Increasing College Education in the Manchester, NH Fire Department

In order to remain a progressive organization the Manchester Fire Dept. must adapt to trends in leadership development and recommended educational benchmarks for its leaders. With an increasing desire from municipalities to hire and promote better-educated managers and department heads the level of higher education among current employees is inadequate. Through comparison to similar departments and utilizing various incentives this can be improved in the future to better serve all stakeholders both internal and external

Information theory and representation in associative word learning

A significant portion of early language learning can be viewed as an associative learning problem. We investigate the use of associative language learning based on the principle that words convey Shannon information about the environment. We discuss the shortcomings in representation used by previous associative word learners and propose a functional representation that not only denotes environmental categories, but serves as the basis for activities and interaction with the environment. We present experimental results with an autonomous agent acquiring language

Sampling-Based Motion Planning Using Predictive Models

Robotic motion planning requires configuration space exploration. In high-dimensional configuration spaces, a complete exploration is computationally intractable. Practical motion planning algorithms for such high-dimensional spaces must expend computational resources in proportion to the local complexity of configuration space regions. We propose a novel motion planning approach that addresses this problem by building an incremental, approximate model of configuration space. The information contained in this model is used to direct computational resources to difficult regions, effectively addressing the narrow passage problem by adapting the sampling density to the complexity of that region. In addition, the expressiveness of the model permits predictive edge validations, which are performed based on the information contained in the model rather then by invoking a collision checker. Experimental results show that the exploitation of the information obtained through sampling and represented in a predictive model results in a significant decrease in the computational cost of motion planning

Increasing leaf hydraulic conductance with transpiration rate minimizes the water potential drawdown from stem to leaf.

Leaf hydraulic conductance (k leaf) is a central element in the regulation of leaf water balance but the properties of k leaf remain uncertain. Here, the evidence for the following two models for k leaf in well-hydrated plants is evaluated: (i) k leaf is constant or (ii) k leaf increases as transpiration rate (E) increases. The difference between stem and leaf water potential (ΔΨstem-leaf), stomatal conductance (g s), k leaf, and E over a diurnal cycle for three angiosperm and gymnosperm tree species growing in a common garden, and for Helianthus annuus plants grown under sub-ambient, ambient, and elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentration were evaluated. Results show that for well-watered plants k leaf is positively dependent on E. Here, this property is termed the dynamic conductance, k leaf(E), which incorporates the inherent k leaf at zero E, which is distinguished as the static conductance, k leaf(0). Growth under different CO₂ concentrations maintained the same relationship between k leaf and E, resulting in similar k leaf(0), while operating along different regions of the curve owing to the influence of CO₂ on g s. The positive relationship between k leaf and E minimized variation in ΔΨstem-leaf. This enables leaves to minimize variation in Ψleaf and maximize g s and CO₂ assimilation rate over the diurnal course of evaporative demand

Methods for the Measurement of a Bacterial Enzyme Activity in Cell Lysates and Extracts

The kinetic characteristics and regulation of aspartate carbamoyltransferase activity were studied in lysates and cell extracts of Helicobacter pylori by three diffirent methods. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, radioactive tracer analysis, and spectrophotometry were employed in conjunction to identify the properties of the enzyme activity and to validate the results obtained with each assay. NMR spectroscopy was the most direct method to provide proof of ACTase activity; radioactive tracer analysis was the most sensitive technique and a microtitre-based colorimetric assay was the most cost-and time-efficient for large scale analyses. Freeze-thawing was adopted as the preferred method for cell lysis in studying enzyme activity in situ. This study showed the benefits of employing several different complementary methods to investigate bacterial enzyme activity