Nitrogen Inputs to Rhode Island Coastal Salt Ponds - Too Much of a Good Thing

Reviews concerns about increase of nitrogen in Rhode Island salt ponds as a result of human activities

Open banking and Australia’s data-sharing regime: six lessons for Europe

As the phenomenon of open banking spreads, countries would be better off by working together and making data-sharing across jurisdictions a smoother process. Ross Buckley, Natalia Jevglevskaja, and Scott Farrell write that the sooner national policymakers find themselves on the same page, the more control consumers will have over their data at home, and abroad, and the more data-sharing will be able to drive needed competition in economies. They highlight six lessons from Australia’s experience that could help policymakers around the world establish robust data-sharing frameworks

VIP Approach at the University of Strathclyde : A Pilot Evaluation Report 2015-16

The potential for enhanced knowledge creation through collaborative group effort has been reasonably well established within educational discourse. This stands in direct contrast to former traditional models, where knowledge was treated as a transmitted commodity from ‘expert’ to ‘student’. Such transmission models have long been viewed as broadly ineffectual, especially as regards the teaching of primary Science, Technologies, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) subjects. The Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) approach may offer pedagogical advancement in terms of STEM teaching and learning in Higher Education (HE). Established within the University of Strathclyde some five years ago, an initial University-wide evaluation of the programme was piloted in Session 2015-16. Students’ perceptions of their participation in VIP generally very positively reported within the pilot evaluation. Key messages centred on students’ perceptions of the benefit of participation in the unique collaborative real-world study afforded by the VIP approach and their desire for the programme architecture to expand even further both laterally and vertically across the University

Microdialysis fluxes of inorganic nitrogen differ from extractable nitrogen by minimising disturbance of mineral-associated sources

Measuring soil nitrogen (N) provides important information for ecosystem productivity and improving N use efficiency in agricultural systems. Conventional means of sampling N using soil extractions disturb soil structure and function, and likely distort accurate quantification. In situ microdialysis is a novel sampling method that generates differing N profiles compared to soil extractions. Here we test the hypothesis that differences observed between sampling methods are due to the minimal disturbance and sampling of a mobile N fraction when using microdialysis, with discernible patterns expected across soils with distinct clay and organic matter contents. In a short-term laboratory microcosm experiment with 21 sugarcane cropping soils, we compared salt (potassium chloride; KCl) or aqueous (H2O) extractants and microdialysis. KCl-extractable ammonium (NH4+) was highly correlated with the content of clay, total N and carbon, indicative of bound N being solubilised. In contrast, NH4 (+) contributed significantly less to microdialysis fluxes and was not correlated with the measured soil properties, which we attribute to minimal disturbance of bound N center dot H2O extracts sampled proportionally more NH4 (+) than microdialysis but were significantly correlated with fluxes. This suggests that while microdialysis and H2O extraction sample from a dissolved N pool, H2O extracts sample from an additional pool of loosely-bound NH4+. Nitrate (NO3) measures were correlated between methods, but shared no relationship with the measured soil properties, indicating that NO3 sampling is less affected by the disturbance introduced by extractions. We conclude that sampling inorganic N is biased by the degree to which soil sampling methods disturb adsorbed N sources with implications for interpreting soil N measurements

Effect of Feeding L-Carnitine and Sunflower Seeds on CLA Content of Pasture-Fed Beef

Pasture finishing enhances levels of conjugated linoleic acids (CLA) in beef lipids (Shanta et al. 1997). CLA (e.g., C18:2 c9, t11), formed during biohydrogenation of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in the rumen, can reduce the incidence of heart disease, cancer and obesity in humans. However, pasture finishing cattle can reduce carcass grade. Feeding pasture-fed cattle a high-grain diet for a short finishing period (~60 d) improves grades but may reduce lipid CLA levels. A feeding regime is required that maintains the positive nutritional attributes of pasture-fed beef and improves the meat grade. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of adding sunflower seeds (SFS), a good source of PUFA (Mir et al. 2000), or carnitine, a vitamin-like compound shown to increase fat deposition and marbling in cattle, to finishing diets of pasture-fed cattle on lipid fatty acid profiles (FAP)

Pure Women in a Blighted World: Protesting Rape Culture in "The Cenci" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles"

