A Feasibility Study on Possible Uses for a Common Area Greenbelt in a Southern California Neighborhood

Common greenbelt areas within residential neighborhoods are capable of existing as multi-function zones. ‘The Village’ in Southern Orange County, California, envisions its greenbelts as benefiting the homeowners, both in cost and esthetics, all beneficial insect and plant species, and the surrounding micro-climate. Research was conducted on three different systems, aimed at improving the areas of ‘The Village’ both economically and environmentally; the areas of focus were vineyard installation, fire resistant landscaping, and low impact development installations. The process began with evaluating the sites physical and judicial restraints. Soils tests, topography calculations, climate records, and preexisting species identifications were conducted; documents regarding water rights, installation restrictions, site history, and zone regulations were also collected. Interviews were conducted with all relatable parties, including local fire authority, board members from the Homeowners Association, vineyard lesser and lessee, and LID specialists. All potential benefits and drawbacks of each installation were compared and contrasted between the three areas of focus, on levels ranging from maintenance costs to long run ecological factors. This research will be used in moving forward to improvements within the greenbelt areas of ‘The Village,’ and can be further applied to similar residential development areas in future projects

Master of Science

thesisThis work examines in detail the lifecycles of the convection on 20, 23, and 24 May 2011 during the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) field experiment in Oklahoma. Furthermore, specific attention is given to the environmental mechanisms that affect the propagation, maintenance, strength, and morphology of organized convection for the duration of the three cases. This study was conducted using the MC3E field campaign observational database, with particular emphasis on ground and airborne radar, radiosonde, and Oklahoma Mesonet data. This work was motivated by the goals of the MC3E field campaign, including improved understanding of convective evolution, organized convection, microphysics, ultimately leading to improvement of parameterization of convection and mesoscale processes in weather and climate models, and improvement of retrievals of precipitation by remote sensing. The three cases examined exhibited leading line/trailing stratiform mesoscale convective system, supercell, and back-building convective structures, each with a complex evolution. From the data analyzed for these cases, we suggest that given certain initial conditions, the vertical wind shear profile is the dominant factor in the determination of storm morphology. If the source of the buoyant updraft is renewed throughout a system's lifetime, then a convective system's propagation and longevity is tied strongly to the strength of the cold pool produced by convective downdrafts, and formation of new convection along the boundaries of the pool

Identification of a novel motif in DNA ligases exemplified by DNA ligase IV

DNA ligase IV is an essential protein that functions in DNA non-homologous end-joining, the major mechanism that rejoins DNA double-strand breaks in mammalian cells. LIG4 syndrome represents a human disorder caused by mutations in DNA ligase IV that lead to impaired but not ablated activity. Thus far, five conserved motifs in DNA ligases have been identified. We previously reported G469E as a mutational change in a LIG4 syndrome patient. G469 does not lie in any of the previously reported motifs. A sequence comparison between DNA ligases led us to identify residues 468¿476 of DNA ligase IV as a further conserved motif, designated motif Va, present in eukaryotic DNA ligases. We carried out mutational analysis of residues within motif Va examining the impact on adenylation, double-stranded ligation, and DNA binding. We interpret our results using the DNA ligase I:DNA crystal structure. Substitution of the glycine at position 468 with an alanine or glutamic acid severely compromises protein activity and stability. Substitution of G469 with an alanine or glutamic acid is better tolerated but still impacts upon activity and protein stability. These finding suggest that G468 and G469 are important for protein stability and provide insight into the hypomorphic nature of the G469E mutation identified in a LIG4 syndrome patient. In contrast, residues 470, 473 and 476 within motif Va can be changed to alanine residues without any impact on DNA binding or adenylation activity. Importantly, however, such mutational changes do impact upon double-stranded ligation activity. Considered in light of the DNA ligase I:DNA crystal structure, our findings suggest that residues 470¿476 function as part of a molecular pincer that maintains the DNA in a conformation that is required for ligation

Aliens Found in Waiting: Women of the Ku Klux Klan in Suburban Chicago, 1870-1930

