Landscape Management Challenges on the California Channel Islands

Managing for sustained biodiversity and restoration of natural habitat has become increasingly important over the last two decades, first as mitigation for development (especially in wetlands), and , more recently in natural areas. The latter has come about as land managing agencies like the Department of Defense and Bureau of Land Management have seen the need to reverse the impact of past land uses and agencies like the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy have taken on the responsibility for less-than-pristine lands. On the California Channel Islands, the need for restoring and managing biodiversity is great, but this restoration and management needs to be based on a sound ecological understanding. By conducting surveys, implementing long-term research and monitoring, and by conducting population and community dynamics research, the necessary data to arrive at such an understanding can be obtained. Once management actions have been taken to effect restoration, monitoring needs to be conducted to determine the success of those actions. The need is to gain enough of an understanding of the islands\u27 ecosystems that we can manage to restore, not just populations of native plants and animals, but also the processes of a naturally functioning ecosystem. The challenges that confront this goal are many and include ecology and popUlation biology, conservation ecology, information management, agency mandates and regulations, the need to build constituencies and consensus among disparate groups, financing, and political pressures

Geology and petrology of the Devils Tower, Missouri Buttes, and Barlow Canyon area, Crook County, Wyoming

Field and laboratory investigations were employed to detmine the mode of emplacement and a petrogenetic model for three igneous localities in Crook County, Wyoming: the Devils Tower, the Missouri Buttes, and the Barlow Canyon area. X-ray fluorescence, microprobe data, and optimal analyses iden tify the Missouri Buttes rock as foid-bearing alkali trachyte and anal cime phonolite and the Devils Tower and Barlow Canyon rocks as analcime phonolite. Associated alloclastic breccia with a crystal-charged volcanic glass matrix, surrounding depressions representing collapse of igneous material back into the vent, striking similarity to known volcante necks, and the occurrence of other extrusive volcan1S11\ in the vicinity lead to the conclusion that the Devils Tower and the Missouri Buttes are the erosional remnants of volcanic necks, The Barlow Canyon intrusion is a small laccolith which caused additional folding of an Early Cretaceous dome. Analcime constitutes 10% to 30% of the phonolite in Devils Tower and the Missouri Buttes, and up to 70% of the Barlow Canyon phonolite Calculated analcime unit cell dimensions are a0 =13.736 ± 003A, and reflect a silica-undersaturated composition. Analcime microphenocrysts and some groundlmass analcime are interpreted as primary igneous phases. The remainder of the analcime was magmatically derived from hydrous, sodium-rich fluids. The analcime-liquid stability field indicates a crystallization depth of 18 km to 43 ·km and a temperature of 600° 640°c. Microprobe and x-ray fluorescence data plot along the trachyte phonolite trend and show a differentiation pattern from Missouri Buttes· trachyte to Missouri Buttes and Devils Tower phonolite to Barlow canyon phonolite, Differentiation occurred by fractional crystallization through the mechanisms of flotation and flow differentiation, The rocks in all three localities are intratelluric material which in the Missouri Buttes and Devils Tower has been rapidly pro pelled to the surface by H20 and CO2 pressure

Effective Polymer Dynamics of D-Dimensional Black Hole Interiors

We consider two different effective polymerization schemes applied to D-dimensional, spherically symmetric black hole interiors. It is shown that polymerization of the generalized area variable alone leads to a complete, regular, single-horizon spacetime in which the classical singularity is replaced by a bounce. The bounce radius is independent of rescalings of the homogeneous internal coordinate, but does depend on the arbitrary fiducial cell size. The model is therefore necessarily incomplete. It nonetheless has many interesting features: After the bounce, the interior region asymptotes to an infinitely expanding Kantowski-Sachs spacetime. If the solution is analytically continued across the horizon, the black hole exterior exhibits asymptotically vanishing quantum-corrections due to the polymerization. In all spacetime dimensions except four, the fall-off is too slow to guarantee invariance under Poincare transformations in the exterior asymptotic region. Hence the four-dimensional solution stands out as the only example which satisfies the criteria for asymptotic flatness. In this case it is possible to calculate the quantum-corrected temperature and entropy. We also show that polymerization of both phase space variables, the area and the conformal mode of the metric, generically leads to a multiple horizon solution which is reminiscent of polymerized mini-superspace models of spherically symmetric black holes in Loop Quantum Gravity.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures. Added discussion about the dependency on auxiliary structures. Matches with the published versio

Validation of a New Ramping Aerobic Exercise Protocol (NDKS) in Overweight, Obese, and Normal Weight Individuals

International Journal of Exercise Science 15(4): 386-398, 2022. The research purpose was to establish reliability and validity of determining VO2max via a new NDKS (Nustad Dressler Kobes Saghiv; named for the sir names of department faculty at the time) ramping protocol compared to the Standard Bruce protocol in normal weight, overweight, and obese individuals. Forty-two physically active participants (23M, 19F) ages 18-28 years were grouped into normal weight (N = 15, 8F, BMI 18.5-24.9 kg/m2), overweight (N = 27, 11F, BMI = 25-29.9 kg/m2), and Class I obese (N = 7, 1F, BMI = 30-34.9 kg/m2). Blood pressure, heart rate, blood lactate, respiratory exchange ratio, test duration, rate of perceived exertion, and preference via survey were analyzed during each test. Test-retest reliability of the NDKS was determined first, via tests scheduled one week apart. The NDKS was then validated by comparison with results of the Standard Bruce protocol; tests also conducted one week apart. The normal weight group’s Cronbach’s Alpha was .995 for absolute VO2max (L/min) and .968 for relative VO2max (mL/kg.min). Overweight/obese Cronbach’s Alpha for absolute VO2max (L/min) was .960 and for relative VO2max (mL/kg.min) .908. Relative VO2max was slightly higher with NDKS and test time lower compared to the Bruce (p \u3c .05). 92.3% of subjects identified more localized muscle fatigue with the Bruce protocol vs NDKS. The NDKS is a reliable and valid exercise test which can be used to determine VO2max in physically active, young normal weight, overweight and obese individuals

On the nature of continuous physical quantities in classical and quantum mechanics

Within the traditional Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics, it is not possible to describe a particle as possessing, simultaneously, a sharp position value and a sharp momentum value. Is it possible, though, to describe a particle as possessing just a sharp position value (or just a sharp momentum value)? Some, such as Teller (Journal of Philosophy, 1979), have thought that the answer to this question is No -- that the status of individual continuous quantities is very different in quantum mechanics than in classical mechanics. On the contrary, I shall show that the same subtle issues arise with respect to continuous quantities in classical and quantum mechanics; and that it is, after all, possible to describe a particle as possessing a sharp position value without altering the standard formalism of quantum mechanics.Comment: 26 pages, LaTe

Witnessing causal nonseparability

Our common understanding of the physical world deeply relies on the notion that events are ordered with respect to some time parameter, with past events serving as causes for future ones. Nonetheless, it was recently found that it is possible to formulate quantum mechanics without any reference to a global time or causal structure. The resulting framework includes new kinds of quantum resources that allow performing tasks - in particular, the violation of causal inequalities - which are impossible for events ordered according to a global causal order. However, no physical implementation of such resources is known. Here we show that a recently demonstrated resource for quantum computation - the quantum switch - is a genuine example of "indefinite causal order". We do this by introducing a new tool - the causal witness - which can detect the causal nonseparability of any quantum resource that is incompatible with a definite causal order. We show however that the quantum switch does not violate any causal nequality.Comment: 15 + 12 pages, 5 figures. Published versio