Remote Predictive Mapping 1. Remote Predictive Mapping (RPM): A Strategy for Geological Mapping of Canada’s North

Remote Predictive Mapping (RPM) techniques are being developed and refined by the Geological Survey of Canada for mapping Canada’s North. Remote Predictive Mapping should be considered an integral part of the geological mapping process designed to involve compilation, and re-compilation of data derived from existing geological maps, aerial photographs, satellite imagery, and airborne geophysical data. Predictive geological maps may be iteratively revised and upgraded to publishable geological maps by integrating remotely sensed data with newly acquired field and laboratory data, as RPM techniques are progressively tested and insight evolves. A predictive map, produced without collection of new, field-based data, may also serve as a first-order geologic map in areas where field-based studies cannot be accomplished due to expense of field access or remoteness. As a welcome consequence of adopting RPM into the normal work flow of any mapping or exploration project, there will, by necessity, be greater participation and integration of expertise of field geologists, geophysicists, Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing specialists. Significantly, RPM also encourages geoscience organizations to make full use of all available geoscience data. This paper outlines a strategy for RPM and provides processing and interpretation examples based on a variety of geoscience data and interpretation techniques to be employed for geologic mapping. SOMMAIRE La Commission géologique du Canada développe et raffine des techniques de télécartographique prédictive (TCP) pour cartographier du Nord canadien. La télécartographie prédictive doit être perçue comme une composante intégrée d’un processus de cartographie géologique de compilation et de recompilation de données extraites de cartes géologiques, de photographies aériennes, d’imageries satellitaires, et de géophysiques aéroportées existantes. Les cartes géologiques prédictives peu-vent ainsi être révisées, mises à jour et publiées selon une approche itérative intégrant les données de télédétection avec les données de terrain et de laboratoire nouvellement acquises, au gré de l’évolution et du raffinement des techniques de TCP. Dans les cas de régions trop éloignées, ou parce que les coûts d’établissement de cartes géologiques de base régulières seraient prohibitifs, la TCP peut aussi être utilisée pour produire une carte géologique de base. D’entrée de jeu, on réalise que l’adoption de la TCP dans la routine de production normale de tout projet de cartographie ou d’exploration permettra, en soi, une meilleure prise en compte et une meilleure intégration des savoirs-faires des géologues de terrain, des géophysiciens et des spécialistes de la télédétection et des systèmes d’information géographique (SIG). Par sa nature même, la TCP permet aux organisations géoscientifiques de faire plein usage de toutes les données géoscientifiques dont elles disposent. Le présent article définit une stratégie de TCP et décrit des exemples de traitement et d’interprétation d’une variété de données géoscientifiques et de techniques d’interprétation utilisables pour la production de cartes géologiques

Degradation and forgone removals increase the carbon impact of intact forest loss by 626%

Intact tropical forests, free from substantial anthropogenic influence, store and sequester large amounts of atmospheric carbon but are currently neglected in international climate policy. We show that between 2000 and 2013, direct clearance of intact tropical forest areas accounted for 3.2% of gross carbon emissions from all deforestation across the pantropics. However, full carbon accounting requires the consideration of forgone carbon sequestration, selective logging, edge effects, and defaunation. When these factors were considered, the net carbon impact resulting from intact tropical forest loss between 2000 and 2013 increased by a factor of 6 (626%), from 0.34 (0.37 to 0.21) to 2.12 (2.85 to 1.00) petagrams of carbon (equivalent to approximately 2 years of global land use change emissions). The climate mitigation value of conserving the 549 million ha of tropical forest that remains intact is therefore significant but will soon dwindle if their rate of loss continues to accelerate

Healthcare-associated outbreak of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia: role of a cryptic variant of an epidemic clone

BACKGROUND New strains of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) may be associated with changes in rates of disease or clinical presentation. Conventional typing techniques may not detect new clonal variants that underlie changes in epidemiology or clinical phenotype. AIM To investigate the role of clonal variants of MRSA in an outbreak of MRSA bacteraemia at a hospital in England. METHODS Bacteraemia isolates of the major UK lineages (EMRSA-15 and -16) from before and after the outbreak were analysed by whole-genome sequencing in the context of epidemiological and clinical data. For comparison, EMRSA-15 and -16 isolates from another hospital in England were sequenced. A clonal variant of EMRSA-16 was identified at the outbreak hospital and a molecular signature test designed to distinguish variant isolates among further EMRSA-16 strains. FINDINGS By whole-genome sequencing, EMRSA-16 isolates during the outbreak showed strikingly low genetic diversity (P < 1 × 10(-6), Monte Carlo test), compared with EMRSA-15 and EMRSA-16 isolates from before the outbreak or the comparator hospital, demonstrating the emergence of a clonal variant. The variant was indistinguishable from the ancestral strain by conventional typing. This clonal variant accounted for 64/72 (89%) of EMRSA-16 bacteraemia isolates at the outbreak hospital from 2006. CONCLUSIONS Evolutionary changes in epidemic MRSA strains not detected by conventional typing may be associated with changes in disease epidemiology. Rapid and affordable technologies for whole-genome sequencing are becoming available with the potential to identify and track the emergence of variants of highly clonal organisms

