Mountain Weather and Climate: A General Overview and a Focus on Climatic Change in the Alps

Meteorological and climatic processes in mountain regions play a key role in many environmental systems, in particular the quantity and quality of water that influences both aquatic ecosystems and economic systems often far beyond the boundaries of the mountains themselves. This paper will provide a general overview of some of the particular characteristics of mountain weather and climate, to highlight some of the unique atmospheric features that are associated with regions of complex topography. The second part of the paper will focus upon characteristics of climate and climatic change in the European Alps, a region with a wealth of high quality data that allows an assessment on how climate and dependent environmental systems have evolved in the course of the 20th century and how alpine climate may undergo further changes to "global warming” in the 21st century, as the atmosphere responds to increasing levels of greenhouse gases that are expected in coming decade

Assessing and managing soil quality for urban agriculture in Ohio

Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (FAES): 3rd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)Urban agriculture (UA) is rapidly expanding in the majority of Ohio's cities and is widely recognized as a means of improving the ecological conditions, quality of life, and food security in urban areas. This project will apply the soil quality evaluation process to soils being used for specialty crop production in urban areas in Ohio with the goal of better understanding their soil properties and identifying appropriate management strategies. The project is focused around two major components: an experimental research site and a field study of production sites. The experimental site is located in a series of adjacent vacant urban lots in Youngstown OH where vacant houses were recently demolished and removed. The demolition process often leaves soils severely degraded and this experiment will document the soil's initial condition following demolition, as well as the ability for the soil to be improved for UA by applying organic matter. Experimental treatments focused on applying organic soil amendments produced from urban green wastes will be applied in a replicated, complete block experimental design, including the following treatments: 1) control, 2) leaf compost, 3) leaf compost + intensive cover cropping, 4) leaf compost + hardwood biochar. All plots are split plots comparing in ground cultivation with cultivation in 20cm raised beds. The experiment will be run for the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons. Data will be collected on vegetable crop yield and on soil physical, chemical and biological properties and analyzed through both hypothesis testing and soil quality indexing. Compaction is a primary constraint at the site with bulk density values of 1.79 g cm-3 for in ground plots and 1.55 g cm-3 for raised beds. Crop yield data from 2011 demonstrate strong treatment effects on both crop yield (p=0.002) and harvest index (p=0.008). Both compost amended and compost + biochar amended plots had significantly greater crop yields than control plots, while compost + biochar plots had the highest harvest index values. An additional study in 2012 will conduct soil quality assessment at urban market gardens in Ohio and provide producers with a soil quality report and management recommendations. Expected outcomes include improved knowledge and management of UA soils in the region.A one-year embargo was granted for this item

Mountain Climates and Climatic Change: An Overview of Processes Focusing on the European Alps

This contribution provides an overview of the intricacies of mountain climates, particularly as they pertain to the European Alps. Examples will be given of issues that are related to climatic change as observed in the Alps during the course of the 20th century, and some of the physical mechanisms that may be responsible for those changes. The discussion will then focus on the problems related to assessing climatic change in regions of complex topography, the potential shifts in climate during the 21st century that the alpine region may be subjected to, and the associated climate-generated impacts on mountain environment

Mountain weather and climate: a general overview and a focus on climatic change in the Alps

Meteorological and climatic processes in mountain regions play a key role in many environmental systems, in particular the quantity and quality of water that influences both aquatic ecosystems and economic systems often far beyond the boundaries of the mountains themselves. This paper will provide a general overview of some of the particular characteristics of mountain weather and climate, to highlight some of the unique atmospheric features that are associated with regions of complex topography. The second part of the paper will focus upon characteristics of climate and climatic change in the European Alps, a region with a wealth of high quality data that allows an assessment on how climate and dependent environmental systems have evolved in the course of the 20th century and how alpine climate may undergo further changes to “global warming” in the 21st century, as the atmosphere responds to increasing levels of greenhouse gases that are expected in coming decades

CollectiveEYEdentity: Connecting Community Curation

CollectiveEYEdentity: Connecting Community Curation - an article featured in The Canadian Art Therapy Association\u27s online magazine Envisage

Seneca’s Natural Questions: Platonism, Physics, and Stoic Therapy in the First Century AD

The combination of ethics and physics in Seneca’s Natural Questions has frequently puzzled scholars. Although a number of studies have attempted to reconcile the work’s ethical and physical parts, others maintain that there is no substantial connection between them. Both positions are problematic. The former glosses over the quite obvious ways in which these vivid accounts of vice are thematically at odds with the physics; the latter results in a bifurcation of the aims of the work. This study argues that the incongruous character of these passages plays an integral part in the work’s overall goal: to defend the Stoic account of the ‘the good’. This account was under attack from Platonist rivals. The Stoics argue that the good is grounded ultimately in the wellbeing of the cosmos as a whole; Platonists maintain that conceptualising the good as such is impossible because, as empiricists, the Stoics can only account for a subjective understanding of the good, grounded first and foremost in the wellbeing of the body. Seneca’s engagement with this debate is indicated by the frequent allusions to Plato in the work, particularly the idea of ‘separating soul from body’. Seneca suggests that a carefully structured study of nature can achieve this ‘separation’. This process helps agents to overcome the subjective, body-focussed perspective that the Platonists associate with empiricism. Seneca thus demonstrates a therapeutic means through which an empiricist agent could come to conceive of the good as the Stoics envisage it. This same process of separation from one’s body, however, also provides an ideal opportunity to reflect critically on the objects that we tend to misidentify as goods. It is here that the moralising passages prove useful. These arresting accounts of vice serve to jar us into critical reflection on where we ground our understanding of the good

HPV-18 transformed cells fail to arrest in G1 in response to quercetin treatment

Previous work with primary human keratinocytes demonstrated that quercetin, a potent mutagen found in high levels in bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum), arrested cells in G1 with concomitant elevation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor (cdki) p27Kip1. Expression of the human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) E6 and E7 oncoproteins, under transcriptional control of a heterologous promoter, in transformed keratinocytes failed to abrogate this arrest [Beniston, R., Campo, M.S., 2003. Quercetin elevates p27(Kip1) and arrests both primary and HPV-16 E6/E7 transformed human keratinocytes in G1. Oncogene 22, 5504–5514]. Given the link between papillomavirus infection, bracken fern in the diet and cancer of the oesophagus in humans, we wished to investigate further whether cells transformed by the whole genome of HPV-16 or HPV-18, with E6 and E7 under the transcriptional control of their respective homologous promoters, would be similarly arrested in G1 by quercetin. In agreement with earlier work, quercetin arrested HPV-16 transformed cells in G1 with an increase in the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p27Kip1. However, HPV-18 transformed cells did not arrest after quercetin treatment. The failure of HPV-18 transformed cells to arrest in G1 was linked to the up-regulation of the HPV-18 long control region (LCR) by quercetin, maintaining high expression of the viral transforming proteins. Transcriptional up-regulation of the HPV-18 LCR was mediated by a “quercetin responsive element” homologous to the one identified previously in the bovine papillomavirus type 4 (BPV-4) LCR