Metal Distribution and Short-Time Variability in Recent Sediments from the Ganges River towards the Bay of Bengal (India)

The Ganges River receives inputs from highly populated cities of India (New Delhi, Calcutta, among others) and a strong influence of anthropogenic activities until reaching the Bay of Bengal. It is a seasonal river with 80% of discharges occurring between July and October during monsoon. The land-based activities next to the shore lead to discharges of untreated domestic and industrial e uents, inputs of agricultural chemicals, discharges of organic matter (cremations), and discharges of chemicals from aquaculture farms. In spite of the UNESCO declaring Human Patrimony the National Park Sundarbans, located in the delta, contamination has increased over time and it dramatically intensifies during the monsoon period due to the flooding of the drainage basin. Vertical element distribution (Cd, Co, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn) was studied in sediments collected in di erent stations towards the Hügli Estuary. Results determined no vertical gradient associated with the analyzed sediment samples, which informs about severe sediment dynamic in the area that probably relates to tidal hydrodynamics and seasonal variation floods. The multivariate analysis results showed di erent associations among metals and in some cases between some of them (Co, Zn, Pb, and Cu) and the organic carbon. These allow the identification of di erent geochemical processes in the area and their relationship with the sources of contamination such as discharge of domestic and industrial e uents and di use sources enhanced by the monsoons. Also, an environmental risk value was given to the studied area by comparing the analyzed concentrations to quality guidelines adopted in other countries. It showed an estimated risk associated with the concentration of the metal Cu measured in the area of Kadwip

Best Practices in Creating a Healthy School Lunch Program

Childhood obesity has become an epidemic in the United States. Diet is the most significant contributor to childhood obesity and a large portion of school children’s calories are derived from school meals. This research project will seek to understand the school lunch program and what can be done to improve it. The research seeks to understand the current state of the school lunch program through literature review and surveys of schools. The research will include interviews with directors of nutrition from schools that have achieved best practices. It will focus specifically on improvements schools have made to their school lunches, the difficulty of each change, and how they were able to make the improvements

FUELS MANAGEMENT POLICY AND PRACTICE IN THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE

This dissertation investigates the history and development of wildland fire and fuels management policy in the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the implementation of this policy in fuels management project planning at the national forest and ranger district levels. The policy guiding fuels management is broad and ambiguous but may be summarized as: 1) reducing the risks posed by wildland fire and 2) restoring or maintaining ecosystem health and sustainability. Wildland fire management policy is interagency in scope, including input from state governments and is dispersed among a multitude of policy and strategy documents, such as the 1995/2001 Federal Wildland Fire Policy, successive fire policy implementation guidelines as well as the various documents collectively known as the National Fire Plan. To these policy documents have been added the legislation and regulatory enactments of the Healthy Forest Initiative. The relationship between these policy and strategy documents and these legislative and regulatory enactments is not well defined nor are concepts such as risk, restoration and ecosystem health or sustainability. There is no clear guidance for determining environmental conditions or management actions that contribute to risk or sustainability or for adjudicating conflicts between them. This research examined three national forests in the Forest Service Northern Region; the Bitterroot, Helena and Kootenai, to understand how fuels management project proposals are developed and to identify the key factors that affect this development. The results suggest that fuels management project proposals are developed within a loosely defined process called NFMA analysis. It is an iterative process of negotiation with specialists from other resource management programs in which a project’s objectives and treatments are refined and defined. This research suggests that the key factors that affect the development of project proposals are fuels management acreage targets and the budget associated with this target and the costs associated with data collection and analysis estimated by managers to be necessary for regulatory and policy compliance and to mitigate the threat of litigation. Some recommendations are offered in the context of current efforts to develop a cohesive wildfire management strategy and new forest planning regulations

Optimal hedging of Derivatives with transaction costs

We investigate the optimal strategy over a finite time horizon for a portfolio of stock and bond and a derivative in an multiplicative Markovian market model with transaction costs (friction). The optimization problem is solved by a Hamilton-Bellman-Jacobi equation, which by the verification theorem has well-behaved solutions if certain conditions on a potential are satisfied. In the case at hand, these conditions simply imply arbitrage-free ("Black-Scholes") pricing of the derivative. While pricing is hence not changed by friction allow a portfolio to fluctuate around a delta hedge. In the limit of weak friction, we determine the optimal control to essentially be of two parts: a strong control, which tries to bring the stock-and-derivative portfolio towards a Black-Scholes delta hedge; and a weak control, which moves the portfolio by adding or subtracting a Black-Scholes hedge. For simplicity we assume growth-optimal investment criteria and quadratic friction.Comment: Revised version, expanded introduction and references 17 pages, submitted to International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF

