate that enhanced insulation combined with modern sustainable technologies can significantly reduce energy consumption

Orbital Fluctuation-Induced Triplet Superconductivity : Mechanism of Superconductivity in Sr2RuO4{\rm Sr}_{2}{\rm RuO}_{4}

The mechanism of superconductivity in ${\rm Sr}_{2}{\rm RuO}_{4}$ is studied using a degenerate Hubbard model within the weak coupling theory. When the system approaches the orbital instability which is realized due to increasing the on-site Coulomb interaction between the electrons in the different orbitals, it is shown that the triplet superconductivity appears. This superconducting mechanism is only available in orbitally degenerate systems with multiple Fermi surfaces.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Egg shape changes at the theropod–bird transition, and a morphometric study of amniote eggs

The eggs of amniotes exhibit a remarkable variety of shapes, from spherical to elongate and from symmetrical to asymmetrical. We examine eggshell geometry in a diverse sample of fossil and living amniotes using geometric morphometrics and linear measurements. Our goal is to quantify patterns of morphospace occupation and shape variation in the eggs of recent through to Mesozoic birds (neornithe plus non-neornithe avialans), as well as in eggs attributed to non-avialan theropods. In most amniotes, eggs show significant deviation from sphericity, but departure from symmetry around the equatorial axis is mostly confined to theropods and birds. Mesozoic bird eggs differ significantly from extant bird eggs, but extinct Cenozoic bird eggs do not. This suggests that the range of egg shapes in extant birds had already been attained in the Cenozoic. We conclude with a discussion of possible biological factors imparting variation to egg shapes during their formation in the oviduct

Predicting Intermediate Storage Performance for Workflow Applications

Configuring a storage system to better serve an application is a challenging task complicated by a multidimensional, discrete configuration space and the high cost of space exploration (e.g., by running the application with different storage configurations). To enable selecting the best configuration in a reasonable time, we design an end-to-end performance prediction mechanism that estimates the turn-around time of an application using storage system under a given configuration. This approach focuses on a generic object-based storage system design, supports exploring the impact of optimizations targeting workflow applications (e.g., various data placement schemes) in addition to other, more traditional, configuration knobs (e.g., stripe size or replication level), and models the system operation at data-chunk and control message level. This paper presents our experience to date with designing and using this prediction mechanism. We evaluate this mechanism using micro- as well as synthetic benchmarks mimicking real workflow applications, and a real application.. A preliminary evaluation shows that we are on a good track to meet our objectives: it can scale to model a workflow application run on an entire cluster while offering an over 200x speedup factor (normalized by resource) compared to running the actual application, and can achieve, in the limited number of scenarios we study, a prediction accuracy that enables identifying the best storage system configuration

“Fever means antibiotic”, the Omani public’s attitudes to the use of antibiotics for treating the common cold

Background: Antimicrobial resistance is a worldwide concern to reserve the effectiveness of antibiotics in therapy. The irrational use of antibiotics is one of the factors contributing to antimicrobial resistance. In depth exploration of the public’s attitudes towards the use of antibiotics for treating the common cold will improve understanding of the factors that cause the indiscriminate use of antibiotics; and could have an impact on antimicrobial resistance. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with individuals recruited from public places, within governorate of Muscat, Oman. The interviews explored public perceptions about self care of minor ailments. The data was analysed by applying the principles of constructivist grounded theory. Results: Twenty-one participants were interviewed. Emerging themes included attitude to medicines in general, comprising specifically the use of antibiotics. Some participants indicated that it was necessary to take antibiotics for conditions associated with fever or severe sore throats. They believed that fever and inflammation is always a sign of bacterial infection that requires antibiotics. Participants did not understand the concept of bacterial resistance but thought that overuse of antibiotics affected their immunity to colds and sore throats. Access to antibiotics for treating the common cold is highly influenced by physicians’ prescribing behaviours, and there was a clear variance percieved between the private and public primary health sectors with regards to antibiotic prescribing practice. Conclusion: Due to misunderstanding, people believe that antibiotics are needed to treat colds and sore throats. These findings suggest there is a need for educational intervention and better enforcement of regulations in Oman

Dietary patterns, insulin sensitivity and inflammation in older adults.

