Perspectives on New Wilderness Area Designations in Michigan\u27s Upper Peninsula

The Wilderness Act of 1964 designated certain areas denoted as wilderness in the United States of America for the sake of preservation and conservation. In the state of Michigan, 16 designated wilderness areas currently exist, and the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) is advocating for the addition of four new wilderness designations. The addition of these areas would add about 51,000 acres of federally recognized wilderness areas to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This paper aims to understand public attitudes and political support or opposition to these new wilderness designations among residents and visitors of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.). Using social media posts from Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, I qualitatively analyzed social media data to understand the reasonings behind support or opposition to wilderness in the U.P. I also conducted a social network analysis of Twitter users discussing wilderness in the Upper Peninsula to reveal how they interact with one another, diffuse ideas about wilderness designation, and organize support or opposition of wilderness designations. Findings show that public social media posts were generally supportive of wilderness designation with very little explicit opposition posted on public sites. Supportive social media posts generally noted the importance of protection and preservation of wilderness and discussed behaviors of respecting wilderness. Opposition social media posts generally discussed concerns of “conservation police officers” and hypocritical actions taken by wilderness advocates. The social network analysis revealed that more people expressed support for U.P. wilderness and wilderness designation than opposition on Twitter. This report offers insight as to how the ELPC and decision makers should promote the four wilderness designations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which can impact the final legislative decision on whether to designate the new areas

A fully 3-dimensional thermal model of a comet nucleus

A 3-D numerical model of comet nuclei is presented. An implicit numerical scheme was developed for the thermal evolution of a spherical nucleus composed of a mixture of ice and dust. The model was tested against analytical solutions, simplified numerical solutions, and 1-D thermal evolution codes. The 3-D code was applied to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; surface temperature maps and the internal thermal structure was obtained as function of depth, longitude and hour angle. The effect of the spin axis tilt on the surface temperature distribution was studied in detail. It was found that for small tilt angles, relatively low temperatures may prevail on near-pole areas, despite lateral heat conduction. A high-resolution run for a comet model of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with low tilt angle, allowing for crystallization of amorphous ice, showed that the amorphous/crystalline ice boundary varies significantly with depth as a function of cometary latitude.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figure

The Glass Transition Temperature of Water: A Simulation Study

We report a computer simulation study of the glass transition for water. To mimic the difference between standard and hyperquenched glass, we generate glassy configurations with different cooling rates and calculate the $T$ dependence of the specific heat on heating. The absence of crystallization phenomena allows us, for properly annealed samples, to detect in the specific heat the simultaneous presence of a weak pre-peak (``shadow transition''), and an intense glass transition peak at higher temperature. We discuss the implications for the currently debated value of the glass transition temperature of water. We also compare our simulation results with the Tool-Narayanaswamy-Moynihan phenomenological model.Comment: submitted to Phys. Re

Radiolysis of water ice in the outer solar system: Sputtering and trapping of radiation products

We performed quantitative laboratory radiolysis experiments on cubic water ice between 40 and 120 K, with 200 keV protons. We measured sputtering of atoms and molecules and the trapping of radiolytic molecular species. The experiments were done at fluences corresponding to exposure of the surface of the Jovian icy satellites to their radiation environment up to thousands of years. During irradiation, O2 molecules are ejected from the ice at a rate that grows roughly exponentially with temperature; this behavior is the main reason for the temperature dependence of the total sputtering yield. O2 trapped in the ice is thermally released from the ice upon warming; the desorbed flux starts at the irradiation temperature and increases strongly above 120 K. Several peaks in the desorption spectrum, which depend on irradiation temperature, point to a complex distribution of trapping sites in the ice matrix. The yield of O2 produced by the 200 keV protons and trapped in the ice is more than 2 orders of magnitude smaller than used in recent models of Ganymede. We also found small amounts of trapped H2O2 that desorb readily above 160 K.Fil: Bahr, D.A.. University of Virginia; Estados UnidosFil: Famá, M.. University of Virginia; Estados UnidosFil: Vidal, Ricardo Alberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Industria Química; ArgentinaFil: Baragiola, Raul Antonio. University of Virginia; Estados Unido

