Wildland Urban Interface Growth and Development Potentials in Deschutes County

Policy can and has been used as a tool to reduce the risk communities experience from natural hazards by limiting development in areas most vulnerable. How and where development occurs directly influences the amount of risk a community experiences from natural hazards like hurricanes, earthquakes, flash floods, and wildfire among others. Development patterns that contribute to increased wildfire risk mostly occur within the wildland urban interface, a land use type where development is at the fringes or intercept of wildland areas and is more flammable due to surrounding vegetation, slope, local climate, and other factors. For this research, Deschutes County in Oregon was selected as the study area due to its fire prone landscape, fast growing population, and Oregon’s unique land use planning program which limits sprawling development patterns and could be used as a tool to reduce wildfire risk to communities in the state. To better understand how development patterns impact risk, past and potential future development trajectories were determined. Past trajectories were determined using land use data (NLCD) and wildland urban interface data (University of Wisconsin-Madison\u27s SILVIS Lab) in ArcGIS Pro and potential future trajectories were determined using synchronous surveys and interviews with local land use planners in the county. The potential future development trajectories learned in the interviews will be contrasted with other potential future development scenarios using Envision, a GIS based modeling software, to understand how risk varies across different development scenarios and wildfire regimes. This research will help to inform decision makers and development choices in fire prone landscapes to reduce wildfire risk

Breaking the Fat Stigma

Fat-shaming is seen as the last acceptable form of discrimination. Many people think just because someone is larger, that means they\u27re unhealthy. This isn\u27t always the case. This presentation hopes to teach people that weight doesn\u27t always equate to health, and there are many underlying factors why some people may not fit American society\u27s ideal body type.https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/gender_studies/1058/thumbnail.jp

Evaluating a Macrophage Inflammatory Profile in Response to Raspberry Ketone In-Vitro

Guided bone regeneration (GBR) is a process used to enhance bone growth and treat alveolar bone loss when insufficient bone volume is present. GBR uses membranes to prevent soft tissue infiltration into areas of new bone growth, and in previous studies, GBE membranes have been used for local drug delivery to promote wound healing. Macrophages are immune cells that polarize from an M1 pro-inflammatory phenotype to an M2 pro-healing phenotype as wound healing progresses. Previous research has identified significant potential in the use of raspberry ketone (RK), a compound of red raspberry, in the modulation of macrophage polarization towards the M2, pro-healing, phenotype. This study analyzed the effects of raspberry ketone on pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokine production in-vitro using RAW 264.7 cells. Twenty cytokines were measured, providing insight into inflammatory mediators that are present in RAW 264.7 culture models as well as the effects of RK on cytokine production

Scale-Dependent Linkages between Nitrate Isotopes and Denitrification in Surface Soils: Implications for Isotope Measurements and Models

Natural abundance nitrate (NO3−) isotopes represent a powerful tool for assessing denitrification, yet the scale and context dependence of relationships between isotopes and denitrification have received little attention, especially in surface soils. We measured the NO3−isotope compositions in soil extractions and lysimeter water from a semi-arid meadow and lawn during snowmelt, along with the denitrification potential, bulk O2, and a proxy for anaerobic microsites. Denitrification potential varied by three orders of magnitude and the slope of δ18O/δ15N in soil-extracted NO3− from all samples measured 1.04 ± 0.12 (R2 = 0.64, p \u3c 0.0001), consistent with fractionation from denitrification. However, δ15N of extracted NO3− was often lower than bulk soil δ15N (by up to 24 ‰), indicative of fractionation during nitrification that was partially overprinted by denitrification. Mean NO3− isotopes in lysimeter water differed from soil extractions by up to 19 ‰ in δ18O and 12 ‰ in δ15N, indicating distinct biogeochemical processing in relatively mobile water versus soil microsites. This implies that NO3− isotopes in streams, which are predominantly fed by mobile water, do not fully reflect terrestrial soil N cycling. Relationships between potential denitrification and δ15N of extracted NO3− showed a strong threshold effect culminating in a null relationship at high denitrification rates. Our observations of (1) competing fractionation from nitrification and denitrification in redox-heterogeneous surface soils, (2) large NO3− isotopic differences between relatively immobile and mobile water pools, (3) and the spatial dependence of δ18O/δ15N relationships suggest caution in using NO3− isotopes to infer site or watershed-scale patterns in denitrification

State-dependent Neural Inhibition by Extracellular Stimulation

Utilizing the Aplysia california buccal ganglia neurons, our research built upon previous findings concerning the presence of neuronal activity states, but demonstrate that these states play a role in the cell’s responsiveness to electrical stimulation. It was demonstrated that fast-firing neurons are more resistant to inhibitory stimulation as compared to slow-firing neurons. NEURON computational modeling revealed differences in ion channel dynamics that may underlie the differences in stimulation responsiveness that are associated with neuronal states

