Gettysburg College Sustainability Proposal

In the fall of 2011, the Environmental Studies capstone class led by Professor Rutherford Platt was asked to write Gettysburg College’s first Sustainability Plan. The goal of the plan was to develop specific sustainable practices for the campus that were related to the three pillars of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental, and how integrating diligent sustainable practices into each of these respected pillars will result in a more conscious campus, community, and future. In 2010, Gettysburg College turned to the Sustainability Tracking Assessment and Rating System (STARS) to quantify the institution’s sustainability efforts, providing a self-check mechanism to encourage sustainability applications to all aspects of the College. The American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment was signed in 2007 by former Gettysburg College President Katherine Haley Will, declaring that Gettysburg College would become carbon neutral by 2032. Gettysburg College has made large strides in the search for sustainability, and aims to continue its dedication to furthering sustainable practice. The following plan outlines the six priority areas identified by the Capstone class: progress of the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, Dining Services, campus green space, community outreach, integration of sustainability into the Gettysburg College Curriculum, and the Sustainability Advisory Committee. The first priority area identified was monitoring and upholding the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). Though creating new sustainability initiatives on campus is the driving force towards an increasingly sustainable college and community, it is imperative that these goals be carried out in full to maximize beneficial returns. In order to reach carbon neutrality, Gettysburg College hopes to increase energy efficiency in buildings, incorporate renewable energy sources on campus, and mitigate remaining emissions through the purchase of carbon offsets. To further the College’s progress, it is proposed that Gettysburg College continue its energy-efficient appliance purchasing policy, as well as create a policy to offset all greenhouse gas emissions generated by air travel for students study abroad. As stated by the ACUPCC, a Sustainability Committee should take responsibility for the updates and progress reports required to meet the goal of carbon neutrality. The second priority area identified was sustainability in Dining Services. Gettysburg College is home to 2,600 students, all of whom require three full meals a day. Dining Services accounts for a large fraction of Gettysburg College’s sustainability efforts, already implementing sustainability through composting, buying local produce, and using biodegradable products. The proposed on-campus sales cuts of non-reusable to-go items, a change in campus mentality on food waste, and improved composting practices will translate to an increasingly sustainable campus, as well as a well-fed campus body. The third priority was maintaining green space on campus. Ranked as the 23rd most beautiful campus in the United States by The Best Colleges, Gettysburg College utilizes campus green space to create an atmosphere that is conducive to activity as well as tranquility. The plan proposes that Gettysburg College and its grounds facilities continue their exceptional efforts, focusing on increasing the use of the student garden, creating a new rain garden or social area on campus, and converting unnecessary parking lots into green space. As these additions are completed, they must be introduced to the student body and faculty alike to assure these areas are known and utilized. The fourth priority was utilizing community outreach to spread awareness of sustainability initiatives on and off campus. To connect the sustainability-geared changes proposed in this plan, community outreach at Gettysburg College is assessed to estimate how well these initiatives are communicated and promoted to both potential and enrolled students, faculty, and other concerned parties. To evaluate the efficiency of communication at Gettysburg College, a quantitative assessment is presented to measure the ease of finding the sustainability webpage, the quality of sustainability-related topics available on the webpage, and quality of webpage design. The webpage is in need of improved text to image ratios, locations of sustainability topics, and data displays. Despite not having a link to the sustainability webpage on the Gettysburg College homepage, sustainability events should be covered and presented on the rotational news feed found on the homepage to maximize outreach to interested parties or simply to add to the definition of Gettysburg College. The fifth priority was integrating sustainability into the Curriculum to build a culture on campus that values academic rigor, supports students as they cultivate intellectual and civic passions, and promotes the development of healthy social relationships and behaviors. The proposed Sustainability Committee on Sustainability in the Curriculum (SCC) will hold sustainability workshops for faculty with the aim to instill sustainability into all academic disciplines, providing all Gettysburg graduates with a means to approach their professional careers in a fashion that is conscious of sustainability. The sixth and last priority was the Sustainability Advisory Committee. Established in 2007, the Sustainability Advisory Committee is currently under review, but it is recommended that the committee restructure itself in accordance with the new Sustainability Committee Bylaws. These bylaws aim to define the purposes, membership, governance, and involvement with the college. With a clearly defined set of goals and methodology, the Sustainability Advisory Committee will be able to improve the solidarity of the sustainability movement on campus as a whole. By following the propositions laid out in the Gettysburg College Sustainability Plan, the student body, faculty, and community alike will become a part of a multi-faceted progression toward a more sustainable future

Quality of Private Ground-Water Supplies in Kentucky

About 3.7 million people live in Kentucky, of which 1.9 million (52 percent) live in urban areas (roughly defined as any community with 2,500 or more people) and 1.8 million (48 percent) live in rural areas (University of Kentucky, 1993). Figure 1 summarizes sources of drinking water for Kentucky residents. About 70 percent of Kentuckians get their daily supply of water from surface-water sources - lakes and streams; about 25 percent get their water from ground-water wells; and about 5 percent get their water from other sources - springs, cisterns, ponds, or hauled water

