Local Residents Outdoor Recreational Conflict: An Instrument Development

Outdoor recreation are activities experienced and dependent upon the natural environment. When goals of the outdoor recreational experience are hindered due to the behavior of others outdoor recreational conflict occurs. While there are many studies that are valid and reliable, the instruments are designed for one location, set of activities, and/or user groups. Utilizing methodological approaches of validation and reliability testing provided an opportunity to create an instrument that can be utilized in a variety of outdoor recreational location, considering a variety of outdoor recreational activity, and implement different user groups without having to test the validation again. In addition data was collected to understand recreational conflict residents may perceive when utilizing the same natural resources as nature-based tourists.Health, Leisure & Human Performanc

Enabling Conservation Concessions in the Context of Guyana’s Low-Carbon Development Strategy

The reduction of green house gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, especially in tropical countries, is a necessary action for the mitigation of global climate change. Guyana is one of few countries which maintain a high forest cover (85%) and a low rate of deforestation (<0.1%). Guyana has articulated a Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) by which it intends to maintain the climate regulation services provided by its forest and receive REDD+ payments. Increased deforestation, primarily form alluvial gold mining, however threatens success of the LCDS. This master’s project reviews the regulatory and policy environment for forest management in Guyana and utilizes experiences of the management of a conservation concession in the upper Essequibo River. The study analyzes benefits and costs of management of the conservation concession under the conditions of its establishment and three alternative scenarios. Recommendations are provided for the enabling of conservation concessions in the context of the LCDS. This study recommends enacting regulatory conditions to limit deforestation, establishing means to mitigate and offset deforestation, and enabling optimal value flows for conservation concession management

Mapping loci influencing blood pressure in the Framingham pedigrees using model-free LOD score analysis of a quantitative trait

This paper presents a method of performing model-free LOD-score based linkage analysis on quantitative traits. It is implemented in the QMFLINK program. The method is used to perform a genome screen on the Framingham Heart Study data. A number of markers that show some support for linkage in our study coincide substantially with those implicated in other linkage studies of hypertension. Although the new method needs further testing on additional real and simulated data sets we can already say that it is straightforward to apply and may offer a useful complementary approach to previously available methods for the linkage analysis of quantitative traits

Trends in protected area representation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in five tropical countries

In late 2020, governments will set the next decade of conservation targets under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Setting new targets requires understanding how well national protected area (PA) networks are spatially representing important areas for biodiversity and ecosystem services. We analyzed the representation of biodiversity priority areas (BPAs), forests, forest carbon stocks, non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and freshwater ecosystem services (FES) within terrestrial PA systems in Cambodia, Guyana, Liberia, Madagascar, and Suriname in 2003 and 2017. Four of the countries (all except Suriname) expanded their terrestrial PA networks during the study period. In all five countries, we found that PAs represented BPAs, forests, and forest carbon stocks relatively well, based on their size. PAs did not represent NTFPs and FES particularly well, except in Cambodia where FES were well represented. Countries that expanded PA networks during the study period also increased representation of forests, BPAs, and ES; in Cambodia and Madagascar these increases were substantial. Representation could be improved across all five countries, however, indicating that additional efforts are needed to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem benefits to people in these countries

Compatibility of a model for the QCD-Pomeron and chiral-symmetry breaking phenomenologies

The phenomenology of a QCD-Pomeron model based on the exchange of a pair of non-perturbative gluons, i.e. gluon fields with a finite correlation length in the vacuum, is studied in comparison with the phenomenology of QCD chiral symmetry breaking, based on non-perturbative solutions of Schwinger-Dyson equations for the quark propagator including these non-perturbative gluon effects. We show that these models are incompatible, and point out some possibles origins of this problem.Comment: 21 pages, uuencoded latex file, 3 postscript figures, uses epsf.sty and epsf.tex. To be published in Phys. Lett.

The Infrared Behavior of Gluon and Ghost Propagators in Landau Gauge QCD

A solvable systematic truncation scheme for the Dyson-Schwinger equations of Euclidean QCD in Landau gauge is presented. It implements the Slavnov-Taylor identities for the three-gluon and ghost-gluon vertices, whereas irreducible four-gluon couplings as well as the gluon-ghost and ghost-ghost scattering kernels are neglected. The infrared behavior of gluon and ghost propagators is obtained analytically: The gluon propagator vanishes for small spacelike momenta whereas the ghost propagator diverges stronger than a massless particle pole. The numerical solutions are compared with recent lattice data for these propagators. The running coupling of the renormalization scheme approaches a fixed point, $\alpha_c \simeq 9.5$, in the infrared.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Revtex; revised version accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Electromagnetic Pion Form Factor and Neutral Pion Decay Width

The electromagnetic pion form factor, $F_\pi(q^2)$, is calculated for spacelike-$q^2$ in impulse approximation using a confining quark propagator, $S$, and a dressed quark-photon vertex, $\Gamma_\mu$, obtained from realistic, nonperturbative Dyson-Schwinger equation studies. Good agreement with the available data is obtained for $F_\pi(q^2)$ and other pion observables, including the decay $\pi^0 \rightarrow \gamma\,\gamma$. This calculation suggests that soft, nonperturbative contributions dominate $F_\pi(q^2)$ at presently accessible~$q^2$.Comment: 25 pages, LaTeX, elsart.sty, 5 figures, To appear in Nucl. Phys.

A dynamical gluon mass solution in a coupled system of the Schwinger-Dyson equations

We study numerically the Schwinger-Dyson equations for the coupled system of gluon and ghost propagators in the Landau gauge and in the case of pure gauge QCD. We show that a dynamical mass for the gluon propagator arises as a solution while the ghost propagator develops an enhanced behavior in the infrared regime of QCD. Simple analytical expressions are proposed for the propagators, and the mass dependency on the $\Lambda_{QCD}$ scale and its perturbative scaling are studied. We discuss the implications of our results for the infrared behavior of the coupling constant, which, according to fits for the propagators infrared behavior, seems to indicate that $\alpha_s (q^2) \to 0$ as $q^2 \to 0$.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures - Revised version to be consistent with erratum to appear in JHE

Can in vitro studies aid in the development and use of antiseizure therapies? A report of the ILAE/AES Joint Translational Task Force

In vitro preparations (defined here as cultured cells, brain slices, and isolated whole brains) offer a variety of approaches to modeling various aspects of seizures and epilepsy. Such models are particularly amenable to the application of anti-seizure compounds, and consequently are a valuable tool to screen the mechanisms of epileptiform activity, mode of action of known anti-seizure medications (ASMs), and the potential efficacy of putative new anti-seizure compounds. Despite these applications, all disease models are a simplification of reality and are therefore subject to limitations. In this review, we summarize the main types of in vitro models that can be used in epilepsy research, describing key methodologies as well as notable advantages and disadvantages of each. We argue that a well-designed battery of in vitro models can form an effective and potentially high-throughput screening platform to predict the clinical usefulness of ASMs, and that in vitro models are particularly useful for interrogating mechanisms of ASMs. To conclude, we offer several key recommendations that maximize the potential value of in vitro models in ASM screening. This includes the use of multiple in vitro tests that can complement each other, carefully combined with in vivo studies, the use of tissues from chronically epileptic (rather than naïve wild-type) animals, and the integration of human cell/tissue-derived preparations