The Student-Athlete Life/Career Portfolio: A Multifaceted Approach to Life and Career Development

The student-athlete life/career portfolio is a process that developed reflective practice and allowed for an in-depth portrayal of the experiences of each person as an individual and an athlete. The contents of the life/career portfolio provided a unique document that is far more illustrative of an individual's abilities and achievement sthan the traditional resume

Siviculture and Management Strategies Applicable to Southern Hardwoods

Southern hardwood forests stretch from the Virginias to Florida and from the mid-Atlantic to Missouri. They can generally be grouped into upland forests and bottomland forests. The upland hardwood forests of the southern region are usually associated with the mountainous topography of the Appalachians and Ozarks. Bottomland hardwoods are found along the floodplains of larger rivers in the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains, including the Mississippi River floodplain. Southern hardwood forests are owned by a variety of governmental and private owners, but the vast majority of owners are nonindustrial private individuals. These owners seldom engage in intensive forest management, often exploiting the resource. The silvicultural systems applicable to the management of hardwoods are the same as those recommended for pines, but in hardwood management, reliance on natural regeneration is more common than use of plantation silviculture. Oak species are very important in the southern hardwood forests, and lack of oak regeneration in present-day forests is a major concern. Lack of fire and the resurgence of white-tailed deer throughout the southern region are proposed as reasons for poor oak regeneration. Many stands, either due to their stage of development or neglect, are in need of intermediate management operations such as thinning and improvement cutting. Crop-tree management is a method that is particularly useful in southern hardwoods. It was concluded that although hardwoods make up a significant part of the southern forest resource, they are generally managed with less intensity than pines, and hardwood management is an opportunity area for the South in the future

Unitary relation between a harmonic oscillator of time-dependent frequency and a simple harmonic oscillator with and without an inverse-square potential

The unitary operator which transforms a harmonic oscillator system of time-dependent frequency into that of a simple harmonic oscillator of different time-scale is found, with and without an inverse-square potential. It is shown that for both cases, this operator can be used in finding complete sets of wave functions of a generalized harmonic oscillator system from the well-known sets of the simple harmonic oscillator. Exact invariants of the time-dependent systems can also be obtained from the constant Hamiltonians of unit mass and frequency by making use of this unitary transformation. The geometric phases for the wave functions of a generalized harmonic oscillator with an inverse-square potential are given.Comment: Phys. Rev. A (Brief Report), in pres

Robotic ubiquitous cognitive ecology for smart homes

Robotic ecologies are networks of heterogeneous robotic devices pervasively embedded in everyday environments, where they cooperate to perform complex tasks. While their potential makes them increasingly popular, one fundamental problem is how to make them both autonomous and adaptive, so as to reduce the amount of preparation, pre-programming and human supervision that they require in real world applications. The project RUBICON develops learning solutions which yield cheaper, adaptive and efficient coordination of robotic ecologies. The approach we pursue builds upon a unique combination of methods from cognitive robotics, machine learning, planning and agent- based control, and wireless sensor networks. This paper illustrates the innovations advanced by RUBICON in each of these fronts before describing how the resulting techniques have been integrated and applied to a smart home scenario. The resulting system is able to provide useful services and pro-actively assist the users in their activities. RUBICON learns through an incremental and progressive approach driven by the feed- back received from its own activities and from the user, while also self-organizing the manner in which it uses available sensors, actuators and other functional components in the process. This paper summarises some of the lessons learned by adopting such an approach and outlines promising directions for future work

Texas Forestry Paper No. 13

Pollen development and release in loblolly and shortleaf pine near nacogdoches, texas, 1971https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/texas_forestry_papers/1024/thumbnail.jp

E3 Ligase Subunit Fbxo15 and PINK1 Kinase Regulate Cardiolipin Synthase 1 Stability and Mitochondrial Function in Pneumonia

Acute lung injury (ALI) is linked to mitochondrial injury, resulting in impaired cellular oxygen utilization; however, it is unknown how these events are linked on the molecular level. Cardiolipin, a mitochondrial-specific lipid, is generated by cardiolipin synthase (CLS1). Here, we show that S.aureus activates a ubiquitin E3 ligase component, Fbxo15, that is sufficient to mediate proteasomal degradation of CLS1 in epithelia, resulting in decreased cardiolipin availability and disrupted mitochondrial function. CLS1 is destabilized by the phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN)-induced putative kinase 1 (PINK1), which binds CLS1 to phosphorylate and regulates CLS1 disposal. Like Fbxo15, PINK1 interacts with and regulates levels of CLS1 through a mechanism dependent upon Thr219. S.aureus infection upregulates this Fbxo15-PINK1 pathway to impair mitochondrial integrity, and Pink1 knockout mice are less prone to S.aureus-induced ALI. Thus, ALI-associated disruption of cellular bioenergetics involves bioeffectors that utilize a phosphodegron to elicit ubiquitin-mediated disposal of a key mitochondrial enzyme. © 2014 The Authors

A Brief Smoking Cessation Intervention for Heavy Drinking Smokers: Treatment Feasibility and Acceptability

Approximately 20–25% of regular smokers report heavy drinking. Abstinent smokers are five times as likely to experience a smoking lapse during drinking episodes. Current efforts seek to improve treatments for this subgroup of heavy-drinking smokers. This study tested the feasibility and acceptability of addressing alcohol use in a brief, single session smoking cessation intervention (SMK+A) compared to smoking cessation counseling only (SMK); these interventions were grounded in a motivational interview framework and included personalized feedback, decisional balance, quit day setting, and tailored skills building (e.g., breathing techniques, coping with urges, dealing with social pressures) to maintain abstinence. Descriptive outcomes included reported helpfulness of intervention skills, readiness to change scores, and feasibility of participant recruitment and retention. We also assessed 7-day point prevalence of smoking cessation, and smoking and drinking reduction at 1-month follow-up. Participants (N = 22) were community-based treatment-seeking daily smokers (≥5 cigarettes/day) who were also heavy drinkers (≥14 drinks/week for men, ≥ 7 drinks/week for women; or ≥5 drinks on one episode in past week for men, ≥4 for women). Twenty five percent of interested individuals were eligible after initial phone screen, and all randomized participants were retained through follow up. All skills demonstrated high acceptability (i.e., rated between moderately and very helpful), and a significant proportion of participants in each condition reported taking action to reduce cigarette smoking and/or alcohol use at 1-month post-quit. Three participants in each condition (27.3%) attained bioverified (CO ≤ 4 parts per million and cotinine ≤ 3 ng/mL) smoking quit at follow-up. Given the modified intervention's acceptability and flexibility, larger studies may help to elucidate this intervention's effects on readiness to change, smoking cessation, and alcohol reduction

Parity Violating Measurements of Neutron Densities

Parity violating electron nucleus scattering is a clean and powerful tool for measuring the spatial distributions of neutrons in nuclei with unprecedented accuracy. Parity violation arises from the interference of electromagnetic and weak neutral amplitudes, and the $Z^0$ of the Standard Model couples primarily to neutrons at low $Q^2$. The data can be interpreted with as much confidence as electromagnetic scattering. After briefly reviewing the present theoretical and experimental knowledge of neutron densities, we discuss possible parity violation measurements, their theoretical interpretation, and applications. The experiments are feasible at existing facilities. We show that theoretical corrections are either small or well understood, which makes the interpretation clean. The quantitative relationship to atomic parity nonconservation observables is examined, and we show that the electron scattering asymmetries can be directly applied to atomic PNC because the observables have approximately the same dependence on nuclear shape.Comment: 38 pages, 7 ps figures, very minor changes, submitted to Phys. Rev.