Capacity to adapt to environmental change: evidence from a network of organizations concerned with increasing wildfire risk

ArticleThis is the final version of the article. Available from Resilience Alliance via the DOI in this record.Because wildfire size and frequency are expected to increase in many forested areas in the United States, organizations involved in forest and wildfire management could arguably benefit from working together and sharing information to develop strategies for how to adapt to this increasing risk. Social capital theory suggests that actors in cohesive networks are positioned to build trust and mutual understanding of problems and act collectively to address these problems, and that actors engaged with diverse partners are positioned to access new information and resources that are important for innovation and complex problem solving. We investigated the patterns of interaction within a network of organizations involved in forest and wildfire management in Oregon, USA, for evidence of structural conditions that create opportunities for collective action and learning. We used descriptive statistical analysis of social network data gathered through interviews to characterize the structure of the network and exponential random graph modeling to identify key factors in the formation of network ties. We interpreted our findings through the lens of social capital theory to identify implications for the network’s capacity to engage in collective action and complex problem-solving about how to adapt to environmental change. We found that tendencies to associate with others with similar management goals, geographic emphases, and attitudes toward wildfire were strong mechanisms shaping network structure, potentially constraining interactions among organizations with diverse information and resources and limiting opportunities for learning and complex problem-solving needed for adaptation. In particular, we found that organizations with fire protection and forest restoration goals comprised distinct networks despite sharing concern about the problem of increasing wildfire risk.The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Coupled Human and Natural Systems Program (NSF Grant CNH-1013296) and the U.S. Forest Service PNW Research Station provided the funding for this research. Support was also provided by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC; DBI-1052875). The authors would like to acknowledge all the interview informants who generously gave their time to participate in the study. The authors would also like to acknowledge Örjan Bodin for reviewing the study plan for the research; Susan Charnley, Emily Platt, and Kerry Grimm for assisting with data collection; Maribel Vidrio for assisting with data management; and Ken Vance-Borland for assisting with preliminary data analysis

High Resolution X-ray Spectroscopy of the Seyfert 1, Mrk 1040. Revealing the Failed Nuclear Wind with Chandra

High resolution X-ray spectroscopy of the warm absorber in the nearby X-ray bright Seyfert 1 galaxy, Mrk 1040 is presented. The observations were carried out in the 2013-2014 timeframe using the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating with a total exposure of 200 ks. A multitude of absorption lines from Ne, Mg and Si are detected from a wide variety of ionization states. In particular, the detection of inner K-shell absorption lines from Ne, Mg and Si, from charge states ranging from F-like to Li-like ions, suggests the presence of a substantial amount of low ionization absorbing gas, illuminated by a steep soft X-ray continuum. The observations reveal at least 3 warm absorbing components ranging in ionization parameter from $\log\xi = 0-2$ and with column densities of $N_{\rm H} =1.5-4.0 \times 10^{21}$cm$^{-2}$. The velocity profiles imply that the outflow velocities of the absorbing gas are low and within $\pm100$ km s$^{-1}$ of the systemic velocity of Mrk 1040, which suggests any outflowing gas may have stalled in this AGN on large enough scales. The warm absorber is likely located far from the black hole, within 300 pc of the nucleus and is spatially coincident with emission from an extended Narrow Line Region as seen in the HST images. The iron K band spectrum reveals only narrow emission lines, with Fe K$\alpha$ at 6.4 keV consistent with originating from reflection off Compton thick pc-scale reprocessing gas

On the massive gluon propagator, the PT-BFM scheme and the low-momentum behaviour of decoupling and scaling DSE solutions

We study the low-momentum behaviour of Yang-Mills propagators obtained from Landau-gauge Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSE) in the PT-BFM scheme. We compare the ghost propagator numerical results with the analytical ones obtained by analyzing the low-momentum behaviour of the ghost propagator DSE in Landau gauge, assuming for the truncation a constant ghost-gluon vertex and a simple model for a massive gluon propagator. The asymptotic expression obtained for the regular or decoupling ghost dressing function up to the order ${\cal O}(q^2)$ is proven to fit pretty well the numerical PT-BFM results. Furthermore, when the size of the coupling renormalized at some scale approaches some critical value, the numerical PT-BFM propagators tend to behave as the scaling ones. We also show that the scaling solution, implying a diverging ghost dressing function, cannot be a DSE solution in the PT-BFM scheme but an unattainable limiting case.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figs., 2 tabs (updated version to be published in JHEP

