Decentralized Administrations and Decision-Making & Effective Policy Implementation: A Study of Agricultural Severance in Southwestern Ontario 2001 to 2007

This paper examines agricultural severance activity, specifically lot creation in agriculturally designated land, in Southwestern Ontario between 2001 and 2007. Data on the number of lots created in agriculturally designated areas in 10 rural municipalities was collected and compared to information on the planning and decision-making structures of the municipalities. The findings reveal that there is a relationship between decentralized administrative and decision-making bodies and the granting of agricultural severances

Molting

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Caudill College of Humanities at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Paul Hicks on November 24, 2003

The University of Georgia School of Law and Early Legal Education

The history of the University of Georgia School of Law examines how developments in American legal education and local attitudes and traditions influenced its formative years. Founded in 1859 as the Lumpkin Law School, it was among the newest of 21 university law schools (those that awarded law degrees) on the eve of the Civil War. To head the revived law school, the UGA board of trustees chose William L. Mitchell. As chairman of the board’s Prudential Committee, he was a principal architect of the 1859 reorganization of the university that included creation of the law school. Almost all southern law schools were closed during the Civil War, and many continued to struggle during the Reconstruction era as well, dealing with damaged buildings, low enrollments, and inadequate finances. Enrollments at many northern and western law schools remained strong, but the only successful southern law school before 1900 was at the University of Virginia. It remains for law schools with antebellum origins to examine how the subject and the law of slavery were taught in their curriculums and influenced proslavery thought in Georgia and other southern state

Trilepida koppesi (Amaral, 1955) (Leptotyphlopidae): First Paraguayan record of the genus and species, with an illustrated key to Paraguayan blind-snakes (Scolecophidia)

The first Paraguayan specimens of the Leptotyphlopid blind-snake Trilepida koppesi (Amaral, 1955) are reported from the Cerrado of San Pedro department. These extend the species known distribution 413km to the south. Images of each species and an illustrated key to the known Paraguayan Scolecophidia is provided to aid identification

De-risking the energy transition by quantifying the uncertainties in fault stability

Acknowledgements DH first presented the core ideas in this paper at the Tectonic Studies Group AGM in Cardiff in 2014, and enjoyed discussions there with Dr Jonathan Turner (RWM Ltd). Thanks to former PhD student Dr Sarah Weihmann (now at BGR) and cosupervisor Dr Frauke Schaeffer (Wintershall DEA) for discussions about using oil industry wireline log data for quantifying geomechanical models. Thanks to Tom Blenkinsop (Cardiff) for the idea of using fault dips to estimate friction coefficients. GMT (Wessel et al., 2013) was used for the maps. SciPy (Virtanen et al., 2021), Numpy (Harris et al., 2020), and matplotlib 605 (Hunter, 2007) were used for the Python pfs code and Allmendinger et al. (2012) for various geomechanical and geometrical algorithms. We thank the reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript. DH acknowledges NERC funding from grant NE/T007826/1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Risk of asthmatic episodes in children exposed to sulfur dioxide stack emissions from a refinery point source in Montreal, Canada.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the respiratory effects of short-term exposures to petroleum refinery emissions in young children. This study is an extension of an ecologic study that found an increased rate of hospitalizations for respiratory conditions among children living near petroleum refineries in Montreal (Canada). METHODS: We used a time-stratified case-crossover design to assess the risk of asthma episodes in relation to short-term variations in sulfur dioxide levels among children 2-4 years of age living within 0.5-7.5 km of the refinery stacks. Health data used to measure asthma episodes included emergency department (ED) visits and hospital admissions from 1996 to 2004. We estimated daily levels of SO2 at the residence of children using a) two fixed-site SO2 monitors located near the refineries and b) the AERMOD (American Meteorological Society/Environmental Protection Agency Regulatory Model) atmospheric dispersion model. We used conditional logistic regression to estimate odds ratios associated with an increase in the interquartile range of daily SO2 mean and peak exposures (31.2 ppb for AERMOD peaks). We adjusted for temperature, relative humidity, and regional/urban background air pollutant levels. RESULTS: The risks of asthma ED visits and hospitalizations were more pronounced for same-day (lag 0) SO2 peak levels than for mean levels on the same day, or for other lags: the adjusted odds ratios estimated for same-day SO2 peak levels from AERMOD were 1.10 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.00-1.22] and 1.42 (95% CI, 1.10-1.82), over the interquartile range, for ED visits and hospital admissions, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Short-term episodes of increased SO2 exposures from refinery stack emissions were associated with a higher number of asthma episodes in nearby children

Differential Gene Expression of Mice Pellet Microbial Communities exposed to Simulated Microgravity

Microbial communities within the human gut play an important role in our overall health and wellbeing. Understanding how microgravity affects these microbial communities provides greater insight into the health of astronauts on board the ISS and what may occur during Deep Space explorations. Previous experiments have measured differential gene expression of single culture bacteria exposed to simulated microgravity, allowing us to map which genes are selected for or against in that environment. Using fecal pellets from mice exposed to simulated microgravity and space radiation, we are constructing and sequencing RNA and DNA libraries to study the metatranscriptome and changes in gut microbiota. These comparisons will allow us to gain a better understanding of how microbial communities are affected by space environments and what that may entail for the gut health of astronauts