Background/objectivesSeveral studies have linked dietary patterns to insulin sensitivity and systemic inflammation, which affect risk of multiple chronic diseases. The purpose of this study was to investigate the dietary patterns of a cohort of older adults, and to examine relationships of dietary patterns with markers of insulin sensitivity and systemic inflammation.Subjects/methodsThe Health, Aging and Body Composition (Health ABC) Study is a prospective cohort study of 3075 older adults. In Health ABC, multiple indicators of glucose metabolism and systemic inflammation were assessed. Food intake was estimated with a modified Block food frequency questionnaire. In this study, dietary patterns of 1751 participants with complete data were derived by cluster analysis.ResultsSix clusters were identified, including a 'healthy foods' cluster, characterized by higher intake of low-fat dairy products, fruit, whole grains, poultry, fish and vegetables. In the main analysis, the 'healthy foods' cluster had significantly lower fasting insulin and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance values than the 'breakfast cereal' and 'high-fat dairy products' clusters, and lower fasting glucose than the 'high-fat dairy products' cluster (P≤0.05). No differences were found in 2-h glucose. With respect to inflammation, the 'healthy foods' cluster had lower interleukin-6 than the 'sweets and desserts' and 'high-fat dairy products' clusters, and no differences were seen in C-reactive protein or tumor necrosis factor-α.ConclusionsA dietary pattern high in low-fat dairy products, fruit, whole grains, poultry, fish and vegetables may be associated with greater insulin sensitivity and lower systemic inflammation in older adults

Callus Induction and Plant Regeneration of Commercial Rice (Oryza sativa L.) Cultivars

Manipulation of agronomic traits at the cellular and molecular levels offers an efficient approach to enhance conventional breeding efforts for rice improvement. Plant regeneration protocols, required for biotechnological applications, have not yet been developed for a number of important rice cultivars. This study was conducted to establish a system for plant regeneration of elite rice cultivars adapted to the southern U.S.A. Callus was induced from dehusked grains of cultivars Alan, Katy, and LaGrue, on MS media containing 0.5, 2, and 4 mg L-1 2,4-D, with 0.5 mg L-1 kinetin or without kinetin. Plant regeneration was accomplished by transferring the callus to a hormone-free medium. Callus proliferation was influenced by 2,4-D, kinetin, and genotype in two-way interactions. The effects of these factors on embryogenesis and rhizogenesis was expressed in a three-way interaction. Depending upon the genotype up to 50% plant regeneration was obtained. In most cases treatments consisting of 0.5 to 2 mg L-1 2,4-D plus 0.5 mg L-1 kinetin produced the best callus proliferations with the highest embryogenic capacity. Regenerants grew to maturity in soil and produced viable seeds. The establishment of this regeneration system is essential for the development of a genetic transformation system for the aforementioned commercial rice cultivars

Prophets and Priests of the Nation: Naguib Mahfouz’s Karnak Café and the 1967 Crisis in Egypt

Similarities between religion and nationalism are well known but not well understood. They can be explained by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory in order to consider symbolic interests and the strategies employed to advance them. In both religion and nationalism, the “strategy of the prophets” relies on charisma while the “strategy of the priests” relies on cultural capital. In 20th-century Egypt, nationalism permitted intellectuals whose cultural capital was mainly secular, such as Naguib Mahfouz, to become “priests of the nation” in order to compete with the ʿulamaʾ for prestige and influence. However, it severely limited their autonomy, particularly after Nasser took power and became a successful nationalist prophet. Mahfouz's novel Al-Karnak, which explores the fate of the Nasser regime's political prisoners and the effects of Egypt's 1967 military defeat, reflects this limitation. Under a nationalist regime, the film adaptation of the novel contributed to Mahfouz's heteronomy