Building & Measuring Psychological Capacity for Biodiversity Conservation

Capacity building has become the centerpiece of recent attempts to strengthen regional biodiversity conservation. Many conservation organizations aim to increase this capacity by training local conservation professionals. While many practitioners will agree that these trainings presumably have a psychological effect on their participants that may benefit long-term local action toward conservation goals, there also seems to be a resignation that these effects are difficult if not impossible to measure and target, especially within diverse cultures. The common result is a perfunctory evaluation of observable behaviors or basic knowledge, which may be easy to count but undoubtedly fails to represent the nuance of complex psychological variables associated with long-term capacity to conserve biodiversity. My dissertation is fundamentally aimed at investigating capacity for biodiversity conservation at this psychological level. Specifically, I explored the current understanding of capacity for biodiversity conservation and how this understanding can be supplemented by psychological theory to strengthen the development, evaluation, and prediction of this capacity over time. I did this within the context of case studies that focus on three separate populations of conservation professionals who participated in capacity building trainings in Africa and North America between 1994 and 2014. I administered surveys to these conservation professionals to create and validate an instrument that measures the construct I call psychological capacity for biodiversity conservation (PCBC). PCBC includes psychological dimensions such as meaningful ownership, effective autonomy, being needed, group effectiveness, and understanding. I administered the PCBC survey instrument to training alumni and conducted interviews with their trainers to the evaluate the effectiveness of the capacity building methods at increasing PCBC directly after and two to ten years after a training. I found that meaningful ownership, effective autonomy, and being needed predicted 34% of the variance in long-term capacity behavior in conservation professionals after training. I recommend specific training methods that I found to significantly increase these dimensions of PCBC. Together, these results offer a novel approach to capacity development and evaluation and a psychometric instrument that can be used to predict long-term capacity for biodiversity conservation in a diverse population of conservation professionals

The religious dimension of lay leadership in Catholic schools: Preserving Catholic culture in an era of change

This article is a qualitative study of the practice of leadership in Catholic schools in Australia. Within an interpretivist framework, a multiple case study of six lay principals was employed. Findings suggest that successful leadership in Catholic schools is highly influenced by the cultural and spiritual capital that a principal brings to a school, signifying a fundamental importance of appointing principals who are not only professionally competent, but who are spiritually competent as well. The relationship between the lay Catholic principal in the parish and the parish priest emerged as a challenging issue in many contexts. Indeed, it was highly problematic for some principals

The strength of heavy welded shapes

This thesis presents the results of a preliminary investigation of welded H columns of A7, A36, and A441 steels; of primary interest is the effect on the strength characteristics of using component plates which vary in thickness from 1/2\u27\u27 to 2 1/2\u27\u27

Foam, Foam-resin composite and method of making a foam-resin composite

This invention relates to a foam, a foam-resin composite and a method of making foam-resin composites. The foam set forth in this invention comprises a urethane modified polyisocyanurate derived from an aromatic amino polyol and a polyether polyol. In addition to the polyisocyanurate foam, the composite of this invention further contains a resin layer, wherein the resin may be epoxy, bismaleimide, or phenolic resin. Such resins generally require cure or post-cure temperatures of at least 350.degree. F

The effect of cellulose nanocrystals on latex and adhesive properties in emulsion- based polymer nanocomposites

Pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs) adhere quickly and firmly to surfaces with the application of light pressure, and can be removed without leaving a residue. Their mechanical performance is measured by tack, peel strength and shear strength. A balanced combination between the three mechanical performance measurements depends on the specific end-use application and is challenging to achieve. This is particularly so when replacing solvent-based technologies with more sustainable, water-based (i.e., emulsion polymerization) technologies. PSAs synthesized using emulsion polymerization tend to have a lower shear strength due to poor gel network formation. As a result, conventional emulsion-based PSAs suffer from the inability to increase certain adhesive properties (e.g., tack and peel strength) while simultaneously increasing shear strength. Nanomaterials are often used in polymer composites to improve polymer properties (e.g., tensile strength). They are particularly effective in low quantities (e.g., \u3c2 \u3ewt.%) because of their high surface area. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are a “green alternative” to common nanomaterials and are isolated from natural cellulose. CNCs have been used more commonly, in the past, as rheological modifiers and interface stabilizers.[1] Because CNCs form colloidally stable dispersions in water, they can be incorporated/processed in water-based systems, eliminating the need for organic solvents.[2] The most common method to produce CNCs is through acid hydrolysis with sulfuric acid; this process preferentially degrades the disordered cellulose regions and leaves behind the crystalline CNCs with grafted anionic sulfate half ester groups.[1] The resulting nanoparticles are whisker-shaped and have a high aspect ratio.[3] CNCs provide composite material reinforcement in the range of other nanomaterials. In the past, CNCs have been blended with polymers and significant strength improvements were noted.[4] Our studies demonstrate how to incorporate CNCs in a nanocomposite using an in situ semi-batch emulsion polymerization protocol.[5] PSA nanocomposite films were generated for a broad variety of copolymer systems including monomers such as iso-butyl acrylate, n-butyl acrylate, 2-ethyl hexyl acrylate, methyl methacrylate, styrene and vinyl acetate. In all cases, the monomer composition of the reaction formulations was manipulated to achieve a suitable range of polymer glass transition temperatures. CNC loadings were varied from 0 to 0.5 to 1 wt.% (based on monomer weight). The addition of CNC was shown to significantly and simultaneously increase tack, peel strength, and shear strength.[6] References [1] Dufresne, A., Nanocellulose, De Gruyter, Saint Martin D’Heres Cedex, France 2012. [2] Flauzino Neto, W. P., Mariano, M., da Silva, I. S. V., Silvério, H. A., Putaux, J.-L., Otaguro, H., Pasquini, D., Dufresne, A., Carbohydr. Polym. 2016, 153, 143. [3] Moon, R. J., Martini, A., Nairn, J., Simonsen, J., Youngblood, J., Chem. Soc. Rev., 2011, 40, 3941. [4] Rajisha, K. R., Maria, H. J., Pothan, L. A., Ahmad, Z., Thomas, S., Int. J. Biol. Macromol., 2014, 67, 147. [5] Dastjerdi, Z., Cranston, E. D., Dubé, M. A., Macromol. React. Eng., 2018, in press. [6] Dastjerdi, Z., Cranston, E. D., Dubé, M. A., Int. J. Adh. Adh. 2018, 81, 36-42

Human bladder cancer invasion model using rat bladder in vitro and its use to test mechanisms and therapeutic inhibitors of invasion

As well as being a passive support, the extracellular matrix also regulates key biological processes such as invasion, differentiation and angiogenesis. We have therefore developed an in vitro model of bladder cancer invasion using de-epithelialized rat bladder to allow for tumour cell–extracellular matrix interactions. Onto this we have seeded a panel of human bladder cancer cell lines (RT4, RT112, 253J and EJ28 (T24)) representing progression from well to poorly differentiated phenotypes and used as models of superficial to invasive bladder cancer. The better differentiated cell lines RT4 and RT112 reproducibly grew as stratified epithelium, whereas poorly differentiated EJ28 cells invaded across a broad front. Invasion was not simply related to proliferation rate, measured either as doubling time on plastic (non-invasive 253J and invasive EJ28 having the same doubling time) or by Ki-67 proliferation index within the model. We used the model to test the ability of 4 compounds that interfere with tumour cell–extracellular matrix interactions (suramin, N-acetylcysteine and the urokinase plasminogen activator pathway antagonists Å5 compound and monoclonal antibody Mab 3936) to inhibit invasion. At non-toxic concentrations, all significantly inhibited invasion (P< 0.05), although to varying degrees, suramin and Å5 almost completely and N-acetylcysteine the least. In conclusion, this model shows the urokinase system is important for bladder invasion and can be used to investigate other mechanisms of bladder cancer invasion and also for the testing of intravesical drugs. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co

Species Trees from Highly Incongruent Gene Trees in Rice

Several methods have recently been developed to infer multilocus phylogenies by incorporating information from topological incongruence of the individual genes. In this study, we investigate 2 such methods, Bayesian concordance analysis and Bayesian estimation of species trees. Our test data are a collection of genes from cultivated rice (genus Oryza) and the most closely related wild species, generated using a high-throughput sequencing protocol and bioinformatics pipeline. Trees inferred from independent genes display levels of topological incongruence that far exceed that seen in previous data sets analyzed with these species tree methods. We identify differences in phylogenetic results between inference methods that incorporate gene tree incongruence. Finally, we discuss the challenges of scaling these analyses for data sets with thousands of gene trees and extensive levels of missing data

High performance structural laminate composite material for use to 1000.degree. F. and above, apparatus for and method of manufacturing same, and articles made with same

A novel materials technology has been developed and demonstrated for providing a high modulus composite material for use to 1000.degree. F. and above. This material can be produced at 5-20% of the cost of refractory materials, and has higher structural properties. This technology successfully resolves the problem of thermal shock or ply lift, which limits traditional high temperature laminates (such as graphite/polyimide and graphite/phenolic) to temperatures of 550-650.degree. F. in thicker (0.25 and above) laminates. The technology disclosed herein is an enabling technology for the nose for the External Tank (ET) of the Space Shuttle, and has been shown to be capable of withstanding the severe environments encountered by the nose cone through wind tunnel testing, high temperature subcomponent testing, and full scale structural, dynamic, acoustic, and damage tolerance testing