The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor

The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) is a four telescope array designed to characterize relic primordial gravitational waves from inflation and the optical depth to reionization through a measurement of the polarized cosmic microwave background (CMB) on the largest angular scales. The frequencies of the four CLASS telescopes, one at 38 GHz, two at 93 GHz, and one dichroic system at 145/217 GHz, are chosen to avoid spectral regions of high atmospheric emission and span the minimum of the polarized Galactic foregrounds: synchrotron emission at lower frequencies and dust emission at higher frequencies. Low-noise transition edge sensor detectors and a rapid front-end polarization modulator provide a unique combination of high sensitivity, stability, and control of systematics. The CLASS site, at 5200 m in the Chilean Atacama desert, allows for daily mapping of up to 70\% of the sky and enables the characterization of CMB polarization at the largest angular scales. Using this combination of a broad frequency range, large sky coverage, control over systematics, and high sensitivity, CLASS will observe the reionization and recombination peaks of the CMB E- and B-mode power spectra. CLASS will make a cosmic variance limited measurement of the optical depth to reionization and will measure or place upper limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$, down to a level of 0.01 (95\% C.L.)

Monte Carlo study of the effects of system geometry and antiscatter grids on cone-beam CT scatter distributions

Purpose: The proliferation of cone-beam CT (CBCT) has created interest in performance optimization,with x-ray scatter identifie among the main limitations to image quality. CBCT often contends with elevated scatter, but the wide variety of imaging geometry in different CBCT configuration suggests that not all configuration are affected to the same extent. Graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated Monte Carlo (MC) simulations are employed over a range of imaging geometries to elucidate the factors governing scatter characteristics, effica y of antiscatter grids, guide system design, and augment development of scatter correction. Methods: A MC x-ray simulator implemented on GPU was accelerated by inclusion of variance reduction techniques (interaction splitting, forced scattering, and forced detection) and extended to include x-ray spectra and analytical models of antiscatter grids and flat-pane detectors. The simulator was applied to small animal (SA), musculoskeletal (MSK) extremity, otolaryngology (Head), breast, interventional C-arm, and on-board (kilovoltage) linear accelerator (Linac) imaging, with an axis-todetector distance (ADD) of 5, 12, 22, 32, 60, and 50 cm, respectively. Each configuratio was modeled with and without an antiscatter grid and with (i) an elliptical cylinder varying 70–280 mm in major axis; and (ii) digital murine and anthropomorphic models. The effects of scatter were evaluated in terms of the angular distribution of scatter incident upon the detector, scatter-to-primary ratio (SPR), artifact magnitude, contrast, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and visual assessment. Results: Variance reduction yielded improvements in MC simulation efficien y ranging from ∼17-fold (for SA CBCT) to ∼35-fold (for Head and C-arm), with the most significan acceleration due to interaction splitting (∼6 to ∼10-fold increase in efficien y). The benefi of a more extended geometry was evident by virtue of a larger air gap—e.g., for a 16 cm diameter object, the SPR reduced from 1.5 for ADD = 12 cm (MSK geometry) to 1.1 for ADD = 22 cm (Head) and to 0.5 for ADD = 60 cm (C-arm). Grid efficien y was higher for configuration with shorter air gap due to a broader angular distribution of scattered photons—e.g., scatter rejection factor ∼0.8 for MSK geometry versus ∼0.65 for C-arm. Grids reduced cupping for all configuration but had limited improvement on scatterinduced streaks and resulted in a loss of CNR for the SA, Breast, and C-arm. Relative contribution of forward-directed scatter increased with a grid (e.g., Rayleigh scatter fraction increasing from ∼0.15 without a grid to ∼0.25 with a grid for the MSK configuration) resulting in scatter distributions with greater spatial variation (the form of which depended on grid orientation). Conclusions: A fast MC simulator combining GPU acceleration with variance reduction provided a systematic examination of a range of CBCT configuration in relation to scatter, highlighting the magnitude and spatial uniformity of individual scatter components, illustrating tradeoffs in CNR and artifacts and identifying the system geometries for which grids are more beneficia (e.g., MSK) from those in which an extended geometry is the better defense (e.g., C-arm head imaging). Compact geometries with an antiscatter grid challenge assumptions of slowly varying scatter distributions due to increased contribution of Rayleigh scatter.The research was supported by academic-industry partnership with Carestream Health Inc. (Rochester, NY) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grant No. 2R01-CA-112163. A. Sisniega is supported by FPU grant (Spanish Ministry of Education), AMIT project, RECAVA-RETIC Network, Project Nos. TEC2010-21619- C04-01, TEC2011-28972-C02-01, and PI11/00616 (Spanish Ministry of Science and Education), ARTEMIS program (Comunidad de Madrid), and PreDiCT-TB partnership.Publicad

Solar Occultation Satellite Data and Derived Meteorological Products: Sampling Issues and Comparisons with Aura MLS