Excess Spin and the Dynamics of Antiferromagnetic Ferritin

Temperature-dependent magnetization measurements on a series of synthetic ferritin proteins containing from 100 to 3000 Fe(III) ions are used to determine the uncompensated moment of these antiferromagnetic particles. The results are compared with recent theories of macroscopic quantum coherence which explicitly include the effect of this excess moment. The scaling of the excess moment with protein size is consistent with a simple model of finite size effects and sublattice noncompensation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 Postsript figures, 1 table. Submitted to PR

Challenging Perceptions of Disability through Performance Poetry Methods: The "Seen but Seldom Heard" Project.

This paper considers performance poetry as a method to explore lived experiences of disability. We discuss how poetic inquiry used within a participatory arts-based research framework can enable young people to collectively question society’s attitudes and actions towards disability. Poetry will be considered as a means to develop a more accessible and effective arena in which young people with direct experience of disability can be empowered to develop new skills that enable them to tell their own stories. Discussion of how this can challenge audiences to critically reflect upon their own perceptions of disability will also be developed

Displaced but not replaced: the impact of e-learning on academic identities in higher education.

Challenges facing universities are leading many to implement institutional strategies to incorporate e-learning rather than leaving its adoption up to enthusiastic individuals. Although there is growing understanding about the impact of e-learning on the student experience, there is less understanding of academics’ perceptions of e-learning and its impact on their identities. This paper explores the changing nature of academic identities revealed through case study research into the implementation of e-learning at one UK university. By providing insight into the lived experiences of academics in a university in which technology is not only transforming access to knowledge but also influencing the balance of power between academic and student in knowledge production and use, it is suggested that academics may experience a jolt to their ‘trajectory of self’ when engaging with e-learning. The potential for e-learning to prompt loss of teacher presence and displacement as knowledge expert may appear to undermine the ontological security of their academic identity

Thermal correction to the Casimir force, radiative heat transfer, and an experiment

The low-temperature asymptotic expressions for the Casimir interaction between two real metals described by Leontovich surface impedance are obtained in the framework of thermal quantum field theory. It is shown that the Casimir entropy computed using the impedance of infrared optics vanishes in the limit of zero temperature. By contrast, the Casimir entropy computed using the impedance of the Drude model attains at zero temperature a positive value which depends on the parameters of a system, i.e., the Nernst heat theorem is violated. Thus, the impedance of infrared optics withstands the thermodynamic test, whereas the impedance of the Drude model does not. We also perform a phenomenological analysis of the thermal Casimir force and of the radiative heat transfer through a vacuum gap between real metal plates. The characterization of a metal by means of the Leontovich impedance of the Drude model is shown to be inconsistent with experiment at separations of a few hundred nanometers. A modification of the impedance of infrared optics is suggested taking into account relaxation processes. The power of radiative heat transfer predicted from this impedance is several times less than previous predictions due to different contributions from the transverse electric evanescent waves. The physical meaning of low frequencies in the Lifshitz formula is discussed. It is concluded that new measurements of radiative heat transfer are required to find out the adequate description of a metal in the theory of electromagnetic fluctuations.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. svjour.cls is used, to appear in Eur. Phys. J.

Simple model of adsorption on external surface of carbon nanotubes: a new analytical approach basing on molecular simulation data

Nitrogen adsorption on carbon nanotubes is wide- ly studied because nitrogen adsorption isotherm measurement is a standard method applied for porosity characterization. A further reason is that carbon nanotubes are potential adsorbents for separation of nitrogen from oxygen in air. The study presented here describes the results of GCMC simulations of nitrogen (three site model) adsorption on single and multi walled closed nanotubes. The results obtained are described by a new adsorption isotherm model proposed in this study. The model can be treated as the tube analogue of the GAB isotherm taking into account the lateral adsorbate-adsorbate interactions. We show that the model describes the simulated data satisfactorily. Next this new approach is applied for a description of experimental data measured on different commercially available (and characterized using HRTEM) carbon nanotubes. We show that generally a quite good fit is observed and therefore it is suggested that the observed mechanism of adsorption in the studied materials is mainly determined by adsorption on tubes separated at large distances, so the tubes behave almost independently