Diagnostic Value of Lumbar Facet Joint Injection: A Prospective Triple Cross-Over Study

The diagnosis “lumbar facet syndrome” is common and often indicates severe lumbar spine surgery procedures. It is doubtful whether a painful facet joint (FJ) can be identified by a single FJ block. The aim of this study was to clarify the validity of a single and placebo controlled bilateral FJ blocks using local anesthetics. A prospective single blinded triple cross-over study was performed. 60 patients (31 f, 29 m, mean age 53.2 yrs (22–73)) with chronic low back pain (mean pain persistance 31 months, 6 months of conservative treatment without success) admitted to a local orthopaedic department for surgical or conservative therapy of chronic LBP, were included in the study. Effect on pain reduction (10 point rating scale) was measured. The 60 subjects were divided into six groups with three defined sequences of fluoroscopically guided bilateral monosegmental lumbar FJ test injections in “oblique needle” technique: verum-(local anaesthetic-), placebo-(sodium chloride-) and sham-injection. Carry-over and periodic effects were evaluated and a descriptive and statistical analysis regarding the effectiveness, difference and equality of the FJ injections and the different responses was performed. The results show a high rate of non-response, which documents the lack of reliable and valid predictors for a positive response towards FJ blocks. There was a high rate of placebo reactions noted, including subjects who previously or later reacted positively to verum injections. Equivalence was shown among verum vs. placebo and partly vs. sham also. With regard to test validity criteria, a single intraarticular FJ block with local anesthetics is not useful to detect the pain-responsible FJ and therefore is no valid and reliable diagostic tool to specify indication of lumbar spine surgery. Comparative FJ blocks with local anesthetics and placebo-controls have to be interpretated carefully also, because they solely give no proper diagnosis on FJ being main pain generator

The provocative lumbar facet joint

Low back pain is the most common pain symptom experienced by American adults and is the second most common reason for primary care physician visits. There are many structures in the lumbar spine that can serve as pain generators and often the etiology of low back pain is multifactorial. However, the facet joint has been increasingly recognized as an important cause of low back pain. Facet joint pain can be diagnosed with local anesthetic blocks of the medial branches or of the facet joints themselves. Subsequent radiofrequency lesioning of the medial branches can provide more long-term pain relief. Despite some of the pitfalls associated with facet joint blocks, they have been shown to be valid, safe, and reliable as a diagnostic tool. Medial branch denervation has shown some promise for the sustained control of lumbar facet joint-mediated pain, but at this time, there is insufficient evidence that it is a wholly efficacious treatment option. Developing a universal algorithm for evaluating facet joint-mediated pain and standard procedural techniques may facilitate the performance of larger outcome studies. This review article provides an overview of the anatomy, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of facet joint-mediated pain

Scene gist categorization in pigeons

Scene gist categorization in humans is rapid and accurate and appears to be tuned to fundamental statistical regularities in the visual world. Although pigeons have been reported to form many types of categorical judgments, little research has examined scene categorization by pigeons or the underlying mechanisms of it. The present study trained eight pigeons on a scene gist categorization task using a go/no-go procedure. Four birds were trained to discriminate between two natural categories (beach vs. mountain) and four were trained to discriminate between a natural (beach) and a man-made (street) category. The birds successfully learned both categorization tasks at a similar rate and to a high degree of accuracy (>80%). During a subsequent generalization test with novel images, strong transfer of discrimination was observed with only a modest generalization decrement. Finally, the birds were trained with progressively shorter stimulus durations (beginning with the original 5-sec duration and decreasing to less than 1 sec) to determine if they could still form a discrimination with limited visual information as with humans. Decreasing durations initially negatively affected performance, but over time the pigeons recovered and formed discriminations with stimulus presentations in the 200-500 ms range. The results indicate that, like humans, pigeons can form rapid scene gist categorization judgments. However, the visual information critical for these judgments remains to be determined

Information and Control in Gray-Box Systems

In modern systems, developers are often unable to modify the underlying operating system. To build services in such an environment, we advocate the use of gray-box techniques. When treatin