Evaluation of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy in a United States population of women

Copyright @ 2012 Morof et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Objective: To evaluate the reliability and validity of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy (a U.K.-developed measure of pregnancy intention), in English and Spanish translation, in a U.S. population of women. Methods: A psychometric evaluation study of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy (LMUP), a six-item, self-completion paper measure was conducted with 346 women aged 15–45 who presented to San Francisco General Hospital for termination of pregnancy or antenatal care. Analyses of the two language versions were carried out separately. Reliability (internal consistency) was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and item-total correlations. Test-retest reliability (stability) was assessed using weighted Kappa. Construct validity was assessed using principal components analysis and hypothesis testing. Results: Psychometric testing demonstrated that the LMUP was reliable and valid in both U.S. English (alpha = 0.78, all item-total correlations .0.20, weighted Kappa = 0.72, unidimensionality confirmed, hypotheses met) and Spanish translation (alpha = 0.84, all item-total correlations .0.20, weighted Kappa = 0.77, unidimensionality confirmed, hypotheses met). Conclusion: The LMUP was reliable and valid in U.S. English and Spanish translation and therefore may now be used with U.S. women.The study was funded by an anonymous donation

Complexity and Expressivity of Branching- and Alternating-Time Temporal Logics with Finitely Many Variables

We show that Branching-time temporal logics CTL and CTL*, as well as Alternating-time temporal logics ATL and ATL*, are as semantically expressive in the language with a single propositional variable as they are in the full language, i.e., with an unlimited supply of propositional variables. It follows that satisfiability for CTL, as well as for ATL, with a single variable is EXPTIME-complete, while satisfiability for CTL*, as well as for ATL*, with a single variable is 2EXPTIME-complete,--i.e., for these logics, the satisfiability for formulas with only one variable is as hard as satisfiability for arbitrary formulas.Comment: Prefinal version of the published pape

Using the posterior distribution of deviance to measure evidence of association for rare susceptibility variants

Aitkin recently proposed an integrated Bayesian/likelihood approach that he claims is general and simple. We have applied this method, which does not rely on informative prior probabilities or large-sample results, to investigate the evidence of association between disease and the 16 variants in the KDR gene provided by Genetic Analysis Workshop 17. Based on the likelihood of logistic regression models and considering noninformative uniform prior probabilities on the coefficients of the explanatory variables, we used a random walk Metropolis algorithm to simulate the distributions of deviance and deviance difference. The distribution of probability values and the distribution of the proportions of positive deviance differences showed different locations, but the direction of the shift depended on the genetic factor. For the variant with the highest minor allele frequency and for any rare variant, standard logistic regression showed a higher power than the novel approach. For the two variants with the strongest effects on Q1 under a type I error rate of 1%, the integrated approach showed a higher power than standard logistic regression. The advantages and limitations of the integrated Bayesian/likelihood approach should be investigated using additional regions and considering alternative regression models and collapsing methods

Virtual patients design and its effect on clinical reasoning and student experience : a protocol for a randomised factorial multi-centre study

Background Virtual Patients (VPs) are web-based representations of realistic clinical cases. They are proposed as being an optimal method for teaching clinical reasoning skills. International standards exist which define precisely what constitutes a VP. There are multiple design possibilities for VPs, however there is little formal evidence to support individual design features. The purpose of this trial is to explore the effect of two different potentially important design features on clinical reasoning skills and the student experience. These are the branching case pathways (present or absent) and structured clinical reasoning feedback (present or absent). Methods/Design This is a multi-centre randomised 2x2 factorial design study evaluating two independent variables of VP design, branching (present or absent), and structured clinical reasoning feedback (present or absent).The study will be carried out in medical student volunteers in one year group from three university medical schools in the United Kingdom, Warwick, Keele and Birmingham. There are four core musculoskeletal topics. Each case can be designed in four different ways, equating to 16 VPs required for the research. Students will be randomised to four groups, completing the four VP topics in the same order, but with each group exposed to a different VP design sequentially. All students will be exposed to the four designs. Primary outcomes are performance for each case design in a standardized fifteen item clinical reasoning assessment, integrated into each VP, which is identical for each topic. Additionally a 15-item self-reported evaluation is completed for each VP, based on a widely used EViP tool. Student patterns of use of the VPs will be recorded. In one centre, formative clinical and examination performance will be recorded, along with a self reported pre and post-intervention reasoning score, the DTI. Our power calculations indicate a sample size of 112 is required for both primary outcomes