Derived Meteorological Products (DMPs, including potential temperature (theta), potential vorticity, equivalent latitude (EqL), horizontal winds and tropopause locations) have been produced for the locations and times of measurements by several solar occultation (SO) instruments and the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS). DMPs are calculated from several meteorological analyses for the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment-Fourier Transform Spectrometer, Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II and III, Halogen Occultation Experiment, and Polar Ozone and Aerosol Measurement II and III SO instruments and MLS. Time-series comparisons of MLS version 1.5 and SO data using DMPs show good qualitative agreement in time evolution of O3, N2O, H20, CO, HNO3, HCl and temperature; quantitative agreement is good in most cases. EqL-coordinate comparisons of MLS version 2.2 and SO data show good quantitative agreement throughout the stratosphere for most of these species, with significant biases for a few species in localized regions. Comparisons in EqL coordinates of MLS and SO data, and of SO data with geographically coincident MLS data provide insight into where and how sampling effects are important in interpretation of the sparse SO data, thus assisting in fully utilizing the SO data in scientific studies and comparisons with other sparse datasets. The DMPs are valuable for scientific studies and to facilitate validation of non-coincident measurements

An empirical evaluation of camera trap study design: How many, how long and when?

Abstract Camera traps deployed in grids or stratified random designs are a well‐established survey tool for wildlife but there has been little evaluation of study design parameters. We used an empirical subsampling approach involving 2,225 camera deployments run at 41 study areas around the world to evaluate three aspects of camera trap study design (number of sites, duration and season of sampling) and their influence on the estimation of three ecological metrics (species richness, occupancy and detection rate) for mammals. We found that 25–35 camera sites were needed for precise estimates of species richness, depending on scale of the study. The precision of species‐level estimates of occupancy (ψ) was highly sensitive to occupancy level, with 0.75) species, but more than 150 camera sites likely needed for rare (ψ < 0.25) species. Species detection rates were more difficult to estimate precisely at the grid level due to spatial heterogeneity, presumably driven by unaccounted habitat variability factors within the study area. Running a camera at a site for 2 weeks was most efficient for detecting new species, but 3–4 weeks were needed for precise estimates of local detection rate, with no gains in precision observed after 1 month. Metrics for all mammal communities were sensitive to seasonality, with 37%–50% of the species at the sites we examined fluctuating significantly in their occupancy or detection rates over the year. This effect was more pronounced in temperate sites, where seasonally sensitive species varied in relative abundance by an average factor of 4–5, and some species were completely absent in one season due to hibernation or migration. We recommend the following guidelines to efficiently obtain precise estimates of species richness, occupancy and detection rates with camera trap arrays: run each camera for 3–5 weeks across 40–60 sites per array. We recommend comparisons of detection rates be model based and include local covariates to help account for small‐scale variation. Furthermore, comparisons across study areas or times must account for seasonality, which could have strong impacts on mammal communities in both tropical and temperate sites

Genome-Scale Networks Link Neurodegenerative Disease Genes to α-Synuclein through Specific Molecular Pathways

Numerous genes and molecular pathways are implicated in neurodegenerative proteinopathies, but their inter-relationships are poorly understood. We systematically mapped molecular pathways underlying the toxicity of alpha-synuclein (α-syn), a protein central to Parkinson's disease. Genome-wide screens in yeast identified 332 genes that impact α-syn toxicity. To “humanize” this molecular network, we developed a computational method, TransposeNet. This integrates a Steiner prize-collecting approach with homology assignment through sequence, structure, and interaction topology. TransposeNet linked α-syn to multiple parkinsonism genes and druggable targets through perturbed protein trafficking and ER quality control as well as mRNA metabolism and translation. A calcium signaling hub linked these processes to perturbed mitochondrial quality control and function, metal ion transport, transcriptional regulation, and signal transduction. Parkinsonism gene interaction profiles spatially opposed in the network (ATP13A2/PARK9 and VPS35/PARK17) were highly distinct, and network relationships for specific genes (LRRK2/PARK8, ATXN2, and EIF4G1/PARK18) were confirmed in patient induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neurons. This cross-species platform connected diverse neurodegenerative genes to proteinopathy through specific mechanisms and may facilitate patient stratification for targeted therapy. Keywords: alpha-synuclein; iPS cell; Parkinson’s disease; stem cell; mRNA translation; RNA-binding protein; LRRK2; VPS35; vesicle trafficking; yeas

CLASS: The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor

The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) is an experiment to measure the signature of a gravitational wave background from inflation in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). CLASS is a multi-frequency array of four telescopes operating from a high-altitude site in the Atacama Desert in Chile. CLASS will survey 70% of the sky in four frequency bands centered at 38, 93, 148, and 217 GHz, which are chosen to straddle the Galactic-foreground minimum while avoiding strong atmospheric emission lines. This broad frequency coverage ensures that CLASS can distinguish Galactic emission from the CMB. The sky fraction of the CLASS survey will allow the full shape of the primordial B-mode power spectrum to be characterized, including the signal from reionization at low-length. Its unique combination of large sky coverage, control of systematic errors, and high sensitivity will allow CLASS to measure or place upper limits on the tensor-to-scalar ratio at a level of r = 0:01 and make a cosmic-variance-limited measurement of the optical depth to the surface of last scattering, tau. (c) (2014) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only