Protistan predation and TCE biodegradation in a fractured rock aquifer

Despite extensive research on the resources required to initiate dechlorination of trichloroethene (TCE), slow rates and stalling continue to be observed in situ. The majority of research on biodegradation of TCE has focused resource availability, while predation is poorly understood. Predation has the potential to significantly alter bacterial abundance, and can play an important role in selecting what species are present, and determine if the community is capable of mineralizing TCE. The impact of protistan predation on TCE biodegradation rates, and occurrence and length of stalls was measured in this experiment. When protists were inhibited, TCE was mineralized. Protistan predation appeared to impact the success of reductive dechlorination by selecting for bacterial morphology and community composition. There was a dual threshold effect: no predation limited the ability of the dechlorinators to become dominant, while too much predation resulted in a system where the dechlorinators were grazed to extremely low levels, inhibiting reductive dechlorination

TECHNICAL PROGRESS IN THE SETE TRAWL FISHERY, 1985-1999

Fisheries throughout the world have long been subject to overfishing and excess capacity, which has generated substantial and increasing concern about biological and economic performance ramifications. These problems in part stem from substantial investment in technical improvements to boats and equipment in fishing fleets. Such technical change exacerbates the extent of excess fishing capacity, as well as low returns to fishing effort and investment due to catch limitations from both regulatory constraints and overfished stocks. However, economists have not yet attempted to quantify the extent or effects of technical change in fisheries. In this paper we use detailed data on innovation patterns for 19 vessels in the Sete trawl fleet of Southern France to evaluate the contributions of embodied and disembodied technical change to catch rates. We find that embodied technical change enhanced productivity by approximately 1 percent per year between 1985-99, but that external (disembodied) events counteracted this by causing a net output decline of about 3 percent per year. Neither efficiency nor output composition changes appear to have had a substantive effect on observed performance levels.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Monitoring Success in Choice Neighborhoods: A Proposed Approach to Performance Measurement

Offers a framework and tools for performance management in the initiative to transform poor neighborhoods into revitalized, sustainable mixed-income communities. Proposes system components, logic model, management reports, and performance indicators

Unmanned Aircraft System Assessments of Landslide Safety for Transportation Corridors

An assessment of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) concluded that current, off-the-shelf UAS aircraft and cameras can be effective for creating the digital surface models used to evaluate rock-slope stability and landslide risk along transportation corridors. The imagery collected with UAS can be processed using a photogrammetry technique called Structure-from-Motion (SfM) which generates a point cloud and surface model, similar to terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). We treated the TLS data as our control, or “truth,” because it is a mature and well-proven technology. The comparisons of the TLS surfaces and the SFM surfaces were impressive – if not comparable is many cases. Thus, the SfM surface models would be suitable for deriving slope morphology to generate rockfall activity indices (RAI) for landslide assessment provided the slopes. This research also revealed that UAS are a safer alternative to the deployment and operation of TLS operating on a road shoulder because UAS can be launched and recovered from a remote location and capable of imaging without flying directly over the road. However both the UAS and TLS approaches still require traditional survey control and photo targets to accurately geo-reference their respective DSM.List of Figures ...................................................................................................... vi List of Abbreviations ......................................................................................... vii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................ x Executive Summary ............................................................................................. xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................ 4 2.1 Landslide Hazards .................................................................................... 4 2.2 Unmanned Aircraft Systems Remote Sensing.......................................... 6 2.3 Structure From Motion (SfM) .................................................................. 7 2.4 Lidar terrain mapping ............................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 3 STUDY SITE/DATA .................................................................. 11 CHAPTER 4 METHODS ................................................................................ 13 4.1 Data Collection ............................................................................................. 13 4.1.1 Survey Control ..................................................................................... 14 4.1.2 TLS Surveys ........................................................................................ 16 4.1.3 UAS Imagery ....................................................................................... 17 4.1.4 Terrestrial Imagery Acquisition ........................................................... 19 4.2 Data Processing ............................................................................................ 20 4.2.1 Survey Control ..................................................................................... 20 4.2.2 TLS Processing .................................................................................... 20 4.2.3 SfM Processing .................................................................................... 21 4.2.4 Surface Generation .............................................................................. 22 4.3 Quality Evaluation ........................................................................................ 23 4.3.1 Completeness ....................................................................................... 23 4.3.2 Data Density/Resolution ...................................................................... 23 4.3.3 Accuracy Assessment .......................................................................... 23 4.3.2 Surface Morphology Analysis ............................................................. 24 4.2.6 Data Visualization ............................................................................... 25 CHAPTER 5 RESULTS ................................................................................. 27 v 5.1 UTIC DSM evaluation.................................................................................. 27 5.1.1 Completeness evaluation ..................................................................... 28 5.1.2 Data Density Evaluation ...................................................................... 29 5.1.3 Accuracy Evaluation............................................................................ 30 5.2 Geomorphological Evaluation ...................................................................... 32 CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSION ............................................................................ 35 6.1 Evaluation of UAS efficiencies .................................................................... 35 6.2 DSM quality and completeness .................................................................... 37 6.3 Safety and operational considerations .......................................................... 37 CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ................................ 40 7.1 Technology Transfer..................................................................................... 41 7.1.1 Publications ......................................................................................... 41 7.1.2 Presentations ........................................................................................ 42 7.1.3 Multi-media outreach .......................................................................... 43 6.4 Integration of UAS and TLS data ................................................................. 44 REFERENCES .............................................................................................. 4

