Evaluating Methods for Measuring and Managing the Cumulative Visual Effects of Oil and Gas Development on Bureau of Land Management National Conservation Lands in the Southwestern United States

The public lands of the United States administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are used for multiple purposes, like conservation, recreation, grazing, mining, logging, and oil and gas development. Many of these activities have the potential to disturb the surface of the landscape, which can negatively impact scenic values. While the BLM has a system for managing visual resources and mitigating the potential impacts of development on visual quality, it does not adequately consider cumulative visual effects, which are the combined impacts of the same type of activity on the environment over space and time. This paper studies the challenges and opportunities faced by managers of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado, a landscape particularly affected by oil and gas development, at measuring and managing cumulative visual effects. This paper also reviews the results of a series of interviews conducted with experts in the field of cumulative visual effects and of a visual preference survey that highlight the strengths and limitations of existing methods for assessing cumulative visual effects. This research paper concludes with a list of recommendations for the BLM to incorporate cumulative visual effects into its existing visual resource management system and details directions for future research on this subject

Anxiety, depression, and attachment before and after the first-trimester screening for Down syndrome: comparing couples who undergo ART with those who conceive spontaneously.

OBJECTIVES: This study's aim was to describe the emotional status of parents to be before and after the first-trimester combined prenatal screening test. METHODS: One hundred three couples participated, of which 52 had undergone an in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection treatment [assisted reproductive technology (ART)] and 51 had conceived spontaneously. Participants completed the state scale of the State-trait Anxiety Inventory, the Edinburgh Depression Scale, and the Maternal and Paternal Antenatal Attachment Questionnaire before the first-trimester combined prenatal screening test at around 12 weeks of gestational age (T1) and just after receiving the results at approximately 14 weeks of gestational age (T2). RESULTS: We observed a significant decrease in anxiety and depression symptoms and a significant increase in attachment from T1 to T2. Results showed no differences between groups at either time point, which suggests that ART parents are more similar to than different from parents conceiving spontaneously. Furthermore, given the importance of anxiety during pregnancy, a subsample of women with clinical anxiety was identified. They had significantly higher rates of clinical depression and lower attachment. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that, regardless of whether conception was through ART or spontaneous, clinical anxiety in women over the prenatal testing period is associated with more vulnerability during pregnancy (i.e. clinical depression and less attachment to fetus). © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Results from a prospective, randomized, controlled study evaluating the acceptability and effects of routine pre‐IVF counselling

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to evaluate a model of routine pre‐IVF counselling focusing on the narrative capacities of couples. The acceptability of counselling, the effects on emotional factors and the participants' assessments were considered. METHODS: The study included 141 consecutive childless couples preparing for their first IVF. Randomization was carried out through sealed envelopes attributing participants to counselled and non‐counselled groups and was accepted by 100 couples. Another 12 couples refused randomization because they wanted counselling and 29 because they did not. Questionnaires including the State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory and assessments of help were mailed to couples before IVF and counselling, and after the IVF outcome. RESULTS: Counselling was accepted by 79% (112/141) of couples. There was no significant effect of counselling on anxiety and depression scores which were within normal ranges at both times. Counselling provided help for 86% (75/87) of initially non‐demanding subjects and 96% (25/26) of those initially requesting a session. Help was noted in areas of psychological assistance, technical explanations and discussing relationships. CONCLUSIONS: This model of routine counselling centred on the narrative provides an acceptable form of psychological assistance for pre‐IVF couple

Coopération entre processus guidés par les données et par les modèles pour la segmentation

Parmi les méthodes de segmentation existantes on peut distinguer deux grands types d'approches : les approches guidées par les données, utilisant l'information sur les niveaux de gris, et les approches à base de modèles, exploitant de la connaissance a priori. Cependant, les résultats obtenus par l'une ou l'autre de ces approches ne sont pas suffisamment satisfaisants (cas de mauvais contrastes pour les approches bas-niveau,trop grande variabilité morphologique pour les approches à base de modèles...) . Nous nous intéressons donc à l'étude et à la mise en oeuvre de techniques de coopération dans le but d'améliorer les résultats de la segmentation. Le travail est appliqué à l'IRM du cerveau

Peritectic solidification of Cu-Sn alloys: Microstructural competition at low speed

Directional solidification experiments on Cu-Sn peritectic alloys have been conducted at very low velocity in a high-thermal-gradient Bridgman furnace. The size of the samples has been reduced in order to decrease natural convection and the associated macrosegregation. At the lowest growth rates (0.5 and 0.58 mu m s(-1)), eutectic-like alpha + beta lamellar structures have been observed in near-peritectic composition alloys over several millimeters of growth. These structures resulted from a destabilization of a band structure in which alpha- and beta-phases overlay each other. Electron backscattered diffraction measurements revealed that bands and lamellae of a solid phase are continuous and originate from a single nucleus. (C) 2008 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

A Covariant OBE Model for η\eta Production in NN Collisions

A relativistic covariant one boson exchange model, previously applied to describe elastic nucleon-nucleon scattering, is extended to study $\eta$ production in NN collisions. The transition amplitude for the elementary BN->$\eta$N process with B being the meson exchanged (B=$\pi$, $|sigma$,$\eta$, $\rho$, $\omega$ and $\delta$) are taken to be the sum of four terms corresponding to s and u-channels with a nucleon or a nucleon isobar N*(1535MeV) in the intermediate states. Taking the relative phases of the various exchange amplitudes to be +1, the model reproduces the cross sections for the $NN\to X\eta$ reactions in a consistent manner. In the limit where all $\eta$'s are produced via N^* excitations, interference terms between the overall contributions from the exchange of pseudoscalart and scalar mesons with that of vector mesons cancel out. Consequently, much of the ambiguities in the model predictions due to unknown relative phases of different vector pseudoscalar exchanges are strongly reduced.Comment: 40 pages, 15 figure

Meson exchange currents in pion double charge exchange at high energies

In this letter we study the high-energy behaviour of the forward differential cross section for the O-18(pi(+),pi(-))Ne-18 double charge exchange reaction. We have evaluated the sequential and the meson exchange current mechanisms. The meson exchange current contribution shows a very weak energy dependence and becomes relevant at incident pion kinetic energies above 600 MeV