Deep Decarbonization in Cities: Pathways, Strategies, Governance Mechanisms and Actors for Transformative Climate Action

As the urgency for climate action heightens, local governments and stakeholders are developing short-term strategies and long-term pathways towards deep decarbonization at the local level. Urban areas are the largest place-based source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 71%-76% of global emissions, and are projected to house 60% of the global population by 2030. Local governments have direct and indirect control of over 52% of emissions that occur within their municipalities. This study aims to qualitatively explore eight cases of best practice cities that are leading the way towards decarbonization. The eight cases are: Bridgewater (Nova Scotia, Canada), Park City (Utah, USA), Guelph (Ontario, Canada), Lahti (Finland), Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada), Oslo (Norway), Toronto (Ontario, Canada) and New York City (New York, USA). Cases were chosen based on the ambitiousness of climate action targets. Each Canadian case was paired with an international case similar in population size. The study was conducted to qualitatively explore the emerging best practice initiatives as well as highlight any patterns among the cities, depending on the population size and/or the national context. The method of qualitative investigation involved interviewing key municipal staff or plan managers on the pathways that are being implemented, the governance structures, the key actors and the tools being used for plan development and implementation. The results of this study fill theoretical gaps in the literature around the pathways that cities of different sizes are developing and the results help to provide understanding and insight on the key variables in deep decarbonization planning and implementation variables. Through identifying the key variables in the urban climate action literature, this study aimed to explore which of these were being addressed in climate action plans, and if cities were going beyond what the literature prescribed. The key research questions related to which sectors were the focus of emissions reduction pathways, what strategies were developed for plan development and implementation, how the plans were organized and governed, what key actors were involved. This study made contributions to the literature on decarbonization frameworks in six key areas by extending the literature to include new initiatives that leading cities are developing. The areas that this study contributes to are: decarbonizing the energy sector in small cities, increasing capacity of local carbon sinks, developing green economy targets and workforce development, formalizing communication structures, bottom up vertical integration tactics, and creating funding mechanisms. The findings from this study can be useful for practitioners working towards local deep decarbonization as well as transnational city networks such as C40, CNCA and ICLEI as it highlights emerging best practices

The development of a simple multi-nodal tool to identify performance issues in existing commercial buildings

Australia’s building stock includes many older commercial buildings with numerous factors that impact energy performance and indoor environment quality. The built environment industry has generally focused heavily on improving physical building design elements for greater energy efficiency (such as retrofits and environmental upgrades), however there are noticeable ‘upper limits’ to performance improvements in these areas. To achieve a stepchange improvement in building performance, the authors propose that additional components need to be addressed in a whole of building approach, including the way building design elements are managed and the level of stakeholder engagement between owners, tenants and building managers. This paper focuses on the opportunities provided by this whole-of-building approach, presenting the findings of a research project undertaken through the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) in Australia. Researchers worked with a number of industry partners over two years to investigate issues facing stakeholders at base building and tenancy levels, and the barriers to improving building performance. Through a mixed-method, industry-led research approach, five ‘nodes’ were identified in whole-of-building performance evaluation, each with interlinking and overlapping complexities that can influence performance. The nodes cover building management, occupant experience, indoor environment quality, agreements and culture, and design elements. This paper outlines the development and testing of these nodes and their interactions, and the resultant multi-nodal tool, called the ‘Performance Nexus’ tool. The tool is intended to be of most benefit in evaluating opportunities for performance improvement in the vast number of existing low-performing building stock

On the Feasibility of Intense Radial Velocity Surveys for Earth-twin Discoveries

This work assesses the potential capability of the next generation of high-precision Radial Velocity (RV) instruments for Earth-twin exoplanet detection. From the perspective of the importance of data sampling, the Terra Hunting Experiment aims to do this through an intense series of nightly RV observations over a long baseline on a carefully selected target list, via the brand-new instrument HARPS3. This paper describes an end-to-end simulation of generating and processing such data to help us better understand the impact of uncharacterised stellar noise in the recovery of Earth-mass planets with orbital periods of the order of many months. We consider full Keplerian systems, realistic simulated stellar noise, instrument white noise, and location-specific weather patterns for our observation schedules. We use Bayesian statistics to assess various planetary models fitted to the synthetic data, and compare the successful planet recovery of the Terra Hunting Experiment schedule with a typical reference survey. We find that the Terra Hunting Experiment can detect Earth-twins in the habitable zones of solar-type stars, in single and multi-planet systems, and in the presence of stellar signals. Also that it out-performs a typical reference survey on accuracy of recovered parameters, and that it performs comparably to an uninterrupted space-based schedule.S. J. Thompson and D. Queloz acknowledges the support from the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) as part of research grant ST/N002997/1. R. Hall acknowledges the STFC for his PhD studentship award number 164162