423 research outputs found
Elder Law: A Guide to Key Resources
This research guide identifies and describes 163 books, periodicals, reference tools, databases, electronic discussion groups, organizations, and U.S. government agencies useful to the elder law practitioner and the legal researcher. Appendices include a state-by-state list of state aging agencies, bar association committees and sections, law school courses and clinics, and publications; acronyms; and subject headings and a index terms used in library catalogs, periodical indexes, and related sources
The impact of insect herbivory on biogeochemical cycling in broadleaved forests varies with temperature
Herbivorous insects alter biogeochemical cycling within forests, but the magnitude of these impacts, their global variation, and drivers of this variation remain poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap and help improve biogeochemical models, we established a global network of 74 plots within 40 mature, undisturbed broadleaved forests. We analyzed freshly senesced and green leaves for carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and silica concentrations, foliar production and herbivory, and stand-level nutrient fluxes. We show more nutrient release by insect herbivores at non-outbreak levels in tropical forests than temperate and boreal forests, that these fluxes increase strongly with mean annual temperature, and that they exceed atmospheric deposition inputs in some localities. Thus, background levels of insect herbivory are sufficiently large to both alter ecosystem element cycling and influence terrestrial carbon cycling. Further, climate can affect interactions between natural populations of plants and herbivores with important consequences for global biogeochemical cycles across broadleaved forests
Potential of Airborne LiDAR Derived Vegetation Structure for the Prediction of Animal Species Richness at Mount Kilimanjaro
The monitoring of species and functional diversity is of increasing relevance for the development of strategies for the conservation and management of biodiversity. Therefore, reliable estimates of the performance of monitoring techniques across taxa become important. Using a unique dataset, this study investigates the potential of airborne LiDAR-derived variables characterizing vegetation structure as predictors for animal species richness at the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. To disentangle the structural LiDAR information from co-factors related to elevational vegetation zones, LiDAR-based models were compared to the predictive power of elevation models. 17 taxa and 4 feeding guilds were modeled and the standardized study design allowed for a comparison across the assemblages. Results show that most taxa (14) and feeding guilds (3) can be predicted best by elevation with normalized RMSE values but only for three of those taxa and two of those feeding guilds the difference to other models is significant. Generally, modeling performances between different models vary only slightly for each assemblage. For the remaining, structural information at most showed little additional contribution to the performance. In summary, LiDAR observations can be used for animal species prediction. However, the effort and cost of aerial surveys are not always in proportion with the prediction quality, especially when the species distribution follows zonal patterns, and elevation information yields similar results
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Working sick and out of sorts: a cross-cultural approach on presenteeism climate, organizational justice and work-family conflict
A climate of presenteeism has important effects on employee well-being and the organization itself. Our study, based on surveys of health sector employees in six different countries (Brazil, Ecuador, Lebanon, Portugal, Russia and Spain) examines whether organizational justice plays a mediating role in the relationship between a presenteeism climate in the organization and work-family conflict (WFC). Our results indicate that the perception of organizational justice and the presenteeism climate do influence WFC. Moreover, higher levels of WFC were found in non-Latin countries. This study contributes to the work attendance and life balance field by providing cross-cultural empirical evidence corroborating the effect of justice and presenteeism climate on the WFC
Can Social News Websites Pay for Content and Curation? The SteemIt Cryptocurrency Model
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by SAGE Publishing in Journal of Information Science on 15/12/2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551517748290
The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.SteemIt is a Reddit-like social news site that pays members for posting and curating content. It uses micropayments backed by a tradeable currency, exploiting the Bitcoin cryptocurrency generation model to finance content provision in conjunction with advertising. If successful, this paradigm might change the way in which volunteer-based sites operate. This paper investigates 925,092 new members’ first posts for insights into what drives financial success in the site. Initial blog posts on average received 20,680.83. Longer, more sentiment-rich or more positive comments with personal information received the greatest financial reward in contrast to more informational or topical content. Thus, there is a clear financial value in starting with a friendly introduction rather than immediately attempting to provide useful content, despite the latter being the ultimate site goal. Follow-up posts also tended to be more successful when more personal, suggesting that interpersonal communication rather than quality content provision has driven the site so far. It remains to be seen whether the model of small typical rewards and the possibility that a post might generate substantially more are enough to incentivise long term participation or a greater focus on informational posts in the long term
Dynamic polarizability of rotating particles in electrorheological fluids
A rotating particle in electrorheological (ER) fluid leads to a displacement
of its polarization charges on the surface which relax towards the external
applied field , resulting in a steady-state polarization at an angle
with respect to . This dynamic effect has shown to affect the ER
fluids properties dramatically. In this paper, we develop a dynamic effective
medium theory (EMT) for a system containing rotating particles of finite volume
fraction. This is a generalization of established EMT to account for the
interactions between many rotating particles. While the theory is valid for
three dimensions, the results in a special two dimensional configuration show
that the system exhibits an off-diagonal polarization response, in addition to
a diagonal polarization response, which resembles the classic Hall effect. The
diagonal response monotonically decreases with an increasing rotational speed,
whereas the off-diagonal response exhibits a maximum at a reduced rotational
angular velocity comparing to the case of isolated rotating
particles. This implies a way of measurement on the interacting relaxation
time. The dependencies of the diagonal and off-diagonal responses on various
factors, such as , the volume fraction, and the dielectric contrast,
are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted to J. Phys. Chem.
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