The underdetermined knowledge-based theory of the MNC

This paper revisits two core propositions in the knowledge-based view of the firm propounded in the seminal work by Kogut and Zander (1993): (a) that MNCs exist because transfers and re-combinations of knowledge occur more efficiently inside MNCs than between MNCs and third parties, and (b) the threat of opportunism is not necessary (although it may be sufficient), to explain the existence of the MNC. We question these conclusions, arguing that firms are only one of many types of ‘epistemic communities’ possessing and nurturing procedural norms, identity, and the cognitive, linguistic and reflexive attributes conducive to efficient exchange and recombination of knowledge. Through their ability to attenuate opportunism, the existence of non-firm epistemic communities has interesting implications not only for the knowledge-based view but also for the applicability of transaction cost economics in the analysis of the scope of the firm

Domestic Biodiesel Viability in the US vs EU

Biodiesel is used to a greater extent in the EU than the US. Tax incentives in the US have not been renewed for small businesses, as seen below. EU provides producer tax exemption if under 2,500 L biodiesel production. Ethanol is the most taxed transport fuel in the EU, while it is viewed as the biofuel of choice in the U.S. Inconsistencies in the RFS are unfavorable to biodiesel production in the U.S. The EU and US share little in terms of public policies and financial support of biodiesel -EU supports it to a great extent, US doesn’t. A weak amount of social involvement is the root cause of lack of biodiesel policies in U.S. Increasing public knowledge could improve thi

Porting Chorus to the PA-RISC: Building, Debugging, Testing and Validation

This document is part of a series of reports describing the design decisions made in porting the Chorus Operating System to the Hewlett-Packard 9000 Series 800 workstation. This document describes the environment for building the Chorus kernel, the various kernel tests, and the debugging environment used for porting the Chorus operating system to the HP PA-RISC. The information contained in this paper will be of interest to people who wish to: • Use the PA-Chorus kernel for development and/or modification, • Know about the build environment for Chorus kernel on PA-RISC, • Know about the PA-Chorus approach to debugging, • Know about the Chorus kernel tests, their buHd environment, and the modifications made to the kernel tests to port them to PA-ruse. The aim of the document is to give a detailed overview of the various items mentioned above. The document does not delve into the specific tails of configuration like the values for various global macros and so on. For an in-depth understanding, one would have to study the sources. For the purposes of this document the word kernel and nucleus mean the same and will be used interchangeably

Porting the Chorus Supervisor and Related Low-Level Functions to the PA-RISC

This document is part of a series of reports describing the design decisions made in porting the Chorus Operating System to the Hewlett-Packard 9000 Series 800 workstation. The Supervisor is the name given by Chorus to a collection of low-level functions that are machine dependent and have to be implemented when Chorus is ported from one machine to another. The Supervisor is responsible for interrupt, trap and exception handling, managing low-level thread initialization, context switch, kernel initialization, managing simple devices (timer and console) and offering a low-level debugger. This document describes the port of the Supervisor and related low-level functions. The informacion contained in this paper will be of interest, to people who wish to understand: • The main characteristics of Chorus and PA-RISC architecture that are useful in understanding the port of the Chorus Supervisor. • The requirements and implementation of the Chorus Supervisor. • The requirements and implementation of Chorus page fault interface • The requirements and implementation Chorus System call interface • The requirements and implementation of \u27mutex\u27 interface which is a part of the Chorus system call interface for efficient thread synchronization. • Reasons for the modifications to the portable layers of Chorus kernel to implement the above requirements. A summary of the modifications is also presented. It is useful to read the port overview before reading this document. It is also a good idea to have the Precision Architecture and Instruction Set Reference Manual and Chorus v3.3 implementation guide on hand although it is not absolutely necessary

Master\u27s recital in jazz pedagogy: A performance-demonstration of rhythm section instruments, compositions and arrangements by Josh Hakanson

This recital is presented to demonstrate skills and competencies on the rhythm section instruments piano, bass, and drums, as well as showcase compositions and arrangements by the recitalist. The study of the rhythm section instruments has been a valuable asset to my teaching and allowed me to expand my knowledge of how these instruments are used in a functional jazz context. The study of jazz composition and arranging techniques has also supplemented my teaching skills and given me the satisfaction of both writing and performing my own works. Though this recital is not a comprehensive overview of my study at University of Northern Iowa, it is my intention that it demonstrates many aspects of my experience

Geographical Mobility and Oregon's Short Term Educational Goals

28 pagesGeographical mobility data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey shows that interstate migration increases the number of highly educated workers in Oregon. Throughout 2011-2018, there were more people entering the state than leaving and those entering the state had on average a higher level of education than those leaving. Within each educational level of Oregon’s population, geographical mobility did not change significantly over this period. These geographical mobility trends may help the government of Oregon meet its current goals of improving the overall education level of the state and meeting projected job openings with the introduction of highly educated workers into the labor market. However, this may or may not impact more complex and longer-lasting concerns of the education system, like social mobility and inequality. This paper also reflects on the formulation and planned implementation of Oregon’s educational goals, suggesting that to meet the underlying concerns of the education system would require more drastic steps than those which the state government is making