Acute exposures of salmonid embryos to total dissolved solids

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2003Two exposure methodologies are described here utilizing embryonic and juvenile life stages of several species of salmonids. Specific life stages of the fish were exposed to solutions of varying total dissolved solids (TDS) modeled after the measured produced water from the Red Dog Mine in Kotzebue, Alaska. Embryonic and juvenile coho salmon (0. kisutch) were exposed for 96 hours to determine acute response to TDS. Following exposure, fish were grown out to button up to assess delayed effects. Results from the 96-hour study suggest fertilization is the most sensitive developmental stage of salmon exposed to TDS. Six fish species were then used to assess a new 24-hour embryo toxicity study during fertilization. We examined short- and long-term mortality, number of unfertilized eggs, and the overall percent affected. The endpoint for the assay is the success of egg fertilization. Based on the results of these experiments, it is reasonable to conclude that the fertilization assay can be generalized across these species and may be useful in setting site-specific criteria for discharging wastes

Terms of Exclusion: Violence and the Impact on Women's Participation in Development

In 2015, the Australian Government–funded Nabilan1 Program (Ending Violence against Women) conducted a study on violence against women and children in Timor-Leste (Asia Foundation 2016). This was the country’s first statistically significant study analysing risk and protective factors for women’s experience of violence, and provided the first quantitative data on men’s use of violence against women. Comprising two surveys — one nationally representative prevalence survey with women,2 and one survey on men’s perpetration in two municipalities3 — the Nabilan Baseline Study is an important tool for those working in service provision to victims and violence prevention. The findings illustrate the extent of this issue is much greater than previously estimated, and point to its causes and consequences.AusAI

Sensitivity of an image plate system in the XUV (60 eV < E < 900 eV)

Phosphor imaging plates (IPs) have been calibrated and proven useful for quantitative x-ray imaging in the 1 to over 1000 keV energy range. In this paper we report on calibration measurements made at XUV energies in the 60 to 900 eV energy range using beamline 6.3.2 at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. We measured a sensitivity of ~25 plus or minus 15 counts/pJ over the stated energy range which is compatible with the sensitivity of Si photodiodes that are used for time-resolved measurements. Our measurements at 900 eV are consistent with the measurements made by Meadowcroft et al. at ~1 keV.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Visuomotor association orthogonalizes visual cortical population codes

The brain should be best able to associate distinct behavioral responses to sensory stimuli if these stimuli evoke population firing patterns that are close to orthogonal. To investigate whether task training orthogonalizes population codes in primary visual cortex (V1), we measured the orientation tuning of 4,000-neuron populations in mouse V1 before and after training on a visuomotor task. The effect of task training on population codes could be captured by a simple mathematical transformation of firing rates, which suppressed responses to motor-associated stimuli, but only in cells responding to them at intermediate levels. This transformation orthogonalized the representations of the task orientations by sparsening the population responses to these stimuli. The strength of response transformation varied from trial to trial, suggesting a dynamic circuit mechanism rather than static synaptic plasticity. These results indicate a simple process by which visuomotor associations orthogonalize population codes as early as in primary visual cortex

Improving services and improving lives: waste-picker integration and municipal coproduction in Pune, India

