Taming the Software Chaos: True to Its Promise, IFTDSS Eases the Burden of Fuels Treatment Planning—and Does a Lot More Besides

A key problem reported by the fuels treatment planning community is the difficulty and inefficiency of evaluating and then applying many planning tools and applications. Fuels specialists have struggled to find, load, and learn all the different fuels and fire planning models, not to mention the interface of running, adjusting, and inputting data specific to each model without the ability to easily share inputs/outputs between models. The Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) was conceived as a way for users to learn one interface, access a variety of data and models all in one place, and pass data (inputs and outputs) easily between models. IFTDSS provides planners with the structure to reuse and share their work products, and it provides a consistent, basic analysis framework for all users. The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) sponsored the design, prototype, early development, and evaluation of IFTDSS beginning in 2008 and continuing through 2013, working closely with fuels managers to ensure that IFTDSS remained focused firmly on proposed user needs and priorities. Those efforts were recently acknowledged when the Wildland Fire Information and Technology Executive Board formally approved IFTDSS on May 30, 2014, for further planning, development, and eventual operational deployment. With continued enhancements, IFTDSS could eventually become an official system of record for federal fuels treatment planning and become available for nonfederal users as well. Periodic progress reports will be available from the IFTDSS website

Big Changes in the Great Basin

JFSP-funded researchers are exploring the ecological functioning of sagebrush-steppe communities in the Great Basin and other places in the dry Intermountain West. Their work is helping managers effectively use tools such as tree mastication and prescribed fire to help these communities become more resilient in the face of invasive weeds. Other research is finding ways to reestablish native vegetation on sites where weedy invaders have pushed the community past the point where it can recover on its own

Cheating Cheatgrass: New Research to Combat a Wily Invasive Weed

Cheatgrass and its cousin, red brome, are exotic annual grasses that have invaded and altered ecosystem dynamics in more than 41 million acres of desert shrublands between the Rockies and the Cascade-Sierra chain. A fungus naturally associated with these Bromus species has been found lethal to the plants’ soil-banked dormant seeds. Supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), researchers Susan Meyer, Phil Allen, and Julie Beckstead cultured this fungus, Pyrenophora semeniperda, in the laboratory and developed an experimental field application that, in some trials, killed all the dormant soil-banked Bromus seeds, leaving none to germinate the following year. The team’s work opens the way to a commercial biocontrol product that may be capable of safely eliminating the seed bank of persistent invasive grasses. Biocontrol could be used in conjunction with other weed control measures and conservation strategies to make sagebrush-steppe lands less susceptible to reinvasion. A biocontrol tool effective against Bromus seeds would be a boon to managers working to restore the native bunchgrasses, forbs, and shrubs that characterize an intact shrub-steppe ecosystem

Cheating Cheatgrass: New Research to Combat a Wily Invasive Weed

Cheatgrass and its cousin, red brome, are exotic annual grasses that have invaded and altered ecosystem dynamics in more than 41 million acres of desert shrublands between the Rockies and the Cascade-Sierra chain. A fungus naturally associated with these Bromus species has been found lethal to the plants’ soil-banked dormant seeds. Supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), researchers Susan Meyer, Phil Allen, and Julie Beckstead cultured this fungus, Pyrenophora semeniperda, in the laboratory and developed an experimental field application that, in some trials, killed all the dormant soil-banked Bromus seeds, leaving none to germinate the following year. The team’s work opens the way to a commercial biocontrol product that may be capable of safely eliminating the seed bank of persistent invasive grasses. Biocontrol could be used in conjunction with other weed control measures and conservation strategies to make sagebrush-steppe lands less susceptible to reinvasion. A biocontrol tool effective against Bromus seeds would be a boon to managers working to restore the native bunchgrasses, forbs, and shrubs that characterize an intact shrub-steppe ecosystem

Remixing to design learning: social media and peer-to-peer interaction

Social and participatory media offer opportunities to interact and share user-generated content. After some investigation and research, the authors are in their initial stages of using such media to provide a pathway for thinking about learning design in higher education. Using the concept of remixing, the authors aim to creatively blend and manipulate ideas to build a sustainable approach to course/program enhancement. Remixing is touted as one of the most important practices within the field of open educational resources, but it is not mainstream practice in educational thinking or design. This article highlights the authors’ approach and uses their pre-service teacher education program and their previous high school study as an example of remixing. The high school study involved the integration of social and participatory media into the face-to-face classroom; Author 1 was the practitioner researcher in the high school study. This article articulates the use of online social environments at the high school level to highlight concepts of sharing and remixing as a creative and social approach to designing learning in higher education. It also attempts to consider this within a course-wide approach