Pressure sensitive adhesives produced by in-situ emulsion polymerization of cellulose nanocrystal-poly(nBA-VAc)

Pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are conventionally produced using a variety of polymerization methods such as emulsion, solution, or radiation curing. Environmental concerns favor the development of emulsion polymerization based PSAs.[1] However, maintaining and controlling the PSA properties achievable from solution polymerization in PSAs produced by emulsion polymerization remains challenging. Depending on the particular adhesive application, PSA properties are largely guided by the polymer glass transition temperature and the polymer microstructure. The latter is controlled in a variety of ways but typically via the addition of chain transfer agents and crosslinkers.[2] During the last decades, efforts in PSA property manipulation have included the preparation of nanocomposite latexes by introducing nanomaterials such as titanium dioxide, silica, and carbon nanotubes into the formulations.[3] On the other hand, utilizing cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) as a sustainable source of reinforcement in polymers is emerging rapidly.[4] CNCs are the product of controlled hydrolysis of plant based tissues, through which crystalline domains of cellulose are isolated from the disordered parts of the raw material. High aspect ratio, surface activity and modulus, as well as non-toxic nature of CNCs make them ideal candidates for use in nanocomposite formulations. More recently, our group have prepared CNC nanocomposite PSAs which were revealed to significantly and simultaneously improve tack, peel strength and shear strength in the PSA films.[5] The ability to improve tack and peel strength without decreasing shear strength overcomes a major challenge in PSA formulation. We will present results from emulsion polymerization of n-butyl acrylate/vinyl acetate/CNC nanocomposite PSAs. We will identify the location of the CNCs relative to the latex particles and show their effect on latex viscosity, gel content, and PSA properties. The goal of these new results is to show how the manipulation of the reaction formulation (e.g., monomer feed ratio, surfactant type) will affect the distribution and relative location of the CNCs in the polymer latex and ultimately the PSA properties. [1] Jovanović, R., Dubé, M. A., J. Macromol. Sci., Part C, 44:1, 1-51, 2004. [2] Qie, L., Dubé, M. A., 46, 1225–1236, 2010. [3] Dastjerdi, Z., Cranston, E. D., Berry, R. Fraschini, C., Dubé, M. A., J. Matls. Sci., submitted January 2018. [4] Lee, K-Y., Aitomäki, Y., Berglund, L. A., Oksman, K., Bismarck, A., Compos. Sci. Technol. 105, 15–27, 2014. [5] Dastjerdi, Z., Cranston, E. D., Dubé, M. A., Macromol. React. Eng., 11, 1700013, 2017. [6] Dastjerdi, Z., Cranston, E. D., Dubé, M. A., Int. J. Adh. Adh., 81, 36-42, 201

Eukaryotic initiation factor-4E in superficial and muscle invasive bladder cancer and its correlation with vascular endothelial growth factor expression and tumour progression

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is an important factor mediating tumour angiogenesis. VEGF mRNA is differentially expressed in bladder cancer with high expression in superficial tumours (stage pTaand pT1) contrasting with low expression in muscle invasive tumours (stage ≥ pT2). To investigate mechanisms regulating VEGF expression in bladder cancer, VEGF mRNA and protein were measured in normal bladder (n = 12) and primary bladder cancers (n = 57). VEGF protein levels correlated with mRNA expression in normal bladder (r = 0.68, P = 0.02) and bladder cancer (r = 0.46, P = 0.0007). Whilst VEGF mRNA expression was threefold higher in superficial compared to muscle invasive bladder cancers (P = 0.0001) there was no difference in VEGF protein (P = 0.81). Accordingly, the median protein:mRNA ratios increased more than 15-fold with increasing tumour stage (P< 0.0001) suggesting translational regulation. Expression of the eukaryotic initiation factor-4E (eIF-4E), a factor implicated in the translational regulation of VEGF, was greater in tumours than normal bladder (P< 0.0001) and correlated with VEGF protein:mRNA ratios (n = 43, r = 0.54, P = 0.0004) pointing to its role in the regulation of VEGF. In superficial tumours (n = 37) high expression of eIF-4E was associated with a poor prognosis and reduced stage progression-free survival (P = 0.04, Cox proportional hazards model). The study demonstrates that eIF-4E may be involved in translational regulation of VEGF in bladder cancer and might have a role as a prognostic factor in bladder cancer. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaig