A report on an Arts Administration internship with the Maryland State Arts Council Baltimore, MD, Summer 1992 : an internship

The Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) was established in 1967, as an autonomous agency of the state government to distribute line-item appropriations to the major arts institutions in the state. Even though, as stated in its founding legislation, the mission of the newly formed Arts Council was to create a nurturing environment for all the arts throughout the state, it was believed, at the time of its inception, that the only arts that deserved to receive public funding were presented by the five already established major arts organizations (Backus 1992). These included the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Baltimore Symphony, The Baltimore Opera, The Maryland Ballet and Center Stage, all of which were located in Baltimore City. During its first five years, as the Council slowly expanded to include other arts organizations, the major portion of its funds supported these institutions

On increasing global temperatures: 75 years after Callendar

In 1938, Guy Stewart Callendar was the first to demonstrate that the Earth’s land surface was warming. Callendar also suggested that the production of carbon dioxide by the combustion of fossil fuels was responsible for much of this modern change in climate. This short note marks the 75th anniversary of Callendar’s landmark study and demonstrates that his global land temperature estimates agree remarkably well with more recent analyses

Flight Test Results for Uniquely Tailored Propulsion-Airframe Aeroacoustic Chevrons: Community Noise

The flow/acoustic environment around the jet exhaust of an engine when installed on an airplane, say, under the wing, is highly asymmetric due to the pylon, the wing and the high-lift devices. Recent scale model tests have shown that such Propulsion Airframe Aeroacoustic (PAA) interactions and the jet mixing noise can be reduced more than with conventional azimuthally uniform chevrons by uniquely tailoring the chevrons to produce enhanced mixing near the pylon. This paper describes the community noise results from a flight test on a large twin-engine airplane using this concept of azimuthally varying chevrons for engines installed under the wing. Results for two different nozzle configurations are described: azimuthally varying "PAA T-fan" chevrons on the fan nozzle with a baseline no-chevron core nozzle and a second with PAA T-fan chevrons with conventional azimuthally uniform chevrons on the core nozzle. We analyze these test results in comparison to the baseline no-chevron nozzle on both spectral and integrated power level bases. The study focuses on the peak jet noise reduction and the effects at high frequencies for typical take-off power settings. The noise reduction and the absolute noise levels are then compared to model scale results. The flight test results verify that the PAA T-fan nozzles in combination with standard core chevron nozzles can, indeed, give a reasonable amount of noise reduction at low frequencies without high-frequency lift during take-off conditions and hardly any impact on the cruise thrust coefficient

Bioportal: Ontologies and integrated data resources at the click of the mouse

BioPortal is a Web portal that provides access to a library of biomedical ontologies and terminologies developed in OWL, RDF(S), OBO format, Protégé frames, and Rich Release Format. BioPortal functionality, driven by a service-oriented architecture, includes the ability to browse, search and visualize ontologies (Figure 1). The Web interface also facilitates community-based participation in the evaluation and evolution of ontology content

Development of High Resolution and Homogenized Gridded Land Surface Air Temperature Data: A Case Study Over Pan-East Asia

The Land Surface Air Temperature (LSAT) climatology during the period of 1961–1990 and the anomalies (relative to the 1961–1990 climatology) have been developed over Pan-East Asian region at a (monthly) 0.5° × 0.5° resolution. The development of these LSAT data sets are based on the recently released C-LSAT station datasets and the high resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and interpolated by the Thin Plate Spline (TPS) method (through ANUSPLIN software) and the Adjusted Inverse Distance Weighting (AIDW) method. Then they are combined into the high resolution gridded LSAT datasets (including the monthly mean, maximum, and minimum temperature). Considering the mean LSAT for example, the Cross Validation (CV) of the datasets indicates that the regional average of the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) for the climatology is about 0.62°C, and the average RMSE and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) for the anomalies are between 0.47–0.90°C and 0.32–0.63°C during the study period. The analysis also demonstrate that the gridded anomalies describe the spatial pattern fairly well for the coldest (1912, 1969) and the warmest (1948, 2007) years during the first and second half of the 20th century. Further analysis reveals that the high resolution dataset also performs well in the estimation of long-term LSAT change trend. Thus it can be concluded that this newly constructed datasets is a useful tool for regional climate monitoring, climate change research as well as climate model verification

On the Mass and Width of the Z-boson and Other Relativistic Quasistable Particles

The ambiguity in the definition for the mass and width of relativistic resonances is discussed, in particular for the case of the Z-boson. This ambiguity can be removed by requiring that a resonance's width $\Gamma$ (defined by a Breit-Wigner lineshape) and lifetime $\tau$ (defined by the exponential law) always and exactly fulfill the relation $\Gamma = \hbar/\tau$. To justify this one needs relativistic Gamow vectors which in turn define the resonance's mass M_R as the real part of the square root $\rm{Re}\sqrt{s_R}$ of the S-matrix pole position s_R. For the Z-boson this means that $M_R \approx M_Z - 26{MeV}$ and $\Gamma_R \approx \Gamma_Z-1.2{MeV}$ where M_Z and $\Gamma_Z$ are the values reported in the particle data tables.Comment: 23 page

The Reliability of Global and Hemispheric Surface Temperature Records

The purpose of this review article is to discuss the development and associated estimation of uncertainties in the global and hemispheric surface temperature records. The review begins by detailing the groups that produce surface temperature datasets. After discussing the reasons for similarities and differences between the various products, the main issues that must be addressed when deriving accurate estimates, particularly for hemispheric and global averages, are then considered. These issues are discussed in the order of their importance for temperature records at these spatial scales: biases in SST data, particularly before the 1940s; the exposure of land-based thermometers before the development of louvred screens in the late 19th century; and urbanization effects in some regions in recent decades. The homogeneity of land-based records is also discussed; however, at these large scales it is relatively unimportant. The article concludes by illustrating hemispheric and global temperature records from the four groups that produce series in near-real time

Expression of nitrous oxide reductase from Pseudomonas stutzeri in transgenic tobacco roots using the root-specific rolD promoter from Agrobacterium rhizogenes

The nitrous oxide (N2O) reduction pathway from a soil bacterium, Pseudomonas stutzeri, was engineered in plants to reduce N2O emissions. As a proof of principle, transgenic plants expressing nitrous oxide reductase (N2OR) from P. stutzeri, encoded by the nosZ gene, and other transgenic plants expressing N2OR along with the more complete operon from P. stutzeri, encoded by nosFLZDY, were generated. Gene constructs were engineered under the control of a root-specific promoter and with a secretion signal peptide. Expression and rhizosecretion of the transgene protein were achieved, and N2OR from transgenic Nicotiana tabacum proved functional using the methyl viologen assay. Transgenic plant line 1.10 showed the highest specific activity of 16.7 µmol N2O reduced min−1 g−1 root protein. Another event, plant line 1.9, also demonstrated high specific activity of N2OR, 13.2 µmol N2O reduced min−1 g−1 root protein. The availability now of these transgenic seed stocks may enable canopy studies in field test plots to monitor whole rhizosphere N flux. By incorporating one bacterial gene into genetically modified organism (GMO) crops (e.g., cotton, corn, and soybean) in this way, it may be possible to reduce the atmospheric concentration of N2O that has continued to increase linearly (about 0.26% year−1) over the past half-century