Howden Moss: a study of vegetational history in Upper Teesdale

The peat deposits at Howden Moss, Upper Teesdale, have been examined stratigraphically and pollen analytically. The present state of the bog in described and pollen diagrams are presented for three sites. The results show that peat formation had begun by the early post-glacial period, zone V, and growth apparently continued up to the present time. The area was colonised by birch trees early in its development. Open birchwood persisted on the site during the expansion of mixed oak forest into the valley bottom. This dichotomous situation continued until the birch wood on the fell was replaced by blanket bog communities. The late-glacial rolict flora which is associated with some sites in Upper Teesdale is not found at Howden Moss. The pollen record provides no evidence for its past existence in the area

HI observations of dwarf galaxies out to a distance of 50 Mpc

Here we report our preliminary findings from an HI search for dwarf galaxies in three environmentally distinct regions of the sky: a galactic void, a galactic cluster, and an interaction field. This study is sensitive at the 5(sigma) level to hydrogen masses as low as 5 x 10(exp 5) solar mass. We have made three possible detections of previously uncatalogued objects: one in the void field, and two in the cluster field. Reduction of the interaction field is in progress

The HI Chronicles of LITTLE THINGS BCDs: Evidence for External Perturbations in the Morphology and Kinematics of Haro 29 and Haro 36

We analyze high angular and velocity resolution HI-line data of two LITTLE THINGS (1) blue compact dwarfs (BCDs): Haro 29 and Haro 36. Both of these BCDs are disturbed morphologically and kinematically. Haro 29's HI data reveal a kinematic major axis that is offset from the optical major axis, and a disturbed outer HI component, indicating that Haro 29 may have had a past interaction. Position-velocity diagrams of Haro 36 indicate that it has two kinematically separate components at its center and a likely tidal tail in front of the galaxy. We find that Haro 36 most likely had an interaction in the past, is currently interacting with an unknown companion, or is a merger remnant. (1) "Local Irregulars That Trace Luminosity Extremes The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey" http://www2.lowell.edu/users/dah/littlethings/index.htmlComment: To be published in The Astronomical Journa

The environments of Markarian galaxies

The extensively studied Markarian sample of 1500 ultraviolet excess galaxies contains many Seyfert, starburst, and peculiar galaxies. Using the 20 minute V plates obtained for the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope Guide Star Catalog, the authors investigated the morphologies of the Markarian galaxies and the environments in which they are located. The relationship between the types of nuclear activity and the morphologies and environments of the Markarian galaxies is discussed. The authors conclude that the type of nuclear activity present in the galaxies of the Markarian sample is not dependent on either the morphology or the local environment of the galaxy. This is not to imply that nuclear activity per se is not influenced by the environment in which the nucleus is located. Rather the type of nuclear activity (at least in the Markarian population) does not appear to be determined by the environment

American Artists Paint the City: Katharine Kuh, the 1956 Venice Biennale, and New York’s Place in the Cold War Art World

By 1956, Alfred Barr and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which then owned the American Pavilion, had recognized the cold war utility of the Venice Biennale. Relying on Clement Greenberg’s formalism, it promoted Abstract Expressionism as the culmination of a European-inspired, American-produced aesthetic embodying universal values with the hope of winning over the moderate European left. American Artists Paint the City, an exhibition for the 1956 Venice Biennale momentarily complicated this agenda. Guest curator Katharine Kuh of the Art Institute of Chicago organized an innovative exhibition thematically uniting 20th century American modernist painters. Her presentation of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning as the inheritors of a New World modernist heritage elicited powerful opposition from American art authorities supporting lineage ties to international modernism as well as upset observers abroad who saw it as a chauvinistic and pretentious effort to undermine European ascendancy in the transatlantic art world. An examination of these reactions exposes the importance of institutional politics in shaping canonical aesthetic priorities and sheds light on the intersecting roles of critics, curators, artists, and patrons in the construction of accepted traditions

Falling in Acute Mental Health Settings for Older People : Who falls, where, when and why?

Copyright: © 2014 Dickinson A et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Falls, slips and trips are a major patient safety concern in hospital settings accounting for 26 per cent of all reported patient safety incidents in England. Mental health conditions and their treatments add further to fall risk but we have little information regarding who falls, where and when within mental health settings. Methods: This paper presents an overview of the pattern of falls by older patients within an in-patient mental health setting in the South of England using routine records completed by staff when a fall occurs. 920 fall reports over three years were analysed, and 7 focus groups were undertaken with ward staff to explore how staff understood falls and their experiences of using the falls reporting system. Results: In terms of diagnosis 40% of fallers had a primary functional diagnosis, 46% an organic mental health diagnosis (14% non-specific diagnosis), average age was 81.7 years (range 59 to 99 years; SD 8.3) and 57% were female. Approximately one quarter, 27%, of falls were observed by staff. Falls were not evenly distributed across either day of week or time of day, with peak times for falls on Tuesday and Saturday and morning (7-8 and 9-10am) and subsidiary peaks between noon and 1pm and early evening (5-6pm). Almost half of falls occurred in private spaces in the ward such as bedrooms, and 42% in public spaces such as sitting rooms. However 60% of falls in public spaces were unseen. Reporting in these settings was problematic for staff and patients were sometimes described as placing themselves on the floor as a consequence of their mental health condition. The average time to first fall was 5 weeks. Conclusions: Routine mapping of falls could be undertaken at ward and organization level and contribute to better understanding of the local factors contributing to falls. Exploring incident report data in focus groups with staff helped us and them to interpret the data and to understand some of the decision making staff engage in everyday when reporting falls.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The HI Chronicles of LITTLE THINGS BCDs II: The Origin of IC 10's HI Structure

In this paper we analyze Very Large Array (VLA) telescope and Green Bank Telescope (GBT) atomic hydrogen (HI) data for the LITTLE THINGS(1) blue compact dwarf galaxy IC 10. The VLA data allow us to study the detailed HI kinematics and morphology of IC 10 at high resolution while the GBT data allow us to search the surrounding area at high sensitivity for tenuous HI. IC 10's HI appears highly disturbed in both the VLA and GBT HI maps with a kinematically distinct northern HI extension, a kinematically distinct southern plume, and several spurs in the VLA data that do not follow the general kinematics of the main disk. We discuss three possible origins of its HI structure and kinematics in detail: a current interaction with a nearby companion, an advanced merger, and accretion of intergalactic medium. We find that IC 10 is most likely an advanced merger or a galaxy undergoing accretion. 1:Local Irregulars That Trace Luminosity Extremes, The HI Nearby Galaxy Survey; https://science.nrao.edu/science/surveys/littlethingsComment: 36 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Nonprofit Use of Information Visualization

This study explores how nonprofit organizations implement information visualization in their operations. Nine nonprofit employees were interviewed to better understand how these organizations use information visualizations to make decisions, plan for the future, and communicate information insights to stakeholders. Expertise and use of information visualization in nonprofits seems to be growing. Interestingly, some nonprofits create information visualizations and tools that foster relationships with stakeholders and spread the use of data to different levels of the organization and various partner organizations. Most nonprofits interviewed use information visualizations on some level in both internal and external organizational activities although many lack standards for creating visualizations and methods for evaluating the effectiveness of the visuals they create.Master of Science in Library Scienc