This case study focuses on two challenges of the developing world: the provision of effective and sustainable solid waste management services, and the improvement of conditions in the informal sector. Internal and structural issues typically prevent institutions in developing countries from adequately delivering basic services (Joshi, 2008). Such obstacles include corruption, a lack of adequate employee training and incentives, and the decentralization of responsibility to local government without also allocating sufficient authority (Joshi, 2008). This paper broaches both topics by examining the case of an innovative municipal solid waste management solution that integrates the lowest on the informal sector waste management hierarchy into the formal system while substantially improving their incomes and working conditions in enduring ways. Historically, the State has been responsible for the provision of public goods and services. But since the 1980s proponents of market-based reforms have questioned the State's role as sole provider. Calling for a greater involvement of the private sector, they argue that competition will promote service efficiency (see the New Public Management literature, especially Hood, 1991, for a summary of these arguments). While the controversy over whether privatization or pluralization actually improves government functions is ongoing, one documented drawback of this approach is that market competition often reduces social accountability and social equity in public services (Joshi, 2008). However, effective and socially equitable service provision is central to achieving poverty reduction; ill-health as a result of poor or absent services can prompt the descent into poverty, and reinforces vulnerability and insecurity among marginalized groups (Joshi, 2008). At the intersection of poverty alleviation interventions and the solid waste management system stands the waste-picker, or more specifically, informal sector waste worker. This paper examines innovations in the delivery of urban waste management through a case study of Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), a union of waste-pickers based in Pune, and the Solid Waste Collection and Handling Cooperative (SWaCH), a novel doorstep waste collection cooperative that resulted from the union's joint effort with Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). This collaboration not only reformed solid waste management and service delivery across Pune, but it also improved the lives, incomes and working conditions of the waste-pickers themselves, addressing the issues of both poverty and sanitation. As a case of two disparate institutions joining to create an innovative solution for improved service provision, their story is a good example of successful coproduction; it is useful and unusual because accounts of such partnerships are seldom told. In examining the nascent cooperative SWaCH, its origins, logic and future challenges, I draw out lessons for planners strategizing for poverty alleviation and improved basic services. This case study describes development processes that not only confront solid waste management issues, but the poverty and insecurity of a highly vulnerable and marginalized urban population. Similarly, this case fills a gap in our understanding of cross-sectoral partnerships for service provision as it represents an arrangement involving not just the State and the market, or the State and civil society, but segments and components of all three.Master of City and Regional Plannin

Optically excited states in positronium

Optical excitation are reported of the 1 3S-2 3P transition in positronium, and a second excitation from n=2 to higher n states. The experiment used light from two pulsed dye lasers. Changes in the positronium annihilation rate during and after the laser pulse were used to deduce the excited state populations. The n=2 level was found to be saturable and excitable to a substantial fraction of n=2 positronium to higher levels. Preliminary spectroscopic measurements were performed on n=14 and n=15 positronium

Science and Technology Review

Serial publication produced by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory regarding the institution's research in technology to address concerns about energy, bioscience, and the environment. "Science & Technology Review (formerly Energy and Technology Review) is published ten times a year to communicate, to a broad audience, the Laboratory's scientific and technological accomplishments [...]. The publication's goal is to help readers understand these accomplishments and appreciate their value to the individual citizen, the nation, and the world" (inside cover)

Transient x-ray diffraction used to diagnose shock compressed Si crystals on the Nova laser

Transient x-ray diffraction is used to record time-resolved information about the shock compression of materials. This technique has been applied on Nova shock experiments driven using a hohlraum x-ray drive. Data were recorded from the shock release at the free surface of a Si crystal, as well as from Si at an embedded ablator/Si interface. Modeling has been done to simulate the diffraction data incorporating the strained crystal rocking curves and Bragg diffraction efficiencies. Examples of the data and post-processed simulations are presented

Neonatal Cerebral Hypoxia-Ischemia Impairs Plasticity in Rat Visual Cortex

Ocular dominance plasticity (ODP) following monocular deprivation (MD) is a model of activity-dependent neural plasticity that is restricted to an early critical period regulated by maturation of inhibition. Unique developmental plasticity mechanisms may improve outcomes following early brain injury. Our objective was to determine the effects of neonatal cerebral hypoxia–ischemia (HI) on ODP. The rationale extends from observations that neonatal HI results in death of subplate neurons, a transient population known to influence development of inhibition. In rodents subjected to neonatal HI and controls, maps of visual response were derived from optical imaging during the critical period for ODP and changes in the balance of eye-specific response following MD were measured. In controls, MD results in a shift of the ocular dominance index (ODI) from a baseline of 0.15 to −0.10 (p < 0.001). Neonatal HI with moderate cortical injury impairs this shift, ODI = 0.14 (p < 0.01). Plasticity was intact in animals with mild injury and in those exposed to hypoxia alone. Neonatal HI resulted in decreased parvalbumin expression in hemispheres receiving HI compared with hypoxia alone: 23.4 versus 35.0 cells/high-power field (p = 0.01), with no change in other markers of inhibitory or excitatory neurons. Despite abnormal inhibitory neuron phenotype, spontaneous activity of single units and development of orientation selective responses were intact following neonatal HI, while overall visual responses were reduced. Our data suggest that specific plasticity mechanisms are impaired following early brain injury and that the impairment is associated with altered inhibitory neuronal development and cortical activation