Characterization of a Novel Small Molecule Subtype Specific Estrogen-Related Receptor α Antagonist in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells

The orphan nuclear receptor estrogen-related receptor alpha (ERRalpha) is a member of the nuclear receptor superfamily. It was identified through a search for genes encoding proteins related to estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha). An endogenous ligand has not been found. Novel ERRalpha antagonists that are highly specific for binding to the ligand binding domain (LBD) of ERRalpha have been recently reported. Research suggests that ERRalpha may be a novel drug target to treat breast cancer and/or metabolic disorders and this has led to an effort to characterize the mechanisms of action of N-[(2Z)-3-(4,5-dihydro-1,3-thiazol-2-yl)-1,3-thiazolidin-2-yl idene]-5H dibenzo[a,d][7]annulen-5-amine, a novel ERRalpha specific antagonist.We demonstrate this ERRalpha ligand inhibits ERRalpha transcriptional activity in MCF-7 cells by luciferase assay but does not affect mRNA levels measured by real-time RT-PCR. Also, ERalpha (ESR1) mRNA levels were not affected upon treatment with the ERRalpha antagonist, but other ERRalpha (ESRRA) target genes such as pS2 (TFF1), osteopontin (SPP1), and aromatase (CYP19A1) mRNA levels decreased. In vitro, the ERRalpha antagonist prevents the constitutive interaction between ERRalpha and nuclear receptor coactivators. Furthermore, we use Western blots to demonstrate ERRalpha protein degradation via the ubiquitin proteasome pathway is increased by the ERRalpha-subtype specific antagonist. We demonstrate by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) that the interaction between ACADM, ESRRA, and TFF1 endogenous gene promoters and ERRalpha protein is decreased when cells are treated with the ligand. Knocking-down ERRalpha (shRNA) led to similar genomic effects seen when MCF-7 cells were treated with our ERRalpha antagonist.We report the mechanism of action of a novel ERRalpha specific antagonist that inhibits transcriptional activity of ERRalpha, disrupts the constitutive interaction between ERRalpha and nuclear coactivators, and induces proteasome-dependent ERRalpha protein degradation. Additionally, we confirmed that knocking-down ERRalpha lead to similar genomic effects demonstrated in vitro when treated with the ERRalpha specific antagonist

Constrained by managerialism : caring as participation in the voluntary social services

The data in this study show that care is a connective process, underlying and motivating participation and as a force that compels involvement in the lives of others, care is at least a micro-participative process. Care or affinity not only persisted in the face of opposition, but it was also used by workers as a counter discourse and set of practices with which to resist the erosion of worker participation and open up less autonomized practices and ways of connecting with fellow staff, clients and the communities they served. The data suggest that while managerialism and taylorised practice models may remove or reduce opportunities for worker participation, care is a theme or storyline that gave workers other ways to understand their work and why they did it, as well as ways they were prepared to resist managerial priorities and directives, including the erosion of various kinds of direct and indirect participation. The degree of resistance possible, even in the highly technocratic worksite in Australia, shows that cracks and fissures exist within managerialism