High impact activities in parks: best management practice and future research

Off-road driving, horseriding, rock climbing and similar activities can be lucrative for tour operators and important for local recreational groups, but contentious for management of national parks and protected areas, both because of safety and liability and because of potentially high environmental impacts. These include spreading weeds and pathogens, starting fires and crushing bird nests on beaches, amongst many others. In Australia as elsewhere, off-road vehicles and horses are allowed only in some places in some parks, and often only under permit. We have very little reliable scientific information to-date on just how serious these impacts may be, and on how well they might be managed through minimal-impact practices such as vehicle washdowns, stockfeed processing and seasonal closures. Such information can only be obtained through site specific ecological studies of the plants, animals and watercourses likely to be affected, differentiating tourism impacts from natural causes and fluctuations. This report examines management strategies for these activities worldwide and in Australia. Suggestions for best management practice and future research agendas are set

Techniques for improving reliability of computers

Modular design techniques improve methods of error detection, diagnosis, and recovery. Theoretical computer (MARCS (Modular Architecture for Reliable Computer Systems)) study deals with postulated and modeled technology indigenous to 1975-1980. Study developments are discussed

Reading Recovery in South Carolina: 2017-2018 State Report

Developed by New Zealand educator Dr. Marie M. Clay, Reading Recovery® is a short-term early intervention for first grade students who have the lowest achievement on measures of literacy outcomes. Students meet individually with a specially trained teacher for 30 minutes each day for a period of 12-20 weeks. The goal during this period is for children to develop a network of reading and writing strategies so they may independently perform within the average range of their class

Designing an International Experience Program for 4-H Members in Louisiana

In recent years, the U.S. Cooperative Extension Program (CEP) has worked to develop international exchange programs (IEPs) for 4-H members in some states. However, no such program currently exists in Louisiana. As such, the purpose of this descriptive study was to identify the IEP participation preferences held by 4H members in Louisiana to inform future IEP development and implementation. 4-H members in this study preferred to participate in a short-term IEP during the summer of the 11th grade. Thus, it is recommended that IEP recruitment be geared toward students in the 9th and 10th grades. 4-H members preferred to participate in an IEP located in Europe or Australia/New Zealand. Future research should examine which characteristics of these locations appeal to 4-H members to broaden the appeal of IEPs in other locations. Career related courses and hands-on experience were perceived by 4-H members as important activities to include in the IEP design, whereas staying with a host family was not. Future research should assess whether this finding is specific to members in this study or representative of a national trend that warrants reexamination of the overall design of 4-H IEPs employed by the U.S. CEP

The Topological Information Retrieval System and the Topological Paradigm: a Unification of the Major Models of Information Retrieval.

There are three topics discussed in this work. The first topic is an investigation of the topological properties of the p-norm model of Salton, Fox, and Wu. It is shown that certain properties of the p-norm model that one would expect to hold, given the topological origin of the model, do not in fact hold. These properties include the ability to change the query by changing p, and the ability to adequately separate documents. Since these properties do hold in the model as actually constructed, it must be that the properties do not follow from the topological origin of the model. The second topic is a search for a usable model with an adequate theoretical basis. In order to construct such a model, the topological paradigm is defined. This paradigm establishes a minimal set of requirements that any system with a topological foundation should have. A particular example of the paradigm, the Topological Information Retrieval System (TIRS), is constructed. It is shown that all of the desired properties of the p-norm model hold for the TIRS model. A discussion of the various query systems that may be used with TIRS is given. These query systems include a natural language interface and a weighted boolean query system, as well as two specialized interfaces. The weighted boolean query system has the property that pairs, when treated as units, have all of the properties of the non-weighted boolean lattice. The run time of the system is estimated, once for an inverted file implementation, and once for an implementation using kd-trees. These run times are much better than for traditional systems. The third topic is a reexamination of the standard models of information retrieval, considered as cases of the topological paradigm. The paradigm is shown to be a unifying model, in that all of the standard models, i.e., the boolean, vector space, fuzzy set theoretic, and probabilistic models, as well as a hierarchical model, are shown to be instances of the paradigm. An appendix contains a review of relevant topics from topology and abstract algebra

Developing arts-based methods for exploring virtual reality technologies: A university–industry case study

Collaborations between human–computer interaction (HCI) researchers and arts practitioners frequently centre on the development of creative content using novel – often emergent – technologies. Concurrently, many of the techniques that HCI researchers use in evaluative participant-based research have their roots in the arts – such as sketching, writing, artefact prototyping and role play. In this reflective paper, we describe a recent collaboration between a group of HCI researchers and dramatists from the immersive theatre organization Kilter, who worked together to design a series of audience-based interventions to explore the ethics of virtual reality (VR) technology. Through a process of knowledge exchange, the collaboration provided the researchers with new techniques to explore, ideate and communicate their work, and provided the dramatists with a solid academic grounding in order to produce an accurate yet provocative piece of theatrically based design fiction. We describe the formation of this partnership between academia and creative industry, document our journey together, and share the lasting impact it has had upon both parties

Provenance Variability in Coeval Slope Channel Systems : Hermod S2 Member Sandstone (Eocene), South Viking Graben (North Sea)

Funding Information: This research was conducted as part of a Ph.D. project funded by AkerBP. Acknowledgments: We would like to express our deepest gratitude to sponsors from AkerBP who kindly provided funding and data necessary for this research. We would also like to thank Kingba Princewill, Ahmed Jama Ahmed, Elliot Foley and Fraser Scott for their outstanding work on their respective MSc projects, which helped further this research, and other staff at the University of Aberdeen, most notably John Still for his support with microprobe analysis. This article belongs to the Collection Detrital Minerals: Their Application in Palaeo-Reconstruction)Peer reviewedPublisher PD