Airborne Temperature Survey of Harrison Bay

During 10 August 1973 while conducting an oceanographic program in deep waters off the North Slope of Alaska, an opportunity arose to make an airborne radiation thermometer (ART) flight to map the surface water temperature of Harrison Bay .... Little is known about the oceanography of the Bay. Yet this zone may well come under considerable, if not great, environmental stresses stemming from present localization of resource development and exploitation. This paper presents a summary of the results of the low-altitude ART flight. ... A Barnes Engineering Company PRT-5, 9.5-11.5 µ Infrared Radiometer with a field of view of 2 degrees was used .... The temperature survey was carried out using 2 helicopters ... flying a grid pattern and measuring the surface temperature along the flight track. The flight was conducted at a nominal altitude of 46 metres, with a flight speed of 150 km/hr. Navigation was done by visual contact with the coast and by radar tracking from the Glacier. Clear, cloud-free conditions existed in the entire study area during the survey. Continuous winds (>3.0 m/sec) mixed the surface waters so that the radiometer measurements are representative of bulk temperature rather than the skin temperature of the water. The ART equipment was calibrated before, during, and after the flight. ... Contours of the surface-water temperature distribution of Harrison Bay are presented .... Two major features are exhibited: the lack of large river effluent plumes; and the penetration of relatively cold water from the west into Harrison Bay. The weak packing of isotherms (4° to 8°C) near the Colville River delta indicates that river runoff was very low in early August and freshwater influence was restricted to near the shore. This was expected. ... the Colville River has a total annual discharge of 16 × 10**9 m³ of which 80 per cent occurs the first twenty days of June. During the rest of the summer, river flow is very low. In the second feature ... the 3°C isotherm represented the boundary of the cold water and was accompanied by a sharp colour separation: offshore of the isotherm the water was green whereas inshore the water was brown. It is also interesting to note that the 3°C isotherm paralleled the 5.5 metre isobath in Harrison Bay. Along the North Slope coast, surface currents depend largely on local winds, are highly variable (0 to 60 cm/sec), and may even reverse direction .... The wind is generally from the east during the summer and rarely exceeds 10 m/sec. However, from 6 to 11 August 1973, the wind direction was from the west-southwest at an average of 4 m/sec. This was sufficient to cause the nearshore waters to flow easterly, pushing the colder coastal waters into Harrison Bay. Assuming steady state conditions the magnitude of the wind-driven cold-water current was 12 cm/sec. The pocket of <4°C water near Cape Halkett ... may represent an eddy. The surface water temperature distribution of Harrison Bay observed 10 August 1973 is probably unique in that the winds were blowing from the west causing the presence of a tongue of cold water to occur which covered a great part of the bay. However, the data should add to our sparse understanding of the area and point out the need for continued study

Plans for future scenarios are hard to communicate to employees

Those not involved in the process struggle to internalise the stories created to explain it, argues Gary Bowma

An empirical analysis of a scenario-informed strategic planning process : a public sector case

This thesis lies at the nexus of scenario planning and strategy. Scenario planning is a foresight activity used extensively in strategic planning and public policy development to imagine alternative, plausible futures as means to understand the driving forces behind the uncertainties and possibilities of a changing environment. Despite significant application in both private and public sectors, and a growing body of academic and practitioner-orientated literature, little empirical evidence exists about how organisations actually use scenario planning to inform strategy. Moreover, the emerging Strategy-as-Practice (S-as-P) perspective, which has exposed strategy to more sociological pursuits, presented a way of conceiving and studying strategy not as something an organisation has, but rather as something people do. By examining the activities of scenario planning, understanding its use as an example of episodic, interactive strategizing, S-as-P provides a theoretical lens through which to perform a much-needed empirical analysis of the scenario-to-strategy process. A second goal of the thesis is to advance understanding of the S-as-P perspective by addressing recent criticisms as well as contributing to the growing body of practice-based research. The central research question which guides the thesis is, how does an organisation use scenario planning to inform the strategic planning process? To answer this question, the research vehicle is a single, in-depth case study of community planning in Fife, which extends from 1999 until April 2008. A detailed, longitudinal narrative of Fife’s scenario planning and strategy process is presented before using empirical evidence from the case to understand how an organisation manages the scenario planning process, how scenario planning affects policy development, and how cognitive processes manifest physically in an organisation. The thesis concludes that scenario planning created a sensemaking/sensegiving framework that provided structural and interpretive legitimacy which facilitated communicative activities and helped the Fife Partnership understand and improve the interconnectedness of Fife’s public services and community planning process. While contributing to the S-as-P research agenda, the investigation of the scenario-to-strategy process also revealed, and solidified, a number of criticisms that challenge the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical validity of the strategy-as-practice perspective