MARV: a tool for genome-wide multi-phenotype analysis of rare variants

Background: Genome-wide association studies have enabled identification of thousands of loci for hundreds of traits. Yet, for most human traits a substantial part of the estimated heritability is unexplained. This and recent advances in technology to produce high-dimensional data cost-effectively have led to method development beyond standard common variant analysis, including single-phenotype rare variant and multi-phenotype common variant analysis, with the latter increasing power for locus discovery and providing suggestions of pleiotropic effects. However, there are currently no optimal methods and tools for the combined analysis of rare variants and multiple phenotypes. Results: We propose a user-friendly software tool MARV for Multi-phenotype Analysis of Rare Variants. The tool is based on a method that collapses rare variants within a genomic region and models the proportion of minor alleles in the rare variants on a linear combination of multiple phenotypes. MARV provides analyses of all phenotype combinations within one run and calculates the Bayesian Information Criterion to facilitate model selection. The running time increases with the size of the genetic data while the number of phenotypes to analyse has little effect both on running time and required memory. We illustrate the use of MARV with analysis of triglycerides (TG), fasting insulin (FI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) in 4,721 individuals from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966. The analysis suggests novel multi-phenotype effects for these metabolic traits at APOA5 and ZNF259, and at ZNF259 provides stronger support for association (P TG+FI = 1.8 × 10−9) than observed in single phenotype rare variant analyses (P TG = 6.5 × 10−8 and P FI = 0.27). Conclusions: MARV is a computationally efficient, flexible and user-friendly software tool allowing rapid identification of rare variant effects on multiple phenotypes, thus paving the way for novel discoveries and insights into biology of complex traits

Anti-prion drug mPPIg5 inhibits PrP(C) conversion to PrP(Sc).

Prion diseases, also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, are a group of fatal neurodegenerative diseases that include scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans. The 'protein only hypothesis' advocates that PrP(Sc), an abnormal isoform of the cellular protein PrP(C), is the main and possibly sole component of prion infectious agents. Currently, no effective therapy exists for these diseases at the symptomatic phase for either humans or animals, though a number of compounds have demonstrated the ability to eliminate PrPSc in cell culture models. Of particular interest are synthetic polymers known as dendrimers which possess the unique ability to eliminate PrP(Sc) in both an intracellular and in vitro setting. The efficacy and mode of action of the novel anti-prion dendrimer mPPIg5 was investigated through the creation of a number of innovative bio-assays based upon the scrapie cell assay. These assays were used to demonstrate that mPPIg5 is a highly effective anti-prion drug which acts, at least in part, through the inhibition of PrP(C) to PrP(Sc) conversion. Understanding how a drug works is a vital component in maximising its performance. By establishing the efficacy and method of action of mPPIg5, this study will help determine which drugs are most likely to enhance this effect and also aid the design of dendrimers with anti-prion capabilities for the future

Imaging the Two Gaps of the High-TC Superconductor Pb-Bi2Sr2CuO6+x

The nature of the pseudogap state, observed above the superconducting transition temperature TC in many high temperature superconductors, is the center of much debate. Recently, this discussion has focused on the number of energy gaps in these materials. Some experiments indicate a single energy gap, implying that the pseudogap is a precursor state. Others indicate two, suggesting that it is a competing or coexisting phase. Here we report on temperature dependent scanning tunneling spectroscopy of Pb-Bi2Sr2CuO6+x. We have found a new, narrow, homogeneous gap that vanishes near TC, superimposed on the typically observed, inhomogeneous, broad gap, which is only weakly temperature dependent. These results not only support the two gap picture, but also explain previously troubling differences between scanning tunneling microscopy and other experimental measurements.Comment: 6 page