Molecular Analysis of N6-Methyladenine Patterns in \u3cem\u3eTetrahymena thermophila\u3c/em\u3e Nuclear DNA

We have cloned two DNA fragments containing 5\u27-GATC-3\u27 sites at which the adenine is methylated in the macronucleus of the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila. Using these cloned fragments as molecular probes, we analyzed the maintenance of methylation patterns at two partially and two uniformly methylated sites. Our results suggest that a semiconservative copying model for maintenance of methylation is not sufficient to account for the methylation patterns we found during somatic growth of Tetrahymena. Although we detected hemimethylated molecules in macronuclear DNA, they were present in both replicating and nonreplicating DNA. In addition, we observed that a complex methylation pattern including partially methylated sites was maintained during vegetative growth. This required the activity of a methylase capable of recognizing and modifying sites specified by something other than hemimethylation. We suggest that a eucaryotic maintenance methylase may be capable of discriminating between potential methylation sites to ensure the inheritance of methylation patterns

A Cholecystokinin B Receptor-Specific Aptamer Does Not Activate Receptor Signaling

Targeted nanoparticles which deliver effective doses of chemotherapeutic drugs directly to pancreatic tumors could improve treatment efficacy without the toxicities associated with systemic drug administration. One protein on tumor cells that can be targeted by nanoparticles is a G-protein coupled cell surface receptor, the cholecystokinin B receptor (CCKBR). Previously, we had shown that attaching the CCKBR ligand gastrin to the surface of nanoparticles can enhance their up-take by tumors. The drawback of using gastrin is that it can also activate the receptor, causing tumor cell growth. This study shows that a DNA aptamer that binds to the CCKBR and enhances nanoparticle up-take by tumors does not activate this receptor. PANC-1 cells, a cultured human pancreatic cancer cell line, were treated for 24 h with CCKBR aptamer 1153. Cell lysates were run on Bis-Tris gels, transferred to membranes, blocked in 5% BSA and incubated overnight with primary antibodies, including antibodies directly against phosphorylated-Akt (Ser473), total Akt, and beta-actin, a protein loading control. Although the CCKBR aptamer 1153 is internalized by pancreatic cancer cells in a receptor-mediated fashion, it does not stimulate cell proliferation. Because of this, we anticipate that it will not activate CCKBR signaling. If aptamer 1153 does not activate downstream receptor signaling, our future work will test whether the aptamer could be used to specifically direct drug-containing nanoparticles to tumors, making chemotherapy treatments for pancreatic cancer patients more effective with fewer off-target effects and toxicity

The Tillamook : stories from a created forest

Starting more than 60 years ago, a complex of four forest fires occurring at six-year intervals burned almost 400 square miles of virgin Douglas-fir forest in the northwestern Coast Range of Oregon. The area, which became known as the Tillamook Burn, was the focus of an unprecedented reforestation effort drawing on the combined skills and resources of many Oregonians. Because of the cooperative character of the reforestation and the wide agreement of opinion on its rationale-to furnish timber for future generations-the Tillamook State Forest, as it was renamed, came to occupy a distinct niche in the culture of the West, at once shaping and exemplifying Oregonians' cultural values regarding forests. In recent years, American culture has become highly divided with respect to the relationship of humans with "nature." At the same time, the trees planted on the Tillamook Burn are reaching maturity and are being prepared by managers for their original destiny, to be cut for timber. Yet the Forest no longer exemplifies near-unanimous cultural values about the purpose and worth of forests. The original rationale of the Forest will likely be strongly challenged by disparate competing interests, and as the timber becomes more valuable those challenges will likely be met with equal force by defenders of the status quo. These conflicts may harden into a standoff such as now exists between timber interests and environmental activists and may eventually result in distinct winning and losing factions. However, if certain conditions are in place, the Tillamook's unique cultural associations may make it a crucible in which a more inclusive, participatory, and universally acceptable forestry can be forged

Focus on Forestry ; Winter 1990

Vol. 3, No.