Aliens Found in Waiting is a case study of the Walosas Club chapter of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan in the suburban Chicago community of Oak Park, Illinois. Through the use of a rare manuscript collection this study provides a glimpse into the daily lives of suburban Klanswomen grappling with changing demographics in the village where they lived. Examination of the Walosas Club also provides a new context for the study of suburban history. New suburban historians have traditionally viewed suburbs as battlegrounds for the intersection of race, class and gender. Oak Park adds religion as an agent of change and an analytical tool for understanding growth and diversification in a streetcar suburb. The village of Oak Park developed as a classic affluent nineteenth-century suburb whose residents were almost all exclusively white and Protestant. The early 1900s witnessed a rapid influx of Catholic residents to Chicago\u27s near western suburbs including Oak Park. The appearance of the WKKK and KKK in Oak Park in the 1920s was one reaction to a perceived threat to the Protestant moral authority of the community. The revived Klan of the teens and 1920s feared and vilified virtually any population that was not native-born white Protestant Americans which included immigrants, African-Americans, Jews, and Catholics. In Oak Park Catholics were the local focus of Klan frustrations with a quickly changing American society

Black carbon and other light-absorbing impurities in Arctic snow, and their effect on surface alb

第6回極域科学シンポジウム分野横断セッション：[IA] 急変する北極気候システム及びその全球的な影響の総合的解明―GRENE北極気候変動研究事業研究成果報告2015―11月19日（木）　国立極地研究所 2階 大会議

Judging A Book By Its Cover Exploring Body Modification and Employment

This work aims to understand the relationship between body modifications and employment. The body has received much academic attention recently, yet the experience of modified bodies’ remains overlooked, particularly within the workplace. This is surprising considering the centrality of the individual within the UK’s growing service industry. In using the legal industry as its focus, this study reveals the taken-for-granted assumptions regarding ability and the body which are present throughout the contemporary job market. Data was collected through a series of interviews with individuals with body modifications and with individuals working at a large Midlands-based legal firm. In contributing to current understandings of the organisational management and the sociology of the body, this work makes evident the importance of the body within the workplace and discusses the shift in meaning of body modifications in society. In so doing, this work reveals the disparity in treatment between certain bodies and the way in which ‘choice’ is used to legitimate workplace discrimination. Its findings have implications for future bodily research and current understandings of hiring and promoting practice within the job market

A Land Use Plan for Brightmoor

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110972/1/landuseBrightmooropt2008.pd

Scratching the surface: the use of sheepskin parchment to deter textual erasure in early modern legal deeds.

UNLABELLED: Historic legal deeds are one of the most abundant resources in British archives, but also one of the most neglected. Despite the millions that survive, we know remarkably little about their manufacture, including the species of animal on which they were written. Here we present the species identification of 645 sixteenth-twentieth century skins via peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS), demonstrating the preferential use of sheepskin parchment. We argue that alongside their abundance and low cost, the use of sheepskins over those of other species was motivated by the increased visibility of fraudulent text erasure and modification afforded by the unique structure of their skin. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40494-021-00503-6

The darkening of the Greenland ice sheet: trends, drivers, and projections (1981–2100)

The surface energy balance and meltwater production of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) are modulated by snow and ice albedo through the amount of absorbed solar radiation. Here we show, using space-borne multispectral data collected during the 3 decades from 1981 to 2012, that summertime surface albedo over the GrIS decreased at a statistically significant (99 %) rate of 0.02 decade−1 between 1996 and 2012. Over the same period, albedo modelled by the Modèle Atmosphérique Régionale (MAR) also shows a decrease, though at a lower rate ( ∼ −0.01 decade−1) than that obtained from space-borne data. We suggest that the discrepancy between modelled and measured albedo trends can be explained by the absence in the model of processes associated with the presence of light-absorbing impurities. The negative trend in observed albedo is confined to the regions of the GrIS that undergo melting in summer, with the dry-snow zone showing no trend. The period 1981–1996 also showed no statistically significant trend over the whole GrIS. Analysis of MAR outputs indicates that the observed albedo decrease is attributable to the combined effects of increased near-surface air temperatures, which enhanced melt and promoted growth in snow grain size and the expansion of bare ice areas, and to trends in light-absorbing impurities (LAI) on the snow and ice surfaces. Neither aerosol models nor in situ and remote sensing observations indicate increasing trends in LAI in the atmosphere over Greenland. Similarly, an analysis of the number of fires and BC emissions from fires points to the absence of trends for such quantities. This suggests that the apparent increase of LAI in snow and ice might be related to the exposure of a "dark band" of dirty ice and to increased consolidation of LAI at the surface with melt, not to increased aerosol deposition. Albedo projections through to the end of the century under different warming scenarios consistently point to continued darkening, with albedo anomalies averaged over the whole ice sheet lower by 0.08 in 2100 than in 2000, driven solely by a warming climate. Future darkening is likely underestimated because of known underestimates in modelled melting (as seen in hindcasts) and because the model albedo scheme does not currently include the effects of LAI, which have a positive feedback on albedo decline through increased melting, grain growth, and darkening