The effects of ownership pattern on forest road networks in western Oregon

The pattern of ownership imposed on the-forest landscape of Western Oregon defines the boundaries in which differences in jurisdiction, regulation, and land use operate. Road building is controlled by these factors, and in turn has an effect on the cumulative effects of human utilization of the forest. This study examined the differences in road density and slope position between areas with different ownership patterns. Land ownership pattern can vary according to the size, shape, and mixture of parcels in an area. The forested lands of Western Oregon have areas with a unique checkerboard pattern, resulting from Federal land grant programs to help build railroads and settle the area in the late nineteenth century. These lands now have alternating, one square mile ownership parcels, split between public agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management or the United States Forest Service and private timber companies. This study used analysis of variance of road density, stream density and the ratio of the two. A GIS system was used to sample and analyze existing data for BLM and industrial lands, as well as Forest Service and industrial holdings. Tukey ANOVA tests and parametric statistics were used on randomly sampled areas of each ownership type to find out which ownership types were significantly different for total area, and classified by slope position. The large industrial and large BLM parcels were found to be consistently different across most slope positions, with higher road densities found on the industrial lands. The checkerboard of the two was shown to be intermediate between to the two. The large Forest Service and checkerboard area were not consistently different in total density, but they showed difference in the distribution of roads by slope position. These checkerboard areas had more roads in valley areas while the large USFS parcels had higher road densities on ridges

Risk factors for otitis media in children with special emphasis on the role of colonization with bacterial airway pathogens: the Generation R study

Acute otitis media is the most frequent diagnosis in children visiting physicians’ offices. Risk factors for otitis media have been widely studied. Yet, the correlation between bacterial carriage and the development of otitis media is not entirely clear. Our aim was to study in a population-based prospective cohort the risk factors for otitis media in the second year of life with special emphasis on the role of colonization with Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae and Moraxella catarrhalis. The study was embedded in the Generation R Study. Data on risk factors and doctor-diagnosed otitis media were obtained by midwives, hospital registries and postal questionnaires in the whole cohort (n = 7,295). Nasopharyngeal swabs were obtained at the age of 1.5, 6 and 14 months in the focus cohort (n = 1,079). Of these children, 2,515 (47.2%) suffered at least one period of otitis media in their second year of life. The occurrence of otitis media during the follow-up period in the first 6 months of life and between 6 and 12 months of age was associated with the risk of otitis media in the second year of life (aOR, 1.83 95% CI 1.24–2.71 and aOR 2.72, 95% CI 2.18–3.38, respectively). Having siblings was associated with an increased risk for otitis media in the second year of life (aOR 1.42, 95% CI 1.13–1.79). No associations were found between bacterial carriage in the first year of life and otitis media in the second year of life. In our study, otitis media in the first year of life is an independent risk factor for otitis media in the second year of life. Surprisingly, bacterial carriage in the first year of life did not add to this risk. Moreover, no association was observed between bacterial carriage in the first year of life and otitis in the second year of life

Plant diversity patterns in neotropical dry forests and their conservation implications

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from American Association for the Advancement of Science via the DOI in this record.Seasonally dry tropical forests are distributed across Latin America and the Caribbean and are highly threatened, with less than 10% of their original extent remaining in many countries. Using 835 inventories covering 4660 species of woody plants, we show marked floristic turnover among inventories and regions, which may be higher than in other neotropical biomes, such as savanna. Such high floristic turnover indicates that numerous conservation areas across many countries will be needed to protect the full diversity of tropical dry forests. Our results provide a scientific framework within which national decision-makers can contextualize the floristic significance of their dry forest at a regional and continental scale.This paper is the result of the Latin American and Caribbean Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest Floristic Network (DRYFLOR), which has been supported at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh by a Leverhulme Trust International Network Grant (IN-074). This work was also supported by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council grant NE/I028122/1; Colciencias Ph.D. scholarship 529; Synthesys Programme GBTAF-2824; the NSF (NSF 1118340 and 1118369); the Instituto Humboldt (IAvH)–Red colombiana de investigación y monitoreo en bosque seco; the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI; Tropi-Dry, CRN2-021, funded by NSF GEO 0452325); Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR); and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). The data reported in this paper are available at www.dryflor.info. R.T.P. conceived the study. M.P., A.O.-F., K.B.-R., R.T.P., and J.W. designed the DRYFLOR database system. K.B.-R. and K.G.D. carried out most analyses. K.B.-R. R.T.P., and K.G.D. wrote the manuscript with substantial input from A.D.-S., R.L.-P., A.O.-F., D.P., C.Q., and R.R. All the authors contributed data, discussed further analyses, and commented on various versions of the manuscript. K.B.-R. thanks G. Galeano who introduced her to dry forest research. We thank J. L. Marcelo, I. Huamantupa, C. Reynel, S. Palacios, and A. Daza for help with fieldwork and data entry in Peru

In-pile steam oxidation of model HTGR fuel elements

Model HTGR fuel elements were exposed to various concentrations of steam while being irradiated under several sets of temperature conditions in the Oak Ridge Research Reactor. In one test, catalysis by iron impurities in the graphite casing of the fuel element caused a highly localized attack on the graphite by the steam; this resulted in the formation of deep pits in the casing. Furthermore, the iron impurities were sufficiently mobile to cause pitting attack on the pyrolytic carbon coatings of the fuel particles as well. The presence of steam induced a rapid increase in the release of gaseous fission products. However, the cessation of steam ingress in the primary system resulted in a pronounced, but correspondingly smaller, reduction in the level of gaseous release. The incidence of fuel failure was greater than anticipated; however, even though the coatings of greater than 30% of the fuel had failed, the release of fission products beyond the fuel element itself was largely confined to iodine and the noble gases. A novel mode of fuel failure was observed under the rather severe conditions of the tests; this involved the attack of the pyrolytic carbon coatings on intact particles by uncoated fragments of uranium fuel kernel material from failed particles