Integrating the markers Pan I and haemoglobin with the genetic linkage map of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Haemoglobin (Hb) and pantophysin (Pan I) markers have been used intensively in population studies of Atlantic cod (<it>Gadus morhua</it>) and in the analysis of traits such as temperature tolerance, growth characteristics and sexual maturation. We used an Illumina GoldenGate panel and the KASPar SNP genotyping system to analyse SNPs in three Atlantic cod families, one of which was polymorphic at the Hb β1 locus, and to generate a genetic linkage map integrating Pan I and multiple Hb loci.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>Data generated allowed the mapping of nine Hb loci, the Pan I locus, and other 122 SNPs onto an existing linkage genetic map for Atlantic cod. Four Hb genes (i.e. α1, α4, β1 and β5) have been mapped on linkage group (LG) 2 while the other five (i.e. α2, α3, β2, β3 and β4) were placed on LG18. Pan I was mapped on LG 1 using a newly developed KASPar assay for a SNP variable only in Pan I^Aallelic variants. The new linkage genetic map presented here comprises 1046 SNPs distributed between 23 linkage groups, with a length of 1145.6 cM. A map produced by forcing additional loci, resulting in a reduced goodness-of-fit for mapped markers, allowed the mapping of a total of 1300 SNPs. Finally, we compared our genetic linkage map data with the genetic linkage map data produced by a different group and identified 29 shared SNPs distributed on 10 different linkage groups.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The genetic linkage map presented here incorporates the marker Pan I, together with multiple Hb loci, and integrates genetic linkage data produced by two different research groups. This represents a useful resource to further explore if Pan I and Hbs or other genes underlie quantitative trait loci (QTL) for temperature sensitivity/tolerance or other phenotypes.</p

A genetic and molecular model for flower development in Arabidopsis thaliana

Cells in developing organisms do not only differentiate, they differentiate in defined patterns. A striking example is the differentiation of flowers, which in most plant families consist of four types of organs: sepals, petals, stamens and carpels, each composed of characteristic cell types. In the families of flowering plants in which these organs occur, they are patterned with the sepals in the outermost whorl or whorls of the flower, with the petals next closest to the center, the stamens even closer to the center, and the carpels central. In each species of flowering plant the disposition and number (or range of numbers) of these organs is also specified, and the floral 'formula' is repeated in each of the flowers on each individual plant of the species. We do not know how cells in developing plants determine their position, and in response to this determination differentiate to the cell types appropriate for that position. While there have been a number of speculative proposals for the mechanism of organ specification in flowers (Goethe, 1790; Goebel, 1900; Heslop-Harrison, 1964; Green, 1988), recent genetic evidence is inconsistent with all of them, at least in the forms in which they were originally presented (Bowman et al. 1989; Meyerowitz et al. 1989). We describe here a preliminary model, based on experiments with Arabidopsis thaliana. The model is by and large consistent with existing evidence, and has predicted the results of a number of genetic and molecular experiments that have been recently performed

Modelling the impact of liner shipping network perturbations on container cargo routing: Southeast Asia to Europe application

Understanding how container routing stands to be impacted by different scenarios of liner shipping network perturbations such as natural disasters or new major infrastructure developments is of key importance for decision-making in the liner shipping industry. The variety of actors and processes within modern supply chains and the complexity of their relationships have previously led to the development of simulation-based models, whose application has been largely compromised by their dependency on extensive and often confidential sets of data. This study proposes the application of optimisation techniques less dependent on complex data sets in order to develop a quantitative framework to assess the impacts of disruptive events on liner shipping networks. We provide a categorization of liner network perturbations, differentiating between systemic and external and formulate a container assignment model that minimises routing costs extending previous implementations to allow feasible solutions when routing capacity is reduced below transport demand. We develop a base case network for the Southeast Asia to Europe liner shipping trade and review of accidents related to port disruptions for two scenarios of seismic and political conflict hazards. Numerical results identify alternative routing paths and costs in the aftermath of port disruptions scenarios and suggest higher vulnerability of intra-regional connectivity

Benchmark Tests for Stirling Convertor Heater Head Life Assessment Conducted

A new in-house test capability has been developed at the NASA Glenn Research Center, where a critical component of the Stirling Radioisotope Generator (SRG) is undergoing extensive testing to aid the development of analytical life prediction methodology and to experimentally aid in verification of the flight-design component's life. The new facility includes two test rigs that are performing creep testing of the SRG heater head pressure vessel test articles at design temperature and with wall stresses ranging from operating level to seven times that (see the following photograph)

Benchmark Calibration Tests Completed for Stirling Convertor Heater Head Life Assessment

A major phase of benchmark testing has been completed at the NASA Glenn Research Center (http://www.nasa.gov/glenn/), where a critical component of the Stirling Radioisotope Generator (SRG) is undergoing extensive experimentation to aid the development of an analytical life-prediction methodology. Two special-purpose test rigs subjected SRG heater-head pressure-vessel test articles to accelerated creep conditions, using the standard design temperatures to stay within the wall material s operating creep-response regime, but increasing wall stresses up to 7 times over the design point. This resulted in well-controlled "ballooning" of the heater-head hot end. The test plan was developed to provide critical input to analytical parameters in a reasonable period of time