The origins of rape culture, as a concept, lie in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the well-known writings of such Romantic (and proto-Romantic) visionaries as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Friedrich Schiller, Victor Hugo, and The Cenci’s author, Percy Bysshe Shelley. These philosophers, dramatists, and poets articulated profound anxieties regarding the influence of social structures on human evil—and Thomas Hardy, author of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, channeled those same anxieties into his work, although he lived much later. The modern conception of rape culture could not exist without these Romantic pioneers, who developed a political and philosophical language that lets us denaturalize and de-normalize sexual violence. In Romantic and post-Romantic literature, we find critiques of rape culture powerful enough to rival anything in modern literature, despite the two centuries that modern literature has had to refine its approach. One might object to categorizing Tess of the d’Urbervilles, first published in 1891, as a Romantic text. 1891 does not fall within one of the timeframes thought to demarcate the Romantic era: from the late eighteenth century to the 1820s in Germany and the United Kingdom, and (by some accounts) from the 1830s to the 1850s in France and the United States. Yet writers now identified as “Romantic” held chronological distinctions like these in low regard. Victor Hugo, the iconic French Romantic, suggests as much in the preface to his drama Cromwell (1827), in which he explains his theories of literature’s evolution. “[We] have in no wise pretended to assign exclusive limits to the… epochs of poetry,” he writes, “but simply… set forth their predominant characteristics.” Hugo contends that each “epoch” or period of literature possesses its own “predominant characteristics,” shared similarities in mindset that Hugo will later term an epoch’s “germ.” These epochs lack fixed historical limits, so that one epoch’s germ might abide for centuries. It therefore does not matter, from Hugo’s perspective, that Tess of the d’Urbervilles takes the form of a Victorian novel. What matters is that Tess possesses a Romantic germ; the novel’s character, not its publication date, ought to determine its categorization. To that end, this thesis’s first chapter will locate the “germ” of a Romantic protest against rape culture. It will discuss how the Romantic period’s most radical political and philosophical theories tended to manifest in its dramatic literature, where those theories sometimes helped to empower a critique of rape culture. This thesis’s second chapter will explore how this radical Romantic framework functions in the context of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci (1818). It will illuminate that drama’s searing indictment of rape culture, while also addressing the drama’s more frustrating aspects. This thesis’s third and last chapter will then consider the influence of Romantic protest on Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891-2). It will demonstrate that Romantic literature informs Tess’s critique of patriarchal structures, and underlies Tess’s compassionate, weaponized portrait of its heroine. A brief epilogue will conclude this thesis, revisiting Romantic literature’s ambitions to find what, if anything, it offers to our present moment of challenging cultural and political turmoil.Bachelor of Art

Investigating the RAS can be a fishy business: Interdisciplinary opportunities using Zebrafish

The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) is highly conserved, and components of the RAS are present in all vertebrates to some degree. Although the RAS has been studied since the discovery of renin, its biological role continues to broaden with the identification and characterization of new peptides. The evolutionarily distant zebrafish is a remarkable model for studying the kidney due to its genetic tractability and accessibility for in vivo imaging. The zebrafish pronephros is an especially useful kidney model due to its structural simplicity yet complex functionality, including capacity for glomerular and tubular filtration. Both the pronephros and mesonephros contain renin-expressing perivascular cells, which respond to RAS inhibition, making the zebrafish an excellent model for studying the RAS. This review summarizes the physiological and genetic tools currently available for studying the zebrafish kidney with regards to functionality of the RAS, using novel imaging techniques such as SPIM microscopy coupled with targeted single cell ablation and synthesis of vasoactive RAS peptides

CASPAR Low-Cost, Dual-Manifest Payload Adapter for Minotaur IV

The Minotaur IV Launch Vehicle is being developed by the Air Force Rocket Systems Launch Program (RSLP) to utilize excess Peacekeeper missile motors and provide low-cost launches for Government payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This vehicle uses three Peacekeeper stages, an Orion 38 motor, and avionics from the heritage Minotaur I vehicle. Nominal capability for Minotaur IV is almost 4000 lbm to LEO. The fly-away cost is just over $20 million. The Composite Adapter for Shared PAyload Rides (CASPAR) Multi-Payload Adapter (MPA) will enable a Minotaur IV to launch two large satellites (1000-2000 lbm) for about$10 million each. The CASPAR MPA is being designed for projected Minotaur IV launch load environments, with design objectives of light weight, integrated vibration isolation, low shock, and modularity. An innovative composite design, including co-cured composite stiffening, provides a lightweight structure with optional access doors. Low-shock separation systems are integrated for MPA and satellite separation events. Vibration isolation systems protect the payloads from the dynamic environment of the Peacekeeper motor stack, and isolation tuning will enable a range of payloads and facilitate modular designs. Qualification testing of a full-scale adapter is planned for early 2006. Design variations are being considered for existing and new launch vehicles

Critical Realism and Statistical Methods: A Response to Nash

This article offers a defence of critical realism in the face of objections Nash (2005) makes to it in a recent edition of this journal. It is argued that critical and scientific realisms are closely related and that both are opposed to statistical positivism. However, the suggestion is made that scientific realism retains (from statistical positivism) a number of elements that result in misleading accounts of social processes and events: indicators are used which do not reflect the close relationship between structure and agency; indicators refer to reified and not real properties of both structures and agents; and indicators do not refer to causal properties of objects and entities. In order to develop a narrative of causal processes, as Nash argues researchers should, then some adjustments need to be made to the principles that underpin scientific realism