NOSL experiment support

An optical lightning detector was constructed and flown, along with Vinton cameras and a Fairchild Line Scan Spectrometer, on a U-2 during the summer of 1979. The U-2 lightning data was obtained in daylight, and was supplemented with ground truth taken at Langmuir Laboratory. Simulations were prepared as required to establish experiment operating procedures and science training for the astronauts who would operate the Night/Day Optical Survey of Thunderstorm Lightning (NOSL) equipment during the STS-2 NOSL experiment on the Space Shuttle. Data was analyzed and papers were prepared for publication

One Hour of Chemical Demonstrations

This article describes a diverse set of chemistry demonstrations especially selected to encourage student interaction and to be easily transported. The demonstrations may be presented at a level that can be tailored to any audience– from very young children to high school students planning careers in science. An ideal environment is a small classroom with 20-30 students where everyone can take part in the discussion. Once the chemicals are prepared, the collection of demonstrations takes about ten minutes to set-up, and one hour (or less) to perform. Very little is needed at the visiting site, no more than a table and a pitcher of water. A single electrical outlet is useful, but not essential. In Table 2 th

Thunderstorm observations from Space Shuttle

Results of the Nighttime/Daytime Optical Survey of Lightning (NOSL) experiments done on the STS-2 and STS-4 flights are covered. During these two flights of the Space Shuttle Columbia, the astronaut teams of J. Engle and R. Truly, and K. Mattingly II and H. Hartsfield took motion pictures of thunderstorms with a 16 mm cine camera. Film taken during daylight showed interesting thunderstorm cloud formations, where individual frames taken tens of seconds apart, when viewed as stereo pairs, provided information on the three-dimensional structure of the cloud systems. Film taken at night showed clouds illuminated by lightning with discharges that propagated horizontally at speeds of up to 10 to the 5th m/sec and extended for distances on the order of 60 km or more

Lightning observations from the Space Shuttle

Motion pictures were taken at night from the space shuttle that show lightning discharges spreading horizontally at speeds of .00001 m/sec for distances over 60 km. Tape recordings were made of the accompanying optical pulses detected with a photocell optical system. The observations show that lightning is often a mesoscale phenomenon that conveys large amounts of electric charge and energy derived from an extensive cloud system into a cloud-to-ground discharge. Several video tape recordings of lightning discharges were obtained on shuttle flights since the termination of the NOSL program. The size and location of the lightning illuminated cloud images is now being analyzed, and comparisons are made with meteorological data concerning the cloud system obtained from the McIDAS

How can participatory social network analysis contribute to community-led natural resources management?: a case study from Bua Province, Fiji Islands

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015Adaptive co-management of natural resources requires a variety of stakeholders across different scales and sectors to communicate and collaborate effectively. Social network theory recognizes that stakeholders interact with each other through networks and that various network characteristics affect the way in which they function. Social relationships can be visualized through network mapping and their patterns systematically analyzed in a process known as social network analysis (SNA). Participatory SNA allows members of the network to be involved in the mapping or analysis process. Participants can then apply their knowledge of these relationships to build, improve, or better utilize their connections to increase desired outcomes. These actions are referred to as network interventions or network weaving. In Bua Province in the Fiji Islands, the Wildlife Conservation Society and other partners are facilitating "ridge to reef" ecosystem-based management planning and are striving to build local capacity for natural resources governance and conservation. This study seeks to determine how participatory SNA might be used as a tool for enhancing community-led natural resources management. First it was necessary to develop methods for conducting participatory SNA research with rural Fijian communities. Network data was then gathered from eight Districts and fifty villages. Social network maps were presented back to community stakeholders for their interpretation and to elicit their ideas for improving their resource governance networks. SNA was used to characterize and map patterns of information exchange and collaboration among stakeholders involved in natural resource management in Bua. Even without complete network data, several patterns emerged. These included: 1) Traditional decision-making networks that were more cohesive than information exchange networks, reflecting the importance of social hierarchies for decision making within rural Fijian communities and the need for resource governance to link into these structures. 2) All the District-level networks had a number of fragmented groups and more ties within than between communities. This highlights the challenge of getting communities to effectively collaborate at the District-level due to issues like distance between villages, conflicts, barriers to communication (e.g. no phone/internet), and clan-based (mataqali) land-ownership system. These issues suggest the need for innovative actions to help bridge these gaps and present an opportunity for network weaving. 3) Actor position analyses (indegree and outdegree) provided a list of opinion leaders and people who are good at reaching out to others. These individuals may be good candidates to receive network weaver trainings. These measures also highlighted individuals and groups that communities would like to work with in the future and who facilitators can help to connect. Overall, these results indicate that SNA can be a valuable tool for better understanding relationships between actors involved in collaborative natural resource management, but its use in rural settings can be limited by the challenges of collecting data in remote villages. The participatory process of evaluating networks with participants was beneficial since it helped communities recognize and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their resource governance networks. This resulted in a list of recommended capacity-building activities (such as alternative livelihoods projects and special trainings for traditional leaders) based on their self-identified needs. However, the real potential benefits of this process will not be realized until the study results are applied, until network weaving and capacity building actually take place, and the process is evaluated to determine if any positive outcomes resulted for communities or conservation. This will require considerable commitment on the part of a network coordinator(s) to impart network concepts, facilitate network weaving activities, and in due course empower a transformation from the status quo to self-organizing, action-oriented conservation networks

Characteristics of successful interventions to reduce turnover and increase retention of early career nurses: a systematic review

Background nurse shortages have been identified as central to workforce issues in healthcare systems globally and although interventions to increase the nursing workforce have been implemented, nurses leaving their roles, particularly in the first year after qualification, present a significant barrier to building the nurse workforce. Objective to evaluate the characteristics of successful interventions to promote retention and reduce turnover of early career nurses. Design this is a systematic review Data sources Online databases including Academic Search Complete, Medline, Health Policy reference Centre, EMBASE, Psychinfo, CINAHL and the Cochran Library were searched to identify relevant publications in English published between 2001 and April 2018. Studies included evaluated an intervention to increase retention or reduce turnover and used turnover or retention figures as a measure. Review methods The review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Studies were quality-assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal tools for Quasi Experimental and Randomised Controlled Trials. Retention/turnover data were used to guide the comparison between studies and appropriate measures of central tendency and dispersion were calculated and presented, based on the normality of the data. Results A total of 11, 656 papers were identified, of which 53 were eligible studies. A wide variety of interventions and components within those interventions were identified to improve nurse retention. Promising interventions appear to be either internship/residency programmes or orientation/transition to practice programmes, lasting between 27-52 weeks, with a teaching and preceptor and mentor component. Conclusions Methodological issues impacted on the extent to which conclusions could be drawn, even though a large number of studies were identified. Future research should focus on standardising the reporting of interventions and outcome measures used to evaluate these interventions and carrying out further research with rigorous methodology. Clinical practice areas are recommended to assess their current interventions against the identified criteria to guide development of their effectiveness. Evaluations of cost-effectiveness are considered an important next step to maximise return on investment